How leaders fail

Anthem of Artists and Entrepreneurs

A brilliant artist of the young generation, Krzysztof Zalewski created a song entitled “Beginning” and together with Kortez and Dawid Podsiadło they played the hit of 2018. For months now I have had it on my Spotify Leaderhip Playlist in 1st place. The main text of this song is:

“I don’t want to go against the wind when it’s blowing in the right direction. After all, I have my time, it’s probably a good time, I don’t want to run to the stars, let the stars run to me, I don’t want to seize a day when I have weeks in my hand, so nice, so nice ”.

Brilliant! I love to find flavors in songs and movies that are often enchanted in one phrase or sentence. It touches me, inspires me and lifts me. One scene from a movie, a fragment of a song, can contribute a lot to the leader’s approach in business, but also to a person’s life.

I believe that this text by Zalewski is an anthem for artists and entrepreneurs. This moment that Zalewski writes and sings about is what one strives for in show business, art and business.

After all, you don’t have to struggle, to fight. After all, the wind blows in the right direction, you don’t need to seize the opportunities, they go to us and the whole line of them is in front of us. It’s nice, it’s very nice.

At the same time, it is the opposite of falling. The moment when everything starts collapsing, or we feel like a few more days, weeks or months until it is going to collapse.

I have great respect for entrepreneurs, artists and leaders who, over the years, strive for something more than just performing ordinary activities as part of their work. Such people constantly look at the stars (physically and metaphorically) and ask themselves:

Will I ever get there? Will I ever get to this level? Will there be a moment when the wind will stop blowing in the face and you won’t have to chase the bunny?

It is a longing for success, for the top, for dreams

It is also a desire, a deep longing to stop worrying, struggle, feel the constant anxiety that results from uncertainty: what will it be like? What’s going to be? how will others perceive it?

Do you know this? I know.

And I know that if you are a leader or strive to be one, you know what I am talking about. And if not, it is only because you are not aware of what is circulating in the back of your head. You are so driven on by everyday life that you don’t even know that deep down there are these questions. Regardless of whether you earn PLN 3,000 or PLN 100,000 per month.

One of my clients said a few months ago in our 1×1 session:

Adam, this world is popie @ #% # $. I used to earn PLN 2,500, now EUR 1.5 million a year and a lot has changed, but the uncertainty about the future has not changed. I am not worried about whether I will have bread now, but I am worried whether my employees will have it if 3 important contracts are broken this year.

I used to worry about what my wife would say when I lost my job and the PLN 2,500 was gone. Now I am worried about what the journalists will say, the market, the stock market when the stocks go down when I have to fire people. So you have to help me through all of your strategic psychology or whatever you call it, get it over with.

I am tired of this. And despite the fact that I have achieved so much, I am afraid that my fears will lead me to wrong decisions. I used to be motivated by my worries about existence. I wanted to build a career that would never have to worry about existence again. And this desire has carried me through the years. But now that I’m over 50, I feel like this philosophy of thinking, or whatever you call it mindset, is going to get me into trouble. Take it, Adam, get it somehow.

I love his inserts “that your strategic psychology” or “what do you call it”. He likes to tease me 🙂

But this is an example of a man from whom most of us could learn, who needs to to some extent rebuild his mindset, his set of beliefs, business worldview in order to be ready for new challenges and business years.

“several months old mentor”

Once I heard from my “several month old mentor” the words:

Adam, you want to work in business, you must have the right philosophy. Remember, never build something new on the wreckage of an old one.

I didn’t quite understand his words back then, but I felt it was very important. I have been discovering the wisdom and essence of these words over the years. Today I repeat to my students, clients adding:

Remember, never make decisions based on fear, ego, or the artificial “should, must” feeling that comes from some pressure. Such a decision will always be wrong.

I see in their eyes what I felt – “I do not fully understand, but I feel that it is important”.

This is one of the few fundamental philosophies that is included in the idea of ​​”Leadership Mindset” that they will talk about extensively and show you how to implement it.

You must remember that your business philosophy determines whether you will fail or not.

Do you know your business philosophy fully? Do you know what you are really driving for? Do you know the threats to the mind that drives you?

Thanks to the wisdom of my mentors in my business path, I did not fall as much and as often as I could, and at the same time thanks to them I am where I am, working with company leaders with a turnover ranging from PLN 1 million to PLN 1 billion.

And in recent days (and I feel business excitement when I write about it :)) a member of the board of a Scandinavian company wrote to me, inviting me to talk to them. He wants me to support their management and top management for 2-3 consecutive years. They have a turnover of over 2 billion euros, the project would be in English.

If this project comes to fruition, it will be the next big step in the development of my company and myself as a strategic advisor. At the same time, it would be another proof for me personally that the mindset that I have been building for 13 years of my career is the right one.

Let me come back for a moment to a word that perhaps you are interested in “ a few-month-old mentor “. Why several months?

It was extremely interesting. By coincidence, our paths crossed. I felt that I could learn a lot from him, and he felt that he would like to help me. And literally for 3-4 months I spoke to him live and on the phone several times.

And suddenly, in the next month, contact broke off. To this day, I don’t know why.

Was it his life changes that made him focus on something else, or something else happened, or maybe he felt that he can’t or doesn’t want to give more of himself?

I don’t know. Everyone went their own way. Later, I met him about 2 times in the city and we exchanged a few sentences, just like old colleagues.

Sometimes that’s just the way it goes. We learn for years from some, and for a while from others, and we go on. This is how it goes. But one thing is important. Each, even a brief meeting with a mentor or advisor brings at least one mindset to our life and business spine, a thought that shapes us.

Think Big

One of the key beliefs that I have been guiding for 5 years is the thought: Think Big, that is, think big, do not limit yourself in your visions and goals. I got this mindset from Steve Jobs. But over the years I’ve found that it is easy to go to extremes in this way of thinking, to become too unreal and stop being on the ground. Which could lead to a collapse.

In the past, I had no mindset to “analyze the competition and look for ways to overtake them and the market.” I actually had resistance, fears: “what if it turns out that they are better, that I can’t?” So I avoided comparing myself and my company to others.

This led to one of the falls. Fortunately, not final and final, but a difficult, big stumble, which in my career I call one of the small-big falls. Luckily I got up stronger after that.

Build a competitive advantage

Another mindset that I did not have and many business owners and directors do not have is “build a competitive advantage”. The lack of such an approach makes us do something, but not create a serious business. But what’s interesting. There is also a risk of this approach.

A friend of mine once said:

On the one hand, building a competitive advantage is important, but Steve Jobs was right when he returned to Apple in 1996 to stop racing and comparing to Microsoft. Let’s create our own direction.

Whenever you overdo your competition, you take away the chance to create something unique because you filter through others, not yourself. This will limit you in principle. No extreme is good.

What should a leader follow?

These stories show what a leader should focus on. This is of course not all, it is not a complete list of the mature leader’s “mental duty”, but if you do it and know how to do it, you will have increases and a high probability that you will not fall.

I always fell when I didn’t care about these nuances. My attention was not where it should be. I was losing the ground under my feet, I was looking for help for myself, I was wandering humanly.

These experiences showed me what my backbone should be in business.

So do you. Even if you fall, you will get up. There is only one condition: you have to have the right mindset, I call him “Leadership Mindset”.