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Day 12. Sunday, September 12, 2021. Today we’re talking about creating!

Specifically, I’m talking about you creating your own ideas, philosophies, beliefs, and courses of action rather than relying on experts, thought leaders, authors, or even podcasters. 😉 

Research has shown the powerful impact teaching or coaching can have on the person doing the teaching or coaching. We think if we insert our wisdom on a person trying to transform will help, but the opposite is true. Instead, when we ask a person attempting to change to tell us how they’d go about helping somebody trying to make the same one they’re working on…they engage and it can help them more figure out their own path. 

That speaks to the power of creating versus consuming. Creating is more positive action. Consuming tends to be much more passive. That’s why the books, articles, podcasts, videos, seminars, and conferences rarely make much of a difference in helping us improve.

Knowing isn’t doing. 

Knowledge isn’t to be discounted, but doing accelerates knowledge enabling us to better figure things out. Labs all over the world are failing at an incredibly high rate, but that failure is vital in the pursuit to solve whatever problem each lab is tackling. 

Examine what you already know about whatever it is you want to improve. An easy example is weight loss because so many of us can relate to it. Is a lack of knowledge the issue? You’d think so based on the number of books and articles written about it. All of us understand we should eat a more healthy balanced diet with a modest amount of daily caloric intake. And we know we should exercise daily, even if it’s walking for just 30 minutes. The benefits of drinking water are well-established and rather common knowledge. Those last 3 sentences represent knowledge we all have about weight loss. There are thousands of little details – or big ones – that aren’t included in that, but are any of them likely to be the one missing piece of knowledge to spark us to take action? Not likely. 

The real problem isn’t knowing. It’s doing. Specifically, it’s doing what we already know to do. 

Get busy creating. Reduce, if only temporarily, your consumption. Wean yourself from the habit of passively taking in information thinking it’s the path forward. Picture a lab full of scientists who daily pour over white papers from all over the globe. They never test anything. No experiments are crafted and performed. No failures happen. No success either.

Success will not happen as long as we’re neglecting to do what we already know to do. It feels better to learn – conning ourselves that we’re doing something – and avoid risking failure. Not doing something doesn’t feel like failure. We fool ourselves into feeling, “Just not yet.” We’re going to do it, but we’re putting in the time to prepare. After all, preparation is a big part of success, right? We don’t want to go off half-cocked. This is why I said that consumption’s biggest negative is it fuels our procrastination. It keeps us from actually doing something – creating. 

What is your very next step – the action you’ll take? And I don’t mean research, reading, listening, or watching. 

I don’t remember a client ever failing to be able to answer that question. We may not know step 5, but we always know step 1. The very next step is more often than not obvious to us. So the question becomes, why don’t we do what we already know to do? 

Well, it could be lots of different things, but fear is the likely culprit. Oh, I know. You’re not afraid of anything. But you’re deceiving yourself. We’re all afraid of something. Some of us are afraid of lots of things. The two most common ones I’ve found are looking foolish or stupid (insert any fear that has to do with how we appear to others) and failure (“what if it doesn’t work?”).

Would you agree that much of what ails us is our refusal to close that gap between what we already know and what we’re already doing? Stop and think about that in your life. You’re not taking any action with the knowledge you already have. What makes you think adding more knowledge on top of your existing knowledge will change that? Storing up knowledge is useless except in games of trivia. 

Creating is taking the very next step. Do that one thing you already know to do. See how it works out. Adjust. Adapt. Get busy figuring it out. And know that figuring it out isn’t just a cerebral activity. It’s physical, too. Move. Do something. Create. 

When I was young I aspired to be a writer. Not seriously, but it was a dream. I was quickly taught the truth about writing. Writers write. 

Subjects (nouns) have verbs. I rightly concluded that if writers write then singers sing, musicians play, speakers speak, coaches coach, podcasters podcast and on and on. The people who are achieving are doing. They’re not just reading. They’re not just consuming. They’re not just learning. Mostly, they’re doing and in that doing – they’re creators who are making the biggest differences. 

