Randy Cantrell

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Be different.

We mean, “Be different in a good way.”

One of the very first marketing and advertising lessons I learned was the power of zigging when everybody else was zagging. The point was simple, but not easy. You have to stand out from the crowd.

Separating yourself from the competition may be easier in the execution of your business, but it may be very difficult in attracting customers. I spent decades running retail organizations. Delivering extraordinary customer service has always been my passion. Establishing a culture willing and able to do that is vastly easier than convincing new customers that you’re distinct.

We have to figure out a way. A way to attract new customers. It’s the first leg of the business trifecta.

1. Getting new customers
2. Serving existing customers better
3. Not going crazy in the process

It’s up near the top of the business challenges facing all of us. How can we stand apart and get the attention of the prospect so we can convert them into customers?

There’s no singular answer. “It depends” is the qualifying statement. It depends on the business you’re in. Not every business is solving the seemingly unsolvable problem customers experience. Not every business is leading the way with some technology advantage. Not every business has the clear advantage of being the best product.

The question for today is, “How can we make our company stand apart from the crowd because we’re significantly different…better?”

It’s not CAN we. It’s HOW can we?

Every business owner has to figure out a way to make being different better!

Today I hope to help jog your creative juices so you can huddle with your team and find a way.

One: Get very clear on what you’d like to be most known for

Reputations don’t just happen. Well, good ones don’t. Architect your reputation.

This will be congruent with your culture. There’s no way to have a culture known for something other than what the customers know to be true. I’ll always encourage entrepreneurs to focus first on their reputation with their employees. What do your employees know to be true? How do they feel about you and working inside your company?

Too often business owners don’t think about it. Some even boldly claim they don’t care. A big mistake! Your people are the face of your company with the customers. Their happiness is paramount. Their dedication to serving the customer matters. Ironfisted rule won’t inspire them to perform better. No society ruled by a dictator has ever outperformed a free society run by capitalism. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll be the lone exception.

Figure out the key reputation points that you want every employee to know are true. Get busy making those things happen.

The best places to work excel at everything else.

It’s not about being soft and easy. It’s about being competitive and striving to win in the market. We make sports analogies for good reason. There are winners and losers. Society and culture don’t hold being competitive up as much as I think they should. But I grew up in a different era. We wanted to crush our competition. It’s not about being ugly or failing to be nice. It’s about doing what you can while always doing the right thing so you best all the competition.

The best teams are judged by their victories. Do they win? If they win then you dive more deeply under the hood to see their culture. You won’t find a culture where people run willy-nilly doing whatever they please. You won’t find a culture where people have an easy life. Instead, you’ll find people working harder than their opponents. You’ll find people helping each other be accountable for being as good as possible. They’ll push each other to perform better. And better. They’ll willingly pay the price for success. And if anybody among them doesn’t want to do that, they’ll make life very difficult for that person.

So don’t confuse a high-performing culture as giving the troops a ping pong table and free snacks. It’s deeper and more lasting than that.

Employees know you for what?

Now, what do you want them to know you for? Get busy building the reputation you want with your team members.

What do you want to be most known for by your customers?

Why should they choose to do business with you and not your competition? The answer can’t be “because we’re just as good.” It can’t be, “because we’re better.” Why are you better? The first question is likely, “Are you better?” You may think you’re better than you really are.

This is why your culture matters. If you need to improve…it’s your people who will turn that around. Players play. Coaches coach. You have to get busy coaching your players so they can perform at higher levels. First, they have to understand the goal and how you want to win.

This is hard work. We tend to underestimate the competition and overestimate our ability to execute against them. I’ll share a few things I’ve done through the years. One ingredient is mandatory if you’re going to succeed at doing this work: candid truth. You can’t look away. You can’t get defensive. You have to seek the truth and face it. It WILL set you free.

Many years ago I was commissioned to turnaround a company. The potential for greatness was there, but the place was a shambles in many ways. Inventory problems, people problems, discipline issues…you name it, we faced it. Fortunately, the place was only a few years old and didn’t really have much of a reputation. My challenge was that the place just wasn’t thought of. Visibility and awareness were problems. Performance was poor. Lackluster would have been an improvement.

