Tag Archive for: Leadership

Formwork, Not Framework

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We sometimes miss the point when it comes to the use of frameworks in business.

Have you ever been around a management guru who can’t get away from his or her framework?  You know them, they are the ones who have trademarked the framework and, by golly, they are going to use it.

No?  Well, what about this one:  Have you ever asked someone to think about a strategy, and only received a filled in framework in response?  Surely, you’ve seen this one:

You and a business leader in your company:  “Give me a sense of your marketing strategy…”

2 weeks later:  “Here’s the strategy you asked for…we used the Segment–> Target –> Position framework.”

Ay Caramba.

Framework-itis.

It happens to people who are smart, and not.  It happens to people who are experienced, and not.  And, yes, it happens to people who should know better.

WGP has carried out more than 40 engagements in our short existence, with the vast majority of those focused on business unit or corporate strategy.  Our approach is littered with frameworks.  Littered, I tell you.

Why?

Because frameworks are useful as checklists. We use derivatives of classic business strategy frameworks all the time.  I have a personal affinity for the S-C-P framework, and it’s an absolute dinosaur (Structure, Conduct, Performance for those of you who don’t share my dino-approach to business strategy).

But, and this is an important but…the frameworks are not useful as strategies.  They are useful in helping to derive the right conversation that leads to a strategy.  And, that’s where so many management strategists go wrong.  Just like a balance sheet is a common basis of presentation for the financial position of a firm, strategic frameworks provide a common basis of presentation of strategic situations.  They don’t, however, provide interpretation.

You have to provide the interpretation…and the action.

And that’s the point of this post:  If you feel yourself being fed (or, feeding) frameworks as the answer to a business strategy question, you are probably off track.   Frameworks are not the answer, they are checklists for thinking.

Perhaps we should use the word formworks instead of frameworks because classical “frameworks” only provide a format for thinking.  They can never provide the skeleton of a real strategy.

Know how to use the tools.

Be careful out there.

 

FLY THE AIRPLANE

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When you are faced with many distractions…remember to fly the airplane.

 

It looks like there’s a Star Wars marathon on this weekend, and I fell right into the middle of A New Hope last night.

One of the more memorable scenes from that movie involves a team of pilots on a mission to destroy the Death Star.  In the midst of an attack run, two of the pilots come under attack by the bad guys.  One of them starts to look around and panic.  The other one simply continues speaking a mantra while keeping his sights on the objective…

“Stay on target.” 

The little mantra has been repeated in many internet memes and, no doubt, executive conversations.  And, there’s a reason.

When stuff starts going off kilter around you…staying on target is hard to do.

A great example of an exhortation to “stay on target” is contained in Atul Gawande’s excellent book The Checklist Manifesto.  In it, he describes the first instruction in the emergency checklist for a single engine airplane. It’s simple.

FLY THE AIRPLANE!

That’s right.  When you are the pilot and the troubleshooter, the most important thing to do in an emergency is actually not to troubleshoot.

It’s to fly the airplane.

There’s good learning in there for business leaders.  Let me describe three ways.

The first way is relevant to people who have a little bit too much of the philosopher in them.  These are the CEOs who relish high concept but not the nitty gritty.  They take the need to have a long term view too far, and they stop responding to short term needs.  CEOs who never meet with customers fall into this bucket. Yes, they exist.  Their failure is usually in ensuring delivery vs. direction.  I once worked near a CEO who had famously told his investors “I delivered you a 3 year plan, but not a 1 year plan.”   That’s the CEO who forgot to fly the airplane.

The second way is relevant to modern managers who struggle on the opposite end of the spectrum.  They are the ones who can’t look up from the gauges to see the mountain ahead. They spend too much time with customers or on the production floor, and too little time on direction of the company overall. These are the Dale Carnegie grads who always put people first, but who forget to stay on target with the organization as a whole.  The best examples of these executives are the ones who build magnificent operations and organizations tailored to solving yesterday’s problems.  You probably know them.

