ROOTED IN EFFORT
Wednesday, May 2, 2012 § Leave a comment
Does the second CEO call Oprah? Hell yes! But calling Oprah is not a strategy. The strategy is to create a sexy enough proposition that Oprah might bite.
When we obsess about what we cannot control (Oprah’s response) our experience of the world swings between manic and depressive moments and meanwhile, we waste our time unproductively.
When we focus on what we control, our experience of the world is rooted in our effort and we are constructive and productive.
It’s easy to see what incidentally has the higher chance of success with Oprah.
SUCCESS IN EVERY MOMENT
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 § Leave a comment
Seeking success and practicing success are not the same.
Please see previous post for context.
A CEO might say, “Once we have received the venture capital investment, we can build the technology platform that will satisfy our users and we will be successful.”
Or, “Once we get featured on Oprah, our sales will take off and we will be successful.”
Or, “Once we are through this recession, demand will pick up again and we will be successful.”
(For the CEO these stories will often go hand-in-hand with stories about waiting for personal happiness and life balance – “And once we are more successful I will work less and pay more attention to my partner, kids, friends, health, etc.”)
Just as with seeking personal happiness, achieving success this way can prove elusive:
A. Hoping for external circumstances to work out in your favor is not a strategy for success, it’s just a gamble.
B. The market gives it and the market takes it – maybe today you get lucky with Oprah or the VC and the day after it’s your competitor.
Buying lottery tickets can pay-off big time, but it’s not what value creation is made of. Focusing on external milestones can be a big distraction for the CEO and a drain for the organization. It distracts from value creation that you can control.
What if you define success by the values with which your team works and interacts, the conduct of your organization, the courage with which you make strategic decisions and pursue a new solution, the value you build for the customer, the way you align the organization with the impact it seeks?
The CEO/manager that focuses on these questions can have a successful day every day.
CEO seeking success
Honey: “Honey, how was your day?”
CEO: “Crappy. Oprah that bitch still hasn’t called us back about being on her show!”
CEO practicing success
Honey: “Honey, how was your day?”
CEO: “Excellent. The team is gelling, we had a great conversation about the feature set and we committed to drop the upgrade in favor of the earlier beta-launch.”
Please consider where your business strategy includes statements of hope about how your circumstances will align and change. Strike those out. Your successful strategy is made up of how you respond to circumstances, not how they form you.
FROM FEAR TO LOVE
Monday, April 2, 2012 § Leave a comment
Step 1
The short version
What is, is.
Gesundheit! What?
The long version
Life is one of the harshest: we age, we die, we lose our looks, we get sick, we could lose our jobs and wealth at any moment, we could lose our partners, friends, families, the earth could shake, the bombs could drop,…we are completely out of control of almost everything around us.
All the circumstances that we might use to describe ourselves could disappear from one second to the next and who are we then? Sometimes people’s story of their identity gets shattered and they are so distraught by it that they consider suicide.
But then,…
Life is one of the lightest: we are free to be any which way we want, we can break expectations from dusk til dawn, we can reinvent ourselves in any moment of our lives, complete and utter failure changes nothing really important. Aging, decay and death come and there is no benefit in worrying about it, just the opposite. We can define ourselves independent of the circumstances that we partake in; we can define ourselves by how we respond to our circumstances.
To hold up pretensions is exhausting of energy and draining of self-respect. We are anxious to confront reality and scared to be found out. To give up pretensions frees us up for recognizing opportunity, for growth, for change. This is obviously true for us individually, as well as for groups, businesses and nations.
Pretense has temptations, but in every moment we can choose to give into it, or to be real with ourselves and others.
Business Buddhism 