Transactional
A short-term exchange with nothing invested past the trade. It improves a result, defends the status quo, and produces growth in a straight line.
Ends when the exchange does
Wiley · Illustrations by Lin Wilson
Curve Benders
A handful of relationships will change your direction more than a decade of effort will.
Wiley · ISBN 1119764211
The problem
Growth Stopped Being a Straight Line.
For most of a career, change was slow and iterative, and everyone assumed it was Darwinian. That is no longer the shape of it. Industries now reinvent themselves radically, and a professional journey runs as a series of curves rather than a climb.
- Jim Coulter of TPG Capital watched decades of continuous improvement give way to markets where whole industries reinvent themselves.
- Recorded music is the pattern in miniature: decades of physical media, a period of pure chaos, then a new market with new pricing and new partnerships.
- There is a Grand Canyon-sized gap between intending to stay relevant and doing the work. Nobody is going to pull you up off the couch.
The framework
What a Curve Bender Actually Is
Not a mentor, not a coach, and not a bigger network. A small number of relationships that change your direction rather than your performance.
- 01
Rare
You may meet only a handful in an entire career. They are not a category you can recruit for.
- 02
Unexpected
A coach or a mentor sometimes. Just as often someone with no obvious reason to help you at all.
- 03
Directional
They change where you are going, not how fast you are going. That is the whole distinction.
- 04
Costly to them
Marilyn Monroe spent her own standing to get Ella Fitzgerald booked. The real ones spend something.
- 05
Reciprocal
The question the book builds toward is not who yours are. It is whose you are.
- 06
Reversible
Some relationships point you the other way. Nour calls those Fender Benders, and few people ever audit for them.
Transactions, or Transformations.
The book turns on this distinction. Both are relationships, and only one of them changes where you end up.
Transformational
Continual, collaborative, and pointed at a longer horizon. It challenges the status quo instead of defending it, and the growth it produces is not proportional to the effort put in.
Changes the direction, not the pace
The author
Meet Nour.
Nour advises Fortune 500 boards and leadership teams on the relationships their growth depends on. Curve Benders came out of a question he kept meeting in those rooms: which relationships actually changed the trajectory of a career, and why so few of them did.
Free self-assessment
Do You Know a Curve Bender When You Meet One?
Six questions from the book on what separates a relationship that changes your direction from one that simply improves your week.
- Where you sit on the ideas the book is built from
- The distinction most people miss between a mentor and a Curve Bender
- The relationships worth auditing before you do anything else
Tools and Resources
The Curve Benders Assessment
Six questions on the ideas the book is built from. Three minutes, and nothing to fill in first.
Take the assessment
Strategy Visualization
Nour Strategy Visualization turns the plan into one shared visual a room can agree on, remember, and act from.
See the workAdvisory
Nour works with leadership teams on the go-to-market relationships their growth actually depends on.
Explore advisoryRead by Leaders Around the World.
Questions About the Book.
- How is a Curve Bender different from a mentor?
- A mentor generally improves how you perform inside a direction you have already chosen. A Curve Bender changes the direction itself, and often the destination with it. They are rare enough that you may meet only a handful in a career, and they are frequently not the people you would have gone looking for.
- What is a Fender Bender?
- Nour’s term for a relationship that takes you in the complete opposite direction. It is the counterpart to a Curve Bender, and the reason an honest relationship audit has to look at both sides of the ledger.
- Do I have to wait to be chosen by one?
- No, and the book argues the opposite. The more useful question is how you become someone else’s Curve Bender, which is where chapter six goes. Marilyn Monroe was not assigned to Ella Fitzgerald. She used what she had.
- How does this relate to Relationship Economics®?
- Relationship Economics® is the discipline of building strategic relationships as a portfolio. Curve Benders is about the few inside that portfolio which change your trajectory, and about the future-of-work pressures that make them matter more than they used to.
Free self-assessment
Who Bent Your Curve?
Six questions from the book. About three minutes, no email required, and every answer comes back with the idea behind it.
1 / 6
0 answered
Start with the mandate
Bring the Ideas to Your Stage.
The frameworks in Nour's books are the backbone of his keynotes. Tell him about your event to start.