Lastly, when it comes to figuring out who you most want to be, creating is key. You’re writing the story of your own life. Nobody else can write your story. That doesn’t mean they won’t try, but you must wrestle the pen or keyboard from anybody who would dare live your life for you. You have to be responsible. 

Starting tomorrow we’ll peel back how you can at long last get on the path to accepting the challenge to transform your life to what YOU want. Warning: it’s not magical. Or easy. It’s not complex, but it’s difficult. But you can do it. We all can. 

Will YOU? 

Let’s find out.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Twenty years ago today. It was a Tuesday morning. We had the NBC Today Show on the TV as we were getting ready. Sometime after 7:30 am Central the news hit. Something horrific was happening in NYC at the World Trade Center towers. It was – and still is – surreal. And the phrase, Nine-Eleven, entered our vocabulary, symbolizing the date, September 11th – the day a series of coordinated attacks happened on American soil by foreign terrorists killing 2,996. 

Day 11. Let’s talk about your consumption. No, we’re not going to address weight loss or how much you’re drinking. I’m talking about information consumption, but let’s narrow it down a bit.

Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, books, articles, blog posts, podcasts, YouTube…all these places we go where we skim headlines, click a few links, scan a few sentences, devour an entire 700-word Medium post, watch a 56 second TikTok, read a 238-page leadership book…I’m talking about all of this consumption that we think makes us better. Maybe we know it makes us better. I’m not here to debate the woes of social media. Or to push some agenda that we should read more books. 

I love to read. 

I love YouTube.

I’m entertained – sometimes inspired – by Instagram and TikTok.

I’m enlightened – sometimes encouraged – by Linkedin.

So I’m not going to preach against consuming information. After all, if you remember my “progression of leadership,” knowledge is in the middle of it. It’s important that we learn.

Question: Do you understand why you consume so much?

Most of us blindly do it. Others have researched and written how UI (user interface) designers have designed social media to be addictive. Plenty of others have addressed, in a variety of ways, how news is manipulated. And many more than sounded the bell of concern about how our attention span is shrinking. Dramatically. 

I’ll leave that conversation to people more expert in those areas. This is you and me talking and I’m asking you if you understand why you consume what you consume? 

“You are what you eat,” say nutritionists. 

There’s little doubt we are also what we think about and what we think about is heavily influenced by what we watch, read and hear. 

Each of us has biases. All kinds of them. You’ve heard phrases like confirmation bias and cognitive bias. 

Confirmation bias – according to Wikipedia – is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.

Cognitive bias is the subjective reality each of us creates, sometimes to adapt, but sometimes because it’s just how we view the world. 

Humans may be incapable of fully controlling such things, but I wonder if we’re able to better manage what we think, how we feel, and what we believe is true. Ironically, I choose to believe we can better manage these things and that if we do, it can spur us on to higher performance. So let me repeat the questions…

Do you understand why you consume so much?

Do you understand why you consume what you consume?

My experience in serving top-level leaders for the past dozen years has revealed some things – things my own life confirms.

Those of us who love to read, read for enjoyment and enlightenment. Many of us describe ourselves as “lifelong learners.” Others are wannabe lifelong learners. There are fakes and hypocrites in every arena. Some of us disguise our consumption habits by declaring we’re hooked on learning when in reality we’re more hooked on the quest to find the secret we think might be missing. That one thing we’ve yet to learn that might make all the difference. It’s a hard truth people don’t openly admit, especially top-level leaders, but we’re all susceptible to it because high-performing people genuinely are curious and wonder, “What don’t I yet know?” It’s that quest – that curiosity – that compels us to keep on this endless search. I’m not critical of it because I’m right there with you doing the same thing. Much of my thinking has been heavily influenced by reading about people named Drucker, Deming, Geneen, and Welch. 

We are a composite of all the things we’ve learned – and all the information we’ve consumed.

Some of us consume because we want to make sure we’re on top of the information curve. We drop author names with pride, proving our scholarship. It makes us feel like we’re superior. More well-read. More expert. More of a thought leader. The irony is, whose thoughts are being led? Again, it’s fine if that’s what a person chooses to do. I’m only asking us to think about those questions so we better understand the WHY behind our consumption habits. 

