Tough Times.....Make You Stronger

Team,

I apologize in advance for the long email that follows. I had a habit of writing to the team before with my thoughts when I felt inspired, but I have let it drop for too long.

I have had many conversations with different people on the team over the past few months, and I know that in some places we are going through a tough time. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of us. Things are tough. Perhaps you have been in your role for too long and don't see where it is all headed. Perhaps you have been putting in extra work and the lines between work and life have started to blend into one another. Perhaps, your peers have gotten projects that you would have loved to contribute on or you would have loved to have similar time to work on your own projects. Or perhaps even, the culture in the team or in the company has changed and it is not the same as it once was when you loved it here the most. Maybe some of these are true, or maybe even all of them. But whatever it is, I wanted you all to know that I hear you, I am here to listen, and I care.

Things are just flat out hard right now. And guess what, they may yet get harder. We had two people recently leave the team. But our customers don’t care about that and they will still hold us to extremely high, and sometimes unreasonable standards. And yes, we have a ton of holidays coming up in the next months where different team members will be out. There will be even more pressure on each and every one of us. If we look at this individually, it could be overwhelming and frustrating. But if we tackle the challenges together, I know we will look back at this time with pride and admiration of what we were able to accomplish. With that in mind, I want to share with you a story about my days playing Rugby in college. I took away more from that time in my life than just broken bones, scars and injuries. I know it doesn't relate to everyone, but hopefully enough to understand some of the lessons that I have learned that have guided me ever since.

The rugby program at Cal (University of California, Berkeley) is well known in the US and has a long tradition of excellence. For example, since 1980, Cal has won the College Rugby National Championship about 35 times. When I joined Cal, we had won it 12 years in a row. Getting into the program was for elite athletes and very difficult, and I was the very last recruit let into the program, I felt lucky just to be there. Prior to getting to Cal I was the best athlete on all the teams I had played on. Once I got to Cal, it was clear that I was one of the worst.

My first year at Cal, I never got to play. We trained so hard, seemingly year round, twice a day during the season, and three times a day leading into the playoffs. It was an incredible amount of work with no reward. I had my own personal challenges as well. My high school girlfriend had just broken up with me. I was shy and missed being home with my family. And for the hardest stretch of the season I was fasting as practicing Muslim, with no food or water during the day, but didn't want the coaches to have an excuse to not give me a chance, so I kept it to myself. I was struggling personally, but I also was struggling on the team. I remember being 1 of only 2 people who did not get to travel with the team on our road trips that year. It was difficult, but I was just a Freshman and felt I had to wait my turn.

As a Sophomore, I finally started to get some playing time, and took advantage of it. By the end of the year, I actually was named a starter for our first round of the playoffs (this was because we usually rested our best players for the next round of the playoffs, but it was still an honor and progress from the year before). In that game, we got down early, and just 15 minutes into the game I was replaced by a more senior player. Two years of hard work for 15 minutes of trust. It felt unfair, and I was pissed off about it. Twenty minutes later, the player at my position ended up getting a red card for punching an opponent and we had to play a player down the rest of the game. It proved to be a challenge too big to overcome and we ended up losing the game in the last minute in a total shock, and our streak of 13 straight championships came to an end. I was the first player taken out of the game, and when we did our exit interview with the coach at the end of the year I told him it was just too much and I was quitting the team. There was no fun in winning, it was only the relief of not losing. And when we did lose it, it was a total shame of being the first team in 13 years not to win. It was awful, and I was done with it. When telling my coach I did not plan to return, he told me it was nice to have me but it was not a significant loss to the team. I knew he was right. He didn't ask me to stay, and wished me the best of luck. That was a real low point for me.

Later that Summer, one of our assistant coaches called me and asked me if I would reconsider joining the team. There was an injury from someone on the team at my position and they could use an extra player there. The head coach himself didn't didn’t reach out to invite me back. But, I was honored anyway, and after a lot of thought I decided to rejoin. But this time, I was gonna do it my way. I played for myself and for my teammates. I played without fear of making mistakes. I played free and the way I knew I could play best and didn't worry about trying to fit into the strict roles that were defined by the coaches. I played to have fun, not to impress anyone. I didn't care about playing time, and I didn't care what the coach thought, I just had to be my best self. And guess what, success followed. They saw I was not just another cog in the wheel, I was something different. I had a unique style, I brought unique skills, and it was paying off. I ended that year starting every game in the playoffs and helping us return to winning the National Championship. And my coach, the same one who told me just a year earlier that I would not be missed, invited me to join the Collegiate All-America team, an all-star team of the best players across the country that would travel to New Zealand to play a few matches there. A year later, I was one of our captains, and we went on to again win the National Championship. I even had my picture on the front page of the College newspaper with the title "Cyrus the Great" (see below).

