Breadcrumbs: 7 Early Career Lessons I Had to Learn the Hard Way

Introduction

I distinctly remember a high school career day when the professional leading the presentation asked the question “Who is going to work in a career that doesn’t require interacting with people?”?I still think I surprised him when I was the only person who confidently raised my hand.?Having already interrupted the flow, the presenter stopped to challenge me and asked that simple question, “Why?”?I responded that I was going to be an engineer; I was going to be a technical individual and I wouldn’t have to work with others because as long as I did good work, that work would speak for itself.?Unfortunately, it would take me over 8 years to realize just how wrong I was, and another 5 after that to be able to articulate why.

When I started my first engineering job out of college, I came in as a cocky, arrogant, know-it-all who was going to show you how to do it, regardless of how much experience you had, or how little I had.?At the time, I believed experience meant nothing, interpersonal skills were worthless, and all problems could be solved through sheer willpower and determination.?Needless to say, this didn’t help me in trying to advance my young career.?After being hired and then “laid off” in less than six months at two separate companies due to “business restructuring” or “not winning a contract,” I was reminded of the saying “If you have the same problem with everyone, maybe you’re the problem.”?It was finally time for me to take responsibility and change, rather than try to force the world to change around me.

Why the lengthy introduction??Because I want to illustrate the result of trying to do it all on your own.?I had failed to grasp the importance of emotional intelligence and its impact on the world.?Sure, I could blame my story on the fact the economy was still recovering from the 2008 recession, that I had joined a volatile company making bespoke bicycles with no business plan, or that I later joined a tiny engineering firm trying to win a project bigger than they’d ever won before, but I knew those were all excuses for my personal shortcomings.?I had failed to build relationships in a collaborative environment where I could learn and be wrong without feeling personally attacked.?I knew I needed to learn emotional intelligence but without someone to guide me and learn from, I didn’t know where to start.

Either through coincidence or (most likely) my actions, I had failed to connect with someone a few years ahead of me who could help me guide me through the dark, overgrown forest of early career development and set me up for success.?Without a mentor to show me the way, I had to navigate the forest by myself to get back on the path I wanted.?I certainly got lost a few times along the way, and while I’m not out of the forest yet, my intention with this series is lay a trail of breadcrumbs so those in similar situations may have the guidance I was looking for.

Breadcrumbs:

1.??????Shut up and listen – how to learn more (and look smarter)

2.??????Own your mistakes – how to increase credibility

3.??????“Pick your battles, don’t be a dick” – how to be more efficient

4.??????Solicit Feedback – how to constantly learn and improve

5.??????Speak facts, not emotions – how to focus on the problem at hand

6.??????Go forth and execute – how to always move forward

7.??????Do the right thing – how to make sure you can live with yourself

Shut up and listen

This seems so obvious, but early on I felt the need to constantly interject a thought or correct an inaccurate statement someone made during a conversation.?This accomplished two things:

(1)???it solidified in people’s minds that I was a know-it-all that didn’t really know anything, and I added no value to their organization.

(2)???it deprived me of the opportunity to learn.?

At one of my first jobs, I was working with another employee to assemble wooden bicycle frames.?At this point I was incredibly familiar with bicycle components, having built and raced multiple bikes before, worked as a bike mechanic, and had even built my own frame from steel tubing.?The thing is, I’d never worked with wooden frames before.?(For reference, a wooden bicycle frame is closer to a piece of hand-fitted, custom furniture than an actual bicycle in most cases).?“How hard can it be??It just a bicycle frame and I’m an expert at everything bicycles,” I thought to myself.?It turns out I didn’t know anything, but what’s worse is that I didn’t know I didn’t know anything.?We managed to eventually assemble the frames, but not after significant rework by the other employee who had to come back and fix the numerous errors induced by my stubbornness of “knowing better” than the guy who had been doing this exact job for years.?Not only did my arrogance result in lost productivity and the potential to ship a defective product that could have hurt someone, it deprived me of the opportunity to learn the process and build a relationship that would have allowed us to improve the process together.

