This is a double “hat tip”. First to fellow EOS Implementer, Ken Ritterspach, who commented in his recent newsletter about comments made at our EOS Quarterly Collaborative Event (QCE) by another EOSImplementer. Second to that implementer, Dan Wallace,  who, in turn, was sharing a quote from a speech by Suzy Welch:

I frequently encounter this odd, paradoxical statement in my work. My clients specifically hired me to teach them how to run their businesses in a way that will give them more time and freedom, yet when I try to schedule sessions with them, they often tell me they’re “too busy.” They’re so busy trying to do that they “don’t have time” to learn how to do those things better, faster, and with less effort.

One thing most successful leaders do well is delegate. Being completely open and honest—this has never come naturally to me. As a busy manager and classic over-committer, I often chose to do something myself that could have been done just as well or better by another member of my team. As a result I spent too much time and energy on stuff I didn’t like to do and wasn’t very good at.

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins asks, “Are you a hedgehog or a fox?”

The Hedgehog Concept originated from a line of the Greek poet Archilochus, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows ONE BIG THING.”

As the story goes, the cunning fox spends hours strategizing the perfect attack on how to eat the hedgehog.  He continually tries and fails, as the hedgehog simply rolls into a shiny, spiny ball with each attack.

After days of the fox’s attacks, the hedgehog’s laser focus on one simple method of defense keeps it alive.

When I was a kid we’d started counting the moment we saw lightning strike. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one- BOOM, the thunder would roll through our neighborhood, shaking everything to its foundation.

When I read Gino Wickman and Mark Winter’s most recent book, Rocket Fuel, I thought, “What an apt metaphor for the roles of Visionary and Integrator.”