Success

imperfect action beats perfect inaction

“I can’t remember how it begins.” My six-almost-seven year old son was warming up for his first martial arts tournament and he was pretty nervous. He had been practicing a form – a pattern of movements – for a couple of months, but he went completely blank.

One of his instructors pulled him aside and said, “When you get out in front of the judges, if you can’t remember what to do, just make it up. Just do some moves until you get to a part you remember. That’s better than freezing up.”

Great advice for life. You can stay frozen, not starting until you can do it perfect. Or, you can jump in, get moving, do what you think is right (or close), and correct on the fly. There are very, very few situations where doing nothing is better than doing something and improving as you go.

Words to live by: imperfect action beats perfect inaction.

tale of two burritos

Customer service makes or breaks a business and good enough just isn’t. This weekend, I ended up having burritos from two competing franchises. Let’s call them Good Burrito and Better Burrito. Both offer super fresh ingredients, make them with specifically the ingredients and toppings you ask for, are pretty quick, and are very tasty. I never really thought about the differences until sampling them back to back.

Good Burrito asked what toppings I wanted and shuffled me from person to person as the burrito moved down the line. By the end of the line, three different people had contributed to my dinner. Henry Ford would be proud of the assembly line efficiency. Better Burrito had one person who put my food together and what a difference that one person made.

Supergregarious, he seemed to truly be interested in my day. How was my Saturday going, was I working or off, where did I work, did I like it there? When adding ingredients he’d brag on them a little: These vegetables are great, we cook them with… You can’t go wrong with that salsa, it’s great on everything…

A couple of important points. This took NO MORE time, in fact it was probably quicker because I didn’t have to repeat what I wanted like I did when getting passed from person to person at Good Burrito. He never got bogged down in the conversation. I never felt like I was being interrogated. It never felt fake or forced. Instead he gave the impression that he was really interested in my day and in making me the perfect burrito.

Then when I got to the register to pay I asked to get a brownie. The woman at the register (also superfriendly) said, “Let me find you a good one. They put the old ones on top.” And she dug through the basket until she found one. It looked like all the others, but she proclaimed it worthy. When I decided to get a brownie to take home for my wife, she dug through the basket again.

Here’s the most important point: Whether they cared about me, my day, and my lunch doesn’t matter. What matters is that they made me feel like they did. It took no more time, cost no more money, and made all the difference.

The HR and business lessons I take from this:

Hire right! Here’s the secret to hiring people: hire people who give a damn. Nothing else matters unless they care. If they care, the rest is largely irrelevant.  I’ll take under qualified people who care over qualified but apathetic people any day. Qualified and they give a damn? Score! I suspect that the guy making my burrito was following a semi-scripted patter. But he was so fluid and did it so well that it came across as very authentic. And, he was clearly a very outgoing person and a good fit for a customer facing role. The woman at the register went out of her way to find a good brownie. It’s hard to train people to care or go above and beyond. Much easier to hire for it.

Train right. Again, I suspect that much of it was patter, but done so well it felt natural, not forced. That requires a lot of practice, role playing, feedback, more practice, etc.

Think twice about your dress code. Employees at both places were clean and well groomed. Except that the three workers I saw at Better Burrito had long hair (male), blond dreadlocks (female), purple hair (female), and a heavy emphasis on tattoos and face piercings. And they were supernice, not too cool for you, not angsty, not indifferent. Let’s see, person who gives a damn and has nose rings or one who is unpierced and indifferent? Hmmm, easy choice.

Sustained business performance requires great customer service. Great customer services requires great people. Great people requires an intense focus on hiring right and training well. That requires leadership that truly gets the DIRECT connection between people and performance.

The final lesson? Great customer service trounces good customer service every time. Good enough customer service never is.

the toughest part about leadership development

Becoming a better leader is difficult, no doubt there. Many, many books and classes exist to help you, but there is one particular challenge that rarely gets mentioned, yet is at the heart of all real leadership development. Here it is, you might want to commit it to memory:

All leadership development is personal development.

You can get promoted into a leadership role with very little leadership ability. It’s sometimes just a matter of tenure, being in the right place at the right time, or being very technically skilled and having no other career path available. And there are a lot (emphasis on a lot) of bad managers out there whose people get results despite their poor leadership skills. But we’re not talking about continuing on as a bad manager, we’re talking about growing and developing as a leader.

You can never become a better leader without first becoming a better you. Your team won’t get better until you get better. You cannot sustainably get more out of others without getting more out of yourself. That’s not quick. It’s not easy. It’s not sexy. And it’s a hard sell. But it is truth.

Say it again with me: All leadership development is personal development.

 

i commit

I commit to playing bigger, taking relentless action, having epic fun, and making a freakin’ difference!

