Thinking Outside the Box.
Ken Miller is an executive in the healthcare industry, focused on transforming companies into industry-leading organizations. Check out his thoughts…
One of the first mantras that many of us hear when we first get involved in sports as children is, “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team.’” We quickly learn that even a superstar standout player can’t beat a well-coordinated team in winning a championship.
But teamwork only becomes more critical as we progress in life, particularly in the workplace. Anyone who has tried to run a business wearing every hat on their own can attest to the enormous advantage any organization has when it builds teams capable of working together in harmony.
On my best days, I try not to be an executive – I try to help my teams pursue their wildest dreams. Running virtually any enterprise can be an all-encompassing job, and that’s true whether it’s a mom-and-pop store or listed on the NASDAQ. At larger organizations, there’s always a fire to put out somewhere. Meanwhile at smaller companies or start-ups, there are so many roles to fill yourself and holes to plug, you can inevitably be pulled into a thousand directions.
Almost all of us have experienced it at some point. A position opens up at your company and you are sure you’re the logical candidate. You sit back and wait for the offer because you’re fully prepared for the role and perfectly suited for it.
But despite your confidence, you get “stepped over,” as I call it. Management taps someone else for the role that you were convinced was going to be yours.
For aspiring business leaders, there are plenty of books and blog posts that offer advice like “invest in the culture” or “make sure you build trust into your relationships.” While this can be useful, what’s often missing from these guides to leadership is how to handle less predictable and more unsettling scenarios: What do you do when you get passed over for a job? What happens if you’re in the boardroom presenting and you can feel yourself losing your audience?
It is natural if you work in an organization to want to climb the ladder as quickly as possible. If you want to be a CEO or president, why take longer than you need to get there?
But the reality is that trying to race to the top can backfire and dampen your chances of success if you do end up running the organization. Every stop on the path to your ultimate goal is important, and it is critical that you immerse yourself in each and every one of those jobs. This isn’t to say that you should rein in your ambition, but rather that you need to become a master of each role.