The third way is relevant to those who struggle to define what “flight” is.  These are the executives who only pursue financial performance as their “target.”  They think of flight only as airspeed and lift and not safe arrival at a destination.  The executive here is the one who hits every key performance indicator except the ones that point to the health of the business.  They are the ones whose customers are indifferent and whose top performing employees are leaving in droves. Next time you see a sick company with a CEO who departs after earning the biggest bonus of his or her life, you will think about this type of executive.

So…in your own life, you must “stay on target” and “fly the airplane.”  It matters whether you are too focused on the long term or the short term. And, it matters when you may not have defined what a healthy target (or flight itself) actually is.

FLY THE AIRPLANE!

 

United Airlines and Only Following Orders

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Only following policy only hurts your business.

By now, you’ve doubtless seen the sturm und drang surrounding United Airlines’s escalation of an unreasonable passenger’s behavior to forcible police action against the passenger.

If not, here’s one link to give you some background.

United’s CEO Oscar Munoz then, and now famously, backed his employees for following the rules and doing the right thing.   He called the passenger “disruptive” and “belligerent” and emphatically stood behind his employees.

Now, a lot has already been written about how United took the most painful route to resolution with this situation (not this passenger, more on that later).  The company could have simply continued to raise the offer of compensation to passengers who would leave the plane until “somebody” felt it was worth it to leave.  Investor’s Business Daily had a decent article on this.  It’s here.  

But, that article, while precisely right, probably ignores a reality of large company “policy and procedure.”  And, I’m just guessing here.  But, what we have likely seen is the result of a company policy that prevents gate agents from offering more than “X” dollars compensation for re-accommodation.  In other words, the gate agents, in escalating this circumstance to (1) random selection of passengers and (2) calling in the police were merely “following orders” or “complying with policy.”

Having a large number of people in a large organization adhere to policy is good for business as a rule.  But it’s awful for business during a true hard case.  And, it appears that this is a true hard case.

As many of you have probably experienced in sales and retail environments, someone sticking “policy” in your face as a means to resolving customer service rarely makes you a more loyal, understanding customer.

And this is where United’s CEO got this one wrong.  Munoz has been attacked from the perspective of his communications being awful for public relations; but I’ll go so far as to say his words are probably bad for business.

What he said to his employees in an internal email was “I emphatically stand behind all of you.”

That’s an admirable statement from a CEO, and not an easy one to make in a crisis like this. But it is a callous response to the brutality of events precipitated by United’s escalation to the police.

What he should have said was probably something like “I stand behind you, but in a truly hard circumstance like the one we just experienced, you have the discretion to choose a better way.” And, he ought to ensure policy allows for it.

Now, on the passenger:  It’s quite possible that this particular passenger would have stayed on the airplane no matter what.  He appears to be a truly unreasonable fellow. At the end of his ordeal, he wasn’t dealing with flight attendants, but with the police.  When you are non-compliant with a sworn law enforcement officer, you are making your own bed.

But this situation isn’t about that guy.  That guy exists on every flight in America. Forget him. He’s a screaming lunatic who put himself and his travel plans above dozens of other people’s (before he was forcibly removed, then walked back on the plane).  That’s true no matter whether he was “technically” right just as it’s true that Oscar Munoz’s comments were wrong even if “technically” right.

This is about the other dozens of passengers, at least one of whom might have left for a higher price. I’m always surprised when we fail to look at circumstances like this one and forget that there wasn’t just one option available to United…there were dozens of other options, many of whom were probably closer to leaving than the guy who ultimately was dragged off the flight.  People have already forgotten that the unruly passenger wasn’t the only one selected against his will.

There were three others.

The other three left peacfully, probably with some compensation and a hotel room for the night (and no doubt with a bad taste in their mouth about United).  Sure, that may make them “sheep” with no respect for their “rights,” but it left them with choices, too.