Unfortunately, it would take me a couple more years (and more examples similar to the above situation than I care to admit) to acknowledge that I didn’t know it all and my development was being hindered by this arrogance.?As soon as I learned to “shut up and listen,” I instantly started to learn more about people, processes and underlying motivations than I ever had in the past.?In the rare situation when I had a potentially more effective solution, others were much more willing to listen and collaborate because I had already invested in them.

• How much of the talking / directing do you do in your interactions with others??More than 50%??Less than 20%???The more you talk, the less opportunity you have to learn.
• Pay attention to how you engage in conversations with people.?Assertive and authoritarian styles have their place but should be reserved for rare situations and should not be the go-to approach.?Default to inquisitive and collaborative.?Assume the person you’re working with ALWAYS knows more than you do.
• Ask follow up questions when talking to people – this not only shows you’re invested in the conversation but also gives you an opportunity to learn more about the people and the process.
• Ask yourself “why am I about to speak?”?If it’s to try and prove you’re smarter than someone or speak with great authority and little knowledge, shut up and listen.

“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid, than open it and remove all doubt” – Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, the Book of Proverbs or Maurice Switzer – ?take your pick .

Own your mistakes

I think it’s pretty safe to assume all of us make mistakes.?I’d also venture to guess most of us have run across the type of person that believes nothing is their fault; it’s always the result of someone or something that is completely outside of their control.?Don’t be that person.?Own (and even embrace) your mistakes.

I tried to be like Teflon early in my career, nothing could stick to me.?I believed someone was out there keeping a scorecard of all the failures attributed to me and if I reached some arbitrary threshold I would forever be labeled a failure.?This was incredibly taxing, but I had convinced myself it was necessary to avoid forever being a failure.

Around the time I started making these changes to my mindset, I also tried to fundamentally shift the way I thought about blame and failure.?I realized that by trying to shift the blame, all I did was create a roadblock.?This not only prevented me from reaching the solution as quickly as possible, it hindered my development.?From a purely practical point, it was faster to admit a mistake, take the blame and move forward as a group.?Trying to assign (or deflect) blame not only created a sense of unhealthy competition, it distracted the group from the actual goal – were we trying to solve the problem at hand or make sure we knew who screwed up?

I’ve found two primary benefits from owning your mistakes: professional credibility and learning.

It took me a while to realize the statements “I don’t know” or “yes, I screwed that up” are significantly more powerful than any excuse or trying to explain the root cause away to another person, group or set of circumstances.?In any reasonably healthy organization, people don’t care about who screwed up, they care about reaching the goal.?Every person, at some point in their career, has made a decision that resulted in inefficiencies and not reaching the goal as quickly as possible.?This is human nature; some of us make mistakes hourly, others are lucky enough to go a few days or even weeks between mistakes.?By owning up to the mistake, you demonstrate to the group that you are aware of the decision you made and that you’ve learned from it.?This isn’t to say you should go out and throw yourself on every sword that presents itself, but if you’re in a situation where you made a decision that led to an adverse situation, own it.?You will not only allow the group to reach the goal faster, people will respect you because you had the courage to own your part of the decision.?Bonus tip: if you have a recommendation for how to get back on track, bring it up.?This again refocuses the group on the goal and demonstrates your leadership skills.

Here’s another way to think about it, if a project goes perfectly, with no hiccups, missed deadlines or roadblocks, how much opportunity did you have to learn???Now, remember those projects where seemingly nothing went right, and you had to grind to get it back on track and even then, entire goals were missed??Which situation did you learn more from??Which lessons stuck with you the longest??There is certainly a time and place for being led through a project by an expert to learn the process but, in my experience, the real learning comes when you’re writing the rules as you go and encounter roadblock after roadblock.?While frustrating at the time, try to embrace these situations and take every lesson from them you can, they will be invaluable to your future growth.

Finally, consider reframing how you approach situations.?This may feel like mind games but try referring to “problems” as “opportunities” and “mistakes” with “learning opportunities.”?Go back through this section and switch out those words.?See how the tone shifts from avoidance to growth??This is a subtle, but absolutely critical shift, and one I found that led to significant personal growth.

