Wisdom Is Not Enough

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

By  Rob Wright

I just finished reading Jeff Appelquist’s book, Wisdom Is Not Enough, which provides key insights in a concise manner with chapters that are four to five pages in length. I read the book over a period of several lunches, and I wanted to share a couple of his words of wisdom that really hit home for me.

Small Decisions Matter
I have always been a firm believer in “it is the little things that make the difference.” From my experience, small decisions often matter the most — taking the time to send a thank you, privately recognizing a colleague for a job well done, calling a friend to let them know how much they mean to you. Applequist provides a poignant example of a small decision which cost a person $22 billion. On April Fools’ Day in 1976, three men, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne founded Apple Computer, Inc. Wayne was asked by Wozniak and Jobs to be their partner with a 10% stake in the company. His primary role was to mediate disputes between the Steves. He designed the original company logo, drafted the computer manual, and wrote the initial partnership agreement. Wayne quickly realized he was the only member of the partnership with actual assets that creditors could seize. With Jobs being an extravagant spender and Wozniak taking mental flights of fancy, Wayne got cold feet and sold his share of the company back to the owners for $800. It is estimated that his 10% share would be worth $22 billion, give or take. What seemed like a small decision at the time proved to be a rather large blunder. To Wayne’s credit, he doesn’t spend time lamenting his decision stating, “I left Apple for reasons that seemed sound to me at the time. Why should I go back now and ‘what if’ myself?” How true. Sometimes decisions involve other people … and meetings.

Avoid The Tyranny of Meetings
In chapter 23, Applequist took me down memory lane with his explanation of meetings for the sake of having meetings. He uses his personal experiences to describe how inefficient meetings can not only be time wasters but energy drainers. Having started my first real job after college in retail, I would swear Applequist and I worked in the same store as he described how the general manager would pull his leadership team together for an all morning meeting. This was not a give-and-take discussion, but the manager took it as his opportunity to ramble on about any discussion that just popped into his head. He provided other examples of inefficient meetings, and again, I could totally relate. But, what I like about Applequist is his solution orientation. Rather than throw out a problem without an answer, he gives some basic tips on how to improve meetings. These may seem to be commonsense, but I see meetings take place on a daily basis which fail to implement these basic suggestions. For example, invite the right people, start and stop the meeting on time, develop an agenda, assign a note taker, stick to the agenda, use real data, encourage everyone to contribute, create a comfortable environment for communication, and at the end, summarize the meeting and assign next steps.

Interestingly, while in the lunchroom reading the chapter on meetings, the president of our company walked in and asked me about what I was reading. He happened to be on his way to a meeting, so I shared the information in the book on this topic. A few days later he stopped by and thanked me for sharing that information. Perhaps I can continue my so far successful meeting-avoidance behavior.