Making today’s best tomorrow’s average
Build on, don’t sit on. The danger in success is trying to protect it rather than expand it. The feeling that you’ve arrived kills progress. Success should fuel your passions rather than protect your positions.
Take a single, don’t wait for the homerun. Rather than waiting for a grand slam homerun, take a month’s worth of bunts and singles. I’ve found progress tends to go along slowly until an occasional leap forward surprises us. Once in a while, everything comes together and boom, it’s out of the park. However, you won’t experience the game-changer if you aren’t working hard when progress is slow.
Dream beyond your resources. If you currently have the resources to fulfill your dream your dream’s too small. Recently, I spent a day with 15 leaders and high potentials. The goal of the meeting was to identity several organizational break-throughs. The challenge is that it’s natural to define a dream in terms of something you are currently doing. Many of the suggestions for break-throughs could be accomplished by simply realigning resources, or working smarter, harder, or faster. Break free by asking yourself, “What would I do if resources weren’t a factor?”
Build strategic alliances that create shared resources. Other people have the knowledge you need. Other organizations have the talent, structure, or processes to take you higher. For example, the organization I lead is currently moving toward strategic alliances to expand our facilities. Strategic alliances mean you’ll learn how to “play” well with others. Let some folks get in your sandbox or you get in theirs.
Expect failure, don’t be surprised by it. The path to success is littered with things that didn’t work. Our failures make us.
Today’s best isn’t your highest potential.
*****
How can people make today’s best tomorrow’s average?
Good morning Dan. This post is filled with good advice and even more than that — it contains the ONE thing that breeds success: inspiration.
Leaders who lead only for today bring teams down for longer than today. Dreaming, foresight, and building ahead keeps people developing their talents. It actually brings the team into realms of possibilities that they would otherwise not see.
To do what you advise in this post, a leader must honor the mission, the team members, and most especially honor hope. My latest post recounts one risk to getting sidelined and how to avoid it. Would love your thoughts on it.
http://katenasser.com/leaders-moving-from-peer-to-boss-feelings-vs-results/
Best wishes for an inspired week!
Kate
Dan, Rock On. “Take a single, don’t wait for the homerun.”, I really like that is we all know big swings are not the norm but we want to play them like singles. I was having this same conversation chatting to a client who I am worried is betting the future of their business on a couple of big proposals they have put out there and I was trying to encourage them to increase their funnel with more smaller clients. I wish I had your line then, as the analogy is apt.
I agree with so many of the points in this post, especially “take a single, don’t wait for a homerun.” All of my responses seem to bleed into other points (such as do what you love and the money will follow), but here goes:
1) As a perennial “extra” in FSU Films locally, I end up meeting all kinds of people, from community members for whom it is a big deal to play a “grocery store shopper” in an 8 minute film to accomplished SAG actors who travel to Tallahassee to be in those same films – people who have a great deal to share about their experiences. At one shoot, I was speaking to an actor who plans to act professionally but is a community member who is still relatively unknown as a professional actor. He said, “I’m through taking “extra” roles – it’s all real roles from here on out.” I think by making that choice, he is going to miss a lot of opportunites to “single” and I’m not so sure a “homerun” opportunity will present itself.
2) I was very struck when reading Robin Roberts’s book “From the Heart” with how she, on her way to being a nationally recognized morning show host, would cover the most obscure of high school sports, any sport, any time, and how she was a country music announcer to get her foot in the door of broadcasting. My niece wants to be a sportscaster “like Erin Andrews” but I fear that her generation in many ways has lost sight of the importance of all of the “singles” that lead up to “homeruns”.
Great post, Dan!
“If you have the resources for your dream, you dream’s too small.” Love it.
Just before hiring my new coach I told him, “I don’t have the money to pay for that program.” His response, “That’s great! If you did, this program wouldn’t be right for you.” As a result of making the commitment, the money has shown up and I’m making great progress.
Dan, Great thoughts!!!! It’s real easy to strike out waiting for the perfect pitch to come. Small ball, singles and doubles, can drive in a lot of runs and many times will win the game!!!!! Have a blessed Thanksgiving. Howie
I used to do consulting in quality and SO many time, I would hear the phrase, “We did continuous improvement.” Translated, that means that we have completed it. Thus, I started using the phrase “Continuous continuous improvement,” which drives my spell-checker crazy, and punch-lined it with the fact that I got that phrase from the Department of Redundancy Department.
The point that people tend to get is that continuous improvement is actually continuous. Most of us get a sense of intrinsic reward when we complete something, and thus we like to feel that some effort reached a goal and was closed. That feels good. BUT, it gets in the way of progress.
