by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Collaboration, Goals, Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 44 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Extreme Ownership
— From Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
The ultimate test for a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, retired U.S. Navy SEALs and experts in building high-performance teams, say that there are only two types of leaders: effective and ineffective.
“Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not.” In our path through leadership, we can all be effective leaders, yet at times, we will be ineffective. Mistakes will be made and things will go wrong. However, as long as we keep in mind the principle of Extreme Ownership, we will be able to move forward along with our team and get another chance at being effective.
The principle behind Extreme Ownership is that “the leader is truly and ultimately responsible for everything… all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world.”
While this may be very simple, it certainly is not easy.
As leaders, applying Extreme Ownership requires humility and courage. We must check our ego at the door and always remember that, “it is all about the Team. The sum is far greater than the parts.” Note that team here is loosely defined to suit your particular case: it could be a small business team, a large corporate team, a sports team, a school team, a military team, a non-profit organization, a country, etc.
Extreme Ownership is about responsibility and ultimate accountability. It requires looking at all the details and making sure that everything is covered, checked, communicated, empowered, enabled, etc., for the team to be able to perform at its highest and best.
Team members that see Extreme Ownership in their leaders “emulate Extreme Ownership throughout the chain of command down to the most junior personnel. As a group they try to figure out how to fix their problems –instead of trying to figure out who or what to blame.” There is a sense of camaraderie and joint desire to fulfill the mission the best way possible.
Extreme Ownership, although it sounds wonderful, is not an easy prize. The leader can never take his/her eye off the goal, there is no time for the leader to coast along, and there is never a moment to rest (figuratively speaking).
Here’s an example of what owning everything means:
“When subordinates aren’t doing what they should, leaders that exercise Extreme Ownership cannot blame the subordinates. They must first look in the mirror at themselves. The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute.
If an individual on the team is not performing at the level required for the team to succeed, the leader must train and mentor that underperformer. But if the underperformer continually fails to meet standards, then a leader who exercises Extreme Ownership must be loyal to the team and the mission above any individual. If underperformers cannot improve, the leader must make the tough call to terminate them and hire others who can get the job done. It is all on the leader.”
Think about this last sentence for a second: it is all on the leader. Extreme Ownership can feel overwhelming at first. But think again: doesn’t it give you a sense of relief that success is dependent on you and not on an outside factor that is out of your control? By adopting the Extreme Ownership mindset, you already have (or are resourceful enough to find) the resources to win, or pivot, or fix and move forward, or do whatever you need to do to ultimately succeed with your team. This changes everything (at least for me): overwhelm is gone and empowerment reigns supreme.
Cheers to your success in Extreme Ownership!
ACTION
TODAY: Think about the projects that you are working on now. What is going well? What is not? Take Extreme Ownership of your projects and the teams you lead, and focus your energy on figuring out what you need to do today (apply Extreme Pareto!) to equip and empower your team to succeed.
FUTURE: Adopt the Extreme Ownership mindset and combine it with Extreme Pareto. As you move along, determine what is the one thing that you need to be doing right then to move your team forward to succeed.
Know someone who’s leading a team and could benefit from Extreme Ownership? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Collaboration, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Planning, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 50 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Launch a search party for the opportunity
— From Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck by Jon Acuff
Change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. Change brings an unknown factor into the equation. Most of us don’t like or accept change easily. Jon Acuff, in his book Do Over, rightly says that “upon being confronted with change, our first reaction is to brainstorm reasons it won’t work: I’m too old. I don’t have enough money. It’s too risky. I’m not qualified enough. Someone has already done that exact same thing. There are worse jobs than the one I currently have…” and the litany of excuses goes on and on.
“For minutes or maybe even lifetimes, we do our best to rally the troops around why we shouldn’t do something. And this tends to be the approach we take for ourselves and even other people.” For example, say that you ask a friend to do something that he really doesn’t want to do. Your request is met with resistance, so what’s the next thing you do? Very likely you’ll find yourself asking, “Why don’t you want to do that?”
As common as that question is, Acuff says it’s the wrong one to ask. He cites the book Instant Influence, by Michael V. Pantalon, PhD, where Pantalon says, “when you ask someone a question like this, you unknowingly invite them to brainstorm new reasons they don’t want to do something. That question is an invitation to sit in the no and work yourself up even more than you were before.” By asking a negative question we use our imagination in a negative way.
