Perfect Practice - from Virtue to Virtuosity

One day, you wake up and suddenly everything just comes together - now you are a masterful Lean leader.

Wait - were you hit by lighting? Blessed by the gods? Did you just burst out into flames of raw natural Lean ability? Are some people born with latent talent, and others, well, not at all? Do you suddenly have the Eureka moment and just “know” what to do now?

No. Lean leadership is a skill - a learnable skill. Becoming a Lean leader takes practice. No amount of reading books or seeing graphs will teach you the raw skill of acting effectively when you need to.

So, how do you become a master at any skill? How do you practice? How do you become a karate champion, concert pianist, or an Olympic swimmer? The good thing is you don’t have to be the champion in the room to be masterful at a skill. There are thousands of masterful musicians who build out our wonderful cultures. There are hundreds of athletes who don’t need to compete to inspire. The garden is pleasing for both the gardener and the visitor.

Becoming a Lean leader is a skill that can be learned - and learning takes practice. We know the saying “practice makes perfect.” But, a key part of practice is often left out - perfect practice makes perfect.

In the next series of posts, we interview people who have become masterful in their areas of work, and take these lessons into the Lean practices of our corporate and project world. 

We talk to Karate champions Natalie Goodale from the US, and Lamis Youssef from Egypt to learn about how they focus their practice on creating the skills they need to excel in their sport.

We will follow that with an interview with the world-renowned London-based classical bass player, Leon Bosch. Here we will talk about the role of practice in his career as a concert player, and how it lead him to become the premier solo and group performance bass artist and teacher of today.