The Toothbrush and the Cave
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
I have long believed that the great benefit of travel is not merely seeing and experiencing new things. Rather, it is the opportunity to put yourself into unfamiliar situations and environments, because doing so allows, encourages, and even forces you to examine and re-think your own views and assumptions. As the writer Henry Miller neatly put it, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
The great benefit of travel is not merely seeing and experiencing new things, but rather the opportunity to put yourself into unfamiliar situations and environments, which in turn forces you to examine and re-think your own views and assumptions.
Once you get out into the big wide world, you will find that most everywhere you go is quite a bit different from the place you left. People there think differently; they do things differently; and they hold different values. Sometimes these differences are profound: for example, the differences in family life or the place of religion in Africa or India as compared to the United States or Western Europe. Sometimes they are trivial but interesting. When I was young, I was surprised to realize from observing readers on the Paris Metro that in France serious books of literature and philosophy tended to be small, whereas best sellers and genre fiction were often large in format. Quite different from the way things have traditionally been in the States, where we have little paperbacks for fun reading but literature and serious nonfiction tend to be packaged in a larger format.
Thinking differently is one of the most important jobs of any leader. Determining when the best practice is the right way to go versus when things need to be shaken up. Improving or iterating versus innovating. Being able to see things from multiple perspectives, ideally all at the same time. Understanding sources of conflict that arise from stakeholders with different beliefs or different goals so you can better manage through them.
My friend Andy Nordin, one of the most intellectually curious Millennials I know, recapped for me the biography of Dieter Mateschitz, the late co-founder of Red Bull. On a business trip in Thailand, the origin story goes, Mateschitz sampled a caffeinated beverage marketed to Thai laborers … and then, in a stroke of genius decided he could adapt it to Western tastes, add carbonation to it, and promote it as an energy drink to extreme sports fanatics at a premium price point. Today Red Bull challenges the likes of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in global sales. Andy wryly noted, “Imagine if Mateschitz had the attitude of Usain Bolt at the Beijing Olympics, who refused to eat anything apart from McDonalds chicken nuggets.”
Thinking differently is not easy, but leaders who fail to look at things in a different way and challenge assumptions may find their organizations lagging. And leaders who insist on seeing things the same way often find themselves left behind. The classic example among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is Blockbuster. The company’s last few CEOs just dithered around as movie-watching preferences evolved, and they simply couldn’t understand the seismic shift underway by market disrupters like Netflix and Redbox. Blockbuster might still be around today, having made the (in hindsight) no-brainer shift to digital streaming. They had the resources to do it. They just didn’t have the vision or the will; indeed, they deliberately turned away and in the end were the architects of their own demise.
Thinking differently is not easy, but leaders who fail to look at things in a different way and challenge assumptions may find their organizations lagging.
Last month on a business trip through Europe and the Middle East I was reminded of the value of travel for shaking up my own fixed opinions. I have a long-standing habit of keeping a journal, and when I travel I find myself taking a lot more notes than when I’m home—probably because my senses are being stimulated and I’m a bit (mostly delightfully) off-balance. Following are two short anecdotes related to “thinking differently” about leadership that I brought back with me.
The Toothbrush
One great insight came from Haitham Albakree, CEO of Wataniya, a large publicly traded insurance company based in Jeddah. During an intense working session focused on the challenges of implementing broad strategic and structural change, Haitham observed how important he felt it was to remain open to different ways of seeing things. He noted, speaking for himself as well as for many of his peers, that when the stakes are high executives will often tend to take the safe path forward. They may not dare to challenge standard assumptions or risk messing around with things that are working, even if they aren’t working brilliantly. As the old saying goes, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
Therefore, he argued, leaders must work constantly to make themselves uncomfortable so that they can learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and with doing things in new ways. Haitham and I talked about a variety of ways to do this: ensure that your people feel that they have permission to challenge you; appoint devil’s advocates on your team; challenge yourself to do things in a different way than you normally would; seek outside your organization and even outside your industry for different ways of doing things; restrain yourself so that you go last in meetings and work on listening actively and intently for fresh ideas and approaches.
Haitham shared with me that he makes a regular effort to make himself uncomfortable even in his daily life, because he believes that it’s good practice for his work as a leader. We compared ideas such as trying out new hobbies; talking open-mindedly with people either much younger or much older than you; reading books you wouldn’t normally read; even driving to work via different route each day.