While responsibility for the escalation resides with United and “policy,” I think it’s fair to say to United employees that they will encounter another jerk in the future.  Their option is to blacklist that jerk from ever flying United again if he chooses to take this flight at this time against the company’s wishes and policy, and select another passenger.

It’s the jerk’s choice at that point.

So, bad things all around.  The CEO’s “right” but callous focus on company policy is a bad thing for business.  The passenger’s “right” but idiotic stand ultimately got him entangled with the police.

Sometimes, a little discretion is all it takes.  Only following policy only hurts business.

What do you think?

 

 

Mars, Resilience, and Resourcefulness

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What do you do with what you have?

 

One of the cool parts about having a 13-year old homeschooled son is that I get to ride along for some of his lessons.  He is currently taking a class that revolves around watching a broad set of historically and ethically relevant films and reflecting on them.

Last night, the assignment for this class was to watch The Martian.  If you have not read this most entertaining book or watched the visually and emotionally stunning motion picture, you might be missing out on a really great science fiction narrative rooted in a very real approximation of real world scientific constraints.  But, that may be beside the point.

As I mentioned to my daughter this morning on the ride to school (she, one of our three non-homeschoolers), the lessons from The Martian are not only good lessons for a person who might one day be trapped on Mars.  They are very much real life lessons applicable in junior high or in the boardroom of the largest organizations.  They are lessons in resilience and resourcefulness…and they resonate.

Here are a few aspects that stand out from The Martian that just might save your life or career right here on earth.

First, things are going to go wrong. It’s how you respond to crisis that matters.  The main character in The Martian is a guy named Mark Watney (played well by Matt Damon in the film).  He is famously stranded on Mars after a confluence of events that make your head spin.  But, once faced with the reality of his situation, he takes stock of his situation–which is exceptionally dire–and gets busy figuring things out.  He, faced with a painfully narrow chance of surviving in a harsh environment, famously says “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this…”

We are all faced with times where we have to “manage the shit out of” bad situations. They can be immediate crises with clients or customers, or they can be the slow train wreck of a deleteriously competitive market.  Mark Watney’s example of reacting to reality is instructive.  Take stock, let the emotions work themselves out, then get to work.

Second, your resources are going to be limited, but often not as limited as you think. For me, the most amazing aspect of The Martian (and one that is far better fleshed out in the book) is its overt display of resourcefulness.  Watney is forced to confront his resource constraints in terms of power, water, air, food, warmth, physical strength, ability to communicate with the rest of the world.  He then goes about tackling, one by one, the constraints he has, and he uncovers new ways of solving his own problems. Without going into detail, I’ll simply say that Watney’s ongoing calculations of his resources form a centerpiece of the book, and his continual pressing against those constraints is instructive.

You and I are going to have to face constraints.  We can only make so many sales calls, close so many deals, and coach so many people in our organizations.  We can only spend so much capital.  It’s a fact of life.  But, many creative managers out there get more productivity out of their sales forces, work forces, and capital because they try. They don’t have to be Watney-esque, they just have to ask the question of whether constraints assumed are constraints for real.

Third, it helps to have moments to reflect…and a sense of humor.  This one seems easy, but it’s actually one of the best lessons for high stress professionals anywhere.  Watney is the king of the one liner in both the book and the movie; and he is the king of the reflective vignette that frames his awful circumstances in positive light.  In one instance, the character reflects on the fact that no matter what he does on Mars, he is the first person ever to do it.  And, that’s kind of cool.

Professionals anywhere tend to know the value of a moment of humor in a terrible circumstance. Gallows humor isn’t that hard.  What is hard is stopping for a moment and positively framing challenging circumstances.  Then, you get back to work.

