Alexandersmap

    Tag: Peter Drucker

    • Between Mediocrity and Excellence

      “But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity’s a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.”
      ― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

      Holy Crap (with a capital C), is the year already over?! In a year packed with experiences, did we experience enough? Is the bucket list half full or half empty? Did we reach the promised land of life satisfaction or will we once again carry over unfulfilled dreams to tomorrow?

      To live an average life is fine. Fine could surely be worse. Fine is better than many people wake up to. We should offer our due respect and gratitude to fine, appreciate it for getting us here and acknowledge it for all that is. But we know there’s another side to fine, because when someone offers that response when we ask them how they’re doing we know we have a problem. An ignore it at your peril problem. Fine is fine for linen, but not for people. We ought to elevate our game beyond fine.

      The trick, I think, is to return our focus to our routine. Now, we know the very word routine infers something akin to average. And average may be a notch below fine on the scale of how the heck are you? But our routine is what we make of it. And a few strategic, small changes to our daily routine bumps the average up just enough to offer dividends over time. This is the basis of James Clear’s Atomic Habits, which is a good book to return to when we’re thinking about making changes in our life.

      “Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

      As we approach the New Year, we can focus on big, hairy audacious goals, because BHAG‘s are fun to imagine, and delightful to achieve. So schedule the trip, sign up for that marathon, write the first page of that novel today, or file for that Limited Liability Corporation you’ve dreamed up. But when that’s done, return to the little things we can do today to make the experience of living right now far better than average. What will we say yes to today? Often that begins with what we’ll say no to. Incremental progress is the name of the game, and it begins with discipline and the smallest of wins.

      We know the expression, what gets measured gets managed (usually attributed to Peter Drucker). So what are we focused on and what are we tracking in our daily lives? To step on the scale every morning won’t trigger weight loss, but it’s a lagging indicator of whatever we did yesterday. Maybe that pound we gained (or lost) is enough to trigger a different decision today. Maybe our lousy sleep score this morning leads us to look at what we ate and drank yesterday and serves as the prompt to make meaningful change today. Measuring isn’t necessarily going to lead to effectively managing, but it does serve to keep us from straying too far off the path to progress.

      We all have different goals for our lives at different stages of it. What do we want to be exceptional at now? To be a good spouse or parent? To rise to the C-suite? What stage of life are we in anyway? What is really meaningful right now that didn’t mean a thing to us in that last stage (or won’t mean much in the next)? To live a fully-optimized life we ought to know where we are now and what will make now resonate as one of the very best stages of our life sometime then, should we be lucky enough to arrive there one day.

      Some things apply to all stages of life, and ought to be part of our core daily ritual. We ought to build and maintain a healthy, vibrant body, mind and soul, that we may thrive now and grow later. Health ought be our foundation and not quicksand pulling us to our demise. If health is our primary goal, what other goals rise to meet that level of urgency? Knowing we can’t do everything, what are our two or possibly three most important things?

      A change in the calendar is nothing but a reminder that the future is calling, and asking what the heck we want to be next. Don’t we owe it to ourselves for that to be something beyond the average we’ve lived with up to now? We may only focus on goals once a year (I hope not), but the entire process is about lifestyle design. Decide what to be and go be it, but know that we can’t be everything.

      What does personal excellence (arete) mean to us now? Choose to rise towards excellence in the few things that will make the greatest difference in our lives, and learning to accept mediocrity in all the rest. We may hate the idea of being mediocre at anything, but we can’t be excellent at everything. So what is worthy of the climb? What is worthy of our precious time? Finding the answer offers a clear path between mediocrity and excellence.

    • The Whisper

      “The key to efficiency is doing things right. The key to effectiveness is doing the right things.” — Peter Drucker

      I’ve made some changes this summer that have in turn changed how I spend my time. Things I did in an unfocused way have become very focused, while things I shouldn’t have focused on at all have been removed entirely from my day. When we make changes, it’s important to take stock of how we react to these changes. What do we want more of? What do we miss? Which habits are going to finally stick and which will we forever be trying to kick?

