71. Rick Williams on his new book: Create The Future!

In this episode, Rick Williams, a seasoned executive, advisor, board director, prolific writer - - and the author of the new book, Create the Future, shares his journey writing the book and key leadership takeaways.

Rick’s core idea in Create the Future is that leaders create the future by the decisions they make Impactful leaders believe they can create the future, and they change uncertainty into hope and possibility.

Rick discusses the CTF process of making great decisions for companies and individuals including the importance of board dynamics and how to harness the collective wisdom of a diverse group to make impactful decisions.

We love our listeners! Drop us a line or give us guest suggestions here.

Big Ideas/Thoughts/Quotes

1.    Journey of Writing Create the Future

·      Initial book concept during travels in North Africa while sitting in a café in Casablanca

·      Wrote the book and refined it with the help of a professional editor.

·      It took more time than I expected to choose the right publisher, Amplify, to bring the book to market.

2.    Overview of Create the Future

Create the Future outlines the process and the tools successful leaders use when they must make an important decision - when they must get it right. Rick profiles the Five Step decision making process major consulting firms recommend for making important decisions and brings the tools and techniques to organizations off all sizes.

Create the Future is a guidebook for leaders who want to turn their leadership team into a powerful creative engine for defining the challenge, imagining success, creating realistic options, evaluating execution barriers, and finally choosing the path forward.

 

3.    The Five-Step Decision-Making Process

“I spent quite a bit of time on how do you as a leadership team - a board of directors for example - how do you actually go about deciding what you're really going to do.”

“This book outlines the five steps that we all either instinctively use, or should be using, when we have an important decision to make.”

·      Define the real opportunity or threat.

·      Identify what success looks like

·      Be creative about the options.

·      Evaluate execution barriers.

·      Make the final decision.

 

4.    Factors to be Considered in Decision Making

·      How close do the decisions come to achieving the goals you set? 

·      Where are they in the risk profile in terms of acceptable risk to you or unacceptable risk to you?

·      How do they express the values that you may have as a company owner or your board may have.

 

5.    Examples and Applications

The CTF process makes sure that everybody on the board participates in the conversation, their point of view is heard, and they hear each other talk about it. They hear each other say what they really are trying to accomplish.

“We talk about success, which sounds like a simple idea, but the notion of what are we really trying to achieve is one that often we don't spend enough time on.”

“Value is not created by the ideas we come up with - value is created through execution on the decisions we make.”

“Often we as board members either don't have time or haven't fully thought through what are the values that we bring to the decisions we make, what are our risk preferences, and also what are the values and goals of other people on our board and how do they factor into this?”

In the end, the board will make a decision, and the people who participate in this will say: “You know, I may not fully agree with where we're going to go, but my voice was heard, and I now understand what other people are trying to do and where they're coming from.”

 Joe: If you have the people in the room, whoever they may be board or otherwise, feeling at the end of the process like their voice has been heard, their ideas have been heard, and at least considered - - that alone is success.

Links

Here is the link to CTF’s website: https://rickwilliamsleadership.com/books/ 

Here is the link to the book on Amazon

Rick’s LinkedIn Profile:  www.LinkedIn.com/in/RickWilliams100

Bio
Rick Williams is an experienced technology company board of directors’ member and board chair. He has chaired the board of a medical device company and a bank/VC firm. Williams is a company founder and CEO and was a management consultant advising clients in a wide variety of industries.

He is an internationally published thought leader on board of directors as a value accelerator for the company. His new book, Create the Future, is a leadership guidebook for being more creative and making better decisions for your company and yourself when you must get it right.

Rick is past President of the Harvard Business School Association of Boston. He was a management consultant with the global consulting firm Arthur D. Little, Inc. He is a physics graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.   

www.RickWilliamsLeadership.com