Category Archives: Leadership

What I learned the hard way before Jim Collins taught me

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A few years ago I wanted to see what jogging was all about, so I put on my tennis shoes and ran as far as I could around my neighborhood.

Several nights later, when I could move my legs again, I did the same thing. I ran until my body said, “No more!” and waited a few days until I could try again.

I repeated this cycle for a few weeks without ever seeing any improvement in my endurance.

Later I learned that there are better ways to get started jogging, and tried one of those successfully.

The new way I learned was to go slow and do reasonable amounts on a regular schedule.

What I learned from that first ugly attempt at becoming a runner was that intense bursts of desire, focus and energy had no power compared to consistently applied effort.

This idea was broadcast back to me in a big way in October at Catalyst as Jim Collins shared some of the ideas in his book Great by Choice: Uncertainly, Chaos and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All.

In his talk Collins shared the idea of the 20 Mile March. Click that link to get the idea fleshed out. It’s FASCINATING. But if you’re content with the grossly oversimplified version it’s this:

  • Companies that win know how much effort they need to put in each day
  • They put in that effort
  • They stop
  • They get up the next day and do it again
  • Over and over and over again

That’s one of the dimensions of great companies – they do this consistently.

And that’s how you get great at other stuff.

You get up and walk around the neighborhood for 30 minutes. Every day.

You read the Bible for 10 minutes. Every day.

You call 10 clients before noon. Every day.

You pick a different friend to call, text or email. Every day.

Not in a legalistic, trudging, “Ughhh, I gotta do this again?” kinda way. But just knowing that consistent effort applied over time is likely to have more benefit than spurts here and there.

So what about you? Do you already have a 20 Mile March? Is there something you want to make your 20 Mile March?

Three questions to ask when you’re facing a challenge

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I never liked it when the characters on Friends were mad at each other.

I wanted the writers of the show to make everyone get along and for everything to go their way. I thought it would be more fun and more funny that way.

Of course, that’s not the case. Conflict – even among friends – is what keeps a TV show moving. Conflict is the thing that will keep you in a novel for 500 pages. Struggle is what will bind you to a movie for two hours.

Conflict is a part of life. Difficulty, hardship, challenge – it’s just part of the deal. And as much as we might try to avoid it in ourselves, it’s part of what keeps our own personal stories moving forward.

But just because difficulty is a part of life doesn’t mean it’s any easier to deal with while we’re walking through it. Tough times are…tough.

We talked about tough times in our small group recently. In his resource Everything is Possible with God, Rick Warren talks about difficult circumstances. Here are three questions to ask if you’re facing a challenge:

1) Do I need my circumstances to change?

Is there something about the situation outside of me that needs to change in order for things to get better? What is it? How does it get changed?

2) Do I need to change?

Would this situation be resolved if I were to adapt my behavior or attitude? In what specific way do I need to adapt?

3) Do I just need to give it time / get some perspective?

Is this a temporary trial that will pass with time? Is there a way I can step out of this situation and see it from a different view to check if my heart and mind are in the right place?

Conflict and challenges are part of life. They’re part of what keep moving the plot lines of our life forward. But that doesn’t mean it’s any fun when you’re living through it.

Next time you find yourself facing a challenge, I hope you find these questions helpful.

Do you like it when TV characters fight?

The simplest formula for building a successful business

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From 2006 to 2008, I worked on an MBA at nights and on the weekends.

I read case studies, did group work and wrote a bunch of papers. I read about a lot of companies, strategies and management styles.

It was a good experience. I’m glad I did it.

But in August 2011, I got another MBA in 11 seconds.

I was listening to Len Schlesinger, president of Babson College, give a talk at the Global Leadership Summit. He started his talk with the simplest formula I’ve ever heard for building a successful business:

  1. Find out who your customers are
  2. Find out what your customers want
  3. Give it to them

It’s so simple. So easy to remember.

You can generate two dozen questions about any new idea you might have or any enterprise you’re currently running using those three points as your guide.

What’s one practical way you would find out what your customers want?

Friday Linking for Thinking

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It’s Friday again, so that means it’s time for me to share with you some interesting stuff I found in my reading this week. Here goes:

Can introverts succeed in business? by Laura Vanderkam on the CNN Money blog caught my eye. I think I just wanted to see if I’m wasting my time trying to make it in the business world or if – as an introvert – the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against me.

Have you ever played “Phone Stack?” by Eric Dye at ChurchCrunch. Ever been with someone who answers texts and takes calls while you’re eating lunch? What did you do? Grab your phone and kill time? Stare straight at their eyeballs? Ever been the person texting and taking calls? This is the answer.

