77: Craig Lemasters: How to Get Unstuck

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Any organizational leader can feel “stuck” at some point. What does that look like for you? When it happens, how can we get unstuck?

Craig Lemasters often introduces himself as, simply, “an operator.” He has always run things. Craig sat in the CEO’s chair at a major business for years—Assurant Solutions. He’s quite transparent in describing the struggles he faced: how to expand the business, how to navigate mergers and acquisitions, how to best grow the team.

His time leading Assurant was, by any measure, a great success—growing from a $2 billion domestic business in the stagnant industry of credit insurance, to a much larger and growing global provider of protection products. How did that happen? Craig will tell you that as he climbed the corporate ladder he felt more and more alone. But he found an approach that helped: leveraging the wisdom of others who had travelled a similar road before him.

Today, Craig is helping other leaders with his concept of wisdom-based learning. He is CEO of a consultancy called GXG. He says their radically simple approach has helped more than 100 senior corporate leaders generate more than $400 million of impact. He sets it out in an upcoming book, Unstuck: How to Unlock and Activate the Wisdom of Others.

Among the topics that Craig and Jim discuss:

  • The common scenarios in which leaders and their teams tend to get stuck
  • Why our natural reactions in those scenarios often work against the business
  • How to energize and focus internal teams in the face of needed change
  • Craig’s approach to “wisdom-based learning,” and how it differs from other models (such as customer panels or peer-advisory groups)

Links:

Learn more about Craig Lemasters and his work:

https://craiglemasters.com/

Connect with Craig on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-lemasters-72507321/

Learn more about Jim Karrh’s virtual and in-person speaking and training topics, and read testimonials:

https://jimkarrh.com/speaking

Check out a sample of Jim’s new book, The Science of Customer Connections: Manage Your Message to Grow Your Business:

https://jimkarrh.com/books

Follow Jim on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/jimkarrh?lang=en

Connect with Jim on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimkarrh

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