Fourth–and I’ll stop at four–The entire book is a treatise on the need for resilience in problem solving.  If you aren’t failing, you probably aren’t working on hard enough problems, or you aren’t working them fast enough.  The Martian is a book about failure.  There are failures of systems, people, organizations, tools, and even imagination.  The book and film are so outstanding because of their display of resilient problem solving in the face of failure.  You get blown up by your improvised water generator, and you light that mother right back up.

Resilience is something that we are, unfortunately, breeding out of our culture. That is, perhaps, a topic for another blog sometime.  But, the fact remains that as our levels of professional, political, and social understanding narrow, we feel the buffets of perspective shocks far more than we used to. As professionals, we need to be resilient because the world changes.  We may not face life and death circumstances for our bodies, but our ideas may live and die constantly. Have the courage to keep going.  Have the courage and grace to allow your organization to keep going.

The Martian is about Mars.  And, it’s chock full of life lessons for us right here on Earth.

May we learn them.

Are You Too Smart To Be Great?

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The best executives aren’t too smart for their own good.

 

Have you ever worked for the smartest guy in the room?

I don’t mean literally, I mean figuratively…as in he thought he was the smartest guy in the room, and so he disregarded good counsel constantly.

There’s a segment of leaders out there who got where they are by bringing a lot of horsepower to bear.  They got there by answering the question.  They got there by making A’s on tests and getting the top grade in the class.

And, on the way?  They lose their ability to be good executives.

I once worked near a senior executive who was an insufferable, arrogant boor to everyone around him. He wasn’t a boor in the “gets drunk and makes off-color jokes” fashion.  He was a boor in the “don’t even bother to argue with him” fashion.  He was the smartest guy in the room, even when it was demonstrable on the facts that he was not, in fact, right.  This habit–one of being always certain but only sometimes correct–drove people away from him until he lost all effectiveness.

In my 4 lives as an investment analyst, a “big firm” management consultant, a corporate executive, and now a boutique strategic partner, I’ve witnessed the foibles of dozens of senior and chief executives up close (not to mention my own).  And, given that experience, I think being too smart is a tremendous hindrance to effectiveness.

Why?  Let me count the ways.

First, executives who are too smart for their own good tend not to delegate.  Why? Well, nobody else is smart enough to get the job done right.  Executives, by definition, have to drive organizations. Being too smart to delegate is a killer.  This does not mean that they necessarily micromanage…they just don’t give freedom to their less smart underlings.

Second (and only slightly less bad), too smart executives tend to try to delegate via control and process.  They institute “simple” processes that muck up management culture and drive people who aren’t so smart absolutely crazy.  The next time you wonder why your TPS reports have to have three covers on them, you will think about the executive who is too smart.

Third, and building off that point, executives who are too smart tend to overcomplicate.  This is especially true in today’s data rich and insight poor environment.  The too smart executive wants to study more, build in that extra variable to the model, vet and validate assumptions, and generally create intellectual friction.  They drive complication.  The worst of them drive complication and then ask their teams why things are so complicated.  It’s exhausting.  Watch out for the executive who always orders studies and never makes decisions.  He’s probably an over-complicator.

Fourth, and final for the purpose of this post, the too smart executive runs the risk of being dismissive of outsiders.  I watched one C-level executive consistently disregard questions and encouragements from his board.  The board “just didn’t get it.”  A slightly less smart executive learns to take it all in.

And, my friends, that may be the key to this post:  Listening.  Executives who are smart enough learn to listen to outsiders, insiders, superiors, subordinates, and others.  They listen for signs that their own intellect may be getting in the way.

Go out there and be smart…but not too smart.

 

Dear Younger Me

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10 pieces of advice I would give to my twenty-something self

 

After recently depositing my youngest at college, it got me thinking about myself back then. I was painfully shy, insecure and still trying to find my identity. The same was true when I entered the work place and, in spite of apparently performing well, I was riddled with anxiety. Over the years, I eventually found my footing but I can’t help wondering how many years I shaved off my life with needless worry. If only I knew then what I know now.
So, if like the Little Debbie ad, I could back and talk to my younger self, here are the 10 pieces of advice I would give…
1. A problem shared is a problem halved – Don’t shoulder the burden yourself, especially if the issue is out of your control. Talk to your manager, but come armed with some potential solutions too.

