that reality and had seen it happen to Motorola and others. She has chosen reality over comfort. She looked at the world and saw the reality of what platforms are doing, and how Welch Al yn needed to be aligned with that reality. So the pruning moment was right in front of her.
Shimer’s leadership is an example of clearly grasping reality and making the necessary ending. Fearlessly. How do you do that?
By getting hopeless about what is not going to work.
The first step that wil motivate you to do what is necessary is to see that what you are doing has no hope of getting what you want. When that happens, you wil instantly feel an epiphany. You realize that to get where you want to get, you must make a change. You real y get it that to continue to do what you are doing is hopeless, and then you wil begin to see motivation to make a change appear. So hopelessness can bring us closer to fearlessness, as it does not take courage to stop doing what you know is not going to work. When you see a train coming, you have fear working for you, motivating you to get out of the way. It just takes a clear dose of the reality, over and over, to confirm that you are going nowhere. It creates its own discomfort, which motivates us to action. It is sometimes the most important step you can take, as it wil fuel you to make a move.
But remember, to get there, you have to get honest with yourself and be ready to see hopelessness as if it is staring you in the face. You have to come to that moment with 20/20 vision in order to see it, by doing the work of the previous chapters. To have clear vision, the steps we have already discussed must be in place. Here is a brief review:
1. Do a gut check to see how you feel about pruning in general and identify any potential intellectual or emotional resistance. You wil not embrace a pruning reality if you have an internal conflict with the idea. Shimer had no conflict with this at al . As she reports, she had asked for it at Motorola and did not get it. But it was wel within her comfort level to get rid of what needs to be gotten rid of.
2. Make the concept of endings a normal occurrence and a normal part of business and life, so you expect and look for them instead of seeing them as a problem. If you real y believe that pruning, seasons, and life cycles are as real as gravity, you wil not have to be talked into them; you wil always be looking for them.
Just as a good real estate developer does not expect an up cycle to last forever, Shimer did not believe that sustained market share could go on forever in a tech company that was not ending the old ways of technology and not morphing to the new way of the world: platforms. Trains versus airplanes al over again. Wires versus wireless. The dead or dying has to be moved out, and that is a normal process. Her worldview expected both seasons and life cycles. Just as a person plans for retirement, she knew she had to plan for product obsolescence. Her vision in that regard was corrected to 20/20 by the Motorola experience before she got to Welch Al yn, enabling her to see it. Do not be surprised by obsolescence: expect it and plan for it.
3. Identify the internal maps that keep you from executing necessary endings. In chapter 4, we listed many of the personalized maps that get in our way. As I talked to Shimer about these, she said that hers were mostly cleared out by twenty-five years of leadership experience. She was over the squishy thinking that would prevent her from executing an ending, having seen too many instances where not executing an ending caused more pain than it solved. Ironical y, the one thinking pattern she had to clear up, she said, was in the opposite direction. The shift she had to make was in her thinking that it was going to be easier to get everyone on board than it was. She learned that getting movement around such a monumental change would take more steps than she had foreseen. She thought everyone would instantly see reality
Shimer’s leadership is an example of clearly grasping reality and making the necessary ending. Fearlessly. How do you do that?
By getting hopeless about what is not going to work.
The first step that wil motivate you to do what is necessary is to see that what you are doing has no hope of getting what you want. When that happens, you wil instantly feel an epiphany. You realize that to get where you want to get, you must make a change. You real y get it that to continue to do what you are doing is hopeless, and then you wil begin to see motivation to make a change appear. So hopelessness can bring us closer to fearlessness, as it does not take courage to stop doing what you know is not going to work. When you see a train coming, you have fear working for you, motivating you to get out of the way. It just takes a clear dose of the reality, over and over, to confirm that you are going nowhere. It creates its own discomfort, which motivates us to action. It is sometimes the most important step you can take, as it wil fuel you to make a move.
But remember, to get there, you have to get honest with yourself and be ready to see hopelessness as if it is staring you in the face. You have to come to that moment with 20/20 vision in order to see it, by doing the work of the previous chapters. To have clear vision, the steps we have already discussed must be in place. Here is a brief review:
1. Do a gut check to see how you feel about pruning in general and identify any potential intellectual or emotional resistance. You wil not embrace a pruning reality if you have an internal conflict with the idea. Shimer had no conflict with this at al . As she reports, she had asked for it at Motorola and did not get it. But it was wel within her comfort level to get rid of what needs to be gotten rid of.
2. Make the concept of endings a normal occurrence and a normal part of business and life, so you expect and look for them instead of seeing them as a problem. If you real y believe that pruning, seasons, and life cycles are as real as gravity, you wil not have to be talked into them; you wil always be looking for them.
Just as a good real estate developer does not expect an up cycle to last forever, Shimer did not believe that sustained market share could go on forever in a tech company that was not ending the old ways of technology and not morphing to the new way of the world: platforms. Trains versus airplanes al over again. Wires versus wireless. The dead or dying has to be moved out, and that is a normal process. Her worldview expected both seasons and life cycles. Just as a person plans for retirement, she knew she had to plan for product obsolescence. Her vision in that regard was corrected to 20/20 by the Motorola experience before she got to Welch Al yn, enabling her to see it. Do not be surprised by obsolescence: expect it and plan for it.
3. Identify the internal maps that keep you from executing necessary endings. In chapter 4, we listed many of the personalized maps that get in our way. As I talked to Shimer about these, she said that hers were mostly cleared out by twenty-five years of leadership experience. She was over the squishy thinking that would prevent her from executing an ending, having seen too many instances where not executing an ending caused more pain than it solved. Ironical y, the one thinking pattern she had to clear up, she said, was in the opposite direction. The shift she had to make was in her thinking that it was going to be easier to get everyone on board than it was. She learned that getting movement around such a monumental change would take more steps than she had foreseen. She thought everyone would instantly see reality
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