Dear Farillio member,

You asked our fabulous guest Bill Eckstrom on the Go Far Fast Show:

“Can you tell us all about The Growth Rings model and how they’re used to categorise the various conditions of which people may be working in? And how can they tell you the likelihood that their business’s kind of performance culture will succeed or fail?”

And Bill said:

Be mighty always, Farillio

Transcript:

“Well, it's challenging to envision, and I would tell people, go to the TED Talk to actually see the actual graphic itself, but think of rings as a goldfish bowl. Basically, it's an environment, and these rings depict environments that either promote or hinder the growth of living things. Now, when I say living things, usually people think of like a frog or a goldfish or myself as a person. But living things can encompass a team. It can encompass a forest or a political party. There are so many things that can encompass what a living thing is.

And really, in the sense that we use it in business, is to help people understand that if I'm in a coaching role, I am an environment influencer and creator, is what I am as a coach. And depending on how the people on my team respond to me. For example, if I coach with fear, I'm probably going to put my people in a state of chaos, which is an environment that we that is part of the growth rings. If I make people on my team follow too many steps and permissions and minutia and they always have to ask permission to do things, they probably could be in a state of stagnation, which is negative growth, another environment depicted in the growth rings. I can also be a leader that we do the same things all the time, trying to get a predictable outcome that makes us an order, another environment within the growth rings.

And the challenge with order, as I say in the TED Talk, is that we should be fearful of it. Here's what's fascinating and dichotomous about it, high performing teams have order involved, there has to be some comfort in what I do, you can't live a whole life of discomfort. You can't. And so, we need some order in our life because that prepares us for times when we need to go into discomfort, and when we go into discomfort, that ring we call complexity. And that is where we enter an environment, it means we've changed an input 'order' and now the outcomes are going to be different. That's what typically people avoid, but it's the only environment where growth occurs. So that's the dichotomy about it.”

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