How to Engineer Opportunities: Growing People from Strength to Strength

We had a leader when I first started that used to have the saying, they said, it's okay to have selfish goals, as long as you're willing to achieve them through unselfish means.

It's kind of a weird saying, but it's something that we've embraced in our company, and I think that example will sort of weave into what I have to say today.

So we all aspire as a goal to progress through our careers and move from stage to stage in our career and have a really, really fulfilling career growing along the way.

What I want to introduce to you today is the concept of really not only thinking forwards for yourself but also thinking backwards and thinking about how can you engineer opportunities for those who follow you and think just as much about that as you are thinking about moving forward in your own career.

That's growth leadership and the concept is engineering opportunities.

First, I'm gonna give you a little test, a little example, one of the P's of Evergreen, pragmatic innovation.

So everybody just quickly think of this.

Can you think of just one thing that you're doing in your role today that you think is an improvement over the person who did the job before? One improvement that you've made.

Can you think of that? Raise your hand.

A lot of hands came up pretty fast.

Okay, that's great.

So you're an innovator.

We have lots of innovators here.

My question is, are you thinking about that if you ask for advice from the people who work for you, how many of you think they have an even better idea than that right now? That's really the concept of the opportunity for personal growth that you have and that others have really in tandem with you.

We had a leader when I first started that used to have the saying, they said, it's okay to have selfish goals, as long as you're willing to achieve them through unselfish means.

It's kind of a weird saying, but it's something that we've embraced in our company, and I think that example will sort of weave into what I have to say today.

So we all aspire as a goal to progress through our careers and move from stage to stage in our career and have a really, really fulfilling career growing along the way.

What I want to introduce to you today is the concept of really not only thinking forwards for yourself but also thinking backwards and thinking about how can you engineer opportunities for those who follow you and think just as much about that as you are thinking about moving forward in your own career.

That's growth leadership and the concept is engineering opportunities.

First, I'm gonna give you a little test, a little example, one of the P's of Evergreen, pragmatic innovation.

So everybody just quickly think of this.

Can you think of just one thing that you're doing in your role today that you think is an improvement over the person who did the job before? One improvement that you've made.

Can you think of that? Raise your hand.

A lot of hands came up pretty fast.

Okay, that's great.

So you're an innovator.

We have lots of innovators here.

My question is, are you thinking about that if you ask for advice from the people who work for you, how many of you think they have an even better idea than that right now? That's really the concept of the opportunity for personal growth that you have and that others have really in tandem with you.