I’m not advising you to change anything about your habits. Maybe you’ll want to. Maybe not. 

Let’s just examine it more closely to see what it might teach us about ourselves. It’s really just one aspect of self-examination that can help us move forward – and see things more accurately. That’s the point of it all. For us to see ourselves more accurately so we better understand why we do what we do. Such insights might spark curiosity about how we might adjust things so we can improve our progress. 

Or not. 

Mindfulness. Intention. Purpose. 

Those are the primary issue. 

There’s little doubt that all our lives can be improved by increasing those aspects in our lives. To think about our actions instead of mindlessly putting one foot in front of the other. To act with greater intention and purpose. 

Additionally, I want to challenge you to look for the answers within yourself. To accept responsibility for your own life. To avoid being suckered into acquiescing to the common belief that somebody else may have the answers you most seek. To stop living by the motto, “If only…” 

“If only I know a little bit more.”

The consumption habit’s worst impact on us is procrastination. We delay taking action because we fall into the trap of thinking we just need to learn a little bit more. Once we learn a bit more, then we’ll move. But too frequently we find we need to learn just one more thing. Then another. And another. 

And now you know why tomorrow we’re going to focus a creating. It’s time for you to become a creator.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 10. After today we’re one-third of the way through this micro leadership course. I hope you’ve been ruminating on your leadership and working to figure out how to improve.

Today, let’s talk about decluttering, consuming, and creating. 

Decluttering is ridiculously powerful. Hard, but powerful. No, I’m not talking about going through your office and pitching all those outdated papers and other crap you never use. I’m talking about decluttering your mind and viewpoint. That’s much harder than cleaning your office. But it’s more impactful, too.

Test your assumptions. Prove what you know to be true. 

Spend some time taking a close look at the things you believe to be true. Even things you KNOW are true. Or think you do. 

It’s time to test your thoughts, notions, opinions, beliefs and philosophies to see if they’ll hold up. I’m challenging you to enter this work with a mind made up that you’ll ditch the things that aren’t so and the things that just don’t work. 

How many leadership books have you read?

How many articles, blog posts, and podcasts have you consumed?

What lessons did mentors or others pass on to you?

What positive and negative experiences have you had as a leader?

These and many other factors have helped develop how you view leadership – particularly your own leadership. All the good, bad and ugly have a compounding effect on your life and your leadership making decluttering feel impossible. But it’s not. If you put in the right kind of work. 

I regularly use this illustration to show clients the power of not being able to see something…but once you do, you’re not able to unsee it. It simply can’t be ignored. That’s how your leadership insights will be if you put in the work. 

There are some things you easily see. Other things you find seemingly impossible to see. Until you do. Then they leap out to you plain as day!

Before moving on to consumption and creation – sessions 11 and 12 – we have to concentrate on decluttering your thinking. This is why I focused earlier on possibility thinking. So many of us are stuck because we just don’t believe. “That’ll never work,” is how some choose to live. Denying that growth, improvement, and higher performance are even possible. Or that it’s just not worth the effort. 

Stuck. It’s the number one culprit of my client work. People are stuck. Most know it. Some don’t. Typically, we see things the way we see them and we’re unable to see them differently. We see the old woman or the young woman, but not the other one. That inability to see differently sticks us. 

In every instance, decluttering ideas, philosophies, and beliefs is required. Some people refer to it as “back to basics.” Whatever you call it, it’s clearing away enough distractions so we can see more clearly. It’s opening ourselves up to the possibilities of what we can do to move ourselves and our team, group or enterprise forward. It’s always about moving forward, growth and improvement.

So how do you do this decluttering? 

