Collecting vs. Keeping

After seven years in a clinical leadership role at a hospital system, Beth had been vice president of supply chain for nine months. She was good at the job and wanted to get better. In our first session, she wrote down most of what I said in a notebook. She apologized twice for asking questions she thought she should already know the answer to.

She filled three notebooks over the year. Every session summary I sent went into a folder on her laptop, along with every newsletter, every article a colleague forwarded, and every framework from the leadership program she finished that spring. She was diligent about collecting and keeping information in the same way she was diligent about everything.

The year gave her plenty of challenges to work on: fine-tuning unreliable processes, managing a planning system conversion, replacing vendors who no longer met the standard. Two of her directors needed hard conversations she had been putting off. Her own boss moved into a bigger seat, and she wondered whether the relationship would hold.

She brought each challenge to our sessions. We worked the tactics outside and the strategy inside. She wrote down what she planned to do, and she did it. People noticed. Her reputation as an astute executive was growing.

At the end of the year, she asked to bring her reflections to our last session. I expected volumes, but she brought only one page containing five lines.

• Reflect with curiosity instead of ruminating.
• Turn expectations into agreements.
• Ask what evidence supports my inner story, and what evidence refutes it.
• Control my response, not the situation.
• Recognize people on purpose, not by accident.

I asked her about the folder and all the filled notebooks.

"I’ve kept it all," she said. "Those are my raw materials. These five insights are what I’ve distilled and put into practice."

The folder held what she had taken in. The five lines were what she did, under pressure, when the vendor called or the director pushed back or the new boss went quiet. The notebooks went on a shelf. The page stayed on her desk.

Beth decided what was hers, and what she would use.

Collecting is what you know. Keeping is what you use.

The Question

If your leadership had to fit on one page, what would survive?

"It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential." — Bruce Lee