Our usual modes for happiness- the hedonist who only lives for pleasure in the moment and the rat racer who postpones gratification for the purpose of attaining some future goal- do not work for most people, because they ignore our basic need for a sense of both present and future benefit.
More to come about Happiness and Tal Ben-Shahar.
In his 1980 book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Millman writes: To change the course of your life, choose one of two basic methods:
1- You can direct your energy and attention toward trying to fix your mind, find your focus, affirm your power, free your emotions and visualize positive outcomes so that you can finally develop the confidence to display the courage to discover the determination to make the commitment to feel sufficiently motivated to do what it is you need to do.
2- Or you can just do it.
Too many people say that they want to change. “I want to go on a diet… I want to start going to the gym… I want to spend more time with my kids”. But most are unwilling to put in the work because that’s the hard part. As you develop your plan for how you want to change, you become overwhelmed. You’ve also expended the energy you could have used to enact the change by only thinking about the change. JUST DO IT. You want to go to the gym? Then go to the gym. Don’t be intimidated by your plan. You are only convincing yourself to do it tomorrow at best. More likely tomorrow becomes next week, then next month, then next year. Be the change you want in your life and start now.
From “The Joy of Leadership” by Tal Ben-Shar:
Meaningfulness is about the connection we feel toward an activity- whether we experience it as personally significant and aligned with our ideals. Commitment is about the motivation or energy we bring to the activity- and consequently, how likely we are to persevere in what we’re doing. In his book, which was focused mostly on how young people chose the direction their lives would take, Damon categorized people into four groups- the disengaged, the dreamers, the dabblers, and the purposeful.
So often, many of us speak about the “Grind.” The daily routine… putting your nose to the grindstone… some would even call it “hustle.” But for what purpose? Is there meaning to your commitment? Are you focused on a goal or a purpose? Goals are incremental steps that take us from one place to another. Purpose is the why that describes our actions.
Received job tasking this morning to provide feedback to headquarters consolidating tools, resources, initiatives, and best practices that complement a “Culture of Excellence.” I found the tasking striking for two reasons. First, relating to a book I’m currently reading, “The Evolution of Everything: How Culture Emerges” by Matt Ridley, trying to identify and engineer culture changes from the top-down is a failing effort. Many leaders are unwilling or unable to accept that many ideas, whether culture, language, or ideas, develop and evolve from the bottom-up. In many cases, there is no engineer or architect directing the efforts of the lesser entities. The bottom-up concept is hard to accept for many because we want to see cause and effect. Most are unwilling to accept that some things just are.
The second reason I found this tasking interesting is that included in the tasking was an internal study conducted of industry-leading companies. This study identified the attributes and characteristics of organizations that embrace a learning environment. Leaders of these companies also cite that it is impossible to focus efforts are multiple areas of culture, but rather by focusing on one area of culture, learning or safety for example, they would often see dividends in other areas of culture, such as productivity or morale. By establishing well thought out goals, and reinforcing “correct” behavior, culture was able to slowly evolve.
The tasker I received strikes at the heart of a top-down approach where leaders want to identify the “tools, resources, initiatives, and best practices” so that they can be emulated. While the intention is good, I strongly feel that a bottom-up approach is more effective. Furthermore, the “Industry Best Practices and Learning Culture” materials highlight that a key component in any learning culture change is Leadership.
Where psychological safety was discussed as a precondition for realizing a true learning culture, leadership was cited as its most important criterion. Without the right leaders, culture change and other large, transformative initiatives are likely to fail. The corporate leaders prioritized finding top talent and stressed the need for organizations to acknowledge that effective leadership is a skillset of its own. Technical competence is not, in itself, enough to merit promotion to a leadership position. Only the best and most ideally suited leaders consistently live the values and exhibit the desired behaviors of the organization, properly engage and coach employees, create and communicate a sense of purpose, and define and execute the vision of these companies. These leaders are genuine in their approach to the obligations of leadership, taking pride in their ability to positively influence and develop their employees, and by extension, the trajectory of the organization. In identifying these traits and promoting the leaders who exemplify them, organizations nurture loyalty to the institution in a self-reinforcing cycle.