“They” do not decide your success by Greg Darley. This post from Greg and an email from a helpful friend this week reminded me of this: comparison is a trap. Play your game, play it as well as you can, and strive to grow.

And in case you missed it (gasp – how could you?!?) we had two posts up here this week:

Three reasons your customers are leaving you (and how to get them to stay)

Three reasons to find a mentor now

What has been the best part of your week?

Three reasons to find a mentor now

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I had a job once that ended up not being a great fit. I was a round peg trying to fit into a square hole, so it just wasn’t going to work.

Even though I didn’t leave there with a pension and a gold watch, I still count my time there as very valuable because I learned a ton. Most of what I learned came because I had a great mentor.

In many places, the benefits of having a mentor get overlooked. You can transform the next year by finding someone with more experience to latch on to and learn from.

Here are three reasons to find a mentor:

1) You can learn from your mentor’s mistakes.

Your mentor has been been around the block. He’s tried new things and some of them haven’t worked out. He’s said the wrong thing at the wrong time. He’s invested in the wrong stuff. He’s let the wrong people influence him.

Your mentor has made all the mistakes that, without guidance, you and I will make. Take advantage of someone who has already made those mistakes and save yourself the trouble.

2) Your mentor can see stuff in you that you can’t see.

I’m lousy at seeing my gifts and abilities. And I’m lousy at seeing my faults and idiosyncrasies.

A mentor will be able to spot potential in you that you don’t have a clue is there. And she’ll also be able to spot the baggage.

Having a mentor will broaden your understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses by showing you things that you can’t see.

3) You’ll play at your mentor’s level faster.

Having a mentor is going to mean you’ll have a regular stream of information, wisdom, accountability and hopefully friendship.

It won’t be long before your mentor begins to view you and treat you like a peer rather than someone to be trained. And eventually you’ll view yourself that way, too.

When you view yourself as a peer to your mentor, you’ll start to act like a peer to your mentor. All of a sudden you find yourself doing all the same things a person whose success and wisdom you wanted to capture in the first place would do. You’re playing at your mentor’s level.

Mentoring can be useful in many dimensions of life. It’s not just a business thing. This year, for instance, I’m making it a goal to reach out to some friends with older daughters to start preparing for what the teenage years are going to be like around our house. I want to learn about the parenting decisions these friends have made.

Ron Edmondson has a great series on mentoring on his blog. If finding a mentor is something you want to do, here’s Ron’s post How Do I Find a Mentor?

Once you find a mentor, Jon Acuff has a great post called Three Things You Should Never Say to a Mentor which is very insightful.

Who’s one person in your life who you would consider a mentor?

Why your information sources matter

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Back in December, I had the chance to help the local university screen applicants for a leadership scholarship.

Along with half a dozen other grown ups, it was my job to ask questions of these high school seniors and then make judgments about their responses.

It was fascinating.

The questions and answers were all over the map, but one question I found myself asking consistently was:

Where do you get your information?

I was curious to see – in today’s world of Twitter, The Facebook, blogging, texting and WUPHF – to what extent the younger set relies on mobile stuff for its information.

The surprising thing was that most of the kids said that they read the local paper or watched the evening news. Only a few mentioned mobile as their primary information source.

My conclusion was that one of the following must be true:

  • They were lying
  • They were telling me what they thought I wanted to hear
  • They were honest, and news consumption among that age group may be very low
  • They were honest, and news orgs have a long way to go in reaching kids under 18

Since then, I’ve been really curious about where other people get their information. I’ve asked a few of my clients and a few other people I know. I figure if I know how you inform yourself and how you reach conclusions, the better positioned I’ll be to help you.

I’ve also been thinking about how I get my information. It kinda goes in layers, like this:

  1. Twitter, on my phone: this is generally the first place I hear about news-y things
  2. Google Reader, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Wall Street Journal, on desktop computer – I would love to have put something more sophisticated than Yahoo! as news sources, but I’m just keeping it real
  3. Today Show, on the TV – I catch about 20 minutes of this while I’m getting ready for work
  4. Local newspaper, paper copy – I scan the local paper a few days per week

That’s how it works for me.

How about you? Where do you get your information?

Three benefits of being more authentic

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I’ve had several conversations with people lately about the idea of being more authentic.

I’m drawn to authenticity in other people. Even if I don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with other people, as long as they own who they are, they get a lot of credit in my book.

I value authenticity and I’m drawn to it, but it’s something at which I have to work. It’s not natural for me. My tendency is to be a chameleon and be different people in different environments. But I’m working hard at it, and thanks to God’s sanctifying grace, I’m getting there.

