Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

This week I found myself in Chicago at the Capital Strategies and M&A Forum hosted by the consulting engineering subject matter experts, Matheson Financial Advisors.

The keynote speaker, Michael Farr, is a regular contributor on most financial cable channels and he came to impart some wisdom on the group. In addition to providing valuable predictions for the next five years in the stock market, he shared a story that transcends the financial world.

In Oklahoma, there once was a remote, Native American tribe who went through leadership transition when the wise old Chief passed away suddenly and they found themselves with a new, very young Chief.

Because it gets cold on their reservation, once harvest was done, they began to gather firewood and they looked to their Chief to tell them how much to gather. The novice gave a conservative response but as soon as they started the process, the young Chief became nervous and uncertain, put gas in the pickup and drove to the nearest town to call the National Weather Service (NWS) to find out how cold it was going to be so he didn’t look like a fool in his new role. The NWS told him indeed it was going to be “cold”. He drove back and told his tribe to collect more wood.
Two weeks passed and he became nervous again so he drove back to town, called the NWS asking again how cold it was going to be that Winter and they increased the severity saying yes, it was going to be “very cold”.
Guarding his reputation, the new Chief repeated the process one more time and fearing the worst, he was told, “Yes! It’s going to be bitter cold this Winter.”

By now, he was frustrated after telling the tribe to tear down all the old buildings and cut up every dead tree for miles and asked the NWS, “How did you arrive at this latest upgrade to the forecast? The response was, “We run our computer models, we monitor wildlife patterns and … this year we noticed the local Native American tribe has collected more wood than they have in decades!”

My questions for you are:
•What does your leadership succession plan look like?
-Are you taking it seriously?

•What contributes to the data you use to make critical decisions?
-How often do you seek a second (or third) opinion?

•How long do you think that tribe continued to follow their new Chief?

Have a blessed weekend!