Quotes About Growth

It's something else, something in me that wants things always to remain the same, always safe. It's a basic fear of life, I guess. I've never admitted that to anyone, and I guess I've never admitted it to myself, but it's the truth.

Many family men come to me. If you were a father of children you would know that reassurance is necessary from time to time. But if one protects too much—if the child is not helped to learn his lessons, to overcome his fears—he will need a greater and greater dose of this medicine of consolations. He will not grow. Could it be that our Lord is asking you to grow very quickly? It seems he trusts you sufficiently to give you this test." It

garden. I have been defeated,

You mean, how have we kept together all these years? With so much to separate us?" "Yes. How did you?" "Well, it wasn't always serene. But many questions do resolve themselves without words. You stand side by side for so long and have other things to fight than each other." Yes, she loved the man, her husband. But still did not know him. At least not with the knowledge of the laboratory. It was an inner kind of knowing maybe, an underdeveloped sense.

YOU'VE GOT BIG IDEAS AND AMBITIONS IN YOUR CAREER, and you've done well ... so far. But are you ready for your next move? Because your path to the top will be built step-by-step through a series of major career moves. And each time you make a change, you have the opportunity to shine or to stumble. Shine and you will be positioned for still greater things. Stumble and you may never recover.

The situational diagnosis conversation. In this conversation, you seek to understand how your new boss sees the STARS portfolio you have inherited. Are there elements of start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success?

Accelerate everyone. Finally, you need to help all those in your organization—direct reports, bosses, and peers—accelerate their own transitions. The fact that you're in transition means they are too.

What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face in the near future)? Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges? What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth? What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities? If you were me, what would you focus attention on?

How will you make it your own?

start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success. The STARS model

FIGURE I-4 Key transition milestones

successful in rapidly scaling the learning curve, building key relationships, and getting early wins,

To borrow an old saw, preparing yourself is a journey and not a destination. You will have to work constantly to ensure that you're engaging with the real challenges of your new position and not retreating to your comfort zone. It is easy to backslide into habits that are both comfortable and dangerous. Plan to reread this chapter and its questions periodically, asking, Am I doing all I can to prepare myself?

you can decide to learn and adapt, or you can become brittle and fail.

Building "ambidextrous" organizations that can do both of these well is a challenge. See Michael L. Tushman and Charles O'Reilly III, Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal, rev. ed. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

The first task in making a successful transition is to accelerate your learning.

The personal development conversation. Once you're a few months into your new role, you can begin to discuss how you're doing and what your developmental priorities should be. Where are you doing well? In what areas do you need to improve or do things differently? Are there projects or special assignments you could undertake (without sacrificing focus)?

also marks the beginning of a new journey in which you must figure out what it takes to excel in the new role, how to exceed the expectations of those who promoted you, and how to position yourself for still-greater things. That's the promotion challenge.

coping with increasing issue breadth and complexity requires leaders to rethink how and what they delegate each time they get promoted.

preparing yourself means letting go of the past and embracing the imperatives of the new situation to give yourself a running start.

growth covers up a lot of sins.

I don't know why people aren't more curious, and why curiosity isn't considered a more important leadership trait. A journalist once asked me if I was ever bored as a kid. I only had to think about it for a second: I never was, not even for a minute, because I was so curious. Every day I'd wake up excited by all the new things there were to learn about.

It's not enough to hire to fill a job. It's not even enough to hire on the basis of one's talents. You have to hire based upon a candidate's potential to grow and develop.

How successful you are is really a function of how well you deal with failure—and how much you learn from it.