I found this beautiful sentence in an excellent post by Manal Ghosain, ‘the Persistence‘.
Becoming unstoppable is often not an issue of unbearable external forces but much more frequentlyan internal issue.
It’s all about personal persistence.
As Manal highlights, it’s often all about letting go of expectations, judgment and comparisons.
Become unstoppable. Just don’t stop!
Contracts and how to behave with them are one of the most frequent issues in many instances, in particular in professional activities. In my case, it applies particularly in the field of project management activities.
Should we have a contract? What should be in there? How should one behave with respect to the other party? Be extremely contractual and formal or be relatively informal and rely on the contract only as a last resort reference? Opinions on the matter vary, behaviors are tainted with cultural differences.
One of the best guidance I found is: “Get it in writing but depend on trust“. It is a quote from an excellent book by Gerald Weinberg, ‘the Secrets of Consulting‘.
It sums it all: those that are coldly contractual are wrong. Those who are all in talking and not in writing are wrong. Both won’t get anywhere.
In all instances I have found that whatever the contractual environment, the bureaucracy and the expectations of compliance, trust needs to be created, maintained and developed between parties for things to happen. And the best project managers and managers understand that. They will try to develop trust with their counterparts.
Depend on trust. You’ll go far. Just put it in writing too!
In the Industrial Age we’ve been raised to ask for permission before doing anything. That was part of our basic education as polite and obedient workers.
The thing is, nowadays and as at any time, to create great stuff, it is essential not to ask for permission.
When you are in an organization or any kind of social setting and you have a great idea, if you start asking for permission, you’ll never get it or you’ll become upset before you get it.
Practice the Jesuit saying: “It is much easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission“!
Just go and do it. Even if it means diverting some resources here and there. If the idea is good they’ll follow.
The next time you’ll realize you are about to ask for permission, pause a second and ask yourself if that’s really the right thing to do!
In the post “What’s Your Brand of Courage“, Danny Iny insists upon the different brands of courage: either the fiery exuberant type, or the day-to-day persistent type.
Which one is the most effective? Except in a few occasion (which should not be underestimated as sometimes lives can be deeply changed in those rare events), it is probably the persistence courage that is probably the most important to achieve our goals.
This quote by Mary Anne Radmacher that Danny Iny’s refers to made a great impression on me. Courage is indeed often the quiet voice at the end of the day saying “I will try again tomorrow“. It is courage against complacency, the courage to build up something stone after stone, step after step.
Those of us that show this courage of persistence are possibly more courageous overall than those heroes society shows us on film, books or TV. It’s less glamour, but it’s what changes the world.
Remember. When you’re persistent, you show great courage. Be proud!
Following on our blog post about competition, most people tend to get angry, frustrated and fearful when they realize what they are doing is being imitated. Wrong! That’s absolutely fantastic! It just means that what you are doing is so great that people believe it is worth imitating!
As Pamela Slim says, “When you are great at what you do, people are bound to imitate you. Sometimes they will try to steal your intellectual property, or students, or employees or business model, or artistic genre. It is natural to get upset when this happens. But instead of fighting with the imitator, move on to innovate the next stage of your work. If you are doing your job well, your work is constantly improving and growing. Imitate that.”
And she continues with this marvelous formula: “When imitated, don’t retaliate, innovate.”
We could argue on the contrary: when nobody cares to imitate you, maybe what you are doing is not at the right level?
More great thoughts from Pam Slim in her post 10 Ways to Develop a Mastery Mindset
There is an idea that comes back again and again in all leadership and management books: don’t care so much about your competitors. Instead, concentrate your focus, energy and creativity in creating an awesome product. Be pro-active instead of being re-active.
This comes as a realization that organizations and individuals often spend too much time spying out what the competition is doing. Whether they would create some product that could push them out of the market. Fear is created. Actions become reactions instead of initiatives.
Many of the most successful ventures never cared about competition or imitation. They went their own way.
Some other successful ventures start life by imitating the competition (often because they were created by some former employees) and then, only, progressively, create their own way.
The thing is: you can never be the same as your competition. There are always areas where you’ll be weaker, and areas where you’ll be stronger. Don’t try to level up your competitor by working on your weak areas. Work on your strengths instead. And by doing so, create something truly unique. And the best is, this works for organizations as well as for individuals!
Looking back at when I have done by best work – that is, the work that changed people or organizations, I realize that it is always linked to situations where I exposed myself. And the more I exposed myself, the more effective the result was.
When I was younger I thought you could change the world by the mere power of ideas and intellectual research. That is not the case – or at least it is a very slow way of changing things. Change happens much more effectively through direct intervention – and exposure.
Exposure is tough. It involves overcoming the inevitable feeling of vulnerability. But be it giving a speech on stage, standing up facilitating, giving tough one-to-one feedback, change happens best when the occasion is at the brink of a crisis. When I feel that I am crossing the yellow line just so slightly by not staying in that nice cozy world of unsaid issued. Saying up and loud something people don’t want to hear, showing inadequacies, and at the same time showing the way to change is the most effective way to create change the world needs.
It’s tough to expose oneself. It involves risk. It is emotionally draining. That’s the only way to be an agent of change. Expose yourself!
“Avoid predictions that are impossible. That means, among other things, not trying to peer too far into the future. A narrow question in a time frame of six months to a year, fine” – that’s the general recommendation about forecasting by Dan Gardner in ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway‘.