      The trick in Drucker’s quote is knowing enough to stop doing the wrong things. We haven’t got time for wrong things in this brief go at things. Knowing the difference between what is right for us and what isn’t thus becomes essential to an effective life. But what is right and what is wrong anyway?

      To borrow from The Tubes old song, what do you want from life? What are we being efficient at that doesn’t align with what we want? If we’re moving with purpose but we’re going in the wrong direction aren’t we just wasting time? Life requires constant assessment. To check the compass now and then to find our true north before taking another step. But knowing what our true north is in the first place requires a level of self-awareness that takes time to develop.

      So it is that we must tackle everything we do as if it’s the most important thing in the world for us in that moment. Painting a room? Aim for perfect lines. Writing a proposal? Look for words that inspire and eliminate what detracts from the real message until it flows like a clear mountain stream. Grilling dinner? Turn down the heat and focus on the perfect moment to flip that fillet. Perfection lies within us, waiting for us to focus on every opportunity to reveal it.

      Any task or odd job will speak to us, informing us that yes, this is the right path, or no, this won’t do for us. If we half-ass the work, we’ll never know the potential in it (let alone our own potential). The whisper comes to those who are focused on excellence in whatever they do. That doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it once we’ve determined it isn’t right for us, but having done it well, we may leave it behind with honor and a hint for where to go next on our journey.

    • How Was Your Experience?

      I received the same question from my dentist and my automobile service team recently—How was your experience? It turns out both left me a bit disappointed this time around, where I’d come to expect excellence. Perhaps that expectation led me there, or maybe they simply didn’t measure up to their own standards. Either way it was the same result.

      We ought to ask ourselves this question every day with an ever-higher standard for our own behavior, execution on goals, and an ever more refined philosophy for how a life should be lived. What gets measured gets managed, as Peter Drucker supposedly said. Each day offers an opportunity to ask ourselves, how’s it really going? What needs to change? How do we become a better version of ourselves than we were yesterday? It starts with the right questions and follows with an honest answer.

    • Doing, With Purpose

      “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker

      “You seem to spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive, and you will probably survive…. It’s the wrong question! The question is how to be useful.” — Peter Drucker to a young Jim Collins (via Nextbigideaclub.com)

      In September, Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay is chock full of bait fish—millions of tiny fish trying to make a go of it in this world, as countless birds and bigger fish attempt to turn that bait fish’s purpose in life to be their breakfast. It’s a fish-eat-fish world on display, and offers lessons for those who witness it. Mostly, it’s a reminder to avoid being a bait fish. For us land-based creatures, the best way to avoid that is to live with purpose.

      We all dabble in those questions of purpose, the “Why are we here? questions. But isn’t that too big a place to start? Purpose is an impossibly big scope to answer with such a broad question. We ought to break it down into bite-sized questions that determine our unique value: “What do I do well? “How can I translate that into serving those who need this value the most?” and “What do I need to learn to become even more valuable for those I wish to serve?” are good starting places for building purpose into our lives.

      It’s fair to ask ourselves why we’re doing something. It’s appropriate to wonder where our work is leading us. And we ought to do something with the answers when we arrive at them, for our opportunity to do useful things resides in a very brief window of time. Feeling the urgency of the moment and doing something with it begins with knowing what both that something and that it really are for us.

      When we leave our lives to chance, we sometimes stumble upon a meaningful life. But more often than not, we end up getting chewed up in the feeding frenzy of life. Purpose brings us higher up the food chain, where we might rise above mere existence to a more valuable destination.

      Which leads back to that question of questions, posed so well by Mary Oliver in her poem The Summer Day:

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

    • It Has Potential

      Looking out the window on a brisk morning on Cape Cod. Streaks of dark clouds mix with blue sky. Faint orange hints at the possibilities of the sunrise. It doesn’t look like a 10 right now, but it’s not a bust either. This sunrise has potential.

      Isn’t that the feeling we look for in every morning? We woke up, hey that’s a 10 right there! Aches, pains, ailments and troubles subtract from the score. Broken promises, setbacks, slips of the tongue, angry drivers and blatant disregard for others subtract more. But right now, what might go wrong in the day doesn’t matter a lick. This day has potential.