2. Conflict now is better than a tsunami later – Addressing the issue may seem daunting, but not addressing it will probably come back and bite you in the butt at some point. And if nothing else, you will sleep better afterward.

3. Check once, check twice, check thrice –  Adopt the discipline of checking documents first for comprehension, second for logic/flow and third for typos/grammar.

4. Feedback is a gift –  It may not feel like it, but feedback is important in helping you to grow. Ask for it, receive it and provide it.

5. Don’t compare yourself to others – We are all different and you were hired for your unique skills. By all means, observe others and adopt what you like, but obsessive comparisons drive feelings of inadequacy.

6. Silence can be golden – Listen to what is being said and process it instead of worrying about not speaking. That way, you will learn and be able to contribute to the discussion.

7. Don’t assume everyone knows what they are talking about – Confidence does not always equate with competence. If something smells wrong, trust your instinct and push back.

8. No pain, no gain – Push yourself to stretch beyond your comfort zone. That’s how you grow. Except when it comes to roller blading in your forties. Don’t do that. There will be much pain.

9. Seek out mentors –  They have made mistakes that you have yet to make. Actively foster relationships with people you admire. They will become lifelong friends.

10. Don’t worry, be happy –  Worrying never solved a problem. One day, someone will tell you to write down your worries on a piece of paper and put them in a box. After a month, you will open the box and find that most of them have miraculously disappeared.

This will change your life…

What about you. What would you tell your younger self?

Why You Need A Little Intransigence

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An effective organization has a little intransigence.

 

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

 – George Bernard Shaw

Meditate on that quotation for a minute.

Now, think about whether you have ever encountered the marginalization of an “unreasonable” person.  Once you’ve been in leadership positions long enough, you come to accept that it happens.  The brilliant researcher whose ideas are just too outlandish gets ignored by the cool-kid MBAs because he’s too likely to call their spin what it is.

The exceptional sales person whose ideas would revolutionize the way the company sells is just too aggressive with senior management to “get things done” the political way.

It happens all the time.

Now, think about someone you know who has actually built or turned around a company.  Think about how much of their style depended on being accommodating and flexible vs. directive and uncompromising. You will find a lot more of the uncompromising style in a real builder.  The easiest ones to name are nearly caricatures of doing things their own way–think Jobs, Rockefeller, Ford.

Somebody, somewhere, thought each of them were “unreasonable.”

And, there’s a lesson in these two thoughts.  You, as a leader, might buy into the notion that you have to go along to get along.  That’s fine, but you have to realize that real progress–real growth–requires people who are willing to challenge the status quo.

If you find yourself marginalizing people with new ideas because they don’t “get” your earnings target, you are part of the problem.  If you find yourself being bothered by someone whose entrepreneurial push to get you to try new things threatens your own well ordered sense of the world, you are limiting progress in your organization.

In short, if you aren’t the unreasonable one, then you need to find a few of them on your team.

There’s probably a critical mass of “stubborn” on a given management team.  I would guess it’s somewhere more than 20% of the team and somewhere less than 50% of the team; but I believe that proportion depends highly on the leader of the team.

A leadership team composed of a group of acolytes who only seek to enshrine themselves alongside the leader can be successful in the short term (if you read this blog you know that I believe that anyone can be successful in the short term).  But, it will lack the capacity to challenge the status quo.

Don’t murder or marginalize your unreasonable ones. Find a way to “dose” and channel the stubbornness into new things.  Create forums for intransigence and revolution.

You just might build something.

Bang The Drum

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Honor the task by bringing what you have to the table.

 

It’s Christmas.

This season comes with so many rending contradictions.  They include greed and generosity, faith and commercialism, cheeriness and emotional doldrums.  They are all there.

