"Get the Moose on the Table"

I am currently in a Management Development Program at work. Essentially the gyst of the program is that we meet roughly once a week and there is a guest speaker who is or has been a successful leader in the business world. The program just started two weeks ago but I'm very excited about listening to advice from different executives and getting their take on leadership and being successful in the business world. I have my own opinions on the best way to be a leader, but most of those come from my athletic background, so I'm always interested to hear people from different backgrounds explain their path to success and the lessons they learned along the way.

Today was our second speaker. His background was in engineering and he had a lot of experience bringing new products to market. He told a very interesting story about going to the Xerox tech park (a place legendary for innovation) in 1978 and seeing a drawing of what looked almost exactly like the Dell Latitude laptop that seems to be standard issue in corporate America right now. The point of his story is that sometimes great visions can't happen overnight. He explained that this is referred to as "The Colorado Principle" which he explained to mean "don't mistake a clear vision as a short vision." The Colorado reference makes sense when you picture driving near the Rockies - the mountains always look very clear, but you can never tell how close they really are.

He also had a saying that will likely enter my list of commonly used phrases. He was explaining how to deal with issues with external partnerships (i.e. joint ventures, jointly developed products, etc.), when he threw in this classic "It's always best to 'get the moose on the table' right up front". The moose being whatever the root cause or issue is between the two parties - basically, don't dance around the heart of the problem, get the cards on the table. He also recommended several books on management and leadership. Overall, very interesting presentation.