Very quickly I concluded that the place lacked pride. It’s hard to be proud when you’re not winning. The place wasn’t even trying very hard to win. To get some pride going I had a major company-wide cleaning party. We made being clean and inviting (in the front as well as in the warehouse, or the back) a point of pride. We wanted to be known for it. I know what you’re thinking, “Cleanliness?” Yep, cleanliness.

I’ve learned that few things trump the power of people looking at a cluttered, dirty space, then transforming it into a space they’re excited to show off. It’s like little boys who are in the yard yelling for mom to “look at me.”

Figure out what you need to do by first figuring out what you want to be known for.

Two: Get very clear on how you want to go about it. 

The first point is pretty much the domain of the top leader. That’s YOU. This second point involves collaboration. Let the employees help create the plan on how to accomplish the reputation you most want.

Too often business leaders focus on buy-in after the fact. One of the ideal ways to foster better (deeper) buy-in is to involve the people in the plans. When they help craft the methodology to succeed in the market, they’ll buy-in. It’s THEIR plan.

You’re the leader. You provide the vision.

They’re the ones making your dreams come true so let them have a healthy involvement in how to make it happen.

Third: No excuses!

Don’t waver. It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to be tough and you’ll have some setbacks. The team will need you to rally to support them. Express your confidence in them. Express your confidence in the mission and what you want to be known for. Reassure them it’ll work out. Don’t be prone to the latest, greatest, coolest, trickest fad or solution. Stay the course on what you most want to be known for.

How will all this result in your company being different?

Here’s a better question, “How different will your company be if you accept the challenge and advice I’ve offered?” For many of you, your company won’t resemble its current look if you put in the work to make these changes. Don’t you think that difference will make you better? Don’t you think your employees will be positively impacted by that? Don’t you think they’ll make the experience for your customers better?

We both know the answer to that.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:09 — 11.6MB)

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I watch just enough baseball to be dangerous. When Pudge Rodriguez was catching for the Texas Rangers I remember going to a few games. His arm at throwing out runners attempting to steal a base was spectacular. Much more so in person than on TV.

Since I was young I was probably more fascinated at throwing the baseball more than hitting it. I don’t understand the physics of pitching at all. Even a non-super fan like me has to acknowledge the brilliant talent of a pitcher who can make the exact same motion, including where they release the ball — and have a different pitch come out each time. One at 95 miles an hour with the next pitch just breaking 80 miles an hour.

TV deceives us as we look at hitters who sometimes look foolish swinging at a pitch you’d think they could hit. At the major league level, the real-time speed is so fast it’s remarkable that anybody can even make contact with a ball. These guys are world-class talent. The best of the best. And they’ve been doing this for so long they have a recognition the rest of us lack. They see things better – differently – and they have practiced, practiced, practiced. The best hitters have learned how to hit almost every pitch, but they’ve also learned something else. They know which pitch they most prefer, but so do the pitchers. The pitchers don’t want to give them their favorite pitch. This means the hitters have got to learn to hit non-favorite pitches, too.

This week has been filled with curveballs. Not so different from any other week really, huh?

If you’re like me you may not be able to remember a week where you saw only your favorite pitch to hit. Life is the pitcher and rarely tosses us the pitch we can hit out of the park. Instead, life is skilled at throwing us the one pitch that most frustrates us.

As business owners, we’ve got to do 2 things. Neither of them is easy, but we can improve. We can GROW GREAT at it if we put in the work.

1. Be patient and look for your ideal pitch.
2. Learn to hit as many non-favorite pitches as possible.

The patience thing is hard. For everybody. Playing business means we want to play. Not swinging feels too passive for many of us. In this context, the pitch is an opportunity. Not every opportunity is worth your effort, but boy can that be vexing when everywhere we look we see pitches that appear worth going after.

Sometimes that first skill of being patient for your ideal pitch isn’t practical or possible. That’s what happened to me this week. I got a curveball, but I had to hit it. These pitches are our challenges. They appear and you don’t have the option of standing there staring at it with your bat on your shoulder. These pitches don’t disappear. They don’t go away. They only grow worse. So we have to deal with them.

That doesn’t mean we’ll hit them. We may not even make contact, but we have to try. Most of the time we don’t have to hit a home run. If we can just get on base then it means we survive the problem just fine.

