“It’s time to activate, ladies and gentlemen; to model a winner’s behavior: Do what you can with what you have, wherever you are.”
Readers, this article admittedly differs from our regular (and typically tech-centric) Future of Work news, but it is no less worth your time. Our team found the lessons herein to be quite valuable, and we hope you seize value for yourselves after reading.
Last week, a huge conference took place – SkySwitch Vectors 2024, the annual signature event delivered by BCM One company SkySwitch for its white-label Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) partners and resellers. From April 14-17 at Vectors, I had the pleasure of covering several content-rich sessions the event had in store; these spanned expert testimonies on driving telecom growth, an exploration of business SMS and must-have integrations, an informative conversation on deftly navigating the unsteady waters of tax and compliance in the UCaaS industry, and much more. It was a grand time, and we recommend keeping a close eye on SkySwitch’s website (between now and August, especially) for announcements on next year’s Vectors experience. (Read more about our time at Vectors 2024 on our sister site, Internet Telephony.)
That said, I purposefully saved one future-of-work topic for last – the Vectors 2024 keynote speakership, which took place in the Symphony Ballroom of the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Nashville, the heart of Music City.
Here’s the story:
Meet Alan Stein Jr. As an internationally renowned speaker and performance strategist, Stein has helped hundreds of businesses – this includes the likes of Charles Schwab, Pepsi, Spotify, Orangetheory Fitness, and American Express – achieve what I took away from his presentation to be “the powerhouse of more,” if you will. That use of more represents a stronger understanding of the fundamentals that drive modern greatness. It represents more sales revenue, more impactful exemplifications of walk-the-talk business leadership, more team cohesion, more loyal customers and, ultimately, more purpose. It truly isn’t every day that you get to sit and listen to a presenter masterfully recount their experiences – in Stein’s case, on the basketball court and in the boardroom, alike – as that person packages together a bundle of empowering ideas in such a stylish manner.
And for Vectors 2024 attendees, we believe Stein succeeded.
More context: After Stein spent 15+ years carving out a fulfilling career as an acclaimed basketball performance coach (while working alongside elite NBA athletes like Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and the late Kobe Bryant), his transition to helping business leaders in high-performing industries felt fluid, rather than disruptive. In that vein, Kobe Bryant, quote, “never got bored with the basics” (even when practicing alone in a gym at 3 a.m.) – in this respect, he ”worked hard in the dark to shine in the light,” an idea that never left Stein’s playbook.
Having the real humility to acknowledge the importance of the basics was just one seed that Stein planted in the audience’s minds at Vectors 2024. For SkySwitch’s UCaaS partners taking in the full scope of Stein’s message, the following ideas left great impact:
- “Winners in business focus on precisely that; winning.” To W-I-N, Stein translated this into What’s Important Now. Practicing the basics and adopting game-changing mindsets powered by habitually ingrained purpose is a must. “And purpose has a deeper meaning than function,” Stein said, “because function serves the day-to-day what, but purpose fuels the engine of why.”
- Stein also explained that business leaders who establish a bona fide code of conduct – one learned with strong convictions, free from trivial compromise – are more likely to exhibit fluid decision-making habits and consistency therein. “Your business will grow in accordance with your code of conduct and, by extension, your perspective and core values.”
- Stein went on to recommend that everyone in the Symphony Ballroom do one task before heading to bed later that evening – create an exhaustive, split-down-the-middle list with what “fills your cup” on one side and how you spend “the bookends of your day” on the other. Why? To determine if “you’re going into the day with success for your best self in mind.” Stein recommended this because, more often than not, this practice highlights a performance gap in our priorities versus how our time is actually spent, and from there the keys to unlockable improvements become both visualized and achievable with the right practical measures in place. “Invest your energy in the practices that you can change,” Stein added, “because we can only control the controllables. Any energy you opt to invest – or waste – on the unchangeable means you aren’t dedicating your best self to what’s happening in the present.”
Hence, “Do what you can, with what you have, wherever you are.”
Overall, this keynote presentation was a definitive highlight of SkySwitch Vectors 2024. I even got the chance to speak briefly with Stein later on, and I’ll simply relay this:
If business leaders want to adeptly cruise the rapid future-of-work currents we’re seeing in nearly every industry, learning from a captain like Alan Stein, Jr. is a great way to make it happen.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