  • What do you commit to?
  • What gets you out of bed, ready to conquer the day?
  • What excites you about being on Planet Earth for one more day?
  • What are you passionate and enthusiastic about accomplishing?
  • What’s the bigger game you want to play?

Bring it on!

no more surprises

Nobody likes to be surprised by bad news. Surprises can be a career limiting event. From this day forward, do all in your humanly power to make sure that two types of people are never, ever surprised:

1. Your boss. Your job is to make your manager’s life easier. The #1 way to make their life (and your life) more difficult is for them to be surprised or blindsided by what you have done or not done. We will all make mistakes and drop the ball from time to time and the first step to retribution is making sure your boss isn’t surprised.

2. Your customers. Your job is to make your customer’s life easier. Nobody buys from someone who makes their life more difficult. Surprises make things difficult. Changes happen, there are things outside our control. Customers are far, far more forgiving if they know about potential issues in advance. Delivering bad news in advance is difficult, but letting them call to complain after being surprised by bad news is a far more challenging situation.

minor legacies

My dad sent me a picture of a tree we planted in our new front yard when we first moved into my hometown. That was way back in the mid-70s when I was about six. We moved on to another house when I was eight, and then another and another, and the tree continued on without us.

I left my home town for college and then moved across the country, returning for a few years in my early 30s. In between, my parents also moved far away, returned a few years later and have been in the town since. And the tree continued on regardless.

In the coming years none of us will be in the same job. We’ll be promoted, transferred, our duties will change, the job will evolve, we’ll be working at another company, or maybe we’ll retire and move on. When we think of legacies we tend to think big, we think of legends and dynasties, but legacies can be minor.

The fact is, whether we realize it or not, we are always creating legacies. Some are good, some are bad, some are indifferent. But our actions live on past us. The cool thing is we can get real conscious and intentional about it. When we do, we start to think different. We approach our relationships in a more meaningful way. We move from tasks and duties to outcomes and impacts.

What are you creating today that you hope will live on beyond you?

What can you do to interact with others in a way that is building them up, championing them, helping them be their best?

Five years from now, how will today’s work have impacted others?

You will move on from today’s role. How do you want to be remembered?

If you were to return to a previous employer to visit, how would you be greeted?

If you were to quit your job today would people be upset, relieved, or thrilled?

If you returned to a previous job, what signs of your efforts would still exist? What things would you hope are still living on?

That tree is still there and thriving some 36 years later. It’s now one of the big old trees on the street. For at least two of us it serves as a common landmark to a very different point in our lives, a guidepost through the passage of time, and a reminder that we can create things that carry on long past us.

the best career advice you will ever receive

Want a great career? Looking to get ahead? It’s actually pretty simple. Understand that everyone gets paid to solve problems, not to complete tasks and approach your job accordingly.

People stall out when they think they get paid for a certain number of hours or to check off to-do’s. Their careers tend to accelerate when they connect the minor tasks to the big picture, understand the outcomes all the tasks are creating, and focus on making that outcome happen.

The value you create for the company – the value you get paid for – is based on the level of problems you are able to solve. Bigger problems have bigger potential consequences and those who can effectively solve them bring more value to the company and get paid more. My boss is paid more than me because she solves tougher problems with bigger consequences than I do. Her boss gets paid more than her for the same reason.

If your boss has to solve problems that you should be able to handle, you aren’t very useful and are probably easily replaceable. If you’re taking on and solving things above your boss’ expectations you are probably difficult to replace and will soon be moving ahead.

Want more money? Want a promotion? Learn to love solving problems and moving solutions forward. Problem spotting doesn’t pay very well (anyone can do it), ignoring problems pays even less. All the money, responsibility, and glory is in solving problems.

career rejuvenation

“Today is a new day. Time to put the plan to work. Generate the new way. Whoa, I hope it works!” ~ from the Crumbsuckers’ song ‘Rejuvenate’

 

A simple question: Is your career exactly where you want it to be? Are you consistently getting the results and outcomes you want?

If you can confidently answer ‘yes’, then carry on doing what you’re doing. If you gave any other answer, it’s probably time to change something. If you keep doing what you’re doing you will always keep getting what you’re getting.

It’s been said that there are three types of people:

1. Those who make things happen.

2. Those who watch things happen.

3. Those who ask, “Wh-wh-what happened?”

I used to think that those in the third category were just lazy, but lately I’ve come to realize that they are just not paying attention. They have hopes and dreams, can be hard working, well liked people, but continually get blindsided by life. They lack introspection and don’t understand why they never get promoted, why they get stuck in one bad relationship after another, why they just can’t seem to create the results they want despite all their good intentions. A quick example:

A friend was telling me about an employee at his company. This employee has been with the company for several years, is friendly and well-liked by customers and co-workers, and does a decent job. My friend was at an all-day training with him and he expressed a strong desire to get promoted into a front-line leadership role. He was also consistently late. He was ten minutes late to the training, late coming back from breaks, late and disruptive coming back from lunch. He had an apology and an excuse every time. My friend later found out that tardiness is a very consistent pattern for him. This person apparently sees no connection between his behavior and lack of career advancement. He’s asking, “What happened?”

