Opinions
The Tyranny of The Urgent
Every day we are bombarded with messages from all manner of devices; lists and schedules, commitments and priorities, all driven by the agendas we have chosen and the agendas imposed upon us by others. The economic crisis has left behind a leaner, more productive work force and our individual productivity, the highest of any industrialized nation, has come with a cost. If we are not careful, the cost we pay may come in the form of diminished civility and by definition, a diminished quality of life. The resources that once made us a great people – our compassion, ingenuity and common humanity – have suffered and are becoming part of the sense of scarcity that imperils the well being of our economy and the very future of our democracy. One need only look to the political theater that passes for political discourse to find evidence of this assertion.
Time for thoughtful reflection and communication should not be a luxury afforded only to spiritual leaders, writers and practitioners of Bikram Yoga. Compassion, kindness, courtesy and concern for our neighbors should not be values we engage in only when we have completed our to-do list or when business is good. These are values and practices that define the very quality of life we are all working towards.
It occurs to me that if we are to rebuild our organizations, our communities and our families in this time of turbulent change, we must learn to distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. Getting the overdue project we are working on off our desk is urgent. Treating an intern with respect, taking time to pause, reflect, contribute and provide a measure thoughtfulness and civility in our engagement with others – these actions are often not urgent, but they are important. They are important contributors to the quality of life we create for ourselves, our co-workers and the people closest to us.
So, I hereby pledge myself to resist the tyranny of the urgent and make time for what is genuinely important…… as soon as I finish the presentation I have to get out the door first thing in the morning.
Linchpin – Making Yourself Indispensable
I am reading Seth Godin’s book, “Linchpin” and liking it so much I couldn’t resist sharing some excerpts. The read is both practical and inspiring. More than that, in Linchpin, Mr. Godin provides a framework for understanding what is required to succeed in the new, post-crash economy. He points out that corporations once valued solid, but replaceable cogs in organizations that produce products and services for mass consumption. But in today’s world, human connectors – linchpins are what organizations require to thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Here are some excerpts:
What we want, what we need, what we must have are indispensable human beings. We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
This is your opportunity. The indispensable employee brings humanity and connection and art to her organization. She is the key player, the one who’s difficult to live without, the person you can build something around.
What Would Make You Impossibly Good At Your Job?
If your organization wanted to replace you with someone far better at your job than you, what would they look for? I think it’s unlikely that they’d seek out someone willing to work more hours, or someone with more industry experience, or someone who could score better on a standardized test.
No, the competitive advantage the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion.
The linchpin brings the ability to lean. He can find a new solution to a problem that has caused others to quit. His art, his genius, is to reimagine the opportunity and find a new way to lean into it.
Beginners luck is dramatically overrated.
Successful people are successful for one simple reason: they think about failure differently.
Successful people learn from failure, but the lesson they learn is a different one. They don’t learn that they shouldn’t have tried in the first place, and they don’t learn that they are always right and the world is wrong and they don’t learn that they are losers. They learn that the tactics they used didn’t work or that the person they used them on didn’t respond.
This is a great read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in developing and applying the qualities that make them indispensable.
Game Changers and Late Bloomers
Ronald Regan was first elected to public office at age 55.
Kurt Warner entered the NFL Draft at age 28.
Country singer K.T. Olsen released her first album at 47.
Colonel Sanders did not start his own business until he was in his 60’s.
Raymond Chandler published his first novel at age 51.
Ken Norton and Rocky Marciano did not take up boxing until they were in their 20’s.
Danny Aiello did not become an actor until after 40.
Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at 49.
Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe at 58.
William S. Burroughs was almost 40 when he published his first novel.
The paintings Cézanne created in his mid 60’s are valued fifteen times as highly as the work he did as a younger man.
Tom Brady sat on the bench for the first two years of his college career. He was drafted #199 as a fourth string quarterback for the New England Patriots.
The one thing all of the achievers listed above have in common is that they were game changers in their chosen fields, and they all became more effective as they got older.
Game changers come in all shapes and sizes. If you are good at what you do and you keep getting better, do not be deterred, the best of what you can deliver is yet to come.
Are Battle Tested Sales Leaders Worth What They Earn?
Great coaches know how to make room for more experienced players to diversify a team and provide game changing leadership to less experienced players. Great Commanders have historically relied on battle tested warriors to lead platoons into combat. Great business leaders understand the added value that experienced sales performers deliver.
Some companies have paid a very high price to arrive at this realization.
Does anyone remember Circuit City’s now infamous cost cutting move to slash payroll expenses by firing the majority of their better compensated more experienced salespeople and managers?
At the time the Washington Post reported:
Circuit City fired 3,400 employees in stores across the country yesterday, saying they were making too much money and would be replaced by new hires willing to work for less.
