The zone of sensible excitement

A couple of weeks ago I ran into a client from my time as a partner in a large business consulting firm. Rieny Marck and I worked together 20 years ago, and he was reminiscing about the Lumley Insurance journey.

I did some work with them over the space of about a year, starting with a vision and strategy session and then working through a detailed opportunity assessment and priority process. He still recalled the methodology I used, and my reference to something I called the “zone of sensible excitement”. I recalled his comment that if you segment the market in New Zealand twice you’re down to three people.

What I hadn’t realized is how they had gone from there. In his 10 years as CEO, revenue went from $100M to $750M, and they went from about 11th to 3rd in size. It was, he said, “a helluva ride, and it all started with the ideas we created in those sessions”.

This is not to take credit for the results; they were a very capable team, open to ideas and bold in their execution. They were focused too, mainly because they never got distracted by corporate politics and they worked really well together.

But I will take credit for the value of an idea. A great team could not have achieved this result without a business coach helping them extract and shape the possibility of greatness. It’s not always as easy to see the direct connection between idea and result as it was in this case. But there is always a connection between the quality of thinking and the scale of your result.

If you’re not achieving greatness (however you define it), it’s because you haven’t worked out the right answer yet. So what are you going to do about that?