Remember:

• Owning your mistakes is about enabling you, and the group, to reach a goal faster.
• Don’t just own your mistakes.?Understand what led up to it and why it happened.?Work to close that gap so it doesn’t happen again.?Every mistake you make is an opportunity to learn something new.
• If you’re in an organization that views mistakes as an opportunity for punishment, rather than learning, consider reevaluating if you want to remain in that organization.

“Pick your battles, don’t be a dick”

I have this saying posted where I can see it daily as a reminder to myself.?As I started to apply many of the points discussed in this series, I noticed that I was quick to become defensive any time a situation didn’t go perfectly the way I’d envisioned (See Shut up and Listen and Own Your Mistakes).?Not only was this not productive, it was incredibly exhausting.?Here’s the thing about me, I’m lazy.?This isn’t efficiency, I have a deep distain of doing things that don’t need to be done – there are whole books on this topic, I won’t cover it here.?If there’s an easier, less messy approach that requires fewer steps and still achieves a similar result, it’s a safe bet that’s the route I’m going to take.?I started to apply these same principles to how I approached people.?

In our interactions with others we are presented with countless opportunities to steer decisions, interrupt conversations or collaborate.?How are you approaching these?

In a previous life, I spent a lot of time riding and racing bicycles; an analogy from that time felt particularly relevant to these situations.?Bike racers typically refer to the term “matches to burn” or “the size of your matchbox.”?This describes the number of times a racer can sprint, try to close a gap, or make any significant physical exertion before they’re exhausted and have to hide in the pack the rest of the race because they cannot contribute anything else to their team.?I started to view my conversations the same way.?Instead of physical exertion, I started to acknowledge every interaction I participated in was going to require some form of emotional investment.?Each interaction would pull from a theoretical emotional match box.?There were only so many of these interactions I could participate in before I would be tapped out and unable to provide any more meaningful contribution before I had to go recharge.

As I began to apply this principle of carefully picking the interactions I participated in, I began to notice another dimension I’d refused to acknowledge existed.?Sticking with the fire example, we’ll call this “goodwill accelerant”.?I noticed that in some situations, I would have to burn a lot of matches to realize the desired result (start the fire).?The more I started to work people and gain their trust and respect, the fewer matches I had to burn to realize the same result.?It turns out if someone trusts you, they’re a lot more willing to take you at your word, and work together towards a solution.?This is so much easier than trying to bludgeon someone with data in an attempt to change their mind.?In the right conditions, I began to realize I would only need to make a small investment from my matchbox and the trust and energy of the group would run with it.?It was exactly like pouring accelerant on a fire.

Realizing this goodwill accelerant even existed created a fundamental shift in my interpersonal communication.?No longer was I only measuring my levels of engagement and investment, I started to acknowledge and measure the group’s.??On top of this, I went back to being lazy.?I didn’t need to interrupt a conversation just because something wasn’t (my view of) perfect if it was going to be good enough to achieve the result needed.?Not only would interrupting force me to burn emotional matches, it forced me to expend accelerant I couldn’t get back.?

I quickly learned, it’s easy to burn goodwill accelerant and it typically takes a longer time to refill.?I was scraping the bottom.?While you can refill the emotional matchbox with a walk around the block, a good night’s rest or whatever you do to emotionally recharge, you can only pour out accelerant; others have to fill the tank for you.?I have found people typically contribute to your accelerant tank when you add something of value to their situation.?Solve a big, tricky problem for someone??Here, have a pour.?Teach someone something they didn’t know before??There’s another pour.?By burning emotional matches, you have the opportunity to accumulate more accelerant, but there’s a balance here.?HOW you approach problems and interactions is arguably as, if not more, important than the problem you solve.?Most of us have worked with someone who is incredibly intelligent and can solve just about any problem, but we hate asking them for help because we know they’re going to be a jerk about it.?That person probably has a large emotional matchbox but has a pretty dry tank of accelerant.?Strive to be the person that can invest your emotional matches and translate them into accelerant.?Then, recharge and use that accelerant to further your goals.

Here’s the thing about matches and accelerant – they are a representation of a state of potential.?It is the physical manifestation of what could be.?While emotional matches, at times, can be enough to start the fire, goodwill accelerant is what helps you turn that tiny flame into a bonfire, driving you forward.?