The company said the dismissals had nothing to do with performance but were part of a larger effort to improve the bottom line. The firings represent about 9 percent of the company’s in-store workforce of 40,000.
Here is the entire story from March 29, 2007:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032802185.html
By January of 2009 the impact of this folly on Circuit City’s downward slide was irreversible – the company announced they were going out of business. By March of 2009 they closed their doors forever; 40,000 people lost their jobs, among them were a few short sighted executives who thought having less experienced, cheaper salespeople was the answer to their problems.
Orchestrator’s Note: I first heard about the Circuit City story through the wonderful NPR program “This American Life”. If you’ve never heard Ira Glass breakdown a story, it’s worth checking your local listings to hear his show. You can find podcasts of the show here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org
Precious Metals
I was recently reminded of the sage business advice contained in an old children’s song my daughters used to sing… “Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver the other gold”.
Many years ago, Sting was asked by an interviewer, what it was like to release a solo album after such a successful run with The Police. He said he thought it was silly to call his latest project a “solo” album in that he collaborated on it with some of the best jazz musicians in the world. Sting, who has worked as a school teacher and a ditch digger, has since gone on to sell millions of records in his “solo” career and he has collaborated with great musicians from genres as diverse as Jazz, Blues, Classical, Middle-Eastern Pop, Latin, Opera and Elizabethan Folk; always ready to share the credit for his artistic success.
No worthy enterprise is a solo effort. All require leaders, risk takers, believers, supporters, followers, collaborators – virtually nothing is accomplished alone. Throughout my career I have been privileged to work for and alongside very gifted colleagues, clients, employers and supporters, without whom I would not have been able to achieve meaningful success in my own endeavors. I have had the satisfaction of making a contribution to worthy initiatives that made a difference in the lives and businesses of others. At times I have profited from my contribution in tangible ways, and sometimes my reward was simply the satisfaction of knowing I was part of a worthy cause. The role of supporter, witness, counselor and cheerleader to a friend or colleague does not always pay in hard currency, sometimes the rewards are less tangible, but no less valuable.
Today we have tons of great tools for maintaining our personal and business networks. Some are extremely useful for building and nurturing our circle of business and professional contacts. The real value in using tools like LinkedIn and Facebook is not in the quantity of people we have in the various networks we manage, but rather in the nature of the relationships they help us sustain. Integrity, respect, authenticity, camaraderie, support, empathy, responsiveness, effectiveness – these are the qualities that form the basis of meaningful and enduring relationships – whether personal or business. These are the distinctions that matter most when we are called upon to build or become part of a new team. These are the distinctions that add genuine value to the relationships we have developed over the years.
Are you someone people turn to when they need help? Can you be counted on to deliver when it matters most? This is how we build equity in our relationships; it is how we become part of someone else’s indispensable currency. This is how we find our way to something larger than ourselves. Life is not a solo project.
“Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver the other gold”.
Are you invested in precious metals? Are you one?
A Silver Lining
I believe one of the good things that will come out of this economic crisis will be that American corporations will strive to be nimbler and more adaptive to change. A recent article in the business section of the New York Times cited two studies done in 1959 by the Ford and Carnegie Foundations concluding that American business schools were “ too vocational and narrow in their approach to the subject matter”. Fast forward about 50 years later and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford concluded roughly the same thing as they set about to make sweeping changes to their MBA program. It appears they have come to the conclusion that “critical and analytical thinking” is now on a par with “number crunching” for aspiring Stanford MBA’s.
My theory as to why this took so long, why critical thinking and innovation took so long to make its way into mainstream business orthodoxy, emerges from the old axiom “a high tide raises all boats”. A robust economy forgives many sins. In a boom environment, not rocking the boat is often a more important skill for moving forward than making a better one. Just ask any senior manager at Ford and GM or any compliance executive at A.I.G.
It’s not like we haven’t had plenty of innovators come out of academia over the last 20 years. However, many of our most forward thinking business innovators usually come from outside of the mainstream business establishment. They succeed despite the prevailing models for doing things, not because of them. Many of them were outsiders, geeks and dropouts, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Bill Gates are just a few high profile examples of incredibly successful business people who never graduated from business school. In fact they didn’t graduate from college at all.
Part of what happens when so much disruptive change occurs, when the folly in the accepted way of doing things is so brutally revealed, often to devastating effect, is that we, individually and collectively, begin questioning what is not working and why. A kind of “critical and analytical” evaluation of reality is thrust upon us in the name of survival. We are forced to discard what no longer works, innovate new business models and in the process, redefine what is possible.
It is a very encouraging sign when our universities and corporate institutions begin to recognize that creativity, critical thinking and ethics belong in a business curriculum as well as the Boardroom, and that they are also, as a matter of fact, good for business.
Louis A. Rivera
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