Falling in love with the future E-Book

Miquel Lladó

• Herausgeber: Plataforma
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 107

Beschreibung

One of the top experts in business strategy, Miquel Lladó shares with us his professional experience in significant cant executive roles in big, multinational companies. In this book the reader will discover Miquel Lladó's work methodology, and, more importantly, the ideas that have contributed to him creating his own future and reaching high-ranking levels in business leadership. Rich in real-life cases, experienced first-hand by the author –a deep connoisseur of the ins and outs of management in big companies– Lladó offers a truly organic and understandable summary. It enables the reader to become immersed in concepts worth mastering to fully understand the needs of a company and to achieve successful strategy implementation, even in a context such as the current covid-19 pandemic crisis. Indeed, an inspiring text for those current and future leaders eager to play in the big leagues.

Leseprobe

Falling in Love with the Future

It’s about writing it, not reading it

Miquel Lladó

Original title: Enamorarse del futuro, originally published in Spanish, in 2020, by Plataforma Editorial.

First English edition: February 2021

© Miquel Lladó, 2020

© Translation: Dustin Langan

© Current edition: Plataforma Editorial, 2021

Plataforma Editorial

c/ Muntaner, 269, entlo. 1ª – 08021 Barcelona

Tel.: [phone]

www.plataformaeditorial.com

[email protected]

ISBN: 978-84-18582-32-5

Cover design: Silvia Lladó Arnau

Photocomposition: Grafime

All rights reserved. Copying of this work or any part of it by any means or procedure, including reprography and computer processing, and distribution of copies by public lending, without the written consent of the copyright holders, is strictly prohibited and subject to penalties under the law. If you need to photocopy or otherwise reproduce any part of this work, please write to the publisher or to CEDRO (www.cedro.org).

Table of Contents

Introduction. Thinking versus teaching1. Making things happen2. What is winning?3. Falling in love with the future4. What is strategy?5. Strategy on a page6. Implementing the strategy7. One thousand days to make a difference8. The endless story

For my family, my most important future project

To all the participants in my sessions and executives whom I advise, who inspire me and whose potential makes me fall in love with the future they are writing

IntroductionThinking versus teaching

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

Sócrates

Why don’t I find strategy books fascinating? I start reading one. It explains different theories to me. It shows me diagrams. Then … I see that it makes no difference whether the past, the present, or the future is important, whether strategy cannot be planned, whether it is emergent, whether it goes from top to bottom or upwards. Ultimately, authors are usually highly regarded professionals who honour their points of view as the most dominant. It seems like everyone is right. Maybe that is why I disengage after having read a few pages of a strategy book.

There are over two hundred thousand strategy books on Amazon Books and only four hundred on appendicitis. Why? I dare to think that when there are so many books on a subject, it means that the subject is not at all clear. I think that there are only four hundred books on appendicitis because appendicitis is appendicitis. And there are more than two hundred thousand books on strategy because many want to talk about the subject and because it is something that leads us to a future that does not yet exist, contingent on a thousand possibilities, where everything is yet to be written. When there are so many books on a topic, it confirms that there are many alternative paths to follow.

Therefore, I think that the best strategy book is each person’s own: the one we can write right now. We are all accumulating experiences, decisions, successes and lessons. This is the main reason that has prompted me to write this book, adding another one to those two hundred thousand. This book is not meant to impose any truth or theory, but to stimulate curiosity and reflection, putting forth my own experiences in black and white: those who have helped me in my professional career spanning more than forty years, both in executive positions and as a business consultant and strategy professor.

This is the book I would write for myself. It is a book in which to find the most important lessons, the ideas that have impacted and influenced me most. It is the book that I most want to share. In short, it contains ideas that have substantially helped me in my life.

I hope this book to inspire current and future leaders to believe in their own strategy view, as we are best placed to define it. We know ourselves best, our era, that of our people, nobody else. At the end of the day, as one student in a recent programme put it, strategy is life itself. And if so, that life is yours and nobody else’s.

Of course, you must spend time reading and learning from many people’s experiences and growing with them. This allows us not only to live our own life, but the lives of many. Yes, you need to devote time to reading. Of course. But there comes a time when, after having accumulated so much in your life, we are in the best position to write down our future. Let’s write. Write down your future from your own experiences and lessons learned, which are worth just as much as anyone else’s. Because they are yours and nobody else’s. Let’s listen to others, and read, and let’s also listen to ourselves by writing our own future. The best strategy book. The one that will take you where you want to go.

I sincerely hope that this book encourages you to give the best of yourself: not only to grow strategically, but above all, to allow you to lead, direct and inspire all those who trust you.