I don’t remember the exact moment but at some point, the thought “pick your battles, don’t be a dick” formed in my head.?It stuck.?This perfectly summarized my newfound approach to interactions with others.?First, I needed to start by approaching conversations with more grace (see Shut Up and Listen).???I also needed to acknowledge that to grow, I was going to have to carefully choose the conversations and interactions I dove into head first.?By constantly reminding myself of this (sometimes even more frequently than I care to admit), I have been able to avoid (most of) the briar patches I previously fell into and focus my energy on opportunities where I can truly add value.

The matchbox and accelerant analogy is elegant; it creates an image of consuming an opportunity to further a goal.?It’s elegant but it’s also messy.?“Pick your battles, don’t be a dick” is lazy; it is a constant reminder to myself to carefully select the opportunities I will pursue and to be mindful of the investment I need to make to further a goal.

In summary:

• You only have so many emotional matches in a day.?Use them wisely.?It’s ok to walk away from losing situations, or not even get involved in the first place.
• While it’s possible to “win” an argument or decision with only emotion (and hopefully a little data), it will probably come at a huge cost.?This also isn’t sustainable.?Building respect, goodwill and credibility will allow you to get much further than just building a bigger matchbox.
• How you approach people, and problems, is paramount.?Try to build goodwill along the way, rather than just trying to win at all costs.
• Pick your battles, don’t be a dick.

Solicit Feedback.?Then ask for feedback on how you receive feedback

All of these points work, in theory, but how are you going to know if you’ve slipped over the edge on the confidence/arrogance boundary??While annual performance reviews are one type of feedback, personally, I prefer near-constant, minor course corrections along the way, rather than significant directional changes less frequently.?

I had previously adopted the attitude that I’m going to do what I think it best and someone will tell me if I’m doing something wrong (dangerous, unsafe, etc.).?I came to realize that not only was I relying on someone to go out of their way to correct me and steer me away from the cliff edge, that attitude only protected me from the negative.?It did nothing to help me improve.??

Instead of hoping for someone to correct me, I began to actively seek out friends, managers and co-workers and ask them for feedback on our interactions.?Simply by asking questions or performing my own self-assessment and sharing it, I’ve been able to receive invaluable feedback because I’m no longer trying to do it myself and rely on someone to steer me away from the cliff, I am now actively taking steps to improve and stay farther away from that cliff edge than ever before.

I struggled with this at first but below are some questions I found helpful when asking for feedback.?Remember to keep them as open-ended questions (try and phrase all questions with “how” or “what” – try to avoid “why”, it can come across as negative and make people defensive) and if that fails try to label the situation with your own self-assessment.?Chances are if you open with how things went, people will tend to build off of that.

• How did that go?
• What could/should I have done differently? What is one thing I could have improved in that interaction?
• It seems like I (overreached there, talked out of turn, really screwed that one up, etc.)

While we could stop there, I found one more tidbit on feedback I’ve found incredibly useful.?After feedback has been offered, ask for feedback on how you received it.?Someone may have just given you the best advice in the world but if you have a sour attitude when receiving it, how often do you think that person is to want to help you out again in the future??Sometime after you’ve received the initial feedback, follow up with that person.?Summarize the feedback you received from them “last week you mentioned that I probably should have done X instead of Y.?When you offered that feedback, how did I respond to it?”?If they’re struggling here, you can even throw in a label, “I feel like I came across as ungrateful” to help prompt them.?This simple act not only shows that you recognize the feedback they gave, but also acknowledge that your outward reactions to feedback are critical as well.

If you feel you’re not getting the level of engagement you were hoping for or want to take this a step further, try reframing the question from feedback to asking for advice.?“If you were in my shoes, what would you have done?”?This approaches the same question from a different angle but asks the person to put themselves in your shoes, forcing them to empathize with your situation.?This typically leads to a higher level of engagement and more constructive feedback or advice.

