All in Careers
There’s a bit of a con in any risk we take on, be it creating a new business, starting a major assignment that hasn’t been done before or embarking on a journey that has never been attempted.
The con is perceived, and it is that we can make it (whatever it is). That we can get ourselves across the line and do what it is that we’ve set out to do.
By the time Bruce Springsteen released his first album, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, in 1973, he’d already had almost a decade of playing experience under his belt. He’d started playing back in 1964 with a band called The Rogues, then another, then another, ultimately morphing into the now famous E Street Band.
That first album met with critical acclaim but little commercial success. The one after (The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle) fared pretty much the same, and he didn’t really achieve commercial success until Born To Run was released in 1975.
I think most of us accept that ambition is a necessary ingredient for success.
Whether we’re growing a business, launching a new initiative or pushing forward on a creative project, ambition is needed to not only get the project going, but more importantly to take it to fruition. It’s a foundational requirement for creating lasting, meaningful change.
So the important question to ask is not whether or not we have the ambition needed to succeed. That’s a hygiene factor. If we don’t, there’s no point even getting started.
To be human is to be complex. It means we aren’t one thing. We’re multi-faceted.
For example, that sports star that won that coveted trophy actually isn’t perfect. She’s made (and will continue to make) plenty of mistakes along the way.
And that team that finished in second place, the one whose faults are being picked apart by all critics? Well, they still played better than all the other teams in the league - except for one.
It feels good to be well received.
That buzz you get when everyone raves about how amazing your work is, is quite a high. And an addictive one.
So it’s pretty natural to look for positive assurance when we do (and deliver) our work. To get that extra bolt of reinforcement. To be sure that what we’re doing is worthwhile.
I remember watching an interview many years ago with Kevin Cronin, lead singer and one of the main creative forces behind R.E.O. Speedwagon. He was talking about his creative process behind their hit “Can’t Fight This Feeling” and how, as a creation of his, it was one that was very difficult for him to let go of.
“It was a great day, but I thought I had fucked it up.”
“We felt like we’d blown an opportunity to be great.”
“I really thought we were crap.”
On July 13th, 1985, U2 took to the stage at Wembley stadium for their designated slot at Live Aid, the global concert for African famine relief. This was pre-Joshua Tree, so while they were popular, they were nowhere near the household name that they are now.
As someone who grew up on Queen’s music, I remember how good they were in their prime. I especially remember their performance at Live Aid back in 1985, as I watched it on TV in my living room in Hong Kong. When Mercury and Queen came on, they electrified the crowd - both those sitting in the audience at Wembley, as well as the millions who watched from their living rooms around the world. In fact, there were two acts that really stole the show that day and Queen was one of them.
Sunday morning, I woke up to watch the Arsenal-Spurs game, famously known as the North London Derby. It’s a game where form goes out the window and these two arch-rivals go all out for bragging rights as to who is the best team in North London.
It’s a game that hasn’t gone our way in recent years and as I anticipated the stress and emotional rollercoaster I would go through over the next couple of hours, I briefly debated staying in bed and waking up when it was all over. To just not have to deal with it all.
Every so often, we see it.
That guy who worked in finance, then decided to leap into the world of books and online retailing, to start a successful enterprise.
Or that gal who went into the flower business -despite having no prior industry knowledge - and created a profitable, growing business in just a couple of years.
Sometimes, the goals we set for ourselves are overwhelming. The bigger the goal or the more challenging the objective, the harder it can be to fathom how we will get there.
We get caught up in the sheer scale of our idea, or we start setting all sorts of impossible timelines and expectations that we think we need to achieve on our path there.
When I got into consulting in the mid-nineties, I did so with the expectation that I was going into a field that was focused on driving change. That we were there to make a difference, and to improve the lot of our clients. And that doing so required people who were committed to that process, both within the firm I worked for and at the client. Generally speaking, that expectation proved to be the reality.
Many years ago, I worked with a senior consulting partner who liked to talk in puzzles. Instead of giving us specific marching orders, he’d talk around the issues and then ask us to put together a deck for his review.
For example, as we’d talk through a proposal we were working on, he’d talk about the client situation, the range of issues they were facing as well…
…Is that there really isn’t any such thing.
In popularity contests of any significance (where a sizable population is asked for its endorsement of an individual or a subject or an action), the landslide win is not a common occurrence. More prevalent (in my admittedly unscientific assessment) is the close race, where the margin of victory is in single digit percentage points.
…Is that there really isn’t any such thing.
In popularity contests of any significance (where a sizable population is asked for its endorsement of an individual or a subject or an action), the landslide win is not a common occurrence. More prevalent (in my admittedly unscientific assessment) is the close race, where the margin of victory is in single digit percentage points.
When it comes to the work we do, no one likes surprises.
It doesn’t matter which part of the organization you sit in - client management, operations, marketing or elsewhere - one of the fundamental tenets of corporate performance is predictability. We want to know what’s happening, why and, if necessary, what we need to do about it.
I love guitars.
I especially love guitars that are handcrafted and expertly finished. Guitars that are works of art, that use the best materials, the best pickups, the best strings. When I play guitars like these, I feel as if they improve my dexterity, my creativity and my tone. I feel as if the music I produce immediately improves. They make me a better musician.
There’s a couple of stages we go through when we’re angered by a particular situation we’re faced with.
First, we lose our cool and debate and question our predicament. We turn the situation over and over in our heads, incredulous, bemused and upset that this is happening to us. We wallow in the ‘why me’s’. This is sometimes inevitable but always unproductive.
We have this obsession, usually rightly so, with organized, accredited education. In an era when economic disparity and the income gap is at its widest, getting a “proper education” isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have.
Which is something most of us agree on, plus the fact that a proper education is defined as not simply completing high school, but obtaining a college degree, at minimum. I think I’m on pretty safe ground when I say that.
Think of the most exciting job you’ve done, the best initiative you’ve been part of, the most rewarding experience you’ve had. What was the underlying basis of that experience, the focus of the leadership in that situation? Were you excited? Were you focused on moving towards something? Were you inspired?