1. Don’t fixate on the problems as problems. This is the hardest thing to do. We can easily focus on our problems and become consumed with what’s wrong. Solutions aren’t born from obsessing about the problem, but from fixating on the solutions. Shift the gears of your mind to think about just one thing, the ideal outcome. Your ideal outcome! What do you want to happen? What can you do to make that happen?
2. Lower your pride because that is what’s in your way. When we’re stuck we’re tempted to blame others. Don’t. Be humble enough to find your deepest courage. The courage to not care what others think. I mean, you’re stuck, so who cares? Get unstuck, then you figure out what others think — and decide if you care. Jettison that stuff right now because it’s clogging the works to your forward progress. Find a whole new level of humility. Ask for help. Seek help. Accept help. Nothing will propel you forward faster than realizing others can help you. Find people you can trust. And be vulnerable, open, and honest. If you thought step 1 was the hardest, this one is right there with it. But it’s what heroes do!
3. Be brave enough to consider alternatives to how you’ve been operating. You can make up your own mind, but only if you have an open mind. Be thoughtful and mindful to consider perspectives you may have not known or considered. Ask yourself, “What if I’ve got this wrong?” Give yourself permission to be wrong. That’s how you can become more right.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about your consumption, then on Sunday, we’ll discuss creating. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Happy 70th birthday to my sister! Hard to believe we’ve both grown old, but here we are. Her name is Lexie. So I’m giving her a shout out today.

We’re on day 9 of our 30 day micro course and today we’re going to talk about potential. What could be so we avoid what might have been.

This follows yesterday’s philosophy or view of the world because leadership is largely the result of such things…including possibility thinking. Have you ever wondered why some people aim so high and seem to achieve great things while others can’t seem to perform at much more modest levels? Most of us grew up hearing the Henry Ford quote…

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.

But I fear many of us still don’t believe it’s true. Instead, we think things may be well beyond our control. 

I learned so many valuable lessons early in my leadership career. Among them, how dangerous our ideas can be. And how limiting they can be. For example, we may think “If only I could earn another $10,000 a year my life would be terrific.” Early in my career, there was a barometer that many professional people used to gauge whether they were on track or not. It was earning your age. In other words, if you were 25 and earning 25 thousand dollars, you were on track. If you were 25 and earning only 19 thousand dollars, well, you weren’t doing so well. That math stopped working pretty quickly as inflation grew out of control. Then the magic number was to hit 6 figures. I mean, if you earned $100,000 you were stinking rich!

But guess what? 

A funny thing happened on the way to thinking income would answer all of life’s problems. The money seemed to disappear for everybody who got any kind of an increase. Time and again I saw myself and employees increase earnings only to see all of our lives pretty unchanged after about 3-6 months. Once we got past the initial surge, it seemed our lives went back to the normals of the past. 

I noticed similar things with our enterprises. Our companies grew to some comfortable place and growth, improvement, efficiency seemed to become static. I didn’t expect to fight so hard to get people to believe that quantum leaps were possible. It was among the most depressing truths I had to learn. I was optimistic that things could always be better. We simply had to figure out how. But I realized most people, especially in my early years, didn’t truly believe it. Most people were quite content to settle. To accept small or no improvement. 

I was driven to avoid regret on one hand and driven to accel on the other to see if my high expectations could be met. It was challenging. It was vastly more fun! 

I could never get excited about a 2% increase. I wondered, “What’s wrong with a 25% increase? Or a 50% increase?” 

It speaks to a real challenge facing leaders. What do you expect? Not just in sales or profits, but in people? 

For most of my professional life, I’ve been criticized for expecting too much from people. Not because I’m hard-charging, but because I talk constantly about what could be. “Lower your expectations,” I’m told. Why? Why should we lower our expectations? Nobody ever gives me a good reason why I should. 

I’ve seen many people rise to the occasion. Many have told me how it compels them to push harder to achieve more. There’s enormous power in having people expect things of us. And there’s power in expecting our enterprises to be better, too. 

But it starts with us expecting more of ourselves!

Why should the boss expect employees to improve, perform at higher levels, and grow when he doesn’t do any of those things? Because sometimes bosses are hypocrites.

Good leaders aren’t hypocrites. 

Leadership is about influence and doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves. So leaders first do. They show others the way by showing them what’s possible. Even though others may be unable to see the possibility. It’s been said that great leaders see the future first. That’s why all this consideration to potential is important. What do YOU see as potential? Are you limiting it to something safe and unchallenging? That will most certainly impact your leadership. 

