Upheavals

Painting

Isn’t it interesting how the simplest sounding things are so much more complex when you think about them a little more? Yesterday,when I asked him what we would do if something didn’t go to plan, Paul glibly suggested that we would have to “paint our way out of the corner we are in”.

Lovely wordplay, and I laughed heartily. On the plane home though, I got to thinking. To paint your way out of a corner, you would have to:

Firstly, recognise it is a corner – and therefore that you are cornered. That requires the ability to admit failure. A rare quality.

Secondly, retreat from the problem in almost exactly the opposite way to how you got there in the first place to avoid being painted in again. Most problematic organisations would find it difficult to systematically retrace their steps.

Finally, paint rather than panic. Invest the hard work to get back to a position of no gain, and be inspiring enough to be given the mandate to do so by increasingly sensitive boards and bolshy shareholders.

How many leaders do you know that could do that?

How many do you know that have?

POSTED: Wednesday, 27 May 2009

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