My 2019 Failures - False Indicators of Success

2019 has been a pretty big year for me. After 11 years at the same company doing sales and sales leadership, I stepped up and became President in January. A lot of people gave me advice along the way and most of it helped. Still, while the year has been full of highs and accomplishments, it also had its fair share of failures for me to learn from. This series is a little different I think from the typical year in reviews because it is not so much about the wins or loses as much as the lessons learned. After all, this isn't my only year as president or the last promotion I'll ever have. I hope you enjoy!

One of the first books I read, when the idea of becoming President came about, was called "What Got You Here Won't Get You There." The book has a number of lessons in it but one I learned exceptionally hard this year is in the first section of the book. Sometimes when we're successful, we adopt beliefs on what caused the success they may not be entirely true.

In May of this year, we lost a manager of one of our sales teams. Myself and the rest of the team were pretty broken by it. She was an amazing coach and support system to everyone on that team. She didn't just give orders or mandates, but explained the benefit to each rep and tethered it up to the importance every aspect of the job had to the company. When she left, we kind of thought the sky was going to fall.

However, June wound up being the largest sales month of that team's history. Each of them took on more responsibilities and unlocked a piece of them they didn't know they had. They thrived and felt a self-esteem boost from the success that was much needed. And a belief and convictions were formed because they took more ownership, because they did certain exercises, and because they operated in this new way, that was why they had their success. They found their secret sauce and I encouraged them all to "do more of that!"

But in reality, there were more reasons for why they were successful in June. Reasons I probably still don't fully understand honestly. So when we tried to repeat the same processes and actions in July and August, we didn't have that same level of success. In truth, they led us down a more negative road with bad habits that would take time to shake. In all this, it made me realize not only was it important not to always be looking for a secret sauce but also to be more proactive than reactive.

There are hundreds of these examples throughout this past year and overall in my career. I remember being in sales and seeing our top salesperson only make 1 call a day and thinking "well I can do that too." I had a great month because another panel fell on their faces and we got more than our expected allotment on a study. But my "truth" is that I didn't need to make calls to be successful. That wound up not being true.

Moving on, I know that this is a failure I'll continue making throughout my time working. But I'm aware now of this and a lot more careful when adopting work convictions.