A lodestone is a stone that knows where north is.
I am being literal. It is a lump of magnetite that took a lightning strike at some point in its life and came out the other side magnetised. Float a sliver of it on a cork and it swings north. The first compasses were exactly that: a rock in a bowl of water, steering ships.
For most of history, if you were lost, a lodestone was the most trustworthy object you could hold. It had no opinion about you, and it did not care whose hand it sat in or how badly the voyage was going. It pointed north anyway.
As a business consultant, I have been using lodestone as a metaphor for a good mission – something that shows the way.
For the last month, with a couple of clients, I have been testing the opposite.
The Blackstone
There isn’t a Blackstone in nature, so I have made it up. It looks like a lodestone. It sits in your palm with the same weight. The needle swings with the same confidence. But it does not point north. It points where you shouldn’t go. Where your worst competitors live.
I am aware that inventing a magic rock to make a point about business is quite pleased-with-myself behaviour. Stay with me, because you have almost certainly held one.
The seminar
I have my own Blackstone. I won’t be giving the company a specific name. Let’s generally call it coaching.
For my Blackstone, the playbook runs like this. In the first ten minutes you are sorted into two kinds of person: the ones who take ownership and the ones who make excuses. Nobody wants to be an excuse-maker, so the room reaches, as one, for ownership. Which turns out to mean agreeing that whatever is wrong with your business is really something wrong with you. “Don’t wish it were easier,” says the slide, quoting a motivational speaker who died before you registered your company. “Wish you were better.”
Then a plan appears. The same plan that appeared last month, in another town, for a room full of completely different businesses. A quarterly grid and a borrowed quote about eating frogs.
And at the end, the real slide. Leave us a review, and book the free assessment, where the programme is waiting.
Most of these things work, but used for evil. Quarterly planning works. Prioritised lists work. The frog thing, irritatingly, works. If the mechanics were rubbish, the playbook would have died out years ago, and nobody would need a word for it.
What separates a Blackstone from the real thing is where the needle points.
Finding yours
Yours will not be a coach. Your Blackstone is whoever makes your promise, to your customers, with values that make you wince. The builder whose quote doubles once the floor is up. The agency whose favourite client is the one that never learns.
One rule for choosing well: it has to be good. If your Blackstone is a cowboy, pick again. Nobody needs a magic rock to avoid the obviously terrible, and you will learn nothing from an idiot. The useful Blackstone is competent, plausible and winning work you could have won. It makes your promise properly. The difference between you and it is who the plan really serves, and whether the whole arrangement is ever meant to end.
That is also why it deserves to be studied rather than sneered at. Get its brochure and sit through its webinar. Note, with gritted teeth, what it does well.
What the needle is for
A mission is fine on a clear day. But you don’t learn as much about weather when there are no clouds in the sky. Seeing how things shouldn’t be done is a great teacher. “Is this something they would do? What’s the opposite, or right way of doing it?”
Is the thing you are thinking of doing sitting comfortably in your Blackstone’s slides? That tells you whether it’s worth doing, or better to turn around and sail the other way.
I am working with someone at the moment who knows their Blackstone, and knows it well. The conversations we have when trying to grow their business are shorter now. “Is that something your Blackstone would do? Why do they do it? Should you do it?” It helps.
My own Blackstone is still out there, running the same slides in another town. A small part of me hopes it never changes. I would be lost without it. But then I think of the customers, and that’s another thing my Blackstone isn’t doing…
If your business feels like it is running you, I offer a free 30 minute conversation. No slides, no programme. Just the other voice.
