Inspirational quotes that can be retired

Everyone has heard these, or read these, or had someone present them to you again again probably hundreds of times. Everyone gets them now. Please stop repeating/Tweeting/Instagramming them:

(Note: I may get a couple of specific words wrong on these quotes, but you will recognize them I bet)

1. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

You also miss 100% of the shots you miss. Pass the ball once in a while, you chucker.

2. I don't skate to where the puck is, I skate to where the puck is going to be.

Okay Kreskin. Let me know where the puck will be in say about 2 years so I can skate there and wait for everyone else.

3. "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Ok, so this isn't so much 'inspirational' as it is 'empty'.

My 4th grade baseball team had an awesome culture. We also couldn't hit, field, or pitch worth a darn and we never won a game. But we had fun!

4. Be the change you wish to see in the world.

Really? The change I wish to see in the world is never having to see this quote again. I mean it. I am really wishing hard for it right now.

5. Do or do not, there is no try.

Ok, sure. Of course the world is that simple from the perspective of an imaginary 800 year-old puppet. Don't 'try' anything. Just do. Or do not. What in the heck does that even mean?

6. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.

Translation: You are always right. Right?

7. Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

I believe I can be a point guard for the Knicks. Hooray - I'm halfway to the NBA!

8. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.

You will not ever be offered a seat on a rocket ship.

9. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

This one is attributed to Albert Einstein, who had earned shall we say A LOT more wiggle room to make mistakes than the rest of us.

10. The past is a ghost, the future a dream. All we ever have is now.

This is also the mindset of the dumbest dogs you'll ever meet. Their entire time horizon is 2 seconds. This second right now and the one that is about to happen. That is it.

Ok, I am out. That is what a Monday spent catching up on email will do to me.

What do you think?

Did I miss any? Share your favorites (least favorites) in the comments.

Spring Break Rewind #4 - I'm not really properly motivated

Note: It is Spring Break week here in Western New York, (for the school-age kids anyway), and while I will still be working and traveling to New York City to present at a conference, this week will be busier than most. So this week on the blog I'll be re-running some pieces from the last 12 months or so. Yes, I am being lazy. Cut me some slack. Anyway, if you are on Spring Break this week, I hope you have a great little vacation!

This piece - 'I'm not really properly motivated', originally ran in August 2012.

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Most readers who are parents would likely agree with me when I say that of all the challenges we face in various parts of our lives, that convincing a stubborn kid to do something, (or more likely, to continue to do something so as it becomes a habit), is probably right up these on the frustrating and maddening scale.

When the kids are really young, say less than 5, logic and reasoning are (mostly) useless as negotiating tactics, and once they get a little bit older they develop a pesky ability to apply their own forms of logic and let's say unique world views to bat back most of your well-reasoned and completely reasonable demands. Never mind that as parents we almost always give up really fast trying to actually see the problem from the kid's perspective, after all, it is the one time in our lives when we have (pretty much) absolute power in the negotiation. And breaking out 'Because I said so' or 'Because I am the parent and you are the kid' might both be fully valid, accurate, and successful ways to put an end to any discussion around behavior modification, they also feel kind of hollow and depressing to have to rely upon, at least too frequently.  Dilbert.com

Whether it's a reluctant kid who can't see the inherent wisdom in simply doing whatever it is you want him/her to do, or a pesky colleague, manager, or subordinate at work that for some reason is having trouble seeing the brilliance (or at least the logic) in whatever fool idea you are pushing, it seems to me it is getting more important all the time to appreciate the absolute value of being able to have your ideas, if not adopted wholly, at least understood and maybe, maybe even supported by collections of folks that have their own ideas about how things should go. Like the kid who does not seem enthused about mundane activities like 'room cleaning', the truth is most folks won't naturally or willingly see the value to them of listening to you, making the 'I'm the boss/parent/teacher/coach' your all-too-frequently uses fall back position, and discussion-ender.

I know all contentious debates do need to come to an end for any progress to be made. The kid's room has to be cleaned, homework has to get done, the TPS reports have to go out, and on and on and on.

But how the debate ends I think is important, and how the accumulation of these endings over time begin to impact the ability of any type of leader, be it a parent, manager, or coach, to get people around them working towards mutually beneficial ends matters.