Then Haitham revealed that, as of the last month, he had started forcing himself to brush his teeth with his left hand. For his whole life he had brushed his teeth with his right hand and, as for most of us, the activity had become almost unconscious. Starting out with his left hand was extremely uncomfortable and very slow, he noted. But the activity has created a productive kind of discomfort and one that he says has made him more comfortable with being uncomfortable. “I find that brushing with my left hand makes me hyper-conscious and aware, and that’s a great way to start and end each day.”
“I find that brushing with my left hand makes me hyper-conscious and aware, and that’s a great way to start and end each day.”
Do you have a toothbrush practice—or something like it? I’ve had little luck so far using my left hand—I’m just too clumsy. But I’m going to keep at it, and along the way I’ve instituted a related ritual I read about a while back, which is alternating standing on one and then the other foot while brushing my teeth: apparently this is good for balance and core strength, but it also makes me more mindful during an otherwise mundane activity.
The Cave
During the same trip through Europe and the Middle East, while conducting a Hogan Assessment interpretation/debrief with a seasoned CFO, the question of how to build trust came up. This executive’s Hogan scores clarified to him something that had been worrying him: that people were not likely to experience him as open and transparent, and that under pressure he tended to come across skeptical and even mistrustful of people. These orientations are not entirely surprising for an executive who has a huge responsibility to manage risk, but this perceived style can get in the way of interpersonal effectiveness.
This CFO is incredibly talented in terms of the technical parts of his job. He is highly respected and valued for always knowing every detail about the business and for providing great guidance on tough decisions. It’s rare when he doesn’t have the answer; he quickly susses out problems; and he is highly valued by the company’s analysts and board.
On the other hand, his team and his business partners would say that he is “all business,” and despite working with him now for several years, they don’t know him very well. Indeed, he has not made much effort to allowothers to know him. None of this is a problem per se except that trust—true trust—actually depends more on personal characteristics rather than mere technical competence.
Trust—true trust—actually depends more on personal characteristics rather than mere technical competence.
This CFO and I talked about the importance of reaching out to others, building what I like to call “non-transactional relationships,” and bringing more of his whole person to critical partnerships. But we finally clicked on the “ah-ha” when we created a metaphor together—the metaphor of the cave. (No, not Plato’s cave, though that classic might also fit in here.)
We talked about why someone might agree to follow you into a dark cave, and posited that few people other than extreme risk-takers would be likely to follow you simply because you are a master spelunker. There must be more to it. First and foremost, they must know that you have their best intentions in mind: most importantly their safety. You furthermore need to provide them with a rationale for following you into the cave: “Why will I be better off because I’ve made this somewhat perilous journey with you?”
Additionally, it helps if they have come to know and trust you in less dangerous endeavors: if I’ve gone to dinner with you, gone on a walk with you, traveled someplace new with you, and so on, all with no serious concerns, then I’m probably more likely to be confident following you into a less familiar place like that cave.
In talking with the CFO in the weeks following our discussion, it’s clear that he is working harder to round out how his key stakeholders see and understand him. He’s making efforts to be more open, talk more about the big picture, and even to have a coffee or meal with peers and team members (rather than just meeting them transactionally in his office). As a result, he’s seeing real benefits in the workplace… and even having more fun. It turns out that for him to get to the next level he doesn’t necessarily need to be a stronger financeexecutive, he needs to be a stronger colleague and partner. This was a great insight for me too, especially in my own profession where I must remind myself continuously that I will only be able to help my clients if they truly trust me, and that their trust is based on things that go well beyond my technical understanding of the art and science of leadership and organization effectiveness.
So, what can you do to see some of these benefits?
So, what can you do to see some of these benefits?
- Do you make an effort to visit your company’s other offices and meet with your colleagues in their local habitats?
- Do you visit even the more far-flung ones, especially in other countries?
- When you’re in those new places, do you seek experiences off the tourist trail?
- In this Age of Zoom, do you still get out to see your customers on their home courts? And spend time with them talking about more than just business matters?
- Do you try to solicit more honest feedback? And then alter your behavior, even if it’s uncomfortable, to show that you’re willing to do things differently?
- Do you plan vacations to new places and take time to see how things work there? (You’re not likely to get a ton of new ideas down on the Jersey Shore or at a resort in the Bahamas, as nice as those places may be.)
As the classical historian Miriam Beard noted, “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” If you want to think differently, start by putting yourself into a different place. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results.
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