218 50 TOPEXECUTIVECOACHES
- Are they able to take advantage of change more easily?
- Are the people in the business using their full talents?
- Are they doing, to quote Tom Peters, “cool stuff ”?
•Have they broken the code? - Is there plenty of passion to go around—enough that good people want
to work there?
Along the way, I want people to:
- Read the world,including the mess, the opportunities, the politics, or
the fray, the beauty of the situation, the humor, the opportunities, and
what it means for them. - Define the identitythey personally want to hold in the world and the
identity their organization wants to have (and how the two are linked!).
Identit y is the heart of branding. - Decide on the highest leverage actionsit will take to get there in the
most elegant fashion—what I mean by “breaking the code” (sorry, too
many spy mov ies in my childhood and a worship of the Emma Peel
character). - Pull in the talentthey have to help them take the actions and break the
code as quickly as possible. I find there is a layer of subtle malaise and
uncertainty hanging over many organizations like a cloud cover. We
could use a corporate weather channel some days just to break through.
Pulling a team of passionate people together to work a key project is
one of the best antidotes to that malaise.