So why do I share all of this? Why is it relevant??

Well, I think for me, that time in my life really made me who I am and I learned a lot about myself. It was also a period of time where at times I felt totally overwhelmed, that I did not belong, and that I wasn't going to succeed. I learned so much about being a professional, so much more than any course I ever took at school. Many of these lessons I still carry with me today and I feel are relevant in times like these where things get really hard. Here are a few that come to mind:

• Hard times don't last - whether it is in your personal life, at work, or a combination of things, when you get through the hardest times you will look back at them as obstacles you overcame that helped you get to where you are. It is these obstacles that help you become who you are. The hard times won't last, but the lessons you learn to overcome them will.
• Shared sacrifice is the most powerful bond - when we had our toughest days, our hardest practices, the only thing that got me through it was being able to look at my teammates, and know that things will be okay because we are in it together. To this day, my teammates from back when I played are some of the people I am closest to. Only they know what it was like and what we went through and how awful and difficult it was, and nobody else could ever understand it. But we got through it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
• Equal is not always fair - everyone is different. They bring different skills. They have different experiences. They learn in different ways. They have different strengths and weaknesses. Someone who might be a great fit for one task, might be an awful fit for a different task. I believe strongly in treating people fairly, and transparently. But we are all very different, and treating everyone fairly does not always mean treating them equally.
• Find enjoyment in the little things - you don't have to love everything you do, sometimes you just do things because they need to get done or because it is the right thing to do. But when you do find those small things that bring you a tiny bit of joy, take your victories. If it is a positive CSAT rating, a happy customer, a complex problem that you solved, a bug that you helped get fixed...don't overlook those victories.
• Focus on the things within your control - also known as don't be a victim. Our coach was extremely strict. If one person was late to practice, the whole team had to run. No excuses. If you take the bus to practice, don't take the last one. Buses run late, plan for it. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Don't let other people have control of your destiny. Take control of your own life and don't wait for things to happen to you. If something isn't going the way you want, what are the things within your control you can change to improve that outcome.
• Be comfortable being uncomfortable - The best thing you can do for your career or personal growth is find things that make you super uncomfortable and do as many of those things as you can. This is your growth zone. If you do only things that make you comfortable, you are not learning. You are not challenging yourself. Do the uncomfortable things, get embarrassed, make mistakes, fail, and learn from them and you will move yourself forward faster than you thought you could.
• Expect nothing, be grateful for everything - be grateful for those things in your life that you have, many others would trade spots with you in an instant. Don't take that for granted. Be grateful for the people or things in your life that make your life easier or better. Know that as hard as you have it, there are many who have it worse. When someone helps you, be grateful for it and return the favor. But do not expect others to solve your problems for you or point fingers when things don't go exactly the way you want them to.
• Don't let others tell you what you are and are not capable of - nothing motivated me more than people telling me what I could not do. It was fuel to my fire. I had what I called 'humble arrogance'. To myself, I was confident and arrogant, I thought there was nothing someone else could do that I could not do better. To the outside world though, it was nothing but humbleness and humility. Nobody needs to believe in you more than you believe in yourself, put your doubters in the rear view mirror, but do it with grace and humility.
• Great success does not come easy - above all the other stuff above, know that success is hard. There is no magic wand that you can wave for instant success. It takes work, determination, and above all failure for you to learn how to be successful. It is also not a steady or straight path. There are ups and downs all along the way. You need to be resilient enough to get through the worst of times, and humble enough to not lose momentum through the best of time. Put in the work, stay grounded, and don't give up.

So back to us. Yes, tough times are ahead. Yes, we have many many senior people on the team who deserve great opportunities. Yes, we are now short staffed and things may not always feel fair. We may have to ask some to give up their projects to focus on our customers. We have a tough month or two ahead without any doubt. But if we can all put in the work, be grateful for one another, take control of the challenges we face and focus on solutions and not complaints, we will end this year very proud of what we achieved and we will look back at these few difficult months with admiration of what we accomplished and what we learned. We need to all sacrifice a little to get there. Let's rally together, not against each other. We need to be laser focused. We need to have each other's backs and not point fingers. We need to communicate when things could have gone better and hold ourselves accountable to improving them. Let's be the change we seek. And let's be grateful for having each other. If we do those things, the next few months won't be a problem. Sure, there will be challenges, but they won't break us. We will rebuild, improve, prioritize, and we will end the year higher than we started.