Some reminders:

• Ask for feedback early, and often.
• Feedback is not about self-validation, it’s about constantly learning and growing.?Know the difference.
• It’s ok to push people a little bit.?When asking for feedback, your goal isn’t to change their mind, it’s to make sure you full understand their position.?Approach this from a position of learning and development.
• Be mindful of how you react when you receive feedback.?Ask for feedback on your reactions and responses.?Adjust accordingly.
• Avoid the echo chamber – solicit feedback from a variety of sources and not just the people you like and get along with.?This is not only a great way to find blind spots, there’s a chance you may build some allies along the way.

Speak facts, not emotions - “let’s not let our emotions get in the way of our analysis”

If you have to do only one of things well, make it this one.?This is not to say that we should all be emotionless robots, but I noticed an immediate shift in my results and interactions with people when I began to focus on the facts and data, rather than the emotions surrounding the situation.?I’d previously thought any disagreement was a personal attack on me, and I would immediately lock down and defend my position well past the point where I knew I was wrong.?You can imagine how well this went over with my peers.

Here’s the thing about engineering (and many other numbers/data-based professions) – opinions can be translated into facts and those facts can be proven or disproven against an acceptance criteria.?I think the beam will break and you don’t think it will??Cool, there’s an equation for that based on empirical data, or we can just test it to see.?Even in human psychology or the social sciences, data exists (or can be generated) for most situations, albeit you’ll probably have a little wider confidence interval than in a pure engineering test.?Every opinion has data and a confidence interval around it.

The shift from emotion to facts isn’t the easiest thing to do.?

I recently had the opportunity to test this theory.?I was asked to help get a project back on track that was a year late and had been escalated to the highest levels of the customer’s leadership team.?The customer was frustrated because we weren’t delivering or doing what they asked us to and the internal team was frustrated because they felt the customer was constantly demanding the impossible.?We were on the verge of losing the business and a critical opportunity with this customer.?I knew nothing about the product, how it was designed, built, or intended to function, but was told I had a month to deliver something experts had struggled to solve for over a year.?Now, I like a challenge just as much as the next person, but this seemed a little over the top.?Since I knew nothing about the process or product and there were experts working for the customer, I wasn’t going to bluff my way through this one or rely on what I thought I knew.?We were going to have to solve this together.?For a week, I explored every input and output of the process, pulled all of the historical data and generated new data, both to help me understand the process, but also prove or disprove what we thought we knew.?Rather than coming in to my first meeting with the customer and saying “here’s the answer,” I essentially threw all the data I had on the table and said “here’s what I have right now, and this is what I think it means.?What did I miss and where am I wrong?”?(I’d like to say I played dumb but I really didn’t know anything so there was less playing than I care to admit).?The shift in the conversation was almost instantaneous.?Instead of making excuses about why we couldn’t do the impossible or claiming I knew the right answer, the data was right there in front of them.?Gradually, we collectively reached the decision that the original approach wasn’t viable for this project and we would have to deviate.?While the customer still wanted us to deliver in a month (now three weeks) we had the data to demonstrate that wasn’t even a possibility.?Together, and based on the facts and data, we agreed to an accelerated three-month timeline.?Every week, we demonstrated that a facts-focused discussion could steer the conversation with the customer.?Gone were the excuses.?Instead, we came prepared with facts and hard data: test results, ship dates, run times, etc.?Everything was right there for the customer to see and analyze if they wanted.?This didn’t stop them from pushing us to go faster, but any time they did, we had the data to present why that wasn’t possible or the risk associated with the proposed path.?This data-focused approach allowed us to cut through the emotions that had previously clouded this project, ultimately delivering the desired result.

By shifting to a factual, data-based discussion, you are able to remove almost all emotion from the discussion and focus purely on the opportunity at hand.?Think about what brought you (and all the other opinions) together in the first place – you were probably trying to address some opportunity and people have different ideas on how to solve it, that’s good!?At the end of the day, what do you care about more, that the opportunity is solved or who solved it and how it was solved? (As always, assuming within the relevant ethical, legal and regulatory requirements.)