Something magical and true is in place when the curveballs (our least favorite pitches) come our way as challenges. The rules of baseball don’t apply. We get as many swings as we’re willing to take. Which is great for us, bad for the challenge!

So these two skills are vital for us.

1. Be patient and look for your ideal pitch.
2. Learn to hit as many non-favorite pitches as possible.

Late last week I was presented with a challenge – a pitch that isn’t just a non-favorite, but a pitch that I absolutely hate. You’ve got pitches like that. Pitches you love and other pitches you positively HATE.

I got a pitch I hate. Technology challenges. Simultaneously I was in the midst of trying to wrap up a project I’d been working on so the timing of the curveball was ideal for the Universe conspiring against me. It was awful timing for my success. But what are you gonna do? You’re gonna try to hit it, that’s what.

I swung and missed over the weekend. By Monday I was making contact. Here’s the thing about the challenges that come as curveballs. It’s like a perpetual pitching machine. The same pitch just keeps coming so you treat it as you would if you were in a batting cage. You keep swinging learning along the way. That’s what I did.

By Tuesday I was making solid contact. I knew I was getting close. I was seeing it more clearly. I had adjusted my swing and if there had been video of it I guarantee I would have looked much more confident on Tuesday than I did on Saturday.

Wednesday arrived and I was making solid contact and driving for distance, but the balls were still going foul. Didn’t matter because I knew I had this.

Thursday was frustrating because I was so close, but I still wasn’t on base. My experience with these curveball challenges is that I go from swinging and missing to making contact, to making great contact…until I hit it over the fence. With challenges in our business that’s my experience even in helping other business owners or CEOs out of their problems. We either give up and the challenge defeats us or we hit it over the fence and solve the thing.

By Thursday mid-afternoon I hit the curveball out of the park. It was grueling. I spent about 70 hours working hard to figure it out, but I refused to quit because – well, it was a problem that had to be solved. Like you, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. There I was standing in the batter’s box and life was giving me this ridiculous pitch over and over. I had to learn to hit it. The problem had to be solved. Just as importantly, I had to learn how to overcome this problem. I needed to add to my skill set – the ability to hit this particular kind of pitch.

Business rules are different than baseball rules. Hitters have the advantage in business because we can take as many swings as we want. There is no “3 out rule” in business. We can play as long as we want.

Some hitters are naturals. They recognize pitches better than the rest of us. And they have a natural talent that may be better than the rest of us. The good news is their success has no impact on ours. Best for us to focus on our own hitting and learn how to hit these curveballs…because they’re just gonna keep on coming. Seize the day and take advantage of seeing these pitches over and over again. You gotta learn to hit them. And I have faith that you can. I’m here to help.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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“Failure is not an option.”

Another platitude that sounds good, but is colossally wrong. Failure is possible in everything. And probable, too. That’s just the truth. Fact.

Does that mean you should fear it? Not necessarily.

More importantly, you should likely prepare for it. Not by bracing for it, but by planning worst-case-scenario. So often failure is preventable if we’d just prepare going in.

Business owners can live in their heads, preparing for success. Sure, we can also fret about failing, but our imaginations soar at the thoughts of what might be – in all the best ways! That’s why we create proformas that are nothing but dreams. Figments of our imagination.

We love doing it. Creating a spreadsheet with calculations of what might be. Man, look at that. If we can close just a few more deals every month it’ll add a few million bucks to our top line. And if we add a few million bucks to the top line, lookie there! We’ll add over $300,000 to our bottom line. Awesome.

Of course, experience teaches us – often the hard way – that most of the time that “best-case scenario” never happens. Instead, we hit numbers we never did a spreadsheet on. Turns out we end up closing a few less deals every month and suddenly our gross revenue is down a few million bucks. Now what?

Every savvy business person knows the maxim, “Formulas over feelings.” We’re a pretty intuitive bunch though so I think it’s empty advice to ignore how we feel about something. Many of us have a good gut feel about things. It why we often make decisions that seem ridiculous to our friends. We believe in things. Mostly in ourselves. And our ideas or solutions.

Even so, there’s wisdom in the phrase that we’d be foolish to ignore. The numbers need to make sense. We can help leverage our feelings by looking more realistically at numbers.

It’s a common practice to ask, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

It’s a far less common practice to actually answer it.