In trying to think about a worthy topic to write on, I was reminded of the Christmas carol “The Little Drummer Boy” when my 7-year-old son chose it as his carol to lead at a cub scout meeting a couple weeks ago.

The scout leader chuckled and said “ok, we’ll try it” with a knowing tone of “nobody really knows that song…”  And, I agree.  Its odd time and slow pace make it one that usually is experienced through formal performances.

But the song carries a message that resonates beyond this season and beyond reverence for the birth of a savior.  The message is in the lyrics, and I’ll just pull out the essence to make it easy.

The story is of a young person who is called to see the newborn king by other people who are bringing their finest gifts.  He, a poor boy, realizes he has “no gift to bring / that’s fit to give a king.”

So, he brings a drum.  And, he plays it.  He says “I played my best for Him.”

And, then the King smiles.

…

In the churn that is the holiday season, it’s good to hear a message of effort.  It’s good to hear a message of humility that depends on doing the best with what we have.

You or I might be called to do something “great.”  We might be asked to do more than we think we can.  And, we might realize we have no capabilities fit for the task.  But in most cases we have a skill of some sort.  We have something we can offer to the task.  We have, at the very least, a drum to play.  We can honor the task through effort and faith, rather than cower from it by giving in to our feelings of inadequacy.

This may sound like a very personal thing.  It is.  But it’s also a professional thing. You are probably embedded in an organization that has a few drums sitting on the shelf. There are talents that are buried out of fear or neglect.  The art of enlightened leadership is to find the strengths you have, and to put them in play.

You might only have one strength.  You might only have a drum…so only bang on it.

Bang the drum the best you can.

Merry Christmas!

 

Ooh, That Smell!

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Do you know what your organization smells like?

 

Alright, so I’m a biology major from wayback…and sometimes biological reality meshes with organizational reality far too easily.

It’s the tail end of the Thanksgiving weekend.  As an encore to the festivities, we are having some family over for a holiday meal this afternoon.  I have spent this Sunday morning roasting a Wilson-family signature wet-brined turkey while simultaneously boiling the well-picked carcass of a Wilson-family signature cherry-wood smoked turkey that we consumed earlier in the holiday festivities.

Yes, that’s a bird in the oven and a pot of bird essence boiling on the stove.

My house smells exceptional.

Except, I only know that because my wife just returned from a brief outing and told me so.

The olfactory sense being what it is, I’ve lost all sensitivity to the ambient aromatic goodness that is in my house. My sense of smell is saturated. It took someone coming in from the outside to tell me how good it smelled in here.

And, there’s a lesson in that.

On getting stale…

You know what?  People become stultified. That is, they lose enthusiasm and initiative after too much of the same.  They do it in both good and bad circumstances.

In cultures where the air is heavy, people stop noticing.  I’ve been in places where the sword of Damocles hung over the head of every executive, casting a pall over the whole organization. They eventually stopped really noticing–until some outsiders forced a change and the more perceptive around them realized how much the prior regime really stunk!

Their sense of smell for the badness was saturated. They started focusing in on retirement, or the next job, and forgot how many years they sank in the stink.

Happens all the time.

The funny thing is, the same thing can happen in positive cultures.  People become desensitized to how good they actually have it and constantly yearn for the greener pasture next door.  I’ve been in one of the greatest organizations in the world and listened to grievances that would lead you to think it was a prison. People stopped noticing how brilliant their colleagues were and how interesting the work was.

During that time, I had a (very prescient, it turns out) mentor tell me that “people can’t ever tell how great it is here because we focus on improvement all the time. And, then they leave and it’s the best place they ever worked.”

He was right.  But, we were positively desensitized.  We had the organizational “smell” equivalent to a Thanksgiving feast, but couldn’t’ tell.

And, it leads to the question:  Do you know how your organization smells?