Another tool I use is my cartoons around a wooden wagon with a guy pulling with a rope and people pushing from behind. The wagon is rolling on wooden Square Wheels®. The cargo? Round rubber tires.
Relevant punchlines and learning points:
The ideas for improvement already exist (often as best practices done by the exceptional performers).
Don’t Just DO Something, Stand There.
The Round Wheels of Today become the Square Wheels of tomorrow.
The View at the Front is quite different than the View at the Back.
The Spectator Sheep, on the hillside and not involved with the crew, will generally voice their opinion about how things are really working: “Naaaaaa. Baaaaaa.” These same people have an objective and dissociated view and can often see the opportunities for improvement; Most try to ignore them and few actively ask for issues and ideas.
and on and on and on. I have 300 of these cartoons that are used to illustrate different issues of how people perform in most organizations. You can see more at http://www.PerformanceManagementCompany.com if you want.
Have fun out there!
.
Very crisp & effective messages through your current post. It makes everyone starts thinking how best to secure better future.
Your title again is the most suitable and catchy. Every leader certainly would look for taking the best out of today to make it an average standard for tomorrow. What a great way to define a role of any leader in any sphere of life!
Good collaborative approach by looking for a strategic partner to share the resources and strengthen your today to reach the desired tomorrow in an unprecedented manner is the stepping stone to success. Moreover, the concluding remark of ‘Expect failure, don’t be surprised by it’ is just superb to avoid any kind of major setbacks. The final goal is to beat your own records and excel by learning from your own failures.
Leaders are self-motivated and will always look for opportunities even during the setback periods. They trust their people and keep them inspired to march ahead with all possible permutation to succeed and planned subtractions to overcome any setbacks with speed.
Dear Dan,
People can make today’s best tomorrow’s average by competing self. Challenging self potential, efforts and passion for better result can make today’s best tomorrow’s average. Passion propels determination, devotion and dedication. 3 Ds are key to breakthrough success. However, when position becomes parameter of success then passion dies and self centric attitude and approach becomes prime weapons. When passion is the parameter of success then success becomes norms and passion becomes stronger every day. Passion for success is usually pure and unbiased but passion for position is not passion, it hurts many.
I agree that one should dream beyond resources. Too much resource can hinder progress. So, the person with a lot of support may not reach to the highest level. Even circumstances may not be help progressing position, however, odd circumstances opens new options and possibilities to look for opportunities. Therefore, lack of resources and odd circumstances actually create platform for more success. Sufficient resources and favourable circumstances may not help you to progress.
Expecting failure is a sign of anticipating more success in future. It is a strength that shapes your future. Not accepting failure means perhaps person does not try or blame situations for failure. Accepting failure is the signs of openness, resilience and firmness while not accepting is the signs of rigidity, inertia and accusations.
Person should compete with self. Competing and comparing with others might be cancerous. So, the best way to make today’s best tomorrow’s average is to compete and compare with self.
Love the part about dreaming Dan, someone once told me not to aim for the moon or the sun, but for alpha centauri. When you dream, totally overdream, let it be your ideal goal, if you aim too low you’re gonna have an easy way out.
As entrepreneurs, we didn’t choose the easy way by definition.
Dan,
This reminds me of the new book by Jim Collins, How the Might Fall.
The most intriguing part of your post to me was the last about failure. Yes, success is always sprinkled with failures along the way. And many times it takes lots of failures to get to that success.
Thanks for sharing.
Chris,
Thanks for jumping in.
I think one reason success is tough is the path of failures that finally got us there.
My best to you ,
Dan
Dear Dan,
People can make today’s best tomorrow’s average by competing self. Challenging self potential, efforts and passion for better result can make today’s best tomorrow’s average. Passion propels determination, devotion and dedication. 3 Ds are key to breakthrough success. However, when position becomes parameter of success then passion dies and self centric attitude and approach becomes prime weapons. When passion is the parameter of success then success becomes norms and passion becomes stronger every day. Passion for success is usually pure and unbiased but passion for position is not passion, it hurts many.
I agree that one should dream beyond resources. Too much resource can hinder progress. So, the person with a lot of support may not reach to the highest level. Even circumstances may not be help progressing position, however, odd circumstances opens new options and possibilities to look for opportunities. Therefore, lack of resources and odd circumstances actually create platform for more success. Sufficient resources and favorable circumstances may not help you to progress.
Expecting failure is a sign of anticipating more success in future. It is a strength that shapes your future. Not accepting failure means perhaps person does not try or blame situations for failure. Accepting failure is the signs of openness, resilience and firmness while not accepting is the signs of rigidity, inertia and accusations.
Person should compete with self. Competing and comparing with others might be cancerous. So, the best way to make today’s best tomorrow’s average is to compete and compare with self.