The road to success

What is the difference between failure and success? How can we increase our chances of success?

Personally, I think success comes from a combination of four possible sources. Firstly, I “need” to have knowledge of the subject and technical skills to come up with the “idea” and to achieve the desired result. These are the “subject-matter skills” we know well from the industrial age. Secondly, I need to have the skill to transform / to execute on the idea – my “transformational ability”. Thirdly, delivering great results requires drive and resilience, i.e. I must be motivated to complete the hard work. Finally, despite failing partly on the other elements, people do somethings, though rarely, succeed thanks to luck – educated guesses not to be underestimated though.

In the non-routine work of the digital age, it seems that even though subject-matter skills are important, they are not the main reason for failure. Want to know how to isolate your roof? Look it up on Google. Failures are much more likely the product of missing transformational ability and/or motivation (the two are often even closely connected). For non-routine work unlike for rule-based routine work, we cannot be told what to do (or it is at least very inefficient). Therefore we need creativity, adaptability and resilience.?

“You don’t hire for skill; you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills”

(Simon Sinek)[1]

If I try to translate Sinek’s catch phrase: You should hire a person who’s needs and value (purpose) match with the job, as they are more likely to have intrinsic motivation for the tasks. Combined with strong transformational skills, these are more important than subject-matter skills, which can be taught – at least partly.

Can you teach transformational skills? Sinek would seem to indicate not, but I disagree and may just be his simplification of things. Teaching transformational skills is exactly what coaching is all about. Digging into the core of a topic and making a realistic plan for getting to the result. Anyone can become better at transformation and implementation. But when did you last spend an hour or more thinking something all the way through?

The Henka Cherry Blossom Tree

First, let us take a closer look at motivation. I talked in the last blog about the importance of intrinsic motivation for the non-routine creative work in the digital age. Leaders must support autonomy, mastery and purpose, but where does our intrinsic motivation come from?

I find the best way to illustrate this is with the cherry blossom tree, which I got to know from Henka Institute. In our busy corporate lifes, we may get lost in our focus on results and performance (the fruits and flowers of the tree), and wonder why we do not deliver, like in the example of the new year’s resolution below. However just like with a tree, we need to dig down to the roots – our needs. Our needs are what drives us and they may change over time due to changes in our personal situation (family, wealth etc.). Like the roots of a tree determine what fruit it may bear, our needs are what determines what results we may produce.

If we want to succeed in delivering great results, then we must know what ?great“ results mean to us and we muster our intrinsic motivation for the task at hand – or the motivation to change away from this task. If the targeted result does not align with our values and does not meet our needs, then we may force ourselves to take short-term actions but we are unlikely to achieve great results in the long term.

Finding purpose, setting objectives and achieving key results

What do successful digital companies do to succeed (their transformation plan)? Andy Grove introduced a system of Objective and Key Results (OKRs) in Intel back in the 1970’ties, which John Doerr later brought to Google and published.[2] The key to Objectives and Key Results is that they are worded to inspire people and be clear for them to know what to do.

“Ideas are easy, execution is everything” (John Doerr)[3]

Objectives are what you want to achieve, the true business outcomes we are trying to realise. They must always say what is required and never how it is to be delivered. Key results are how you will know if you’ve achieved your objective. They are quantitative measures to track success, so we know when we have delivered the objective. Key results can evaluated with “Yes, achieved” or “No, failed” and they are SMART goals (Simple, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely).

Another trend in digital companies we can learn from is Agile and thereby empiricism. In the industrial age, we could plan future projects and take years to implement (Waterfall). However in the quickly evolving digital age, especially software companies found that projects are more successful when we launch small increments (Minimal Viable Products) and adapt to feedback we get. Agile and coaching is a big topic, so let us look into that in a separate blog.

Any corporate as well as individuals can benefit from OKRs and Agile methodologies. You must discover what your purpose is (your needs and values), determine objectives which ring true with you and finally make a plan for how you will achieve it. But you need to “fail fast”- do not only think but try things out and adapt to the empirical evidence.

Sabotaging yourself

It is often not easy to align your objectives with your needs and value, and to make a realistic plan for how to implement it. We are not objective producing machines (like computers), but humans with subjective views of the world. From Shirzad Chamine we learn that we all have “saboteurs” in us.[4] These are the voices in your head telling you what to do. If you are aware of them, you may correct for the wrong information they feed. If not, they will feed you stress, self-doubt, anxiety etc. As mentioned in my last article, Timothy Gallwey described how in tennis, the main opponent is not across the net but yourself. He found that tennis players perform when they can overcome Self 1 (the voice in your head) and rely on Self 2 (our innate ability).[5]

Very successful people have great ideas, make solid plans and execute these efficiently… but often with the help of a coach/friend/mentor. We can all need support in our thought process, in getting out of our own way and in the transformation process.

Now we are starting to scratch the surface of coaching. Dive into more detail in my next blog.

[1] Simon Sinek “Start with Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action” (December 27, 2011)

[2] John Doerr “Measure what matters” (April 24, 2018)

[3] Ibid.

[4] Shirzad Chamine “Positive Intelligence” (April 1, 2012)

[5] Timothy Gallwey “The inner game of Tennis” (1972)