While Promoting Nothing but Fear
The dream of previous generations was to find a good job, settle in, work hard, get promoted and retire.
People were happy to be in one place, and for many of them, one place provided them everything they needed.
The world has change.
Business has changed.
People have changed.
I recently read the book Jump by Kim Perell. It's not exactly a business book, definitely geared towards taking big leaps - more framed for life in general.
The core ideas are great. Nothing dramatically different than a lot of what you will find in other books in the self-help genre, however the presentation is on point and well structured.
Kim sets up the three main buckets for why people need to take big leaps (or jumps) in their life.
You have no choice (i.e. something has happened to you)
You see an opportunity
You're feeling stuck
The book did connect for me on a personal level, however I found a lot of parallels for my professional life as well.
I've spent the last 10+ years of my career in roles that came with the responsibility of changing things. Often those changes would be significant (the business term popularized these days is 'transformative').
Here's how I use Kim's life changing structure to drive massive value for the organization's I work for.
Mindset
No matter what the project is, the biggest barrier to effective change is fear.
It's not that people are resistant to change, they simply prefer the comfort of what they know. The unknown generates a fear response from people. The further away from the decision makers they are, the worse this typically gets.
When people operate from a position of fear, they will start focusing on the reasons something can't work versus the reasons that it can.
Understanding that the people around you are afraid to fail, afraid they may not have the right experience, afraid they won't have the time to properly learn or adapt to new circumstances or that they don't have the tools or resources to be successful is critical to a successful change.
Each one of those fears needs to be addressed. People need to feel heard. They need to be included and understanding how they will fit in and how things will work in the world of tomorrow.
Using brute force and just jamming something through because "it's a good idea /it's the right idea" is the fastest way to diminish your future success. The time you spend up front working through the fears of the team, the bigger the dividends will be on the back end.
Visualize Success
Believing that you can achieve the goal makes it infinitely easier to achieve. No matter what project you are working on or what implementation you are going to put forward, having the confidence that you can do it creates resilience within the team.
Everything has bumps in the road. There will always be unexpected challenges. As hard as you try, you will never perfectly anticipate everything that could go wrong.
The team's confidence in knowing that they can (and will) achieve the goal helps mitigate the impact of these detours.
One way I have always helped my team focus on this is sharing a personal mantra.
Few things in life are as hard or as complicated as we like to make them out to be
Never let people feel they are fighting a losing battle. If they believe they will fail, they most likely will.
Make Decisions
The advice I always give to my team is to make a choice. Indecision kills.
No I don't work in anything that dramatic, however decision paralysis and not doing anything rarely helps.
Making decisions forces people to understand a situation, use the information at hand and act.
While it may not be the 'right' or best choice, there will also be something to learn. Getting people used to defaulting to action has been one of the best ways I have found to develop high performing teams (see my article on the traits of high potential employees)
What Separates High Potentials from Everyone Else
4 key traits of high performing employees and what you can change to deliver the same types of resultsmedium.com
Define Success
Transformative chance comes from understanding exactly where you were and knowing where you expect to be.
It's not about "we will be better", it's "we will be able to process 327 pieces per hour…".
People get lost and spin their wheels trying to make things better without knowing exactly where the bullseye is. The more specific you are in your goals, the better you will be able to achieve them.
This is because you have to be able to influence the right inputs and outputs for each process, each system, each workflow. In the same way that you can't be everything to everyone when selling a product, you can't make improvements if your goal is to make everything better with one big brush.
Conclusion
By focusing on those four areas, you can drive incredible success at work in the same way that you can make fundamental change in your personal life.
Change is inevitable. Life keeps coming. Fear is the price of entry.
Focus more on leaning in when you want to win.
Everyone always wishes they had more courage, no one ever finds themselves at their end of their life wishing they were more conservative in following their dreams.
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