Your Map Is Lying to You!
We’d been married only five years…
Before the reality became so stark and painful…
It was impossible to hide.
“You keep telling me you’re beating your targets at work.” She began.
“You say you’re up there on the (what’s it called?)… The Leader Board.”
I could see where this was leading.
“Yet, here you are, in bed… with flu… for the third time this year.
And it’s July!”
Wendy had spotted the truth.
The truth… that Metrics and Maps can lie!
The figures were announcing that I was starting to enjoy success as a Financial Adviser.
But my body was telling me a different story.
Sometime later I was jauntily pacing the floor of my own financial planning firm. Offices in London and Sussex.
As one of the first users of Cashflow Projection Software in the UK…
I felt like the proverbial Bee’s Knees.
Leading my own business was something I’d dreamed about for years.
Doing ‘proper’ financial planning was a bonus.
We’d started to install better processes.
We were generating better financial planning reports.
We were enjoying the results of a pretty clever marketing strategy.
Then one of my team sat herself beside my desk…
and quietly said…
“David, you haven’t asked me how I’m coping with what you’re creating… for months.”
My life today is privileged.
I get to meet a lot of seriously bright people.
Even brave and beautiful people.
And they know that I’m a religious sort of chap.
Generally they show great respect for that.
Yet… I see much of religion in their thinking and behaviour too.
Even when they declare otherwise.
I see them making Maps and Metrics and Dashboards their idols.
Slowly allowing themselves to worship representations of reality.
Because that’s what those metrics are.
Complex human behaviour…
Made easy and quick to understand.
But underneath that Rapid Review View…
Are complex, messy human stories.
Which is what makes their worship so dangerous.
Instead of reality itself, they see…
Sometimes conversations are difficult to start.
Particularly conversations which might tell you things you’d rather not hear.
About the business.
About your clients.
About a team member who is manifestly fraying at the edges.
About what it’s like working with you.
It’s far easier to praise and revere what can be measured:
Revenue.
Conversion rates.
AUM.
Awards.
But none of that asks anything of our soul.
People do.
Our leadership begins the moment we become breathlessly curious enough to leave the Dashboard…
And sit with the human beings it claims to describe.
When the quality of relationships becomes The Plan… The Strategy…
Then bodies, minds and hearts come alive in a way that no measurement can predict.
Yes, the map will always have its place.
But love… trust… exhaustion…
Joy… fear…hope…
None of them fit neatly inside your Dashboard.
They can only be discovered…
by walking the ground.
By being with your people.
