The Unusual Skill of Being Average

If you are reading this article there’s a high likelihood that you are a high performing individual and a leader in your field. If so, there is an even higher likelihood the title of this article mustered some disappointment in me, the author… After all, who wants to be an average leader and who wants to read about being average? But, what if I told you that being average is the key to unlocking greatness in you and your team where it matters most?

Chances are, if you are a professional, you are vested in the success of your team. You likely want to meet and exceed the expectations your team is charged with. Chances are you or your leaders have defined metrics to measure you and your team’s performance. If you are anything like me, you want to meet and exceed all of those expectations and you are willing to pour your hard work and effort in achieving the definition of success at work.?

"When we try to be great at everything, we tend to be just ok"
        

The problem is, there are often too many metrics to measure performance. I mean, after all, why would they make it a metric if they didn’t care about it… “you get what you measure” they say. But as you barrel down this path to greatness, you come to realize that you and your team are doing just ok…??Sometime later, you realize you never really achieve greatness at all… I know, I have been there.??

The problem is, when we try to be great at everything, we tend to be just ok at everything. Picking what you and your team are going to be great at is only the first step. You must also pick (and come to terms with) what you are going to be average at, or even what you are not going to do at all.?

Before you go crazy in the comment section below, I know that this is easier said than done… I agree. This is the hardest thing I have done in my career. It is also the hardest lesson I have learned in my 24 years as a leader in the military where picking what you are going to be average at has real life or death consequences. But I promise you, knowing (and committing to) where you are going to be average and where you are going to be bad is likely the most important thing you will do as a leader to achieve greatness where it matters most.?

"This is the hardest thing I have done in my 24 year career."        

I am in command of an Air Cavalry Squadron consisting of 577 Troopers, 24 Apache helicopters, 12 Shadow Unmanned Aerial Systems, and 106 trucks, trailers, and generators netting over 1.2 billion dollars’ worth of equipment. The citizens of our great country expect we can use our aircraft to find, fix and kill the enemy as a member of a combined arms team.

Before I assumed command however, I received some valuable advice from many good senior mentors of mine, “Eric, you need to pick the three things your Squadron is going to be good at and focus on that.” At this point, in my career, I had an enough experience to form a clear vision… we need to be great at Fixing, Flying, and Fighting if we were to fight and win our next war.

Easy!

Well, that lasted until the first meeting where my commander queried me on a chicklet that wasn’t green. I did what any average commander in my position would do… “If it was important to my boss, it was important to me.” I decided to pull that thing into the magical pool of importance, and then the other, and the other… You can see where this is going. Before I knew it, we were well on the way to mediocrity.?

In the late dawn of my command, I came to realize we were ok (not bad) at maintaining our helicopters and our vehicles, we were ok at flying our aircraft, and we were ok at fighting them too. But we weren’t great at any of them. We weren’t great because we were wasting too much time chasing after the countless other statistics or chicklets we could extract, display, and discuss. We were ok at driving at night under Night Vision Goggles (NVGs), ok at throwing hand grenades, ok at ruck marching 12 miles with a 60-pound load in 3 hours, and ok at countless other efforts that did not enable us to Fix, Fly, and Fight.?

"I was robbing my team of the greatest gift I could give them...time and focus"
        

I realized we were just ok at Fixing, Flying, and Fighting because I was robbing my team of the greatest gift I could give them, time and focus.??That is when I made the most important decision of my 30-month command, I reluctantly picked where we would be average and picked what we were going to be bad at. As a good Cavalryman does, I probed and realized that the standards in many areas were good enough. Exceeding the standards in those areas would cause exponential amounts of work to achieve. What my higher headquarters was measured against, we met the standard and moved on to other tasks. Where they weren’t measured, we stopped doing all together.

The results were devastating at first. Though we met the standards (barely) we were often dead last in the brigade in many of the measured areas. When questions by my commander on the decrease in our perceived performance, I offered the truth. “Sir we are going to meet the standard and move on… I don’t have the capacity to be great at everything, I accept average here.” Luckily for me, my commander accepted the risk I was taking and gave me the latitude (and trust) to do just that. Thank God.?

What happened next shocked me. Almost instantly we had the room, time, and focus to get after those things we needed to do. We started to analyze our maintenance practices, found efficiencies, increased the standard, and decreased costs. We started to apply novel training programs to increase our technical ability to fly the aircraft in the most demanding modes safely giving us an edge against our enemies. We started to study theories, our enemy, historical lessons, and our doctrine before developing challenging scenarios that increase our survivability and our lethality on the battlefield. We started to become very good at Fixing, Flying, and Fighting.?

Soon, we became self-aware of our increased performance and gained the confidence to demand more of ourselves. We were good, getting better, and we had developed the momentum to become great. In time we did become great at Fixing, Flying, and Fighting. This realization alone increased the moral of the formation, increased our retention rates, increased the efficiency of our maintenance, increased our safety, increased our quality of life, and in broad terms increased our readiness to fight and win wars to levels we had never seen before.?

We were confident in ourselves, but more important, we were competent where it mattered most. Our competence and confidence were validated after large external evaluations reaffirmed our assessment and culminated when the Squadron won the annual LTG Ellis D. Parker award for the best aviation unit in the Army.?

NOTE: Please don’t tell the LTG Ellis D. Parker award committee that we still didn’t know how to throw hand grenades and not all of our Troopers can march 12 miles with a 60-pound load in 3 hours.

None of this is important… but it is validation that choosing to be average can provide the time and focus to become excellent where it matters most.

"Not one high performing leader wants to accepts mediocracy"        

It is hard, I know. Not one high performing leader wants to accept mediocracy. No one wants to tell their boss or commander that they are deliberately going to be average. I will never underwrite the pressures on leaders to meet goals and achieve results. I acknowledge all of this and I share in your frustration.

But this is exactly what they pay us to do, accept risk.?

For you and your team, pick what you are going to be great at (first), but for heaven’s sake, don’t stop there. You must also pick (and come to terms with) what you are going to be average at, or even what you are not going to do at all. Give your team the gift of time and focus.?

Be average so long as it results in being great where it matters most.?

About the Author:?LTC Eric Megerdoomian a United States Army Aviation Officer and the Squadron Commander of the 4th?Squadron, 6th?Air Cavalry Regiment, 16th?Combat Aviation Brigade, 7th?Infantry Division, Joint Base Lewis McChord. A master Aviator, he has held various command and staff positions over 24 years in service and four combat deployments.?