A Spoonful of My Own Medicine

This month’s article is a personal message from me to you. The backdrop is our recently announced merger, my own intentions in light of the merger and, motivated by that, some provocative questions for you. I hope you received our announcement last month that LogiStyle has merged with a Winnipeg, MB, Canada based advertising company, called Think Shift. Together, we intend to help our clients create intentional brands, intentional cultures and intentional strategies based on a foundation of intentional leadership.

We are combining Think Shift’s promise of releasing the potential in brand, organizations and people, with LogiStyle’s promise of intentionality, to create our own concept of Potentionality.

At the outset, I want to reassure our clients that I am not retiring or bowing out. On the contrary, this merger is intended for me to spend more time creating and delivering content. I will serve as the operating Chairman of the combined company, which will be called Think Shift, and David Baker, the current CEO of Think Shift, will serve as the CEO of the combined company. Both David and I will be spending a lot of time with clients delivering content.

Now, modesty aside, I am a pretty intentional guy. So, if this is not an exit strategy, why would I enter into such a merger?

I want to tell you a story, and use it to provoke you to think of your own story.

When I left Planar, my last act in corporate America, I had a body of material that I had developed for over 30 years and I decided to take it commercial by offering workshops for corporate executives. My thinking was that I would build LogiStyle into a viable business that I could, at the right time, take into retirement, throttling my involvement as I wished. It was of little concern to me that LogiStyle provided neither financial leverage nor financial equity. Content for it to be a one-man show – supported by a young staff that I groomed – I was largely motivated by the passion I had rather than the wealth it generated.

Many of you are aware of my definition of Leadership: Leverage + Legacy.

Hearing my pitch on becoming an intentional leader, David Baker came to my L³ leadership program and wrote his Leadership Agenda. His experience was transformative, not only for himself but also as he put each member of his leadership team through the program it transformed their company – financially, culturally and strategically. So convinced was he with the approach, that he signed up to the “graduate” level program called, L³ Rejuvenation, where we focus on the “Why” of your Leadership Agenda.

It was at that program, during those three days, that he forced me to reconcile my plans for LogiStyle with my own “Why” of my Leadership Agenda. If my inspired imperatives (a concept discussed in the L³ Rejuvenation program) cause me to desire high leverage and long legacy, why am I settling for the sunset strategy of LogiStyle for the dissemination of my ideas and materials?

He invited me to come visit him in Winnipeg to witness the impact I had on him and his company.

Lo and behold, I was floored. This advertising company had combined my concepts of intentional leadership and intentional culture with their own concepts of intentional brand, using their prowess of communication and storytelling to bring much of my material to life. But there was more! Not only had they fully internalized the material, but they had begun teaching it to each other and to their clients. They had gone beyond absorbing my material; they had enhanced it and promulgated it. I asked myself— is this not leverage, is this not legacy?

Long story short, we concluded that combining forces would further both our goals.

We spent a year providing our combined services to multiple clients and the marriage was cemented. Last month, our companies merged. We intend to provide a broader set of services and offerings to our combined set of clients. We look forward to talking to you more about our plans.

Now, why is this story of relevance to you?

I want to provoke you to articulate your own story and then question it. Tell your story. What are your plans for your company, for your career? I suspect you have made some definite plans for what you want to accomplish and for the people that will succeed you. Those plans are probably based on certain assumptions – assumptions about what you consider possible, what you consider unlikely, what you would want and what you think is undesirable, etc. Question those assumptions. For each assumption questioned, explore how your current plan would change. Construct the most plausible alternative scenario for your story that invalidates a few of your assumptions. Tell the story of that alternative scenario. Taste it. You might find it not just palatable, but possibly enticing. I did.

Thank you to our clients and well-wishers for all the success we have had to date and the future it has offered our company. I am excited to expand the delivery of my content and approach, including these Food for Thought articles, which starting today, I will write and deliver under our new company name, Think Shift.

Food for Thought is our way of sharing interesting concepts on corporate leadership and management with others who might find it useful. The thoughts offered are intended to be controversial and thought provoking. They are intended to help our readers intentionally realize their potential, what we call Potentionality.