Just a few days left this year, so I thought it would be a good time offer up some wise words for the coming year — actually, they are wise any time and any year.
I rarely quote those who cultivate guru status, but this from Craig D. Lounsbrough really resonates. It’s something many of our so-called leaders should embrace.
“An exceptional future can only be built on the transformation of the mess I’ve made out of my past, not the elimination of that mess.”
We all have messes, some worse than others, so stop minimizing yours or offering glib apologies and mea culpas.
Alan Cohen reminds us that there is no “right” time to start, including New Year’s.
Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.
Beginning opens the door to success, but also to failure — or does it? (I got into a lot of trouble for this post, but I still stand by it.)
There is no failure except no longer trying. —Elbert Hubbard
Finally, a few words from two folks who have forgotten more about succeeding than most of us will ever learn.
Unlike Jeff Bezos, Tony Hsieh does a great job channeling many of Henry Ford’s attitudes. While Bezos is devoted to “delighting customers” and taking care of his professional employees, the same can’t be said for the rank and file.
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
Finally, it seems that too many founders and investors have forgotten, if they ever knew, what drove Thomas Edison’s inventing.
I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent it.
Useful thoughts and good guidance no matter when or where you are in your life.
A couple of weeks ago, in an aside in a post about transformation, I said, “(‘wise’ being very different than ‘smart’).”
Since then, I got a couple of phone calls (I love phone calls; that’s why my number is displayed on the blog.) wanting to discuss the difference.
They both suggested I share my thoughts here, in case anyone else was curious — my thoughts based on my experience. Feel free to disagree.
Smart isn’t about what you know — that’s knowledge.
Smart isn’t about innate intelligence — but about how you use it.
Smart is about what you do with what you learn, whether from books, experience, the streets, general human interactions, or all of the above.
Learning starts when you’re born and continues all your life — or it should.
Obviously, you’ll be better off if it does — and in deep doodoo if it doesn’t.
Wise is a whole different thing.
There is no guarantee you’ll ever become wise — no matter how much you learn or how smart you become.
Wise starts when you apply what you learn to various situations, but goes way beyond the application.
Wise comes from applying, tweaking, synthesizing and repeating over and over in multiple versions and situations.
Wise isn’t something you say about yourself on social media; it’s something that others say about you — eventually.
Wise isn’t fast; it happens over a long period of time — no instant gratification, except the pleasure that comes from knowing that what you figured out worked.
Finally, while you can learn from devices, they will never make you smart, let alone wise.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
Quick. Off the top of your head, what are the chances you’d hire a 65 year-old Black man for a senior management role in your startup?
Unlikely — or flat-out ‘no’?
Next question.
How well could you handle traveling from the Bay Area to Detroit to Toronto back to the Bay Area and then to New York, London and Columbus, Ohio, back to the Bay Are for one night, then to Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong for ten days, with a side trip to Seattle?
That was the recent schedule of the 65 year-old Black guy you probably didn’t hire.
Tough schedule, jumping around all those times zones; think it would dent your 20/30-something system more than the 70+ hour week you brag about?
The guy you didn’t hire is John Thompson, but that’s OK, he already has a job.
He’s CEO of Virtual Instruments, one of several startups he invested in after he retired from his ten year stint as CEO of Symantec, which came after his mandatory retirement from IBM after 28 years.
That little age bias you have would also preclude your hiring Impossible Foods founder Patrick Brown (62), Qualys CEO Philippe Courtot (70), Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison (73), Netflix’s Reed Hastings (56) and dozens, if not hundreds, of others.
The interesting (hilarious? ironic?) part is that if you were using most recruiting filtering tools, human or software, their resumes would probably be screened out.
Now just think how much larger your pool of exceptional talent would be if you brought yours and your organization’s biases/assumptions/prejudices under control.
Cloaked in the form of discourteous comments or unfiltered remarks, King Lear’s fool was able to express the thoughts that others were reluctant to express. Through the mask of comedy, he would remind the monarch of his own folly and humanity. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “every despot must have one disloyal subject to keep him sane.”
