The Blueprint

6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights

Douglas R. Conant

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781119560029
• eBook ISBN: 9781119560098
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Development
• Index: Business

A Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly Bestseller

Lift your leadership to new heights Doug Conant, Founder of ConantLeadership, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and former President of Nabisco Foods, shares transformational insights in his new book, The Blueprint. Conant is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times bestselling author, a top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and a Top 100 Most Influential Author in the World.

Get Unstuck

In 1984, Doug Conant was fired without warning and with barely an explanation. He felt hopeless and stuck but, surprisingly, this defeating turn of events turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. Doug began to consider what might be holding him back from realizing his potential, fulfilling his dreams, and making a bigger impact on the world around him.

Embarking on a journey of self-reflection and discovery, he forged a path to revolutionize his leadership and transform his career trajectory. Ultimately, Doug was able to condense his remarkable leadership story into six practical steps. It wasn't until Doug worked through these six steps that he was able to lift his leadership to heights that ultimately brought him career success, joy, and fulfillment.

• Reach High - Envision
• Dig Deep - Reflect
• Lay the Groundwork - Study
• Design - Plan
• Build - Practice
• Reinforce - Improve

In The Blueprint, part leadership manifesto, part practical manual, Doug teaches leaders how to work through the same six steps that he used to transform his journey. The six steps are manageable and incremental, designed to fit practically within the pace of busy modern life. Knowing how daunting the prospect of change can be, Doug arms readers with exercises and practices to realistically bring their foundation to life in every situation. Now, today's leaders who feel stuck and overwhelmed finally have a blueprint for lifting their leadership to make meaningful change in their organizations and in the world.

Part I
Blueprint
Get Unstuck

Your Foundation Is Everything

“There is nothing permanent except change.”

—Heraclitus, Greek philosopher

To get the most out of this book, it helps to understand the root of the problem leaders face today.

The world is changing rapidly. You’re looking for practical answers because the modern workplace reflects these changes in ways that can be overwhelming. The digital age has ushered in an era of unprecedented complexity and dysfunction. Hierarchies that used to dictate the processes for managing problems are crumbling. Technology has accelerated the pace of business; people are inundated with a perpetual onslaught of communication and messaging from text, email, push notifications, and more, so much that they feel like they’re gasping for air. Adding to this, there are six disparate generations of men and women from every part of the world, often with different communication styles and value systems, working together elbow to elbow.

There used to (sort of) be a way to manage the daily onslaught: you could ask your boss what to do. But as hierarchical structures are collapsing, and leaders are themselves struggling under a deluge of competing priorities, often your boss wants you to figure it out on your own. Today more than ever, your leadership is up to you.

What I’ve observed in my years of research and leadership practice, and in my ongoing work training and mentoring leaders, is that most people can’t find the time to “shoot the lights out” because they can barely even find the time to turn the lights on. They’re treading water, fighting just to stay afloat. People know they need to do better. And most people genuinely want to. You’re probably one of those people. You want to be more present for your direct reports. You want to run better meetings. You want to listen more intently. You want to provide more direction. You want to deliver more aggressive growth. You want to build better relationships. You want to infuse your teams with vitality, to find creative ways to keep people engaged in the work, and on and on. There are a million things you want to do. But then reality happens. A crisis hits. Your next call is waiting. A meeting runs long. You get a call from your kid’s school. Or worse, you get fired, your company is acquired, you get sick, you’re hit with any variety of bad news. And, for the umpteenth time, figuring out how to do all the things you dream of doing gets pushed aside. It’s understandable. But it’s not sustainable. To contribute at ever-higher levels, to achieve what you want to achieve, you need to find a way to do better, to get unstuck. And it needs to be a way that works within the rhythm of your busy, fast-paced life.

Rather than embarking on one giant discovery endeavor that could take years, you need something that can be broken up into manageable chunks, into little steps that acknowledge the reality of your daily life.

Start Small

Dr. Robert Maurer, PhD, is a clinical psychologist at UCLA. His specialty is helping people approach change in a feasible way. In his book One Small Step Can Change Your Life, he shares his approach to change: you start microscopically small. The bigger the change you want to make, the more miniscule a first step he’ll ask you to take. If somebody wants to start an exercise regimen? He tells them to stand – just stand still – on a treadmill for 60 seconds a day. Inevitably (and amazingly), once they wire their habits to this almost laughably small step, they are able to expand the behavior to become an indispensable part of their life. Down the road, 60 seconds of standing often turns into 30 minutes of running or more.

Maurer’s approach works because it outsmarts the brain’s fear response: the innate tendency to avoid things that seem too overwhelming or hard, things that might result in failure, danger, or misery. Because the initial actions taken are so small, his patients’ resistance is disarmed. His approach is doubly effective because it jives with the pace of modern life. While you might not be able to engineer an extra hour into your zany schedule for exercise, everybody has 60 seconds to spare. And that’s all you need to get started. Exercise is merely one application; Mauer’s small-step approach can be applied to any goal.

James Clear, an expert in habits and author of the book Atomic Habits, has discovered much to back up Mauer’s “small steps” idea in his years of researching habits. Clear advocates shifting our focus from the goals themselves to the systems that help us reach those goals. The key is in understanding the power of small habits. Clear writes, “Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action.” But, in reality, we only need to improve by 1% to see better results over time. Just like making seemingly insignificant deposits into a financial investment can yield big payouts in the future, so too can focusing on tiny tweaks and improvements. Clear explains, “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. . . . They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous.” The research and advice from top experts is clear. Investing in small changes, in incremental steps, is the smart approach to getting better.

Forget Perfection

Part of the problem today’s professionals face is that they are overwhelmed by expectations. They have so many looming “to-dos,” not to mention the litany of unfulfilled wishes that keep getting cast aside. It’s all too much. When you look at the giant list of your goals and aspirations all at once, it becomes too daunting to manage.

I speak with leaders daily, and they tell me they feel stuck. When we dig a little deeper, we often discover it’s partially because they are driven and high-achieving types; they don’t want to start something new unless they can do it perfectly. But perfection is an unattainable myth. (As one of my old mentors used to say to me, “Don’t let ‘perfect’ become the enemy of ‘good.’”)

To combat this stifling (and pervasive) perfectionism, and to circumvent your brain’s natural resistance response to new things, you need an iterative approach that starts small, is broken down into practical steps, and that can always be improved upon but never has to be perfect or “finished.” Because guess what? Your life will never be perfect, the conditions will never be just right, and your growth as a person will never be finished. That’s just not the way things work.

You need something you can start doing today, something that starts small but yields big results. That’s what The Blueprint is designed to do. It takes some work upfront, but once you begin, it’s an ace in the sleeve for the duration of your leadership career. And it addresses everything you want to do, all at once, because using it has the potential to transform your behavior in every single moment, no matter the situation.

Building Your Future

Until I was fired, I’d never thought carefully about any of this stuff. I’d never considered what it might take to get to the next level beyond simply working hard. But what I learned on the journey that followed is that a strong work ethic is just not enough. You’ve go...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Authors’ Note
• Introduction
• Part I: Blueprint: Get Unstuck
• Part II: Manifesto: Maximize Your Impact
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Appendix: Understanding the ConantLeadership Flywheel
• Index
• End User License Agreement