Don't Burn your Ships!

This week on Strive Seek Find we look at how the old analogy "burn your ships behind you",  discuss a bit of the history behind it and  how its been co-opted by the wrong ideas in leadership.   
Also this week;
If you're not paying attention
Worth Mentioning 
Shoutouts


https://linktr.ee/striveseekfind

Transcript

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In life, we have two choices, to experience or to exist. Every week, each of us makes that choice to either seek a better way to live or to get by. walk alongside me each week on the strife seek find podcast as we continue to seek our own brilliant future. In Game of Thrones CRC informed, poor soon to be dead, that stark, you winner your die. There's no middle ground. Seriously, that doesn't sound like it's going to work out for 99% of us. Welcome to the strife seek fame podcast. I'm your host chance Whitmore. Welcome to the first episode of 2022. When did that happen? I feel like 2021 was a challenge stacked upon other challenges. And with those came opportunities, and I'm grateful for them. But that's for another day. Today, my opportunity comes in form of a pivot. I finished last week with a clear idea of where I was going to take the podcast this week. At a famous idiom based on a historical event that I was going to relate to changing habits. Eventually I still may. But as I reviewed the history behind the idiom, and more importantly, how it's currently being written about leadership blogs all over the place. It made me want to go in a different direction. Now let's get started. Of course, we should probably start with the basics. Now this is what most of us at least those of us on the North American continent probably got either an elementary school or early middle school along the lines of in 1519 Hernan Cortes invaded Mexico with the intent to colonize, convert and enriches country, which by 15th 24 He had done, he allied with tribes and taken down the hated Aztecs, and the story would continue. Afterwards, gold flowed to the Spanish coffers ensuring Spain status as a superpower moving forward. For our purposes today, this general understanding is enough. We don't need to get deep or examine how Mr. Cortez was a mutineer his brutality to indigenous peoples, his raging entitled eco, or even how he died, which led to his body being juggled across two continents. Instead, let's think about how he began, quote, burned his ships and quote, The legend goes something like this. In 1519, after arriving in Mexico, Cortes burned his ships, so that his men would understand that this was a win or die situation before they marched bravely off into history. It's a brilliant image, that today we would call it cinematic, which of course makes makes it suspect. And despite the fact it's not true, it's believed he scuttled his ships, but that lacks the romance of a good burning along the coastline. What's amusing to me is that over the last week as I reviewed the history to work through the choices and decisions analogy, I started with, I found page after page of leadership articles, referencing this as the way to lead or how to make your business better by shifting your procedures by burning your ships on your old ones. In other words, a quick pivot. It hits me wrong. It starts with the obvious message of there's no way back 1000s of miles from support in hostile territory, again, there's no way back. It's easy to imagine if it wasn't for the darkness of their purpose, that you could see a Braveheart style Mel Gibson speech coming out of this. The hero backlit as the flames artistically flare around him. Cortez promising Victory or death. As the cheering mass of soldier stand ready. And the sniffling opposition that force this righteous move, shrink in the face of the righteous truth. Let's be honest, the truth was probably much darker. The message remains simple, win or die. It's more fun when Sirsi said it and Game of Thrones because the stakes were fictional. To me, it showed that Cortes probably questioned the loyalty of his troops to begin with. So now take your team, your troops your employees, in 99% of settings at sea To me, adopting a winner die attitude, in this way feels counterproductive to long term success. This approach doesn't build up trust based leadership, except perhaps trusting the cheerleader will sacrifice who is upon to reach the goal. And I don't know, if you've seen a lot of people who go for this style of leadership today. Even when people have the information, they tend to question, the style seems to put the average employee in a situation where a self protect protection is more important than collaboration. Operating in fear with no escape plan is no way to live. Look out for yourself easily becomes the mindset, when you don't feel like the people in charge are looking out for your own best interest. To put it another way, you're more likely to work well with a boss that is looking out for your best interest than one who you believe is willing to cut your throat for a stock option. It's leaders job to get the whole job done. And a part of that job is taking care of your people as best you can, so that you can do the job. I always put it as people before things, by struggle with this idea of the point of no return the burn your boats approach to making sure you move things. Because oftentimes, that's a thing before people's approach. And that reduces your long term cent chance of success, because you're going to lose your people in your pursuit of things. So personally, I would think long and hard before burning those boats as a method of leadership if there's any other way. Because your team man eventually need him. Hey, if you're not paying attention, even his latest variant Hello Delta searches across the country, and is already seemingly beginning to retreat in South Africa. And if we're holding to what happened the last time around, we can hope that three years we're working towards something a little less fatal, which delta seems to be even while being more contagious. So the question becomes, what does the post pandemic world look like? We obviously don't really know yet. But the conversations have started. If we're not reading in involving ourselves, both at the local and national level, are missing out on an opportunity to steer the situation. beyond just being told what to do by a wide variety of special interest. I've linked to one article on the subject both on my link tree and at chance whitmore.com. Shout outs. Shout out to Brian for the kind words in his recent review of the podcast. Much appreciated Brian. worth mentioning. Every so often you find an article that leaves your mind completely blown. Today's article from futurism introduced me the theory that the universe may be a learning neural network. In other words, according to the article, according to scientists, the laws of physics may be changing. A paper called The autodidactic universe has been submitted that it is possible that the universe is weirder than even scientists have privily Slee imagined. They have posited that over time, the universe is learning and that the so called immutable laws of physics may slowly be changing. It's an early theory, but it's a fascinating concept that could eventually change the way we view the physical universe. And that alone makes it worth mentioning. And that concludes this edition of strife seek find. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, or would just like to support the podcast, here are a few ways you can do it. You can leave a review on Apple podcasts or pod chaser. They will help bring more listeners to the podcast. If that isn't your style, you can buy me a coffee or purchase some merch. Links are in the podcast description. Finally, if you have ideas or feedback, please reach out to the strive seek find page on Facebook or to@chancewhitmore5 on Twitter. Until next time, keep seeking your own brilliant future. Have a great day.