#Abundance March 19
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Two things happened last week that made me think about ABUNDANCE and specifically a phrase coined by Simon Sinek called “Destructive ABUNDANCE”. This is a condition where we have so much it ceases to have value. That might be getting ready to change.
The first is I finished reading Simon Sinek best selling book titled “Leaders Eat Last”. It is part of my March 30 Day Challenge to read 8 books and this was one of those 8 books. I highly recommend it.
The second is I watched a fabulous documentary called “Now More Than Ever” on the band Chicago. The band in the beginning was such a cohesive team. Yet ABUNDANCE changed them.
I don’t think many of will argue that humans just seem to function better as a team when they are up against a wall. When success and good times are in full bloom we have a tendency to become wasteful and lose appreciation for what we have. This past week might be pushing us to function better as a team. I hope so.
Sinek in the book talks about a number of companies, including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, that lost their way because they become focused on growth and not a vision or passion.
I was intrigued that Merrill Lynch for almost 100 years focused on the investor short term and profits long term. Than they had a culture shift. That focus or vision on the investor left Merrill Lynch and they became all about growth.
In the documentary on Chicago it was clear that it was a band that formed because they had a passion to just play music. Then as with almost all teams that experience success they encountered “Destructive ABUNDANCE”.
Chicago has many hit songs.
The focus in the 1980’s for the band became to put out another hit song. They became like Merrill Lynch their focus was on revenue and growth not the creative passion they once had. They lost their vision in lieu of growth.
To be fair both had to endure changes. A new law that decentralized banking called Dodd-Frank incentivized short term profits for Merrill-Lynch. For Chicago they lost Terry Kath, had success with Peter Cetera and David Foster only to have a falling out, to finally realizing it had to go back to the passion of just playing music.
I love a quote in the book Leaders Eat Last that I believe all leaders should ponder.
”Destructive ABUNDANCE happens when the players focus almost exclusively on the score and forget why they set out to play the game in the first place.”
The job of a leader is to challenge her/his team with a vision. Last week we may have lost a lot of the ABUNDANCE in our lives but we have not lost our need for leaders who can provide vision.
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