This applies to any scenario, personal or professional, from asking your boss why you can’t work from home one day a week, to asking a service provider why they can’t give you a discount to… Ha! Remember when you asked your parents why you couldn’t go to that party or why you couldn’t hang out with that particular group of friends? Now we know why and how they came up with all those reasons at lightning speed!
What should we do about this?
Acuff says the solution is to ask the opposite. “Instead of launching a search party for opposition to an idea, you launch a search party for the opportunity.” In the example above where you encounter resistance from your boss to work from home, ask instead: ‘‘what’s one reason you could see me working from home as possibly a benefit to the company?”
You don’t need lots of reasons. Once you have a good one, you’ve succeeded at establishing a positive foothold in your or the other person’s mind, and you can start to build from there.
ACTION
TODAY: Identify one area or one task where you’ve been asking negative questions. Where have you been building up a reservoir of negative reasons as to why you don’t want to do something? Or where have you given someone the opportunity to nurture reasons why not to do something? Flip that around and launch a search party for the opportunity. What question will you ask yourself or someone else that will shed some positive light in favor of doing something?
FUTURE: Keep this tool handy and make a habit of asking a positive question versus a negative one. Your life and that of the people who surround you will be all the better for it, as there will be less friction and less stress when facing any kind of change.
Do you know someone who is finding a myriad reasons why not to do something? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter!
by Helena Escalante | Collaboration, Creativity, Growth, Mindset, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes 30 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: You are part of a creative lineage.
— From: Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
How many times have we heard that nothing is original and that there’s nothing new under the sun? In Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon shares a great way to get inspired to create your art (whatever form that art takes*) based on the work of many other artists from which you draw ideas and inspiration.
“If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.” After all, “every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.”
Kleon illustrates this by focusing on genealogy: you are the genetic combination of your mother and your father who, in turn, were the genetic combo of their parents, and so on. “You are a remix of your mom and dad and all of your ancestors. [And] just as you have a familial genealogy, you also have a genealogy of ideas. You don’t pick your family but you can pick your friends… the music you listen to… the books you read… You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences.”
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” – Goethe.
Our job, then, is to selectively collect good ideas. “The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.”
Kleon’s method for growing and climbing your creative family tree is this: “chew on one thinker—writer, artist, activist, role model—you really love. Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Then find three people that thinker loved, and find out everything about them. Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you build your tree, it’s time to start your own branch. […] Seeing yourself as part of a creative lineage will help you feel less alone as you start making your own stuff.”
Google everything and everyone. Read as much as you can. Nowadays people leave digital footprints everywhere, so it’s easy to learn from the people you admire; and if you can connect with them via social media or in person, even better. But if your mentors are no longer with us, Kleon says, “the great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can’t refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work.”
ACTION
TODAY: Start building your creative lineage: What do you want to do? And who do you want to learn from? Make a list of your dream-come-true mentors. Then select the one mentor from whom you’d like to start learning and search for his/her work on the Internet.
FUTURE: Continue learning from your selected mentors and follow their paths. Bask in their recommendations for books, blogs, resources, podcasts, etc. Learn until you know that mentor’s life in and out, as if it were your best friend’s. Once you know this, do a brainwriting exercise to see what ideas come to mind about your art with your newfound knowledge. Then select the next mentor based on your previous mentor’s recommendation. Repeat, repeat, repeat… and never stop, make it a habit, and always be learning and growing. (Of course, if you are reading this, you are very likely a lifelong learner… fist bump!)
Do you know someone who could benefit from building a creative lineage? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
_________
* I’m subscribing here to Seth Godin’s description of art in his book The Icarus Deception: “Art is not a gene or a specific talent. Art is an attitude, culturally driven and available to anyone who chooses to adopt it. Art isn’t something sold in a gallery or performed on a stage. Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another. […] Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map— these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.”
by Helena Escalante | Collaboration, Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes 58 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA:
You lead. Your tribe communicates.
— From: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
Seth Godin asks “What does it take to create a movement?” Take, for instance, “microfinance as a tool to fight poverty.” And he cites the answer he got from the Acumen Fund regarding Mohammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank, “the problem (and its solution!) were recognized more than thirty years ago.”
So why did it take so long for the idea to get traction?
“There’s a difference,” says Seth, “between telling people what to do and inciting a movement. The movement happens when people talk to one another, when ideas spread within the community, and most of all, when peer support leads people to do what they always knew was the right thing… Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate.”
That’s how Skype grew all over the world. That’s how Wikipedia grew. That’s how social movements spread. Communication is key, and real leaders know how their tribe communicates and enable them to do so.
