Rod Davis


Things it would have been great to know long ago!


We have all learnt lessons in life that would have been pretty useful back when we ‘didn’t know what we didn’t know’. But other people can’t read your mind... Often you can be way ahead in terms of knowl-


edge of the subject at hand because you have been immersed in it longer than they have.


Connecting the dots comes easy and quickly to you, but not so much for someone who is just entering the loop. Thus you have to communicate what you want others to under-


stand. This communication skill is more important than the concept you are trying to sell, for the simple reason that if you can’t effectively sell the idea the concept will become an orphan. Going nowhere. Good communication, my God, how many books have been


written about communication that are just too long and too hard to get through. This is my point. Good communication is a combi- nation of information and entertainment. Information in bite-sized pieces that can be consumed and digested quickly.  No one reads long emails or reports, any more than they read


books on communication. Emails have to be a few lines that are easy to read, simple and to the point. No detailed explanation with background information. Truth is, this conflicts me as I am big on explaining the ‘why’ of


what we are doing, in the hope of not having to explain the solution the next time the same situation arises. But there is a time and place for everything and it’s not in an email, WhatsApp or tweet.


38 SEAHORSE One on one or small groups is good. And if you’re going to get


people to listen, as in truly engage in listening to what you have to say, you have to be entertaining. It’s show time! Shock and awe (what I call fancy computer-generated overlays


of graphs, and so on) can be an asset, but a lot of the engagement of the listeners will come from the speaker’s energy and salesman- ship. That is a whole package that I won’t attempt to explain here, but if it strikes a chord with you then you can follow it up. Motivation – here is another subject that a million books have


been written about, most of them missing the point completely. Like it or not, true motivation comes from self-interest. Pure and


simple. Our job as leaders is matching the players’/employees’ self-interest to the teams’/employers’ interest. Not rocket science really. If you want people to work with enthusiasm, take ownership. And all those things a great team member does, you need to


feed their self-interest at the same time. Case in point. Ben Ainslie came to Team New Zealand in 2005,


after a rather unsuccessful time with OneWorld in the previous America’s Cup in New Zealand in 2003. Every Kiwi and his dog knew two things. There was a lot of work


to do to make Ben into Dean Barker’s back-up skipper; and in the end Ben would move on. From Ben’s point of view it was about his only chance to get into the Cup with a top team, even if it meant playing second fiddle to Dean, to be relegated to the background. Classic case of motivation of the two parties being aligned. Ben took complete ownership of his team and role of B-boat skipper,


MAX RANCHI


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