Look around; does your company have at least one fool? Or, better yet, one fool in each department?
As Manfred Kets De Vries, the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development & Organizational Change at INSEAD, points out.
All in all, fools are honest and loyal protectors, who allow society to reflect on and laugh at its own complex power relations. They can act as our “conscience” by helping us question our perceptions of wisdom and truth and their relationship to everyday experience. Through humor and frank communication, the “fool” and the “king” or “queen” engage in a form of deep play that deals with fundamental issues of human nature, such as control, rivalry, passivity, and action.
As such, fools contribute to group cohesion and an atmosphere of trust by providing an opportunity to humorously and critically review our values and judgments as the powerful socio-cultural structures of power pull, push, and shape our identity.
And, beyond all that, fools are a repository of wisdom — based on strong critical thinking coupled with extensive experience — which makes them excellent role models and a great source from which to learn.
Finally, whether a boss can hire, let alone keep, a fool is an accurate reflection of their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and a good indicator of the prevailing culture.
In spite of being severely overloaded, KG still finds time to send me stuff he finds interesting and/or inspirational.
Over the years, we’ve had many discussions about culture and its importance in hiring.
He recently mentioned a quote from basketball player and Coach John Wooden.
“The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”
KG: In any high performing organization, there are lots of systems and processes that make the organization successful.
When you look at people considered stars, they are almost never part of second or third rate teams; they are almost always in organizations performing at the highest levels.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t truly high performing people in lesser teams, it’s just that they are not defined as stars in general (sometimes they may be local stars, but generally don’t get the full recognition).
So a star, per definition, is a member of an organization that performs at the top.
Me: So true. I’d add that in most cases people become stars as a result of the culture and their manager, or so I’ve found.
KG: Exactly. Look at all the people who leave Goldman Sachs or Google who were stars there (e.g. Marissa Meyer) but are unable to maintain their level of performance outside the culture & systems of that environment.
That’s why it’s always dangerous to hire stars — more than anything else they are a product of their environment.
Me: Absolutely, and the poster child is GE’s Bob Nardelli!
(Click for more Wooden wisdom. For more information about stars and Nardelli use use the tags below.)
Even after working decades with bosses at all levels, from CEOs to team leaders and first-time supervisors, their ability to make inaccurate, let alone stupid, assumptions based on nothing solid still astounds me.
The smartest/most creative people only attend top tier universities. No they don’t. The wealthiest/most indebted, unless they were on scholarship, attend those schools.
I can spot instantly talent, even with just a casual conversation. No you can’t. What you can spot are people like yourself.
Hiring/poaching top talent always pays off. Not hardly. Consider JC Penny, Bob Nardelli, Marissa Mayer and thousands more at every level and in every field.
Or that a birdbrain, even the smartest, could figure out the eight steps it took to get a reward, with no coaching?
As opposed to the wisdom of crowds, assumptions are more often the bias of crowds.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.
We all know change is the only constant, but is change linear? Does everyone see changes the same way? Does it even matter? And if it does matter, how does it affect your work as a manager? Read other Golden Oldies here
The other day I said to a friend that I’ve turned into a real wimp. He thought I was kidding and said that I was the last person he associated with wimping out on anything.
I was surprised, but as we discussed it I realized that what I saw as wimpiness he saw as strength.
That got me to thinking how often what one person calls wimping out may be another person’s greatest act of courage. Likewise, what moves one person can leave another cold.
It’s all relative depending on your MAP, the circumstances and even the mood you’re in.
Sounds obvious, but it’s important knowledge, not information, but knowledge—maybe even wisdom—for any person responsible for motivating others, whether at work or in everyday life.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Quick. Off the top of your head, what are the chances you’d hire a 65 year-old Black man for a senior management role in your startup?
Even after working decades with bosses at all levels, from CEOs to team leaders and first-time supervisors, their ability to make inaccurate, let alone stupid, assumptions based on nothing solid still astounds me.
The other day I said to a friend that I’ve turned into a real wimp. He thought I was kidding and said that I was the last person he associated with wimping out on anything.