The book tells a story that Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen (a non-profit global venture capital fund whose goal is to use entrepreneurial approaches to address global poverty) shared with Seth about Unicef spending a lot of money in creating posters to promote child vaccinations to the mothers of Rwanda. “The posters were gorgeous—photographs with women and children with simple messages written in Kinyarwandan (the local language), about the importance of vaccinating every child. They were perfect, except for the fact with a female illiteracy rate exceeding 70 percent, words written in perfect Kinyarwandan made little difference.” Jacqueline noticed “that the way messages spread in Rwanda was by song. One group of women would sing a song for other women, both as a way of spreading ideas and as a gift. No song, no message.”
The bottom line to all this? “Your tribe communicates. They probably don’t do it the way you would; they don’t do it as efficiently as you might like, but they communicate. The challenge [for you as a leader] is to help your tribe sing, whatever form that song takes.”
Here’s a video (17 min) of a TED Talk Seth gave called “The tribes we lead.”
ACTION
TODAY: No matter how big or small your tribe, you are indeed a leader. Stop for a moment to think how your tribe communicates and how you can motivate and enable this communication to take place better. OR… want an even better action for today? Watch the video above, at the 16:40 minute mark Seth says that to start a movement it only takes 24 hours. Go start your movement!
FUTURE: Make a list of the various tribes that you lead: your family, your company, your team, your friends, other social circles, internet groups, and more. What is the way in which each group communicates? How can you motivate and connect them? How can you enable, elevate and empower (3 Es) this communication for your movement to gain steam?
This post goes out with much gratitude to Seth Godin for his wonderful books, for being a ruckus maker and starting a movement, and–especially–for the tribe he leads, the altMBA. It was out out of the communication from within the tribe that this blog was born. I’m a proud alumna! Here’s a conversation Seth and I had on Facebook Live where I talk about my altMBA experience.
Know someone who leads a tribe? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter! Curious about the altMBA? Hit me up and I’ll gladly share my experience and answer your questions.
by Helena Escalante | Collaboration, Creativity, Mindset, Opportunity
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 5 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA:
The lone genius myth is not true, it’s about collaboration.
— From Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon (here’s a summary of the book)
As a society we’re enamored with many myths, and one of them is the one of the “lone genius.” Austin Kleon says that seeing creativity under such light portrays it as “an antisocial act, performed by only a few great figures, mostly dead men with names like Mozart, Einstein or Picasso. The rest of us are left to stand around and gawk in awe at their achievements.”
Instead, Kleon points to the way in which the renowned English musician Brian Eno views creativity as a scenius: “a whole scene of people who [are] supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas and contributing ideas.” A scenius is a model under which “great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an ‘ecology of talent’.”
“ A scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those individuals; it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the results of a mind connected to other minds.”
The beauty of a scenius then, is twofold:
- It opens the door for the rest of us: “the people who don’t consider ourselves geniuses” and for whom art and creativity takes many different expressions than in its purest, most widely adopted sense. I’m subscribing here to Seth Godin’s description of art in his book The Icarus Deception: “Art is not a gene or a specific talent. Art is an attitude, culturally driven and available to anyone who chooses to adopt it. Art isn’t something sold in a gallery or performed on a stage. Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another. […] Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map— these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.”
- You don’t have to be a genius to be part of a scenius. To be a valued member of a scenius is not about your intelligence and talent, the school you went to, or who your parents are. It’s about your valuable contribution to the community (ideas, connections, conversations, and elevating the art form, whatever this form may be in your particular scenius).
Thankfully, we live in a time where the Internet provides lots of sceniuses where we can all contribute to something that we care about. There’s plenty of opportunity and no barrier to entry. So, what scenius will you pick and what will your contribution be? Let me know in the comments.
ACTION
TODAY: Where is your scenius? What tribe would you like to belong to? Identify where your scene is (whether in person or virtually) and make connect and contribute something today if possible (an idea, a comment, feedback, etc.). If not, schedule in your calendar when you can start contributing, and do so.
FUTURE: Now that you’ve found your scenius, take a look around. Where and what is the most valuable contribution that you can make with the resources that you have? Think: time, knowledge, resources, connections, etc. May sound trite but it’s true: you always get out what you put into it, so give it your best. If you’re hesitant about making a commitment because it seems daunting, give yourself a trial time to see if it’s a good fit. Contribute to a scenius for, say, 3-6 months and see what happens. One way or another, I’m sure you’ll be all the better for it afterwards.
Enjoyed the post? I hope so! Please share these ideas with more people via email, Facebook or Twitter — thanks a lot!
