THE TIME TELLER VERSUS THE CLOCK BUILDER

He is a businessman of some reknown. He would have been better known if we all appreciated the business he built. He is “Retired’ now, but prefers to go to office to every morning and read the papers there. He thought he would be some sort of consultant helping his daughters run the business, but clearly he did such a good job setting up his company and his successors, he is little needed at the office.

The businessman, let us call him Jack, now has time weighing heavily on his arms and is not averse to a chat.

This time he had the book “Built to Last” by Jim Collins on his desk when I visited. He was visibly excited and after the usual niceties started telling about the chapter that had really resonated with him, chapter Two “Clock building. Not time telling.”

“You know how when you see or hear or read something for the first time and it is as if you had known it for a long time? This is it,” he said slamming a palm on the hapter’s lead page.

For purposes of back ground Jim Collins, the author identified one of the biggest distinctions of leaders who built enterprises that thrived, even after their demise is whether they were time tellers or clock builders.

The time tellers are often charismatic leaders who may have had a good team or lurched onto the latest fad and showed some success for a while, the clock builder on the other hand work on shaping culture and building an enterprise that can generate ideas that allow it to thrive for a long time. To have  enduring success you need a clock builder not a time teller. The clock builder is strategic and the time teller is tactical...

“If more people or managers knew this and applied it this country would be far ahead,” he said.

In his own simpler language, he said it was like the hunter going out in search of the elephant, but every so often squirrels, rabbits and antelopes cross his path. The clock builder will focus on the long game ignoring the smaller distractions for the bigger prize while the time teller will chase everything that crosses his path and may even forget the elephant altogether.

“These small wins make you happy and can even make you a star, but you have to keep your eye on the bigger goal, the big picture,” he said. “The bigness of the eventual prize will determine whether you can weather all the ups and downs that are thrown at you as you chase the dream.”

Some people are wired to focus on the distant future he thinks, but believes it can be taught and the earlier we do it the better.

I asked how he thinks this had worked in his business.

He had scribbled some notes in his note book.

“Looking back I think it helped that I always asked the question of myself and staff, whether we are fully meeting our customers’ needs. As long as we were thinking like that innovation became easy, because as the customers’ demands widened or increased we got better and better. Making money is good but it comes as a byproduct of delivering a good product or service.”

It sounds so cliché but it is a basic, a first principle, he said.

“Look around you people or businesses who fail are not in touch with their clients. They either lose them along the way or were n ever in touch to begin with.”

But later when the business started making money he learnt, he doesn’t remember from where, that real money would be made when you sell the business.

“At the time I looked at the business and realized even I wouldn’t pay much for it, because I was the alpha and omega, without me the business was not worth much,” he said.

To make it more marketable he had to put in place systems. It was painful to let go and it took him about 10 years to the point where he was comfortable letting go of his “baby”.

“It was not easy and I even gave up several times, took back control of the business. I was too emotionally attached to it. But because I had seen the promised land I somehow always got back on track, maybe I would have achieved it sooner.”

It took him another six years to get to his current stage of “retirement”.

The point of the chapter “Clock building. 

Not time telling” he thought, was that as business owners and managers we need to be ambitious beyond making money for ourselves and be ambitious for the company’s success in order to build businesses that will outlive us...

“If you are stuck in emeere ya leero thinking, you cannot build anything of enduring value.  Impossible.”

He hasn’t sold the business yet, he hasn’t felt a need to – the multimillion dollar offers aren’t tempting enough. And the way his daughters are running the business, he thinks it may still be a while before they sell.