How to confront ‘your ordinary’

Directors need to confront their ordinary, says former Z Energy CEO-turned executive coach Mike Bennetts CMInstD. When you climb that mountain – or open that “gate” – you can become extraordinary.

There are a lot of adjectives to describe extraordinary – from rare to remarkable to unbelievable to out of this world.

For Bennetts, extraordinary means something beyond the predictable. “That’s not to say that ‘the predictable’ isn’t hard or challenging, but there are times where we often settle for delivering on the predictable, which is, come to work and repeat what we’ve been doing for the past couple of years. And that gets us the answer.”

Directors are no exception, he says.

“You need to have that willingness to confront where you are ordinary. Many of us aspire to great things, and we don’t necessarily realise that means we need to confront what we’re short of, what we’re not good at and our blind spots.

“Confronting your ordinary, if you like, is the gate you need to go through. If you are willing to do that, then there a series of mindsets and practices on how to get beyond that.”

They are revealed in Bennett’s book, Being Extraordinary by Confronting your Ordinary. Working harder is not among them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

In his work as a coach consultant, he tries to get people to understand the bigger picture.

“So many business leaders do what they do effectively and efficiently, but is that really their game worth playing?

“That’s an important part of them being willing to confront things, to try new things because they know they can’t just work harder to play that sort of game. It’s above and beyond that.

“When the leaders play ordinary, the organisation can only play ordinary. When the leaders play extraordinary, the organisation can transform. Most importantly, the organisation doesn’t change until the leaders do. And nothing changes without action.”

Bennetts says extraordinary performance can require you to give up some of the ways in which you would normally apply your working harder strategies, which is ‘I’ll work longer, I will ask more of my people, I won’t be as caring or as long-term in my views’. This is part of confronting your ordinary.

In talking to directors, Bennetts says he has had a lot of feedback around context – with the role of top leaders in designing the context rather than the content.

“There are three contextual horizons – the current context, the predictable future and then what I call the generated future. If that context is not quite fully understood and mutually agreed, then given actions flow from context, that’s often why boards and management are seemingly in disagreement with one another.”

Directors and management can be on the same page by fully understanding and mutually agreeing those three contextual horizons – ‘Where are we today, what’s our predictable future if we keep on doing what we’re doing,
and what do we want to generate as an alternative to that’?

Bennetts says everything flows from context and gives a simple visualisation: “If I came into the room and said ‘jump out of the window’, you’d think I’m an idiot because the context is that would be an unsafe thing to do. But if I said, ‘Hey, the building’s on fire, there is no way out but through the window, and you’ll only fall a metre on to a cushion’. You go, ‘Great, I’m going to jump’. That’s why context is so important because it shapes our thoughts and our actions. That’s why context needs to be fully understood and mutually agreed. Otherwise, you’re running off in different directions.”

Being extraordinary is not easy, says Bennetts, because it implies you are extraordinary all of the time.

“Directors need to confront – like management do, particularly senior management – where they are ordinary and to understand what are the mindsets associated with a more regular and reliable delivery of extraordinary outcomes. That’s what boards often want, but the typical solution is work harder, or what they call stretch performance.”

The language you use is also important and an indication of how committed people are, Bennetts says. “The example I like to use is, ‘try, hope and possibly’ are not the same as ‘I will, I promise, you can count on me’.

“I wonder again, when boards and management interact, how often people are saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll try to hit that goal’. ‘We hope the third quarter will be better’. That’s like me saying to you, ‘I hope we’ll pay you next month. I’ll try to make sure you have a job next week’.

“We have this language around performance – particularly in times of uncertainty or change, or where you want to get to that next level of performance – where we still use the very ordinary language of the predictable future. ‘I’ll try to do that. Yeah, that’s possible. I hope that things get better’.

“Hope,” Bennetts stresses, “is not a reliable strategy.”

Bennetts says his book is designed to work as a system. “There’s a metaphor that says the eight practices work together or the eight mindsets work together. And equally you could just grab one or two to work with and you would have more regular and reliable delivery of extraordinary outcomes.”

He also warns of a ‘phenomenon’ he calls ‘The Drift’ – akin to ‘Quiet Quitting’.

“I use a metaphor of ‘The Drift’ being like sitting in a kayak or canoe and going down the river, and ending up at a destination. Thinking about it from a business perspective, that destination is around time, quality and budget. Those are usually the three variables that determine a good outcome or not.

“I don’t want people to think ‘The Drift’ is that people just come to work each day and are mindless in what they do. What I’m saying is the future is predictable because you’re not confronting your ordinary, expecting the same result and you’re not on the same page around context or the language of real commitment. ‘The Drift’ isn’t a good or a bad thing. It is just there all of the time, unless you have an awareness around it and you do something about it. It’s the feeling and sensation we have that keeps us from striving for the extraordinary.”

Bennetts, named Deloitte Top 200 CEO of the Year in 2016, has served as a director of various private and public companies and joint ventures in New Zealand, Singapore, China and South Africa. “I’ve been a director for 25 years and a CEO for 20. So I’ve actually been a director longer than I’ve been a CEO.”

He says he wrote the book primarily for New Zealand leaders. “I’ve accumulated a lot of experience over many decades of getting it right and also getting it wrong. I’ve got a lot of practical experience I think would be helpful to people.

“And I heard there was a need for a reasonably comprehensive business book written for primarily New Zealand business leaders. It’s very contextual to New Zealand, although it’s not some sort of hokey Down Under type thing. I think it is useful in any culture.” 

Mike Bennetts CMInstD is the chair of venture capital investor Punakaiki Fund Limited. He was chair of BP Energy Asia Pte Ltd and was on the board of BP Singapore Pte Ltd, BP Guangzhou Development Oil Product Co, China Aviation Oil (Singapore) Ltd, New Zealand Refining Company and Loyalty New Zealand.