About the only way to tell is to have someone check it from the outside.  Unfortunately, as I’ve subtly noted, organizations full of stink rarely want to confront reality; and organizations reeking of positivity only focus on how to get better (which, in its own way, is a mild stench if used improperly).

So, who is your outsider, providing you with a fresh nose?  If you are an executive and you can’t answer that question, then how do you know what your organization smells like?

I’d be curious how you tackle this question. Please comment below. 

[and, yes, this was written between bastings spaced exactly 17 minutes apart]

 

 

Selfish Selflessness

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Hard-nosed pride makes it all possible.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, so how about a post on football?

I was an offensive lineman.  That fact has left physical and mental imprints on me that are hard to ignore.

The paradox of the great offensive lineman (and, to be clear, I make no claim of greatness…) is that he is able to take a fantastically selfless objective and make it selfish.

Yes, you heard that right. An offensive lineman, who toils ideally in anonymity (unless he’s doing it wrong), has to be at once selfless and selfish. He has to be able to work selfishly at a trade that is intensely individual–working for a win on every single play of a football game against another man–while at the same time doing all his work for the success of others and team.  He doesn’t carry the ball.  He doesn’t score.  He just puts in work in hopes that others will, too.

I played in 35 college football games and started 30 of them. In my college days, I officially touched a “live” football perhaps twice (on fumble recoveries), and never in a position other than on the ground.

That is twice that I actually had the football in my hands, out of perhaps 2200 total plays I was a part of in official collegiate football games.

Every single other play required absolute dedication to a job that resulted in somebody else’s ability to move the ball down the field.  It required dedication to playing within a unit of four other offensive linemen plying their trades at the same time, and dedication to doing whatever it took to help the ballcarrier get down the field.

The interesting reality of a lineman’s role is that the lineman can have a massive victory against his opponent on a play that goes nowhere, and he can get beaten on a play that results in a touchdown (ask me how I know). What matters is a commitment to the success of another person and an absolute commitment to getting the job done.  There is an odd sense of humility in knowing that you can be a dominant player and a failure at the same time.

There’s an odd selfishness that one must develop in the job. More importantly, there’s an odd selflessness that one must develop in the job.  It’s selfish selflessness, perhaps best described as pride.

It’s pride in doing what it takes to help the team.

The play called requires you to sprint on sprained ankles to hit a 320-pound defensive tackle with your left shoulder–the one you just sprained–to use your head (connected to your neck which has been sprained since that game three weeks ago) to cut off his path to the ballcarrier?

Get it done.  It’s your job.

It has been a long time since I’ve been on a football field as a player.  But, you know what?  I miss the simplicity of that sort of grinding pride.  The pride in being a key but anonymous part of moving the team forward.

And, I’ll tell you this: Finding people with the right combination of selfish selflessness is exceedingly difficult.

We live in a fantasy football age.  Everybody scores points. It just ain’t so in the real world.  When you find someone with a combination of true ability and pride in being able to help others that can be characterized as selfish selflessness, hold onto them.  Their less interesting counterparts–the ones more focused on their rights than their responsibilities–will pale in comparison to someone who can combine ability with personal pride.

As the proprietor of a now years old consulting firm, I get to apply my sense of selfish selflessness every day.  It’s embodied in the bar that I hold for myself and for my teams in delivering for clients.  We don’t carry the ball.  We don’t score touchdowns.  We work hard to prepare the ground and direction for the ballcarrier.

We hear words like “selfish” and “prideful” nowadays, and they sound very negative.  That’s because we impute some negative traits along with them like arrogance, stubbornness, and greed.

Those things don’t go along with the kind of selfish selflessness I’m writing about this morning.

I’m here to tell you that pride in a job well done, whether one is carrying the ball or wallowing in the mud in front of the ballcarrier, is one sports analogy that truly does convert to the business world.

Hard-nosed pride–combined with a selfless mindset of helping others–makes it all possible.

What do you think?