The Four-Hour Workday

February 15, 2019

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There’s an old saying about great coaches:

He can take his team and beat yours, and he can take your team and beat his. 

The same could be said about great CEOs:

She can make hers more profitable than yours and make yours more profitable than hers.

The same could be said about any great leader/coach/teacher.

How do they do it?

If a coach has one distinct style, then she can be very successful. When you focus on one thing, you become a master at it. And a master will win games.

But that sort of master will only be great for her specific team. She will have perfected the art of that particular style and will have adapted her team to that one style.

If this one-thing coach is given a completely different team, success goes away.

That completely different team is good at completely different things. The one-thing style needs characteristics that are no longer present, and so the one-thing style falls apart.

Being a master at one thing has limits.

Chameleons don’t.

A green-colored lizard has a fantastic advantage in a lush, green forest. It can hide easily and eat bugs ravenously for a long time.

But what if the lizard tribe goes to another forest? Or what if the forest leaves turn red in the fall?

The one thing the lizard is good at becomes the one thing that will get him eaten.

A chameleon doesn’t care. Green, red, turquoise, it doesn’t matter. A chameleon can thrive in his forest, and he can thrive in yours.

The very best leaders/coaches/teachers are chameleons.

Instead of becoming a master at just one thing, they become masters of one principle: making the best out of anything.

If the team is filled with introverted geniuses, a great coach will leave them alone and let them work. If the team is filled with skilled, insecure prodigies, a great coach will be nurturing and hands on.

Chameleon coaches become completely different in completely different situations.

They only care about solving the problem, and are open to any answer that accomplishes that. Whatever color is needed is the one they’re going to get.

There are no rise-and-fall documentaries on chameleon coaches because they never fall.

They just keep changing strategies as often as necessary to keep solving problems. No ego, no angst, no my-way-or-the-highway.

The way to constantly win with either yours or theirs is to be a chameleon.

My book is called The Inevitability of Becoming Rich, and you can find that here.