I once had a co-worker who worked hard and did pretty good work, but never took the time to think ahead. He relied on his boss to do all the thinking. Work stopped whenever he encountered a roadblock and would not move forward until his boss solved the problem. He was really good at spotting problems and miserable poor at solving them. He enjoyed watching things happen. And his career stalled out accordingly.

Those in the first category are simplifiers. They look for solutions to make processes easier, they resolve issues, they fix stuff. They look for ways to move forward rather than finding reasons to stay stuck. When they are not sure of the best path, they bring several possible solutions to their boss with an understanding of the pros and cons of each. When they screw up (we all do) they fix it, learn from it, and keep moving forward. They don’t spend much time worrying about what they can do because they’re too focused on thinking about what they can do. These folks get stuff done and make the rest of us look stuck in slow motion by comparison. I love these people because they inspire me to raise my game.

So what category are you consistently in? Actually, forget I asked that. The real question is what category do you want to be in? If you’re happy with your results, stay where you are. If you want more, aim hard at being in the first category. The good news is that we’re not trapped in any category. As the song said, “Rejuvenation can still be found.” All it takes is you.

never as good as i think i am

I have tried to train myself to view feeling comfortable in my job as a big warning sign. The flashing red lights start going off when I catch myself thinking, “You know, I’m actually pretty good at this.” Hubris is a dangerous thing that leaves us blinded to reality. It feels great, but it’s a dangerous place to be.

It was bicycling that tipped me off to the dangers and often re-reminds me of it:

A couple of times a year, I’ll be out on my road bike pedaling along and just be flying. Beautiful day, landscape rolling past, feeling great, and thinking I’m in much better shape than I thought. Then I’ll turn around to head home and realize that I had a strong tailwind. I wasn’t in great shape, I just didn’t notice how much I was being helped along.

I regularly mountain bike on a pretty challenging set of trails and it’s easy to start thinking I’m pretty good. Well, no. I just know my trails really well and that’s very different from being good. I recently rode a different set of trails and got my hiney kicked. Turns out I’m not quite as good, fast, or strong as I fooled myself into thinking. A painful lesson, but necessary.

Success is the product of good thinking and hard working. It’s important to celebrate our accomplishments, but it’s easy to over-congratulate ourselves for our successes. Yes, we have quite a bit to do with our triumphs, but sometimes they are helped by additional factors that we don’t notice and can’t control. The tailwind, familiarity, being a big fish in a small pond, a lack of real competition, staying within our comfort zones all help us think we’re doing better than we actually are.

Consider some of the key places we see this show up:

People often have a hard time making the jump to the next level of whatever they’re good at. For example, athletes who are superstars at the regional level, are just another decent player at the national level. Another example is MBA programs, where people who were the standouts as undergrads are just another face in the crowd, surrounded by lots of equally smart, aggressive, and talented people. That’s a humbling experience. Some relish the challenge and love being surrounded by people who push them to bring out their best. Others struggle to come to terms with the idea that they are just average in their new peer group.

When hiring, how do you determine that an applicant’s previous successes will translate to your company? We’ve probably all seen people with impressive resumes not do well because the new environment was too different and didn’t mesh.

Or what about the rising star employees who flame out when they are promoted too soon. They show some promise, have some early successes, and then get pushed to a level they are not yet ready for. Something unexpected happens that they don’t have the experience or luck to deal with and it all caves in. Worse, they start believing their own hype and because of their past successes they are given a lot of rope to hang themselves. When it all catches up with them it catches up hard.

This is also an issue with employee development: how do you develop people fast enough to keep them engaged, but slow enough that they can really,  truly learn what they need to know? How do you acknowledge and applaud them without instilling a false sense of confidence?

In our own jobs, we want continuous and never-ending improvement, but how do we push ourselves beyond our comfort levels when it’s so, well, uncomfortable? We want success, but easy success fool us into thinking we’re better than we are. If we don’t consciously try new things, experiment, and sometimes feel like we’re failing, it can prevent the growth that leads to bigger, long-term success.

Where are you feeling confident in your job? What would you need to do to make your job feel challenging? Where is the edge of your skills and what can you attempt that is slightly beyond the boundary? What new settings, projects, or tasks can you take on that might push you just a bit?