The unintended consequence of shifting from emotional to data-based discussions is it buys you inordinate amounts of professional credibility.?Suddenly, political capital, title, position or size of personality or ego has little say in the outcome of the decision.?In my experience, there will always be a few hold outs who take opposing viewpoints as a direct challenge to their title, position or authority but chances are you’ll win the group’s trust by coming to the table with a solid, data-backed proposal.?I’ve seen engineers straight out of college present proposals that were almost polar opposites to the recommendation of an engineer who has worked longer than the new engineer had been alive.?In the situation where the new engineer brings data and leaves emotion out of the discussion, one of two things happen: (1) the experienced engineer changes their recommendation almost immediately, (2) the new engineer is presented with an opportunity to learn why that particular approach won’t work and is offered the opportunity to review the data supporting that conclusion.

As with all of these subjects, there’s so much more detail and nuance, but here are a few of my recommendations:

• Always come prepared with data
• Go reread “Pick your battles, don’t be a dick”.?How data is presented matters as much as what is presented.
• When discussing differing opinions, keep focused on the problem you’re trying to solve and the end solution, not who is right or wrong.?This of it like a path to the top of a mountain.?The end goal is to get to the top, there are a lot of ways to get there.?
• Be willing (and able) to change your opinion if someone presents an alternative solution where the data indicates a more favorable outcome is likely.?Use these as learning opportunities to expand your knowledge base
• When you feel emotion starting to creep into situations with conflicting viewpoints, take a moment to step back and ask why the emotions are intruding.?Has the person/group transitioned from focusing on the problem to focusing on the person??Are you afraid that your opinion or proposed solution won’t be chosen??Always make sure you’re focusing on attacking the problem, not the people.?If you feel like someone else has made that shift, don’t be afraid to refocus on the problem, especially the facts and data presented.

“Go forth and execute”

This quote resulted from a number of conversations with an intern I worked with.?For this example, I’ll call the intern Jill – not the person’s actual name, or maybe even gender.?Jill was driven and wanted to perform but was so unsure of herself, she was stuck in a cycle of constantly planning without ever executing.?In previous points I’ve encouraged people to ask for help, advice and feedback.?We were well beyond that point.?After reviewing the exact same detail for the third time that day, I blurted out “Jill, you have your plan, you know what you need to do, go forth and execute.”??It wasn’t my proudest moment, but it conveyed the point and served as a turning point in our relationship.?Over the remainder of Jill’s internship, that became our catch phrase.?Anytime she would come over to ask a question she already knew the answer to, all I had to do was pause and she’d reply, “I know, go forth and execute.”?She did just that and delivered solid work over the remainder of her internship.?Passing her desk after she left, I found a Post-It note in prominent view.?It read “go forth and execute.”?That same Post-It now sits on my desk.?

Jill is representative of a certain type of person that is so afraid of doing something slightly wrong they won’t even get started.?It’s perfectly natural for young professionals to feel this way.?They’ve been thrown into a brand new world with personalities, challenges and expectations they’ve probably never encountered before and are expected to perform at a high level.?

If this is you, take a moment to acknowledge this – this is normal.?

Take a look around - assess your situation.?What are your constraints??What’s stopping you from starting right now?

And then jump over the cliff – execute.?Do something.?Anything.?

You will build the parachute on the way down.?

Ask for help and people will be there to help you.

Here’s the thing, the world cares about execution, not necessarily the plan.?The plan won’t be perfect, you will make mistakes have learning opportunities (see “Own Your Mistakes”) and you will hit unforeseen challenges.?These things are ok but what’s worse than failing is never getting started.?If you don’t get started, you don’t get the chance to make mistakes learn.?If you don’t learn, you can’t grow and if you can’t grow, how can you ever hope to accomplish your goals and dreams, whether they are personal or professional?

Sometimes it’s hard to take your own advice so ever since my interaction with Jill, I’ve challenged myself to do just that.?I’m highly analytical, and while I favor the “launch, then iterate” approach, I still like to see roadblocks coming three miles out and build a plan far in advance so I don’t need to react at the last minute.?The problem is, I can spend too much time worrying about the future and building contingency plans for things that will never happen.?I challenged myself to go forth and execute.

