Your skill and ability as a leader and manager is critical to the success of your business. According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something.
That's 3-5 years of consistent engagement doing the work or activities you want to master.
A friend of mine years ago was studying a martial arts system called Kempo. He had been at it for 8 years and had achieved the level of brown belt. The next level for him would have been black belt. At the time, it seemed that he had spent a long time to get to that level.
In our immediate results society the idea of investing more than 4 minutes on something seems unreasonable, but 8 years, come on!
I have to admit he was very good. He even shared with me how he had been 'jumped' by 3 guys while in Detroit when his car broke down in a bad part of town. He took the guys out so fast, that it even surprised him. His craft became instinct for him. Perfectly natural.
As I look back and calculate the number of hours my friend spent getting to the level he had attained, I figured he had about 6,000 hours invested over the last 8 years. If you do the math that's about 755 hours per year or 15 hours per week. Which was about right considering the amount of time he spend training and training others. Despite his time spent so far and competency, he wasn't a master yet.
Just because we have the title of business owner, CEO, leader, whatever…doesn't make us a master of our craft. Just because we call ourselves a manager doesn't mean we are competent because we have a title.
Leadership and management work is a skill, a trade, a craft which we must work at to become masterful and effective especially if we want our businesses to be successful. And if we spend little or no time "doing" proper leadership or management work, how can we expect to do it well.
If my friend hadn't invested time in his martial arts training I suspect he would have got his rear end kicked, or worse, when he got ambushed.
If we don't spend sufficient time becoming better leaders and managers, the end result is that our businesses will get our backsides handed to us. Which is the fate of most businesses today.
Lesson: Become a master of leadership and management work.
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