Regarding the title of this introduction, “Thinking versus teaching”, when I began my academic period at IESE Business School, in 2009, after twenty-five years as an executive in large multinational companies, I wondered how I could introduce topics of interest to managers who knew their business and their environment much better than I did. I wondered how much more I needed to know to coach executives in the automotive, aviation, banking, technology, distribution, pharmaceutical, chemical, consulting, start-up, energy, mining and other industries. How much more did I have to learn and know to feel I could teach them anything? And then I came across Socrates’ phrase, “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”, and my eyes opened. I felt good. I thought: “Yes, it’s about making them think, about inviting them to reflect”. That is how I confirmed that I had something to contribute.

That reflection, that way of viewing my teaching activity, has opened most of the strategy and leadership sessions I have delivered over the last eleven years.

There is clearly a wide range of knowledge about strategy that we can all access, mainly through the Internet, although my opinion is that to be really effective and useful, learning must include more than quick and easy access to knowledge. It also involves provoking thought about this knowledge. In this case, it is plainly and simply about developing ideas on strategy from my professional experience after having deepened them through my academic activity. I believe that strategy, a subject that is often shunned because of its abstract nature, is actually a concept that helps us get where we want to go and where we aspire to be.

Therefore, this book is not about teaching, it is not about imposing ideas. It is about making everyone pique their own curiosity and, above all, about their ability to think and to put that thinking into practice.

We all face reality from our own perspective. We experience different circumstances in scenarios that run at different speeds and we all have the possibility of thinking. This common element cuts across sectors, companies, levels of education, nationalities, cultures, speeds, interests, responsibilities and large, medium and small organisations.

My sessions on strategy run through specific cases, such as scenarios that occur in everyday business life that trigger questions and provoke reflection (the so-called Socratic method) with the intention of awakening the mind through conversations held in each session.

Three conversations take place in the sessions. The first is the one the professor keeps with participants, entailing intellectual contact with each of them. The professor, who by being at the podium is not in possession of the truth, has the role of stimulating thought. The second conversation is the one participants have among themselves, provoked by questions asked amongst them and reflections they have in small groups relating to each subject of study. The third conversation, and undoubtedly the most important, is the one each person keeps with himself/herself, that inner dialogue that takes place within each person from his/her unique approach. That is the most substantial and powerful reflection of all. I tell participants not to miss that third conversation, because I consider it vital: what do you say to yourself about what is happening around you, through your mind? It has invaluable potential.

I once read that what is really important is not what you get out of a book, but what the book takes from you. Similarly, what is significant is not what you get out of a session, but what it takes from you: that inspiration that makes you see what you did not see, that gives you the strength and energy you were looking for. That is why I try to instill an active curiosity in participants attending my lectures. I suggest that they lift their heads to see more, to be open to events happening around them. Jeff Immelt, who was CEO of the multinational company General Electric, said that the best executives see more. This is not just about looking, but about looking further.

When I had the opportunity to work for PepsiCo in the United States, I spent three months as a salesperson delivering snacks throughout the northern part of New Jersey, in North Brunswick, near New York. It was a great experience that taught me the importance of being at the frontline, where money meets the product-service, because that is where all business effort is justified.

In those early days, when I accompanied a road salesperson named Joe Pipala to learn from him, very early in the morning, the product was loaded into the delivery truck at the warehouse, ready to drive to the first customer. We would place the product on the shelf and continue the journey until the next stop, and so on, until the end of the day. I would get up at two in the morning, leave the house at three and arrive at the sales depot at four. We would load the truck until six, arrive at the first customer at seven and, after making the delivery to the stores that corresponded to the day and to the route, we would return to the sales depot at around three in the afternoon.

Work was so intense that at noon we didn’t even have time to stop to eat. So we would continue our route, with the driver holding a sandwich in one hand and the truck’s steering wheel on the other. From three to four, we ordered delivery notes and invoices and reviewed the orders for the next day. I would come home at five in the afternoon, have dinner and stay with my family until six, then I would go to bed. This can give you an idea of the physical intensity involved. It’s funny how the opportunity to learn and grow, new situations and challenges give you so much energy that you end up enjoying that intensity right away. How important it is to set challenges for yourself that prompt you to give your best in everything you aim to do!

That period of intense work, and of great learning at the same time, helped me to value those who work in the front line much more, in this case supplying supermarkets, a job that we often consider easy and to which we do not give real value, which I saw is wrong. Since then, I have had great respect for the work of salespeople and delivery people, which is not worthless because they make it easy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Without that job, the company is meaningless. It is a key link in the chain. Let me repeat myself again: they have my full respect and support.

My job as a sales delivery person at Frito-Lay was to get products to the stores along the route in the most efficient way possible. It was a matter of steps. I had to make the most sales and deliveries in the shortest possible time. The maximum sale with the fewest number of steps. I had to comply with delivery schedules and place the product on the shelves, in amount and shape, facing towards the side where consumers walked down the aisle of the supermarket. At first, you would place a bag on the display with the movement of both hands. Looking for more efficiency, not only in the steps, but in each movement of your arms and hands, you would pick up skills. With each movement of your arms, you would get to place five bags per hand on the shelf: you acquired skills that allowed you to buy time.