As a parent, if you keep pulling the 'Because I'm the Dad' line, it is probably a sign of some other kind of problem, perhaps a little bit of a lack of seeing their point of view. As my 11 year old explained to me recently, 'It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I'm not really properly motivated'.

Sure, I could have trotted out the 'Tough luck kid, I am the Dad', (I actually think I did), but there certainly was the feeling that I should not have had to go there. That the kid should have intuitively understood the wisdom/logic/importance of whatever it was I wanted him to do. And the fact that he did not, well, that was completely and totally his problem or failing, not mine.

That's how it works when you are the boss, right?

Spring Break Rewind #2 - Tuesday, rain, and playing the long game

Note: It is Spring Break week here in Western New York, (for the school-age kids anyway), and while I will still be working and traveling to New York City to present at a conference, this week will be busier than most. So this week on the blog I'll be re-running some pieces from the last 12 months or so. Yes, I am being lazy. Cut me some slack. Anyway, if you are on Spring Break this week, I hope you have a great little vacation!

This piece - 'Tuesday, rain, and playing the long game', originally ran in September 2012.

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Ever since Malcolm Gladwell pitched his now famous 10,000 hours theory, it cemented into our awareness what most everyone has known for a really long time - overnight success is usually not overnight at all, and the long, slow grind of experiments, failures, refinements, learning, and disappointments is what (mostly) leads to what only seems like overnight success.Johns - Figure 4

Even the 'Gangnam Style' guy has been plying his craft in one form or another for over 10 years.

We all know this to be true, it isn't novel, we were usually taught this in school starting in about 3rd grade, or whenever it was we ran face first into that first subject or concept that we didn't just 'get' right away. Maybe it was fractions, maybe sentence structure, adverbs, or long division - once that first bit of frustration with not understanding hits, we generally realize pretty quick the only (ethical) way forward is long, boring, hard, and largely unsatisfying effort. Unsatisfying until we do finally 'get it' and say things like 'It's all been worth it', or in the case of calculus, 'I'm glad I'll never have to go through that again.'

So while the 'you have to work really hard for a long time to become great at anything' isn't news, it still is a sentiment or guide that still bears repeating from time to time, (at least for me). And rarely have I seen it expressed as well as in a recent piece on the ESPN True Hoop blog called 'The long game is the only game', by Henry Abbott, (I know you are shocked, a basketball site).  

Here's the money quote from Henry:

It may appear that NBA games are won with big moments when everybody is looking -- dunking over people, blocking shots, hitting a momentous jumper. And once in a while that does happen. But the reality is that many more careers and games turn on getting things right in the millions of small moments when nobody is looking. The big moments will always dominate the Hollywood version of events. But in real life, if you want to do the most you can to get the best possible results, it's a long game of putting together one solid day of training after another.

You want to know who's going to have the best NBA career? You could do worse than to simply figure out who puts in the most work to prepare.

Maybe in the NBA there are some exceptions to this, there are some supremely talented and physically gifted guys where the need for the day-in, day-out slog is not necessary to have successful and even legendary careers. But those guys are extremely rare, often work and practice much, much more than they let on, and often are looked back upon as not making the most of their physical gifts.

For the rest of us, who can't dunk a ball, or for whom irrational number theory never came naturally, we have to continue to grind away. 

I got up early today, it's Tuesday, it's cold and raining. The kind of day that is pretty easy to fold to, to simply go through the motions,  and come back tomorrow.

But that never gets it done.

I'm not really properly motivated

Most readers who are parents would likely agree with me when I say that of all the challenges we face in various parts of our lives, that convincing a stubborn kid to do something, (or more likely, to continue to do something so as it becomes a habit), is probably right up these on the frustrating and maddening scale.

When the kids are really young, say less than 5, logic and reasoning are (mostly) useless as negotiating tactics, and once they get a little bit older they develop a pesky ability to apply their own forms of logic and let's say unique world views to bat back most of your well-reasoned and completely reasonable demands. Never mind that as parents we almost always give up really fast trying to actually see the problem from the kid's perspective, after all, it is the one time in our lives when we have (pretty much) absolute power in the negotiation. And breaking out 'Because I said so' or 'Because I am the parent and you are the kid' might both be fully valid, accurate, and successful ways to put an end to any discussion around behavior modification, they also feel kind of hollow and depressing to have to rely upon, at least too frequently.  Dilbert.com