That’s why I’m urging you to do. Take the time to figure out the answer. Figure out those formulas. Get those numbers. Then see how you feel.

Knowing that failure is always an option doesn’t necessarily prevent us from moving forward, but it can help us increase our faith in what we’re doing. Or not.

Let’s illustrate the point with buying merchandise to sell. Suppose I’m able to buy a truckload of some items at a greatly reduced cost. Suppose a truckload consists of about 60 units that currently have a real street price of $300. That’s $18,000 in gross revenue potential. Our profit margin at that price would be 30%, giving us a profit of $5,400. That’s 7% more profit than we’d earn if we purchased the items in small quantity. So far so good. But what’s our rate of sale. If it takes us 120 days to sell 60 units and the terms on our purchase are net 30 days, then it may not be worthwhile. We can fool ourselves into thinking we’ll make the purchase and sell these units at a faster rate than normal. Best case scenario.

The worst-case scenario would be calculating that our current rate of sale won’t hold up. What if it takes us 150 days or more to sell all 60 units? What if the current street price won’t hold up and we end up having to mark down the items? Answering those questions will likely alter how we feel about this opportunity.

Every day we’re making decisions like this. Decisions that make or break our day, our week, our month and our year. Sometimes we calculate things carefully. Sometimes we don’t. We all do it.

Mindfulness is one way we can avoid getting caught in the option of failing. It doesn’t mean we have to slow down. We just need to be aware – sometimes MORE aware – of what the stakes are. That’s why you frequently hear the sage advice, “Know your numbers.”

Intuition and feelings are critical for every business owner I’ve ever known. Knowing the realities of the numbers is paramount so we give our gut feelings the best chance to guide us toward success.

Get real with what can actually happen. Don’t be pessimistic, but figure things won’t go as planned. What if they don’t go anywhere close to plan? Will it be a good decision then? Figure it out. Calculate the risk you’re willing to make. Then act.

I’ll wager that your results will prove success is more likely time after time. Your winners will overcome any failures. You won’t ever get rid of failure. You just have to win against it more often than not.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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Oklahoma Sooner’s head football coach Lincoln Riley has a reputation as a quarterback whisperer. His two previous QB’s are Heisman Trophy winners. Part of his claim to fame is the ability to simplify the position. He installs game plans and plays that QB’s can more easily execute. It’s what he should do as a head coach. Put players in the best position possible so they can succeed.

What about YOU? Are you making your systems easy for customers and employees?

Simple. Easy. Straightforward.

Those are appealing to customers and employees. It creates an atmosphere where sustainable success can be more easily repeated. Predictable. That’s what customers want, provided that what can be predicted is GREAT.

So many companies get skewered by their customer base for frequent and aggressive price hikes. Or for nickel and diming customers. Or for making the experience awful for customers (and likely employees, too). Lots of businesses are out of touch with how their employees and customers feel. Profits are first. That’s fine. You can operate like that. It’s not the ideal long-term play, but you can do it that way.

Or you can build a culture that will sustain high-performance year after year.  That means you put people ahead of profits. Employees and customers. In that order. For good reason, employees deliver the experience to the customers. Create an atmosphere where employees are miserable and you’ll fail at making the experience for customers much better.

Operations get clogged up with non-sense. It’s not unusual for the clog to be prompted by the owner or top leadership. Nor is it unusual for the clog to be the result of some quirky reaction to a single act of idiocy. For example, a business owner discovers one person has figured out to take unfair advantage of a promotion that is working insanely well otherwise. Armed with this single instance of the violation he cancels the entire promotion. Proving true the phrase, “Cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

Friction in these instances isn’t your friend. Customers hate it. Enough of it and they’ll leave you. Ditto for employees. Put enough friction in front of your employees preventing them from achieving their personal goals and they’ll leave, too.

Here’s the secret. Think like an employee and a customer. Stop thinking like a business owner. It’s counter-intuitive but it works. It’s the only way you’ll get your systems right.

Look at the casual dining landscape as proof. The superstars have good food that is consistently predictable. It’s always good. But they have something more. They’re also predictably fast and clean. They go out of their way to soar above the competition. The atmosphere is inviting. The staff is always helpful. The service is always spot on. So you continue to go back. And they continue to have the best employees. Everybody involved is proud to be part of it – either providing the service/food or providing the purchase to keep the place going.