I am increasingly astounded by the boldness of those producers of business plans that extrapolate into the future… in 5 years or 10 years. That has been made much easier with Excel of course (just copy the formulas into the next years…) but how can that be used to support decision-making? How can we even entertain the idea that the future will evolve linearly and let the nice exponential formulas in our spreadsheet forecast huger and huger growth? Can you just remember how the world was different 10, or even 5 years ago?
For my company, I have decided not to have a business plan. Of course, I don’t need to seek external funding. When/if I’ll do then I’ll cook something knowing it is pure BS to please bankers or investors. In the meantime I just try to have an idea of what the next year will look like, and that’s enough to steer my venture… and end up widely off course already!
Stop spending time doing long term business plans, except maybe as a sensitivity. Concentrate on executing, now and in the next 6 months. You’ll get there much more easily!
If you are interested on some good elements on the limits of business plans, look up this interesting blog by Tim Berry. Although the founder of a business plan software company, his views on the matter are very refreshing.
Age old wisdom: In investing and in life in general, avoiding fatal situations that kill us generally means that we can’t strive for the best possible returns. In other words, trying to follow the best strategies giving the highest returns can be seductive but generally also entails fatal risks – great on the short term but unsustainable on the long term!
Jared Diamond just published a new book, ‘The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies’, in which he describes in details those cultural traits of traditional societies that we should maybe consider re-introducing in our modern world.
In the field of risk management, he reminds us of age-old practices of hunter-gatherers and farmers, that evolved through time for their resilience. For example, traditional farmers generally farm a large number of different small plots (7 to 15 depending on the cultures) in different areas. This is clearly sub-optimal in terms of work, effort and yield. Yet it is the strategy that survived generations because it is the only strategy that ensures survival: diversity in location of the land plots means that even the worst years, some plots of land will give some returns and the farmer’s family will not starve. The current strategy of large fields and unique crops can only work in a developed system involving money where food can be bought in the case of a poor crop.
We are attracted by the stars that produce temporarily incredible returns on investment, that have incredible short-term success. We only forget that it always comes with substantial risks including bankruptcy or starving.
Success on the long term is about survival, and if possible comfortable survival; not great spikes of success followed by abysmal failures. Remember this the next time you’ll feel some hint of envy looking at some other young overnight success. It is defined by luck and in most instances, it is just the premise of a fatal evolution the other way.
Success is just about survival.
Seth Godin says: “The problem isn’t that it’s impossible to pick yourself. The problem is that it’s frightening to pick yourself. It’s far easier to put your future into someone else’s hands than it is to slog your way forward, owning the results as you go“.
Most people wait to be picked (or to be lucky, which is a variation of it). That’s plain wrong. About all successful people did not wait, they just picked themselves. More in this great Seth’s post.
Again and again I find that you are what you believe you are. As I need to assert myself as a consultant in situations that are not always easy, I make sure that I act consistently with the identity I want to have. I pick myself for that activity, and I shape my identity accordingly. I am today what I want to become.
What about you? Have you picked yourself? Why wait? Just be what you want to become. Don’t be afraid: the world will bow to your will!
It is a well known fact in military command that Reserves are the key to success in the uncertain world of battle. As exposed by General Vincent Desportes in his book “Decider dans l’Incertitude” (in French), an excellent book about decision-making in uncertain conditions, reserves are the main tool to manage uncertainty.
The higher the uncertainty, the more courage the commanding officer must have in increasing the size of its reserves. According to Churchill, engagement of the reserve resources is indeed the utmost responsibility of the one in command (and it often makes the decision in battle).
Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, in the book “Great by Choice“, come to the same conclusion: those organizations that thrive on the long term have a far more conservative view on balance sheet and establishment of financial reserves. They don’t necessarily seek the just-in-time; they don’t over-borrow; they don’t extend themselves too thin, even if they find an opportunity to do so. They make sure they are resilient to uncertainty.
Individually and in our organizations, reserves are important. Even if it means some loss of efficiency, they can make the decision when it comes to the realization of specific, unpredictable situations. Not to mention that reserves gives peace of mind when facing the usual ups and downs. Having some reserves is an important approach I also use in my small start-up even in growth mode.
What about you? Do you have enough reserves to face uncertainty? What about your organization? What will you do about it?
Following on our post Why Face-to-Face Relationships Are Still Essential to a Creativity Culture, we need to recognize that some successful collaborative endeavors have flourished across continents in the past few years, using the tools of the Fourth Revolution: Linux, the Anonymous, Wikileaks, to name a few. Some high-tech companies like the acclaimed software company 37signals leverages a worldwide community of programmers, and it has become common practice to hire remote contractors anywhere in the world.
What is then the difference between those organizations which can work collaboratively and remotely, and those that require co-location to create the appropriate context for creating their value?
The actual difference is between the core of the organization and the collaborators. The core of the organization always requires tight collaboration, that always leads to co-location and face-to-face relationship. It is the only way to create effective teams that create incredible stuff. And when one looks at the great examples of remote collaboration, there is always a co-located core of the organization.
Around this core it is possible to leverage a more or less tightly knit network of (occasional or permanent) remote collaborators.
The size of the core depends on the activity, the type of project and the endeavor. Sometimes even it can remain at the level of one or two individuals for simple and straightforward creations. This is why it looks like sometimes it is pure remote collaboration.
The incredible value is always created in a co-located core of the organization. Where is your core?