What if you’re not aiming high enough? What if you could be much better? What if your team or company could be MUCH better? Would you regret not helping yourself, your team and your company achieve high performance simply because you couldn’t see it happen before it did? 

Self-limiting beliefs aren’t isolated to losers. We all have our share of battles to fight with beliefs that hold us back and restrict our growth. 

Cartoonist Walt Kelly coined the phrase in 1970 on an anti-pollution Earth Day poster. It’s true of our leadership, too.

Here’s a hard truth – those at the top are most often the constraint. We’re the bottleneck that too frequently prevents higher performance. The sooner we accept that possibility the sooner we can get busy building bigger dreams…and showing others how much more we can all do to grow and get better!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 8. Session 8 of our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. 

Yesterday I mentioned management theory X and Y. These are important because how you choose to see the world and your place in it matters greatly to your leadership potential. 

Theory X basically puts forth that people will not do work – much less good work – unless management imposes it on them. It’s the old adage that you have to kick people in the rear to get good work out of them.

Theory Y supposes that people want to do good work. They need the right environment (and support) to help them do that. 

Well, you’d be hard-pressed to find two completely opposite approaches. I was in my 20s before I had ever heard of theory Y. No matter, it’s how I viewed the world and my place in it because as a teenage hi-fi stereo sales guy I knew I wanted to do good work. I wanted to make a positive difference. Many of my co-workers did, too. Mostly, everybody I knew worked for a tyrant. Men who were more interested in padding their wealth, buying the latest cool foreign car, taking some European vacation, and buying a bigger house. This was the zero-sum era of American enterprise where the business owner won and the rest of us lost. But I didn’t know any better. I just knew that as a straight commission salesperson I wouldn’t earn a dime if I didn’t produce. For me, the customer was king. I wanted to dazzle customers from day 1 of my working career because it just seemed to me that THAT was the path toward success. 

By the time I got my first leadership role where I was the #1 (the person running the show), I was fully prepared to put my own theories to the test. They were formed by a decade of working retail, engaging customer after customer, learning merchandising and purchasing and creating a philosophy that remarkable service with honesty was the path forward. Bait ‘n switch was commonplace in retail when I began my life in retail as a 16-year-old. I was taught it even though I never practiced it. “Yes, we ran that in our ad, but…” is a phrase I uttered hundreds, if not thousands of times. Thankfully, I started my career in shops that didn’t advertise. Ever. So that helped. But even then there were items on our showroom that were more fixtures than items to be sold. They were figuratively nailed to the shelf, not to be sold. 

By the 1980s arrived I was ready to put my philosophy of honesty, integrity, and doing the right thing to the test. Coupled with my notion that people wanted to do good work, and a few of us wanted to do great work. Turns out, I was right. It worked. No, not 100% of the time, but most of the time. There were exceptions. People too lazy, too dishonest, too whatever to be good humans. But mostly my philosophies proved successful. It was during these early “testing” years that I realized the environment I provided as a manager and leader made all the difference. We didn’t yet really focus on “company culture.”

You have to remember that Peters and Waterman’s book, “In Search Of Excellence” was published in 1982. That book ushered in the advent of serious business book publications. Business titles exploded onto the shelves of bookstores after that book hit big! I had long prowled bookstores for books on sales, management, leadership and self-improvement. But now the space blew up in all the best ways and the business buzzwords along with it. Including “company culture.”

My own view likened it to a garden. I’m not sure why. All I can figure is I knew plenty of folks who had gardens, even though I never remember my parents having one. I grew up well acquainted with gardens where peas, tomatoes, okra and other vegetables were grown, harvested and picked. Then cooked and eaten. Daily. My childhood was filled with homecooked meals where fresh food was a staple. Maybe that’s why I saw the company as a garden where we could help people grow! 

I learned the hard way that the company could also grow weeds. Unproductive, toxic people. And sooner than later I learned it was urgent to get rid of them. Fast. Before they could do more damage to the people trying to do good work. My intolerance for poor performance was sparked by my years working alongside sloths willing to let me do grunt work that all of us were required to do, along with our jobs on the sales floor. As I’d learn, a few of us did whatever we needed to do – whatever would help us be better – and many people would let us as they took smoke breaks, or loafed about. 