      “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”—Henry David Thoreau

      It’s a lot easier to start with a 10 and work to keep it there than to wake up with a 4 with a pit in your stomach dreading the day, trying like mad to build something of it. Each day has potential, and so do we, if we’ll make something of the opportunity. So I weave together habits of reading and writing and a bit of movement and great coffee and try to keep the 10 going as long as possible. Sometimes just making it through the day is all you can hope for, and this isn’t a call for blind optimism. But it is a call for gratitude, for starting the day on a positive note and working to keep the streak alive instead of endlessly pushing uphill like Sisyphus.

      My coat is too thin to linger out in the wind chill so I cheat and look out the window at the brightening sky. The sun crested the hills and I walked across the crunchy, frosted lawn and down to the water. The sky is a light blue streaked in faint pink. Pretty, but not a 10. But I’m grateful for the opportunity to see it, and to reflect on the potential this day brings. No day is perfect, but every day can be great, or at least pretty good, and that adds up to a great life.

      “The key to a great life is simply having a bunch of great days. So you can think about it one day at a time.” – Peter Adeney

      “They say: “Think big! Have a compelling vision!” I say: Think small. Do something super cool by the end of the day!” – Peter Drucker

      There you go, start with a 10, do something super cool by the end of the day to keep it a 10 (or as close as you can get it) and string together as many great days as possible. Seems a worthy challenge, and the best opportunity to make something of this potential.

    • Doing What You Have to Do

      “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus

      If New Year’s Day serves as the traditional launch point for goals and objectives, the 4th of July holiday (in the United States) serves as the midway point for the year.  The first two quarters are over, it’s time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t and apply it to the two quarters to come.  This applies in your career, but also with personal objectives.  This is also a time to assess what you’d like to become in the second half of the year and build towards it.  So with that in mind, I’m certainly reviewing and revising my business plan for 2019, and I’m doing the same with my personal plan.  They’re intertwined and should be scrutinized with equal measure.

      If there’s one theme constant across business and personal goals, it’s that I need to do more of the “good” things and less of the “bad” things.  Schedule more productive meetings and less unproductive meetings.  More exercise and less junk food.  More thoughtful discussion with key decision-makers, less checking the box with people who pay you lip service and never commit to buy.

      So the rowing and the 10 burpees per day are great, but increasing total meters rowed and incrementally moving the burpees up to 12 would be better so long as the shoulder pain is in check.  The shoulder injury occurred last fall when I pushed the daily total to 50 per day and ignored the objections my body was broadcasting clearly. So increase, but in manageable increments. Likewise, Increasing the number of productive face-to-face meetings is surely beneficial, and revising the target upward at the halfway mark is a good idea so long as it doesn’t dilute the quality of the meetings or ultimately the output in monthly sales revenue. Being the busiest isn’t a sign of most productive. In fact the two rarely seem to go hand and hand. Busywork can plug up the day but ultimately doesn’t get you anywhere. Someone I once worked with used the term “high gain activity” to describe the type of productive work that advances you towards your objectives, and I’ve adopted that phrase into my own vocabulary. Focusing on high gain activity means you aren’t hiding in your work, you’re maximizing your productivity through action.

      Productivity starts with knowing what you’re advancing towards, or as Epictetus said, knowing what you would be.  Sometimes that’s simple.  I would be better off healthier and twenty pounds lighter than I currently am, so that drives behavior like daily exercise and eating in moderation.  I could use more of each.  But larger goals require some deep thought and self-knowledge.  I would be better off long term in my career if I developed a more strategic and productive channel, met with more and better qualified clients and prospects and if I measure the results.

      “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” – Peter Drucker

      Tracking the key activities is essential to accomplishing the big things.  What gets tracked gets done.  Which means breaking down big goals into daily habits, which are tasks done automatically and repeated day-to-day.  Epictetus would say do what you have to do, Bill Bellichick would say “Do your job.” and Peter Drucker would say “Do you duty”.

      “Our duty is rarely easy, but it is important.  It’s also usually the harder choice.  But we must do it.” – Ryan Holiday