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Training Excellence
“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” –Robert H. Schuller
I’m not much of a TV person, but recently I’ve been watching a little bit of Top Gear, the BBC Network’s excellent car program. If you haven’t seen it, see it.
Anyway, I thought to myself “these guys live the life: go to exotic places, drive around fantastic cars, and just tease each other the whole way.” Only when I stopped to think about what would actually have to go in to a production like Top Gear did I realize how much work that entire team is doing when the cameras are off.
That sequence of thought has me looking around for “excellence in training.” For example, the NBA Finals kick off tonight. As I write this, I’m sure players and coaches from both sides are hard at work. Muscles need to be stretched, jump shots need to be honed, and ankles need to be taped.
The highest level of achievement is no accident. I love the quote from Robert H. Schuller listed at the beginning of this post. When we study “greatness,” we focus on the success. We even pay a lot of attention to the failures that precede the success. But we very rarely, at least in my experience, focus on the minute, daily improvements made each day through diligent preparation.
The reason for this, perhaps, is because it’s hard to sell books, movies, or TV shows about small, disciplined steps forward. We like explosions! We like to see triumph in the face of hardship! As a rule, we’ll pay good money to read or see stories like that. But would I pay to watch a show about a man sitting down day after day to figure out how a light bulb should work? Nah, just let me know how it ended.
One of the most excellent books I’ve read is a popular one: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. His book gave rise to “The Ten Thousand Hours Rule.” His research suggested that true mastery of a subject or skill is developed through 10,000 hours of practice and preparation. Gladwell cites the Beatles and their stints and hole-in-the-wall clubs, Bill Gates sneaking out of his bedroom window to tinker with his school’s computer, and countless other examples of greatness built through consistent preparation. Paraphrasing Gladwell, he states “these people aren’t overly exceptional, or simply lucky. They were blessed with opportunities to work really, really hard. And they did.”
As you go about your daily work, whether in an office, at home, or anywhere in the world, focus on the true results you really want to see in yourself. How can you prepare TODAY to ensure that result SOMEDAY?
Intentions
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results” –Milton Friedman
I read the above quote by Milton Friedman, a 20th Century economist, early this morning. Though the quote focuses mostly on political, social, and economic programs, I found it particularly enlightening from a business and team sense.
Far from supplying a long diatribe of instances where my intentions and results matched or where they were horribly mismatched, I’m mostly interested in the process by which intentions manufacture results. What kinds of practices incubate a great intention and turn that intention into a satisfactory or excellent result? Below are some simple suggestions:
Communicate
Many an initiative has died a slow death without the nourishing oxygen of communication. Countless books, articles, and blogs speak to its importance, and for good reason. In my experience, communicating the intention is only half the battle. The leader must communicate the process or system by which the strategy will be implemented and accounted. Who is responsible for what? How will it be done? This leads to the next ingredient:
Be Accountable
If our intentions our pure, as we all hope they are, then our activities should be just as pure. If a new manager intends to conduct a great performance review of one of her direct reports, she had better follow through and prepare (and then hold) an excellent performance review. If a new coach wants to instill a more disciplined culture into his team, he had better set aside time in practice for drills that create discipline.
Face Reality
When a leader or manager has communicated the strategy and followed through on the implementation activities, he or she has approached the most difficult phase: determine if the plan and actions are working. Facing reality can be fraught with discomfort. Nobody wants to feel or be viewed as a failure. However, if we’re serious about turning our grandiose intentions into great results, we’ve got to be serious about examining the results of our activities and making changes where necessary.
What tools or processes do you use to turn your best intentions into your best results?
Examining Leadership 