When my manager came to me with an opportunity to build a global program, I had no idea how to do it or where I would even start.?Normally, I would have taken a couple weeks to weigh the options and put together a plan before reaching a decision.?Instead, I leaned in, said “yes” and figured it out as I went.?I knew I had the skill and was confident I could learn what I needed along the way.?The only thing holding me back was my desire to see every rock in the road.?That program was a resounding success and an incredible learning opportunity.?I would have missed that if I’d tried to build the entire plan first.

Another example is a project that had been kicking around for the past 15 years at a company I worked at.?Every few years, someone would pick it up and run with it but then get bogged down in the details before eventually dropping it.?This was a complicated project involving multiple functions and required a strong understanding of regulatory requirements to be successful.?Working with a couple experts within the company (all who had touched this project in the past), we decided this project was going to happen.?It would be tough, and it would be messy, but the opportunity was too large to not execute.?The normal approach would be to solicit feedback from all functional areas, get preliminary buy-in and eventually have each group agree to a portion of the work before kicking off the project.?This is why the project had stalled on every previous attempt – someone got busy, lost interest or changed their mind.?We wanted to take a different approach.?We took that small team and came in with a bulldozer.?This is not to say we ran over the top of anyone and had a willful disregard for the procedures and regulations. Instead, we aligned the team around the end goal and ruthlessly executed.?Again, the world cares about the execution.?At the time of this writing, that project is in the final stages and due to make transformational changes to the business.?Funny enough, when we came in with the bulldozer, we had a groundswell of support and encountered absolutely no resistance.?People weren’t getting out of our way because we were threatening to run over the top of them, they were either cheering us on or out in front eliminating roadblocks before we could even see them.?Instead of just talking about this project, someone was finally executing!?

A quick note to temper the enthusiasm here – execution happens because of people and typically cannot be done in a vacuum.?Execution is not just the end result but also how you got there.?If you leave scorched earth behind you on every project, you’ll quickly find yourself in a very lonely place.?Take people with you and make it a team effort but don’t be afraid to start.?Understand the constraints but don’t get stuck in planning out each last detail.?In other words, make sure you at least have the materials or knowledge to build a parachute, know where to ask for help and then jump over the cliff.

Some takeaways:

Chances are, if you just start, you will figure it out as you go.

If you start the big, ugly, scary thing, chances are there’s a lot of support out there you didn’t know about before.?Use it.

Be mindful of how you execute.?Execution at the cost of relationships and culture is a recipe for disaster.

Start with a clear end goal and have a rough idea of how you’ll get there but don’t waste time planning every last details.?Plans will always change.?Start.?Figure it out as you go.

Do the right thing

I take back what I said in “Speak facts, not emotions” – if you have to pick only one of these, this is the one.?

Early in my career I believed everything was either black or white.?I’m now beginning to realize everything is just different shades of gray.?

Every decision you make will have trade-offs, whether it’s price, performance, timeline, etc.?At the end of the day, I have to believe most of us have a pretty solid moral compass and know whether the decision we’re making is truly right or wrong.?I’m not an expert on Volkswagen’s emission scandal or Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 MCAS flaws , but I can’t believe either of these situations were the result of a single person making a conscious decision to cheat.?This is pure speculation on my part, but I have to believe scandals are most likely the result of a culture of driving for performance, cost and deadlines without periodically stopping to ask “are we doing the right thing?”

I may or may not have developed a reputation for being the go-to person to justify something if there isn’t an immediate, clean-cut, perfectly by-the-books justification for the desired path.?With a little creativity just about anything can be justified or explained away but when straying into these territories it is even more important to keep checking your moral compass.

One defining moment in my career helped solidify this position in my head.?In one of my previous roles, I was the subject matter expert on a process that had significant overlap with a heat-treating process.?One of our customers was struggling with a certain defect on one of their medical device products and had asked for our help to fix it.?There were a number of ways to fix this particular issue, ranging from improved controls on the raw material (difficult and would make the product more expensive, thus decreasing our margins) to significant internal process develop to more tightly control the output (labor intensive with no definitive end date) to simply changing the heat-treating recipe (cheap and easy to implement).?In a passing conversation with another engineer, he mentioned we were just going to raise the heat treat temperature and that would make the defect go away.?I still remember my question, “Won’t that change the [critical customer output]?”?but we were both headed in opposite directions, I was only indirectly supporting the request and this other engineer was the expert in the process.?Who was I to question a decision that I wasn’t responsible for and really shouldn’t have even known about.?[As short aside for non-engineers, the properties of metals (crystal structure, strength, ductility, etc. of metals can be changed by two primary factors: time and temperature of the heat-treating process.?Changing either of these can significantly change the properties of the materials.]

