Future-Proofing Your Business: Real-Life Strategies to Prepare Your Business for Tomorrow, Today

Chapter 5. The Need to Lead

"Leadership has got nothing to do with figuring it out and everything to do with feeling it out. It is an awareness, and for so long I, too, was not aware."

I can recall standing in a conference room of a hotel in Montreal at an Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) university event—one of many I had been to. However, this one was somehow different. We'd just finished a board meeting, one of my first as global president-elect. I was about to really feel what it would be like to take up my global leadership position at the organization. It had been a long day filled with information, discussion, debate, and strategy—and I was beat.

At the time, EO had about 6,500 members. The combined turnover of member businesses was just over $100 billion, the average member age was 36. This group represented the best of young businesspeople and leaders on the planet.

The job for my nine colleagues and me on the Global Board was to lead leaders who lead leaders. The EO leadership infrastructure looked something like this:

• 10 Global Board leaders leading

• 6 regional directors, leading

• 24 area directors, leading

• 108 local chapter residents, leading

• 864 local chapter board members, leading

• 5,500 EO members, leading

• 800,000 EO members' staff

Challenging? You bet. When I asked my predecessor what it was like to be the leader of leaders, he simply replied, "It's like being the only fire hydrant on a street of 6,500 dogs."

And my job was to develop their organization and take it to a better place. ...