If Lanny Goodman does his job right, the audiences of
executives and entrepreneurs that hear him speak are silent
deeply lost in thought when he's finished.
That's because he suggests that effective executives need
to probe deep into themselves to discover what they desire
for their companies.
Without that knowledge, Goodman says, executives
find themselves in the all-too-familiar role of firefighter,
addressing each day's litany of problems as they arise in the
business.
Goodman knows. Combining an undergraduate degree
in art with a graduate degree in finance, he built and sold
two manufacturing businesses. Taking the lessons he
learned as entrepreneur, he launched a consulting business,
spoke to 14 national conferences sponsored by Inc. magazine
as well as hundreds of other management seminars and
has seen his insights featured in the pages of Inc.
The manager-as-firefighter role, Goodman suggests, is
an ingrained habit. Managers often see themselves primarily
as problem-solvers, and they react to employees, the
telephone, competitors and the bank throughout the workday.
And managers
grow frustrated.
The problem,
Goodman says, is
this: Humans are
creative, and fighting
fires is anything
but creative.
"We have a
god-like ability to
create something
whether nothing existed before," Goodman says. "When
we're in reaction, we're not being creative. It's profoundly
dissatisfying."
Change, he says, requires deep questions: Am I running
my business, or is my company running me? What outcome
do I desire? At the end of my life, what do I hope I will have
accomplished?
"People will do things for meaning that they never will
do for money," Goodman says.
Once entrepreneurs and executives get in touch with
their deepest desires and begin exercising their creativity,
Goodman says their companies begin changing:
* Employees who are accustomed to delegating problems
upward for solution are called upon to solve their own
problems.
* Executives who once spent their days fighting fires find
they become impatient with anything that gets in the way
of pursuit of the outcomes they desire.
* Entrepreneurial companies, which often closely reflect
the founder's personality, become transformed as the chief
executive is transformed.
But is this just management flavor-of-the-month, forgotten
soon after the speaker leaves town?
"They say that most consultants give you what they
think you want to hear; Lanny doesn't play that game. As a
matter of fact, he 'rattles your cage' like no other consultant
I've run across," says John McManus of Magellan's, a catalog
retailer of travel supplies based in Santa Barbara, Calif.
McManus continued in a recent interview: "It's not your
business he focuses on it's you and your life and what you
really want out of life (which he helps you define) and then
he weaves in the way your business can help you reach these
goals. Pretty radical. But isn't that really what owning a
business is all about? Satisfying the needs of that business'
founders.
