The Relative North

I was looking at a map of a building site over the weekend, and it took me several moments to figure out the proper orientation of what I was viewing. It turns out that North was marked on this map as pointing to the left, rather than to the top. Once I understood where North was, I could immediately pick out the other landmarks on the map and make sense of the site being portrayed.

For centuries, sailors have used the North Star to navigate the seas. While I am sure I don't understand all the intricacies of navigation, or of the finer details of how exactly 'North' is defined, I can say with some certainty that North isn't occasionally found in the Southeast, or in the West.

I mention this because I came across two distinct references to North, or True North, in some of my reading this week. While I appreciate the intent and understand the meaning of both authors, I think that the real power of the concept of True North is so much more than is immediately apparent from the analogies they use.

I came across the first reference to the North in a book by Sally McGhee called, Take Back Your Life: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized. I have been looking forward to working through this book, and I recently carved out some time to dedicate to it. In the book, Sally McGhee talks about a strategy that aligns activities around a few key Meaningful Objectives. She then goes on to explain that these meaningful objectives are "your North Star, your guiding light, and your reference point for success or failure".

The second reference is actually the fundamental theme of a new book by Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, and now a Harvard Business School professor. As a follow-up to his earlier book, Authentic Leadership, Bill George extends the idea of authenticity and highlights the example of countless authentic leaders in his latest book, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. I just picked up this book yesterday, so I am anxious to begin reading it, but the title concept intrigued me in it's own right.

In both of these cases, the authors talk about some guiding principles that will help define our activities, whether they are organizing or leading. To drive home the point that we need certain key principles influencing the core of our efforts, they both use the analogy of the North Star, or True North. While I readily agree that we will all be more affective at achieving our goals if we have clearly defined principles directing our efforts, I wonder if the analogy can be taken too far.

The reason I started this post talking about maps and navigation is to make the point that the value of the North Star is not simply that it is a guiding light for us to follow, but that it is immovable. It is, and will always be, True North, regardless of where you are. What the analogies in these books imply, however, is that your True North is different than my True North, since your objectives, or the things that make you authentic in your leadership, are different than my objectives, or my authentic leadership.

More accurately, I believe that the power of the analogy of True North is in finding the guiding principles that are outside of ourselves. From the standpoint of my organizational work, my meaningful objectives are only relevant if they support the objectives, or True North, of the business itself. From the standpoint of my authentic leadership style, my True North is not my personal style, nor the learning style of those I am leading, but rather the destination to which we are heading. Unless we are able to align our meaningful objectives or authentic leadership around a single set of guiding principles common to us all, we will all be left chasing our own 'relative' Norths, and little of lasting significance will be accomplished on our own.

I am actually expecting to learn a great deal from Bill George's book True North, and I'm already benefiting from Sally McGhee's Take Back Your Life. As I read and work through these books, however, I will be looking for ways to ensure I am aligned around goals bigger than myself so that I can accomplish more than I could have on my own.

Light it up...

Rob