The customer received the materials from the new process, closed the complaint and began using these updated components in their product.?About a month, later we received notification from the customer – a device had failed in the field.?Here’s the thing about medical devices, they’re not like consumer products.?If my TV fails, I’m out an evening of staring at a screen.?If a medical device fails in the field, that means it didn’t perform the way it was designed, and the surgeon can’t help their patient.?In this case, the device broke inside a person in the middle of a procedure.?This failure was a direct result of the change made to the heat-treating process.?As soon as I heard, I was brought right back to that hallway and the conversation months earlier.

Thankfully, the device was recovered and there was no adverse impact to the medical staff or patient, who were able to complete the procedure with a second device.?With the patient recovering, the real work began – understanding why the device failed.?I’ll skip the intricacies of a medical device recall and just say the change to the heat treat process directly correlated to the failure, forcing our customer to issue a recall of all affected products.

We were back to where we were months ago; we couldn’t change back to the previous heat treat process due to the initial defect but we now had to go above and beyond to prove the product we were providing was safe to put in people’s bodies.?Addressing this recall, characterizing and controlling the process, rebuilding the customer relationship and getting to a point where we could ship product for end-patient use consumed thousands of people-hours of work, all of which could have been spent on other opportunities.?All of this could have been caught, and hopefully prevented, if I’d taken a moment in that hallway to stop and review the decision that was about to take place, even if it meant being late to my next meeting.

There’s no way around it, taking a stand like this is scary.?In my situation, I would have been proposing a solution that would take longer, be more expensive and be directly opposed that of someone with significantly more political capital (or goodwill accelerant, if you will) than me.?I allowed myself to defer the decision because I was only distantly involved in the project but if I’d taken a moment to ask myself what that decision would have had on the broader world, I’d like to think I would have made a different decision at the time.?

I share this story because these decisions happen every day in organizations throughout the world.?Many of them are benign, which makes it all the more difficult to choose between what to pursue and what to let pass by.?I wish I had more concrete, definitive advice than “do the right thing” but it all boils down to that.?Certainly, acknowledge and chase your metrics but be sure to zoom out every once in a while, and take a big picture view.?Ask yourself:

• How will the decision(s) I make today, on this project, etc. impact the broader world?
• What is the impact of my actions on not just the task at hand but also all the people affected by this decision?
• Will I look back on this moment and be proud of the decision I made?

Conclusion

I have one final piece of advice that didn’t fit nicely into any of the above points: ask questions and never stop learning.?Below I’ve shared some of my favorite books, clips and articles that have helped me on my journey.?I’d love to hear your recommendations.

Finally, thank you so much for taking the time to read through this.?I would love to hear your thoughts on this – did any of these points resonate with you??Are they totally off-base from your experience??Where did I totally lose you as a reader??I truly welcome all feedback as it gives me more of a chance to learn.?The best way to reach me is [email protected].

Over the course of writing this, I found myself constantly coming back and wanting to add more detail or context.?In one of my last revisions, I had to remind myself “go forth and execute”.?My goal when I started this was to share my journey in an attempt that others may learn from it, so they don’t have to spend quite as long wandering around in the dark, overgrown part of the forest as I did.?Having this sitting, unpublished doesn’t help further that goal.?So here’s what I’m doing, I know it’s not perfect, but I’m jumping off the cliff.

• The Traveler's Gift by Andy Andrews
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Quiet by Susan Cain
• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol
• Start with Why TED Talk
• Trial and Error and the God Complex
• Never Split the Difference
• Admiral McRaven commencement address (10 lessons from a SEAL)
• Extreme Ownership