While the leadership described above can be inspirational, truly “transformational” leadership requires an additional step. The corporate leaders explained that leaders who are self-aware are the best types of leaders – those who are able to not only notice performance trends in their employees and provide effective feedback, but are also able and eager to receive the same type of feedback. After establishing psychological safety and human factors as a foundation, transformative leaders further differentiate themselves by embracing the practice of self-awareness. Where other managers merely accumulate knowledge and feedback, truly effective leaders go beyond. These high performers are able to overcome the mental blocks others commonly display when receiving criticism, such as defensiveness or self-justification. These successful leaders accept, internalize/acknowledge, and take action to correct identified shortcomings or blind spots. They constantly re-define themselves, acquiring new ideas, perspectives, and skills, while jettisoning others that are no longer relevant.
Thank you Jocko and Extreme Ownership for highlighting that all problems can be solved by leadership. It takes a special person to be a true leader. A true leader must be humble, self-aware, and most importantly, must be willing to take ownership of everything in their world. The study goes on to further stress the importance of failure in a strong learning culture. Chris Argyris from “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” (Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991) says:
“Put simply, because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure. So whenever their single-loop learning strategies go wrong, they become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the “blame” on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it the most.”
One final thought; try to keep things simple, not easy. Thanks again Jocko. (Extreme Ownership Fundamentals). Instead of focusing on the tools, processes, and best practices of other High Performing Organizations, take some easy advice from The Armed Forces Officer, and treat everyone with dignity and respect. Make employees feel important, define their tasks clearly, and eliminate the roadblocks in their way to execute. “Happy” workers are more productive, but satisfaction, whether professional or personal, comes from having control of your destiny, being free to encounter some failure along the way, and being a stakeholder in your company’s success.
Organizations falter in creating a culture of engagement when they solely approach engagement as an exercise in making their employees feel happy…Happiness is a great starting point, but just measuring workers’ satisfaction or happiness levels and catering to their wants often fail to achieve the underlying goal of employee engagement: improved business outcomes. Organizations have more success with engagement and improve business performance when they treat employees as stakeholders of their future and the company’s future. They put the focus on concrete performance management activities, such as clarifying work expectations, getting people what they need to do their work, providing development, and promoting positive coworker relationships.
What better time to remind ourselves of the importance of discipline than as the holidays come to full swing. The distractions and off-ramps that take us farther from our goals are abundant. I’m not saying that these distractions are bad. Time with family, travel, holiday commitments, are all things that take us away from our daily comforts and routines. Maintaining self-discipline during these times is challenging, if not impossible for some. Unhealthy foods, sleeping in, not working out. The holidays serve as a perfect excuse for us to justify taking some time off or letting our discipline crumble. In Jocko’s Field Manual, “Discipline Equals Freedom,” there are numerous examples of how and why maintaining that self-discipline is critical to our progress. The comforts of the easy path are just that, easy. In this book, Jocko’s prose, bordering on poetry in some cases, provide a multitude of reminders to keep us motivated and on the “war path.”
Pulled a few lessons from “Battle Leadership” by Adolf von Schell. Interesting perspective considering von Schell was an active German Army Infantry officer. This book is a collection of lectures given by von Schell to the U.S. Army Infantry School during the interim time period between World War I and World War II.
Knowing the people in your organization is critical to nearly all leader’s success. The motivations that drive individuals can be as unique as the people they reside within. Having, at the very least, a cursory knowledge of those motivations will allow the adept leader to shift and adapt their leadership approaches toward the individual. This is particularly challenging when the number of people being led increases above ten.
Most of us fear the unknown. When those unknowns are encountered, either by design or not, they become less threatening. By removing the fear of the unknown, the legitimate fear of that danger can actually be addressed. Additionally, planning and realistic training can help people cope with their fears when they encounter them in the “real” world.
