Cross Roads Strategies

Once upon a time, there were three kings: Harold the Great, Frederick the Pensive and William the Cautious. One winter, they met at the annual king conference in San Juan (hey, it gets cold in those kingdoms!).

They arrived, tired from their trip and went to their rooms to get settled before the first session on castle design and energy efficiency.

Because of the long trip, each had pressing needs back at home to address and missed the first session (it was on tape, however). When they met, they exchanged the following:

When King Frederick asked King Harold, “Why did you miss the meeting?,” the King explained that he was tired, and fell asleep. However, he enjoyed a dream about knights gathered together in search of the wisest and most innovative men in the kingdom who might help solve the problem of keeping dragons from eating the crops and roasting the cattle. Upon waking, he called his vizier. In the following discussion, they agreed the vizier should select a dozen of their knights with the best judgment of character to search the kingdom for such men and to begin planning on how to deal with this very same situation. “I anticipate we will soon have a plan in place to pre-empt this threat that hurts my subjects and bar-b-ques our cattle. In fact, it may even be over by the time I get back.”

King William then asked King Frederick why he missed the meeting, to which he replied, “I too have a dragon problem and I was on the phone arranging for a meeting to create a committee that would meet with a white paper that would enable us to set up a time to discuss the problem when I get back.”

The two then asked King William how he spent his time, to which he said, “I had to evaluate some requests for munitions, review the expense accounts of our last crusade, check with our stable manager to ensure our quality standards were under control, sit in on two conference calls with our largest farm cooperatives, and then get a checklist of the invitees to the upcoming harvest festival and jousting recognition celebration. Then, I had to ensure we had the scribes record all of that and send it to my best knights and advisors to recheck. You know, we also have a dragon problem, but we never seem to get around to solving it.”

Having taken care of their affairs, the three kings then went on to the next session, “Boiling oil from the turrets: effective defense or environmental hazard?”

Upon his return to his kingdom, King Harold was very pleased but not surprised to find that, rather than removing the dragons, the assembled group had developed an alliance whereby the dragons provided fire power for the kingdom’s power plant in return for a share of the surplus crop production. In addition, the by-product of dragon fertilizer increased the crop production by 85%, allowing increased exports and the government subsidy of a new joisting arena with improved corporate box seating. This pacified the team’s owner who had threatened to move the team to a new kingdom.

The moral? True leaders make dreams a priority…and reap greater rewards when they allow others to share the thrill of developing and fulfilling those dreams.