Have you ever gone to a casual dining establishment and thought (or said out loud), “They do business in spite of themselves?” I sure have. Until I eventually refused to go back.

Find the friction in your business. It’s time for brutally honest candor. I’ll give you just two suggestions.

One, huddle with your employees.

One on one. In groups. Figure out the best way to get the truth. Do it in as many ways as you can.

Question: How can we become the best in class as a place to work?

You’re afraid to ask, aren’t you? Don’t be. The truth will set you free. More importantly, it’ll set your employees free to become world-class. Until you get that right, you’ll never get the customer part of the equation right.

This isn’t about blindly accepting every suggestion you hear. It’s about listening and taking meaningful action to build a culture that promotes individual and team success.

Warning: Do this only if you’re serious about acting on it. Otherwise, you’re going to make matters worse.

Two, work out all the kinks that create friction for your customers. The employees will help.

Question: How can we become irresistible to our customers?

Scrutinize every process and system. Every single one. Turn over everything that impacts customers. Guage the friction on whatever scale you want. I like a simple 3 point scale.

1 = The lowest friction possible
2 = The friction is moderate
3 = The friction is high

Identify the points of contact and score each of them. Now single out those that score 3. Bust them vigorously until you drive them down to 1. Think about forming small teams to tackle the processes with which they’re familiar. It’s ideal to involve the employees who deliver that process to the customers.

Hint: Speed matters. Unless we’re talking about a complete computer system overhaul you should be able to reconstruct a process in a week or less. Accept no excuses for delays.

Next, tackle the items that score 2. Same process.

Once you’ve got no processes that score higher than 1, now install teams to keep a watchful eye on ways to drive the friction down even further. This is a permanent business operation. It’s not a fad you’re going to move past. Make sure the company knows this is a permanent fixed part of the operation from now on.

Weekly you and your team should question everything that impacts customers.

Weekly you and your leadership should do the same thing with everything that impacts your employees.

If you’d like to be world-class or best-in-class, this will be some of the most exciting work you’ll ever do. It will also improve your revenues, profitability and help cure your challenge to find great people to help you.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

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“The central economic imperative of the network economy is to amplify relationships.” That’s what Kevin Kelly wrote in New Rules For The New Economy.

Self-awareness is hard. VERY hard.

Schools don’t help. I know better than to do what I did, but I did it anyway. Because sometimes I’m a ninnie.

My 12-year-old grandson is in 7th grade. That means he’s now in junior high. It’s a big transition from elementary school. In many ways. He’s got 7 classes.

Yesterday I was asking him about his grades. To be fair, I rarely do this. Mostly I ask him about what he’s enjoying (and why). Or I ask what he’s done well. I’m usually more focused on encouraging him to lean into those things he’s really good at. Part of my problem is the same problem other adults have with the kids in their family. A built-in favorable bias where we may think our kids are pretty good at everything.

He told me he had A’s in 4 of the 7 classes, but by the time the report cards hit he expects to have A’s in the remaining 3 classes. “But you don’t have any C’s do you?” I asked. Hello, judgment! 😉

That’s what’s wrong with the state of education in America. Cookie cutter, single standard grade-based performance does not help our kids figure out what they may be best at. Instead, kids are able to quickly tell you what they’re not very good at. We’ve got it backwards. Our kids should be able to quickly tell us where they’re strongest.

This is important for many reasons. Confidence building is chief among them.

A buddy calls me up. He’s telling me about a networking event he attended – we both normal shy away from these affairs. He’s been studying some techniques to improve behavior by elevating your thoughts. So he tries a quick exercise as he walks into the room. Determined to find one suitable client candidate he surveys the room. One person catches his eye. He’s not even sure why, but he approaches the fellow and begins a conversation. This isn’t some full-blown sales mode ordeal. They’re just talking and learning more about each other. As my buddy answers the question, “What do you do?” the other fellow leans in. He’s very interested and asks if they can meet sometime so he can learn more. Well, now you know why my buddy called to tell me this story.

We’re both interested in neuroscience, psychology and why people do what they do. Both of us have studied people for decades. And we’re both pretty self-aware. Like you, we’re very aware of our weaknesses.