Under stress and extreme situations, even the most level man can behave unpredictably. Regardless of the training situations that the individual may have encountered, a leader cannot fully expect for the individuals response to be the same in the “real” world. Quality, realistic training can help remove some of this uncertainty, but not entirely. Also, people are crazy and we are not robots. Our moods, desires, and motivations can shift daily if not even quicker, making our reaction to the same situation variable.
Defense is more difficult than offense. In the defensive situation, the individual ultimately must wait for the enemy to attack. However, on offense, the attacker has the initiative. The offense is by design one step ahead of the defense. Well trained and thoughtful defense can counter the best offense but it is still reacting to the moves of the offender. The default aggressive mindset comes to mind because even if playing defense, those players must be proactive, attacking their own weaknesses before their opponents can.
No one likes to be micro managed. As he discusses later, plans must be simple and the commander’s intent must be clear. If given the guidance, resources, and training necessary to achieve the commander’s intent, then subordinates must be allowed to accomplish objectives in the manner they see fit. That freedom to maneuver must be earned and trust must first be established between the senior and the subordinate.
As we said earlier, people are crazy. With that craziness, they are inherently unpredictable. Most of us, even in daily life, do not make logical decisions. Right or wrong, there are internal motivators, both conscious and unconscious that drive our minds to make decisions. Snap decisions especially, as noted in “Thinking Fast and Slow” are made so quickly that our conscious brain sometimes does not even have time to process everything we think we see. See also “Blink.”
Many times the 90% solution is good enough. It’s not perfect but it will get you close. Do not be trapped by analysis paralysis. You may be wrong. That final 10% of information could be critical, but you don’t know that, and you never will until you act. Additionally, in most situations, we are not going to know when we have 100% of the information.
We must remind ourselves that decisions and orders must be simple. Simple does not mean easy. Clausewitz write extensively about the frictions in war and that everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.
The decision to act is often the most difficult decision to make. Sometimes the most successful leader is the one who is able to act without knowing the entire situation.
Some call this “corporate knowledge,” others may call it “lessons learned.” Sadly, those lessons are easily lost if not reiterated and discussed. The past is our greatest teacher, but it should not be our only teacher. The present moment has her own lessons and one must not be looking so far to the past at the expense of the present.
When making decisions, the leader must not forget the cost and toll that their decisions will have. In this case, von Schell reminds us that the infantryman will bear the burden of his leadership’s decisions. Hence, the infantryman must have a vote. Additionally, the infantryman is the expert; his life depends on it. As a leader, remind yourself of the implications of your decisions and take into consideration the opinions and expertise of the front line troops. Those troopers will be the ones executing your orders.
There are countless quotes about the usefulness of planning. Eisenhower said, “plans are useless, but plans are indispensable.” Others have said “failure to plan is planning to fail.” Whatever quote of your choosing, understand that at the time of action, the planning phase is complete and the execution phase has begun. During the planning process, attempt to identify and mitigate all of the contingencies that you can imagine. Be detailed, be specific, but understand that as soon as you shift to execution, you will realize that you overlooked something. React to those issues but keep your reaction simple.
When my wife and I heard about Anthony Bourdain’s death, we were both shocked and saddened. To learn that he had taken his own life was even more shocking. Sadly, the impetus for reading “Kitchen Confidential” was his death, although the book had been residing on my bookshelf for many years. Not only was it a brash look at the dark underbelly of the cooking industry, it was also an insightful glimpse into the world of Bourdain himself, clearly passionate about an industry that kicked him around for many years. While reading “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, I could not help but think about Bourdain’s prose. Bourdain’s attitude, approaches, and demeanor did not immediately scream PROFESSIONAL, but his commitment and dedication to an art certainly did. Below are just a few notes from this book that I captured, more out of entertainment than insight for myself although there is deep meaning within.
