Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey: What Can Business Owners Learn From Red Lights?
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey is a difficult book to put neatly into one category. It’s part memoir, part self development book and part collection of lessons McConaughey has picked up along the way.
I’ll admit, some of it is a little corny. But underneath that, there’s a simple idea that I think has plenty of relevance to business and leadership.
Not everything that gets in your way is necessarily a bad thing.
What is Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey about?
The central metaphor throughout the book is the idea of traffic lights.
Green lights represent the periods where things are working. Opportunities appear, decisions pay off and life seems to be heading in the right direction.
Yellow and red lights represent the opposite: delays, failures, setbacks, distractions and situations that stop us from following the path we expected to take.
McConaughey’s argument is that those red lights shouldn’t always be viewed simply as roadblocks.
Sometimes they’re telling us something.
What does Matthew McConaughey mean by green lights and red lights?
A green light allows you to keep moving. A red light forces you to stop.
The interesting part is what you do while you’re stopped.
Do you persist because you still believe you’re heading in the right direction? Do you change your approach? Do you pivot completely? Or do you accept that perhaps this isn’t the road you should be travelling down at all?
That idea translates pretty well into business.
How can business owners deal with setbacks and unexpected change?
Every business eventually gets a red light. A strategy doesn’t work, a key employee leaves, an opportunity disappears, the market changes or growth simply doesn’t happen as quickly as expected.
The instinct can be to push harder because we’ve already committed to a particular direction.
Sometimes that’s exactly what is required. Other times, the better decision is to stop and reassess.
Good strategy isn’t about blindly following a plan. It’s about knowing what you’re trying to achieve and being prepared to change the way you get there when the circumstances change.
What other lessons from Greenlights apply to leadership?
McConaughey also talks about embracing friction, prioritising authenticity, removing unnecessary clutter and his well known philosophy of “just keep livin’.”
Again, none of these ideas are particularly complicated. But that doesn’t make them irrelevant.
Business owners can accumulate an enormous amount of clutter over time. Processes, meetings, products, responsibilities and even ways of thinking can remain in a business simply because they’ve always been there.
Sometimes growth comes from adding something new. Sometimes it comes from working out what you no longer need.
Is Greenlights worth reading?
I enjoyed it. It’s an easy book to get through, there are some great stories and it gives you a few things to think about without feeling like you’re reading a business textbook.
I listened to the audiobook, which McConaughey narrates himself, and I’d probably recommend listening to this one rather than reading it. His delivery adds quite a bit to the stories and he’s a very easy bloke to listen to.
Greenlights is a little corny in places, but there are some useful lessons about setbacks, change and knowing when to persist or change direction.
For business owners, perhaps the bigger lesson is that a red light isn’t necessarily the end of the road. Sometimes it’s simply an opportunity to stop long enough to work out where you should go next.