“It’s confidence,” I say. “You employed a technique you believe in. So as you enter that room you believed – you REALLY believed – you’d find a potential client.”

My friend’s value system – the way he sees the world and his place in it – coupled with his strong belief in this technique designed to help him – it gave him the best opportunity to enter that room and make a connection. That’s how it works for all of us. But most of us mistake going it alone. Trying to figure these things out for ourselves. The knowledge we have of ourselves is too frequently conceit and pride. Typically it’s because we didn’t incorporate others to help us see things more clearly. We neglect to amplify relationships that can help us soar with our strengths.

What’s more important than your ability to discover and leverage your individual strengths?

When you amplify relationships you dramatically improve that ability. Because you surround yourself with some people willing and able to help you elevate those abilities.

This isn’t a comparison game. It’s an insight game. People who surround you – people with whom you have a close and safe relationship – are able to support you, serve you and help you see things you wouldn’t otherwise see. In yourself and in the world around you.

On the flip side, there are people with whom you are unsafe. People who you don’t trust. Maybe you never did. Those relationships must also be amplified but in reverse. You may have folks in your life who are toxic. Amplify those relationships so you can more clearly see how damaging they are to your life. This is sometimes as difficult, or more so than amplifying the valuable relationships because quite often the people who do the most damage to us are the ones we’re most attracted to. They can be the people who approve of every poor choice we make. They’re always leading us to behave foolishly. But maybe that’s fun. They don’t challenge us to be our best. Instead, they help us lower our life to a base-level that isn’t good for us or anybody around us. Case in point, drug addicts help each other by getting high together. No drug addict got the help they needed from their drug addict friends. People run together enjoying the same foolishness. How can you see that for what it is? You have to decide for yourself what’s important. You have to make up your own mind that discovering and leverage your individual strengths are more important – and then you have to have the resolve to be more intentional about the people you allow into your life. People willing and able to help you do that.

If figuring out your strengths is hard (and it is), then figuring out who can help you discover them and how you can best leverage those strengths is ridiculously hard. Doable, but hard.

Here’s the thing. It’s not going to happen for you accidentally. It could, but it’s unlikely. Like we talked about Wednesday about success – you want to create the best conditions possible to bring it about. This is an area where your chances of success are very high if you put in the work. It starts with something that seems counter-intuitive. Stop thinking about yourself. Stop being self-centered. Stop putting yourself ahead of everybody else. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and maybe most of all, stop blaming others.

Own it. And realize that all this attention you’re giving yourself is taking pieces of you away. It’s not contributing to help you build a better you. It’s not making you better at being able to properly amplify relationships.

Help others. Be the most beneficial resource possible for others. That’s how you’ll find your best self. It sounds hokey, but it’s true. It’s totally rational, too. People are attracted to the people they trust. We trust the people who we know have our best interests at heart. Who are those people? They tend to be the people with whom we feel the safest. Be safe for others.

Assess the people who surround you. Be honest with yourself. Are they making you live a higher moral life? A life with greater impact? Or are they making your current life more fun? Are they supporting your belief that you deserve whatever you feel you deserve because you’re a victim in life?

The questions aren’t always enjoyable. Wrestling with them isn’t always fun. We’re pursuing the most profitable lives possible though. We’re not merely looking to feel better about ourselves at the moment, only to be riddled with guilt later on. We’re chasing sustainable, long-term growth and improvement. We desperately need people who can help us. People who can see where we’re blind. People with a long-term vision where our short-term vision fails us. People who love us enough to call us out and help us avoid hiding behind our excuses. Those are the relationships that need amplification.

Who you surround yourself matters!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:17 — 9.8MB)

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No, it’s not a secret. There are no secrets to success. It requires hard work, preparation, skill, talent, timing, serendipity, and good luck. I’m probably leaving something out, but you get the idea.

I live in Tornado Alley. Tornado activity is highest in the Spring, but within the last month, we had extensive damage from tornados here around Dallas. Tornados are largely unpredictable, but certain conditions are necessary. Meteorologists armed with hi-tech devices can spot cloud rotations when conditions are favorable.

Success is like that. Largely unpredictable, but it requires certain conditions.

Many of us are attracted to the outliers, those one-off instances where success “just happened.” People can dissect those and try to figure out how to replicate it, but it’s a waste of time. Sometimes things just happen. You don’t want to devote your life to hoping something good will “just happen” though. It’s better to create conditions favorable for success.

