Lendlease the leadership machine series. Part Seven: seek – win, win, win!

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Seek win, win, win!

If you did not experience the Lendlease way of doing business you would be forgiven to think ‘win, win, win’ was a call to win at all cost. Nothing could be further than the truth.

What it really means can be best understood by the metaphor employed at Lendlease of the 3 legged stool. The stool will only stand if the balance of stakeholders (employer, employee and customer) needs is met.

The more common situation is a constant internal debate of who is the most important stakeholder. ‘Client first’ because they pay the bills. ‘Employee first’ because happy employees make happy customers. ‘Employer first’ because if not profitable there is no business. You can see that these are all right and all wrong at the same time. This debate really belittles our collective intelligence and ability to hold multiple values concurrently.

As an employee I was constantly challenged to seek win win win and it paid big dividends in my decision-making skills

• Avoided simplistic decisions that come back to bite and bite hard
• Able to zoom in and out on issues to better understand the nuance of the matters
• Enabled my conscience to play a role in the decision making meaning that outcomes were consistent with values
• Encouraged seeking others input because the creative tension of finding win win win making for better decisions
• Greater solution options emerged as the demand for win win win forced a better framing of the problem
• Improves your mental agility

You were not on this quest on your own. There were internal experts to challenge your work and thinking. It was confronting and stimulating at the same time. We knew these people as Gurus.

The ultimate lesson for me is that thinking more broadly than short term self interest in fact working in your best interest.

Please share your thoughts on win win win.