Whether it's a reluctant kid who can't see the inherent wisdom in simply doing whatever it is you want him/her to do, or a pesky colleague, manager, or subordinate at work that for some reason is having trouble seeing the brilliance (or at least the logic) in whatever fool idea you are pushing, it seems to me it is getting more important all the time to appreciate the absolute value of being able to have your ideas, if not adopted wholly, at least understood and maybe, maybe even supported by collections of folks that have their own ideas about how things should go. Like the kid who does not seem enthused about mundane activities like 'room cleaning', the truth is most folks won't naturally or willingly see the value to them of listening to you, making the 'I'm the boss/parent/teacher/coach' your all-too-frequently uses fall back position, and discussion-ender.

I know all contentious debates do need to come to an end for any progress to be made. The kid's room has to be cleaned, homework has to get done, the TPS reports have to go out, and on and on and on.

But how the debate ends I think is important, and how the accumulation of these endings over time begin to impact the ability of any type of leader, be it a parent, manager, or coach, to get people around them working towards mutually beneficial ends matters.

As a parent, if you keep pulling the 'Because I'm the Dad' line, it is probably a sign of some other kind of problem, perhaps a little bit of a lack of seeing their point of view. As my 11 year old explained to me recently, 'It's not that I don't want to, it's just that I'm not really properly motivated'.

Sure, I could have trotted out the 'Tough luck kid, I am the Dad', (I actually think I did), but there certainly was the feeling that I should not have had to go there. That the kid should have intuitively understood the wisdom/logic/importance of whatever it was I wanted him to do. And the fact that he did not, well, that was completely and totally his problem or failing, not mine.

That's how it works when you are the boss, right?

It's hard to rally around a metric

About a thousand years ago I worked for a large, extremely well-known organization that for a myriad of reasons was going through some tough times. Sales were still good, but expenses were out of control, there were growing quality concerns with some of the most profitable products, and after decades of predictable and recognizable market conditions, changes in the regulatory environment had given rise to a new kind of competitor - smaller, faster, better able to adapt to a much more dynamic market than had previously existed.Got it?

Like many large companies that were entrenched and in some ways held captive by their size, history, amount of process and technical debt, there did not seem to be easy solutions, (or at least obvious ones), that the organization could pursue, and more importantly get everyone in the vast value creation ecosystem behind and pulling in the same direction towards, in order to improve results, better position the company for a much different looking future, while continuing to support thousands of customers and employees. As a low-level functionary at the time, I certainly was not privy to all the strategic options our company leaders were discussing to attempt to right the ship, reverse course, clear the anchor, (insert your favorite nautical metaphor here), but I remember well one of the major initiatives that did break free from the board room and impact all of us in the organization.

It was that from that point forward, everyone in the company was directed to be focused on a financial measurement called Economic Value Added, or EVA. EVA attempts to estimate a firm's profit, expressed as the value created in excess of the require return of the company investors. EVA is basically the profit earned by the firm less the cost of financing the firm's capital. Confused by what focusing on EVA might mean for the actual people in the organization? Perhaps a quick look at the EVA equation will clear things up:

Ok got it now?

I won't bother listing out what all the variables mean, (check Wikipedia if you are a glutton for punishment). The real point is not that folks in HR or in Talent management need to better understand the real economic drivers of the organization, and the real cause and effect cycles that keep the doors open, the payroll met, and the shareholders happy. There have been oceans of books, articles, blogs, presentations, etc. that all make that same (valid) point. There is general consensus that HR needs to understand the actual business. 

But here, and as the little EVA story seems to illustrate, (at least to me), is that in this example HR (and management) needed to understand a lot more than the business metrics. They needed to understand how to connect these metrics, business drivers, and silly-looking equations with what actually would resonate with people, and help them to see the value of the strategy, and help motivate them towards execution of these plans. No one I worked with, for, or near could even really understand at a personal level what focusing on EVA meant to us, or at least was supposed to mean. 

Was it cutting costs and expenses? Was it shaving a day or two off a process cycle time? Was it making sure we answered customer complaints in less than 24 hours? Because if those were the things we needed to think about, well, then just tell us that. We could have rallied around saving money, serving our customers better and faster, reducing the energy consumption in the building, or a million other things that were actually real and we could understand and impact.

What we could not do was get excited about an equation, or rally around a flag bearing a formula.

Even if it was the right formula.