Success. You define it.

Let’s begin with how you define success. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. You have to decide for yourself. It sounds stupid until you pause long enough to think about it more seriously. Lots of people pursue generic “success.” They really don’t know what that means. It just means something better than what they’re currently experiencing. All they know is that THIS ain’t it. Success is THAT.

Well, you need to define that. Put a number on it. Put an accomplishment on it. Measure it somehow.

I’ve known people with high-end careers who had a side project they loved far more than their career. While others would likely see them as successful (because they had a high paying job), they were pursuing their own definition of success to get their side project where it could gross $70,000 a year so they could ditch the job. Exchanging a big 6-figure job for a $70K passion project may not be how you’d define success, but for him…it was THE GOAL.

I’ve known CEOs who felt anything short of a double-digit revenue increase would be a failure. And I’ve known other CEOs who defined success as a 3% increase. To each his own.

Personal success. Company success. 

They’re not the same. Entrepreneurs more than most have their personal success and company success closely tied together. They’re still different. You aren’t your company. You think you are. It often feels that way, but no matter how intertwined your life is with your company – they’re different. Respect them both. Respect them both enough to define success for them separately.

The first element to improve conditions for creating success is optimism. I list it first because of everything that stems from it. Believe the best. Start with thinking the best. You may as well because there’s no downside. We’re not talking about guarantees…we’re talking about improving the conditions for success. Anybody who thinks success is more likely in a pessimistic environment, raise your hand (and go stand in the corner with your dunce cap on). 😉

The next element necessary for creating favorable conditions for success is honesty. You can call it authenticity or integrity, but it boils down to being honest. An environment where the truth is reverred is much more prone to succeed than a culture based on lies or deception. Unless of course, the measure of success is to get away with criminal behavior.

Add safety. A judgment-free zone that fosters people speaking their mind, and being truthful because they know how valuable honesty is for everybody. If there are ramifications for honestly expressing oneself, then the conditions more favorable for failure than success. People must feel safe to contribute. And everybody must feel safe enough to be wrong.

Now add preparation. There’s a lot to this, but let’s just focus on putting in the work necessary to give our success the very best chance. That means we think carefully through the options as we prepare the best course of action. This is why safety precedes this. Preparation can’t be done in a vacuum. We need others to more fully prepare. Maybe preparation involves consensus building. Maybe not. It depends. You can figure that out. No matter what though, you must prepare fully to give yourself the best opportunity to win. Shooting from the hip is sometimes necessary, but more often than not it’s foolish…resulting in shooting only your foot (or worse). Plan your course to give yourself a more ideal opportunity to hit what you’re aiming at.

Execute the plan as quickly as you can without advancing unprepared. Don’t go off half-cocked. Once you’ve got a plan you fully believe in, move. Fast. Everybody has to do their part. Don’t accept passengers. No role is too small. Everybody is significant. Make sure each person understands how their role fits into the plan.

Adjust even more quickly. Plans are made to be adjusted. They’re mostly just a starting point from which to measure and make adjustments. Measure, measure, measure. Is the plan working as you thought? Is it going south? Figure out what can be done to improve it. Commit to the adjustments. This is important so the team knows you’re more committed to the conditions for success than the plan.

Own the outcome. This is your parade. Lead it. Don’t blame anybody or anything. As the conditions for success become increasingly more apparent, praise the team for creating those conditions. Focus intently on how important it is that your organization always be preparing for victory by having a culture that fosters success. When things don’t go as planned, that’s on you. Accept responsibility. Let the team know it’s not acceptable to ever damage the conditions for success. Apologize when you need to and commit to do better.

Create and ride momentum waves. Sometimes they appear out of nowhere. Jump on them. Sometimes you have to paddle like crazy to find them. Whatever it takes to create or find a momentum wave, do it. Then urge everybody to stand up on their board so you can ride it together for the time of your life.

Success may sometimes be an accident, but more often than not it’s the result of conditions that foster it. Give yourself the best opportunities to succeed by making failure impossible to survive in your culture. Much of the time success is more about pushing out failure than anything else. You want to give success all the oxygen possible while simultaneously starving failure of any fuel at all.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

Randy