In the context of relationships, here are three benefits of authenticity:

Being authentic sets realistic expectations. Here’s what happens if I’m not being the real me. Intentionally or not, I wind up communicating to you that I have skills, gifts, inclinations, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses, compassion, you name it, that I don’t actually possess. Somewhere along the way, the fact that I don’t truly have whatever the thing you thought I had is going to get exposed. Give it enough time and it’s just going to happen.

When that moment comes and you discover that reality isn’t what you thought it was, you’re going to be disappointed, because here’s the crash course on expectations:

  • What I received was better than what I expected = Great!
  • What I received was the same as what I expected = Okay
  • What I received was not as good as what I expected = Boo!
It will be hard to surprise people or shockingly disappoint them if you’re always the real you.

Being authentic gives other people permission to follow. It takes a few degrees of vulnerability to move from where most of us live toward a more authentic day-to-day life. But when you start being more authentic – showing people more of who you really are – they’ll follow. They’re just waiting on someone to go first. No one wants to be first. Be a leader and go first.

Being authentic lets more work get done. I knew something was bugging MC the other night so I asked her what was wrong. She explained the issue and then said:

“That’s what’s bothering me and I have no clue why it bothers me so much.

I loved that statement. We were able to talk through the why, which wound up being more helpful than trying to analyze the original issue. We got more done because we both knew what was really going on.

Does authenticity come naturally for you? 

Digging a hole for myself

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Earlier this year I had an idea for a new writing project.

I registered the domain, bought a WordPress template and spent a lot of time writing posts for the new site.

All year I’ve wrestled with what to do about this other site. For a few months, I simply ignored it altogether, chalking it up as another of my goofy ideas.

But for some reason the idea keeps sticking around, and for the past few weeks I’ve been writing more posts for the new site.

Then yesterday I read this post on Seth’s blog. Please go read it. I’ll wait.

Laboring on an idea in secret is the safest thing ever because you can tweak, polish, and delay the thing until it’s perfect. Or you can kill it and no one will ever know you didn’t have the guts to really try.

So.

I’m launching a new writing project at www.intentionalfamilylife.com on September 1.

When you find yourself in the middle of a conversation

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I was talking to someone the other day who told me a story about events I didn’t know about and people who are strangers to me. The lady relaying the story seemed a little puzzled as to why I wasn’t more responsive.

I guess the look on my face told her that I didn’t know about what or whom she was talking. Unfortunately, I seem to find myself in situations like this fairly often. I find people bringing me into stories somewhere in the middle, after all the characters are introduced and plotlines explained.

This is especially true in these days of social media immersion, when it’s easy to assume that everyone has read and retained every Facebook post and Twitter update of yours.

In those situations, I use a technique that serves me well in many facets of life: I play dumb.

Seriously, it may make things awkward for a moment, but here are a few gracious ways to say, “I don’t have a freaking clue what you’re talking about right now”:

Catch me up on that. If someone is going through something that has developed over time, it’s helpful to know where and how things got started.

Who are all these people? If “Well, you know how Ricky acts when he gets drunk,” is a part of your story, I’m going to need to know who Ricky is and how he acts when he gets drunk. Don’t let someone assume you know who everyone is.

Take me back a few steps. Sometimes you don’t want or need to know the whole deal, but it’s helpful to know a few events that built up to whatever you’re hearing about.

Tell me exactly what you mean. At least once a week, someone will end a sentence with, “know what I mean?” and I won’t have a clue what they’re saying. Asking someone to tell you exaclty what they mean will usually get them to paraphrase it in a way that’s more understandable for you and them. This one can be tough, especially at the office, because it defies instinct to be perceived as if you don’t understand 120% of everything that’s said.

Say that again. This is similar to “tell me exactly what you mean” in the sense that 90% of the time, the person you’re talking with won’t say it again. Rather, they’ll re-state what they said in a more crisp, concise manner.

There you go. Next time you find yourself in the middle of a conversation (or blog post!?) and don’t feel like you know all the relevant details, don’t be afraid to hit the pause button and get up-to-speed with one of these conversation helpers.

What would you add to the list?

Wednesday wisdom

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How is it Wednesday already?

Even though the past week has flown by, I’ve still had a few minutes to read some good stuff. Here are a few of my favorite posts from the week:

Five plus yes by Shaun Groves. This is a very cool story about what happens when “your ability meets someone else’s need,” to borrow a line from the post.

Abandon crap by Kent Shaffer. My little daughter the artist gets so frustrated when her work doesn’t turn out perfectly the first time. I tell her that she gets closer to the work she wants every time she “messes up” but she doesn’t believe me. When she’s old enough for the word “crap” I’ll certainly share this post from Kent and the embedded clip featuring Ira Glass from This American Life.

Reverse judgmentalism by Pete Wilson. To whom do you find it most difficult to extend grace?

Who is one blogger who has made you think this week?