I was busy creating an environment that would put positive pressure on the sloths to change their ways. Or get gone. Or get caught up in my efforts to get the weeds out of the garden. 

But it all started with a fundamental belief that people want to succeed. If given the option, I believed most people would rather do good – and be good – than not. Here I am today, four decades later and I now know I was right. I’ve spent my life testing it and I’m here today to tell you that if you have a more negative view of people, then you’ll see evidence to back up your belief because you will take action to make sure you’re right. And the sad collateral damage you’ll cause will be impossible to calculate. Along with the impossible calculation of what might have been. 

We’ll talk about that tomorrow – what could be, what might have been!

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Influence.

Doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves.

That’s leadership. It’s not power. Or authority. Or being in charge. It’s not about being the boss. 

We’re so fixated on titles, positions, and power that we often overlook or discount leadership. We think authority is the key to it all. But it’s not. 

I’m not discounting the power of authority (pun intended). It can serve a tremendous benefit when a good or great leader has it. It can also be disastrous if a person without leadership skills has it. I call them tyrants. 

Let’s talk about authority’s role in leadership.

Leadership doesn’t require authority. It certainly isn’t equal to authority, but authority most certainly can enhance leadership because it affords the leader the power to more quickly eliminate or reduce roadblocks for people. 

Are you a boss? Then I encourage you to take a binary view of your authority. I know life isn’t this simple, but a binary view of your authority will serve you to become a more effective leader. 

Tyranny or service? Those are your choices. Admittedly there are degrees of both, but they’re still tyranny or service. 

I only use “servant leadership” because it’s in the cultural vernacular. It’s redundant though because leadership is all about service. Else, it’s tyranny and not leadership. It’s authority, power, coercision, manipulation, intimidation and all sorts of other things. But it’s NOT leadership (influence and doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves). 

You’ve got a title. You’ve got authority. Great! 

Now decide how you’re going to use it. Do you want to be a tyrant or a leader? You will pick one that most characterizes your daily actions. One will emerge victorious in your career. People will judge you as one or the other. And you get to decide. 

Tyrants lean heavily on the command and control tactics many of us grew up learning (we old guys and gals). Bark out orders. Embrace management theory X. If we don’t make people do the work, it won’t get done. So we control as much as we possibly can. We tighten our grip knowing if we don’t do it ourselves, it won’t get done. 

Leaders lean heavily on the talents, abilities, initiatives and ambitions of individuals and on the collective. Yes, there may be times to bark out orders, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. Sometimes, especially in a crisis, it’s appropriate for command and control to be used in order to serve people – and protect them, their jobs and our enterprise. Leaders embrace management theory Y. People wake up daily wanting to do good work. Hoping to make a contribution so they can make a difference. People want to know they’re relied upon by others. Leaders provide a positive environment – culture – that fosters the growth of the individual and the entire team, group or organization. 

The terrific thing about the leadership who has authority is that she can more quickly do for others what they’re unable to do for themselves. 

Consider an accounting department with a quirk in their data entry. Every time they set up a vendor or a customer they have to go to two separate screens to enter basic information TWICE. It’s cumbersome and frustrating for them. Daily they wonder, “Why won’t somebody fix this?” 

The leader with authority learns of the problem and quickly asks the MIS (management information systems) folks to contact the enterprise software vendor about a remedy. Within a week the vendor comes back with a cost effective solution that can be pushed out during the off hours without business disruption. The leader with authority signs off on it and within 4 business days the fix is in and the second screen that required repetitive input no longer has those same fields. In fact, the vendor is now working on a new release that will streamline data entry even more. 

The accounting staff didn’t have the power to make this problem go away. The leader did. And she used it wisely to help her people perform better. 

Authority and power aren’t negative things. Unless in the hands of a tyrant. 

In the hands of a leader, they’re remarkably effective to elevate performance throughout the enterprise. Now you know why those leadership components (recipe ingredients) are so critical. And why humility is the foundational ingredient. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!