Life Advice

I’ll keep this post short. You can be highly efficient at something (your job, a task, an effort, etc…), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that thing is effective.

If you’re great at selling a single pencil for 25 cents every day, and you do it every day in the most efficient manner, you still only sold a single pencil. You’re super efficient, but are you super effective? Rather than thinking only in terms of efficiency, think about how to maximize your effectiveness. Instead of a single pencil, strive to sell a pallet of pencils everyday. Be both efficient AND effective.

Tim Ferris says it best in his book The 4-Hour Work Week – “Doing something unimportant well does not make it important… What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.”

Find the “right things” – things that are effective, then do those things well.

Thanks for reading!

You may disagree with this wholeheartedly, but not everyone can be a leader. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t or can’t have leadership qualities, but it’s a simple numbers game. If everyone was a leader how would things run? Have you ever been in a group setting where everyone wanted to be in charge? Absolutely nothing effective gets done in those types of settings where everyone wants to be a leader. If you aren’t the leader, that’s ok! I’m so tired of these gurus and books about how you should be the leader, and how you should strive to be a great leader, etc…

If you aren’t cut out to lead… then don’t lead, it’s really that simple. You will know for sure if you have ever tried it. Don’t force it upon yourself, you are doing a major disservice to yourself and to those who you lead. Instead become a great follower. There’s nothing wrong with being a great follower and I’m not saying you should compromise yourself in being a follower either. What I’m saying is that our western society, for various reason, celebrates leaders, but never great followers and that is just shameful. I’ve come across a few managers, supervisors, etc… in my life that were great at their previous job, but when promoted to a leadership role they were terrible. They were just thrust onto the position, because that’s what climbing the corporate ladder is all about.

I don’t even follow sports and such, but I am aware of its existence and I am aware that in football both coaches (the leaders) and the players (the followers) are celebrated! The great coach wasn’t a great player, but rather had a set of skills to be a great leader. Even if the coach is a terrible coach, but the player is great, the player is still celebrated.
I find it completely confusing and utterly obtuse that this sort of concept is not found in business. Instead of having both the leaders and followers celebrated, only the leaders are lifted up.

We need to start celebrating more of the players in business, rather than the coaches. How do you become a great follower? Here are a few actions you can take:

• Demand clear expectations. (of course do it in a nice and respectful way), but notice I said demand.. and not ask. Your average everyday follower, peon worker won’t do this. As a great follower you will demand them.
• Insist on receiving feedback, don’t wait until feedback is given to you. Do you know how well you are doing? Are you serving your leader well? Don’t always expect praise for doing your job, but rather ask for ways how you can do your job even better (even if you are doing a spectacular job).
• Anticipate your leaders needs. This one is a bit more difficult to action, but once you have a rhythm with the leader you are working with, try to anticipate what they will ask for next (whether it’s on a project, or task). You should notice patterns in communication, and tasks/projects given to you after working with your leader after some time.
• Over-communicate rather than under-communicate. Unless your leader is directly advising you to “stop communicating so much” it’s better to over-communicate your activities and actions.
• Follow up with your leader and reiterate the expectations of your project and/or task. Have those expectations changed or stayed the same in light of the work at hand?
• When in doubt ask for clarity. Don’t assume anything –  what you are thinking and what your leader is thinking when approaching the same task or project may be completely different. If there’s any doubt, then simply ask for clarity. An effective leader will no doubt provide clarity for you. A terrible leader will probably just scoff, but ask for clarity anyways.
• Don’t just be another clock in and clock out peon. Actually care about your leader’s success or the success of the company. I guarantee that you won’t go far in a job if you don’t care about your company or their success. If you don’t care then don’t work there! If you want to be a great follower, you need to be invested in your company’s success. As the saying goes “A rising tide lifts all boats” – don’t let your boat sink either… if you aren’t invested in your company’s success then you are like a sinking boat.

Thanks for reading!

I asked my team today about a policy and it just so happened the CEO of my company overheard my question. This lead to a conversation about why we had the policy in the first place. The simple answer to the question was “I was always told that this was the policy”. So instead of letting the issue go, the CEO answered “but why? Why is this the Policy” and that lead to the story of the two crock-pots.

I’m paraphrasing from memory here, but here’s the basic story- A woman had a recipe for roast and her recipe included cooking the roast in two crock-pots. When asked about why she used two crock-pots, the woman replied “That’s the way my mother always did it”. One day she was curious and asked her mother why she used two crock-pots for the recipe. “well”, the mother replied “the crock-pots I had were too small and I couldn’t fit the roast into just one of them”. The woman’s crock-pots were larger than her mother’s and she could fit the roast into one crock-pot.

After this story was told, which basically causes one to think and ask “why” or “what is the root cause”, our team ended up finding out what the root cause was, took action, and ultimately changed the policy.

It’s always important to ask “why” whenever approaching a policy or even a system. Why is this policy in place? Why are you using this system? Once you find out why, you may be surprised. The reason may be something arbitrary or out-dated. Maybe someone long ago decided on a whim that what they thought was important is something that everyone should do. You may also find the opposite, where a policy or system is in place, because of an important reason you didn’t realize. Either way it’s good to know the root of these things.

More important than asking “why” is taking action if action is needed once you find out “why”. In our case we found out the “why” was because of a system issue and a process issue. We found that by talking through the process we could make changes to improve the policy. However we needed to fix an issue with our system – which we accomplished by creating a work around. Sometimes you have to be creative in order to make a change.

Once you find a problem work at it until it gets resolved. This is how great companies and great systems are created.

Thanks for reading!

While dialing through radio stations after work. I came across a radio program (podcast) called On Being. The guest was Ellen Langer a notable Harvard Social Psychologist who describes Mindfullness as “the simple act of actively noticing things”. I didn’t catch the whole podcast, but something Ms. Langer said really struck me. She said

…here’s another one that will sound strange, but I’m against compromise…  Well, the reason for that is, because it’s an agreement for everybody to lose. It’s just reducing your losses, rather than finding the win/win solution, which is often out there.”

And you know what… I’m not social psychologist, but she is ABSOLUTELY right. When you compromise it’s as if both parties are willing to lose in order to make an agreement. Think about how many times you’ve compromised in business and both you and your client were let down, or heck think about compromises in life. You short change yourself all the time with compromise, you’re left unsatisfied, and sometimes left hurt, because of compromise. Why do we put ourselves through such suffering? Probably, because it’s easier than the alternative!

What’s The Alternative?

The alternative to compromise (which MANY think is just not getting involved or getting out of the agreement) is actually creating a win-win scenario. You MUST find a better way, where both you and the other party will benefit. No one loses in a Win-Win situation. Now it may be a little tricky figuring out what a Win-Win scenario is, but know that many times a “Win” for you may not mean the same as a “Win” for the other parties involved. It’s like that saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” What you find value in may not exactly be the same as what your client, family member, or whoever you are interact with values.

A classic example of a Win-Win would be seen in nature would be symbiosis such as  an oxpecker bird cleaning a zebra – the bird gets the parasites and bugs for food, while the zebra is free from the parasites and bugs (other examples include bees and flowers, anemones and clown fish, etc…) , The same principle applies to life in general and in business. To counteract compromise you need to find a way to create a Win-Win situation. It’s not always easy, but find the common ground where you and your client will both win, instead of compromise and both lose.

To throw in another metaphor that my old Sales Manager always said to me all the time –  “a rising tide lifts all boats”. The Win-Win is the rising tide and the boats are everyone involved. Find the rising tide!

Thanks for reading!