Escape From Excellence

I can hardly believe it’s been almost a month since I last posted here. My excuse: I’ve been finishing my e-Book, Escape from Excellence. It’s finally complete, and we’re very proud of and excitied by the results.

It’s available for free immediate download right here. You can also check out the information page devoted to it here.

Escape from Excellence, the e-Book, collects in a brief and digestible format, all of our key thinking, experimenting, refining, and applying in real world engagements over the past four years (or twenty five years, depending how you look at it). Who needs the fluff and filler of a 300-page version? The book can be skimmed, but we worked hard to make it reward a close reading; we’ve tried to add value in every idea. And we’ve shared our entire model and all of our major ideas, excepting only those tools we use with our clients. We’ll be expanding on the ideas in the book with more thoughts, examples, and applications in this blog going forward.

We think we’ve created a genuine leadership breakthrough and built a better mousetrap. I could write the endless blog post, but enough said. Please check it out, pass it on, and use it jumpstart your escape from the high costs of excellence to the exponential rewards of Leadership, Enterprise, and Market Mastery. I think we’ve started somethign that will make a huge difference in your costs, rewards, innovation, performance, and enjoyment. And that of your entire company. You can read more here. Or contact us here.

All the best to you.

This post shares a personal anecdote to make a point about Leadership Mastery, specifically the results of leading from vision in mastery, vs. managing in excellence. We recently moved to a new house that we are remodeling and renovating. The entire project gave me an opportunity to overcome my personal bad side (controlling, micro-managing, worrying), and gave me a chance to practice what I preach. An example of Leaderdship Mastery in action?

Background: We live at home, and we also work at home. In addition, we exercise at home, and my audio recording studio is at home. We’ll do pod and video casting from home. So it’s not just a house, it’s headquarters. Upon moving in, we immediately needed: a new kitchen, a new mudroom, a new roof and roofline, two new offices and a meeting room. We also needed a master plan for improved deck, patio, planting, bathrooms, and for a fourth floor media room. Also, the offices and studio would need acoustic treatments for soundproofing. My wife Michele and I collaborate on everything, and we really enjoy design. But the stakes are high and the budget is never high enough! Plus, we’ve already got a lot on our plates. Would this put undue strain on us? It’s a very enlightening micro-case study.

Managing from Excellence would have had us set big goals regarding scope, timing, and costs, do extensive due diligence, assemble and vet a crack team, closely manage the details, require hard work, seek efficiencies, confirm quality, confront unexpected crises, acknowledge emotional needs, and manage all of this against strategic goals based on our desired outcomes (multiple usage, business growth). Had we taken this approach, perhaps the team (architects, vendors, contractors, and sub-contractors) would have respected and admired us in the end, and maybe they would have feared us. We’d meet our contractual obligations, always act professionally, and maybe tip a few people. Either way, the job would be done on time, on budget and well. And it would have nearly killed me, and everyone who had to deal with me! The Excellence Trap would have extracted its inevitable hidden costs.

Instead we chose Leadership Mastery, leading to an experience in which the ”only-do-it-if-you-have-to-because-it’s hell” of remodeling turned out to be a piece of cake, a delight, with better results at a lower price, and at a lower personal and business cost. How did we do it? By leading from vision; by inviting, enthusing, and inspiring everyone we worked with to participate in that vision; by encouraging them to bring their vision to the project; and then by getting out of the way! More specifically, we made the Five Shifts of Leadership Mastery.

Here’s the story, as briefly as I can tell it: (more…)

What is it about business and words that start with the letter P? We all remember the 4P’s of marketing (I’ll spare you another recitation), and I seem to remember four new marketing P’s coming along several years back. Last week, in a flash of P-inspired insight, I discovered the Five P’s of Leadership. Check it out…

The formula looks like this: Passion + Peace = Purpose >> Prosperity + Profit. This means when a leader has moved past both drive and rest, to have both passion and peace, they will clarify and deepen their purpose, which in turn leads to greater prosperity and profits. This is based on the key insight that the often-overlooked both-and relationship between passion and peace is the key driver of results. If you understand and apply that, you will be closing in on leadership Mastery, and you will enjoy a competitive advantage vs. those who never figure this out.

Challenge: First, too many of us are driven by a passion that never gives us any real peace (probably because this passion comes from our old friends, fear and ego). Consider this: how many seriously driven people do you know who seem to be actually compensating for something, or trying to prove a point? Do they seem healthy and well? Are they effective? I suspect not. But second, often when we experience what we call “peace” (but is actually really merely “rest”), we soon get bored and need to get back in the arena and do something! This is because we’re meant to be creating and doing; it turns out that we’re bundles of energy after all. But nonetheless, so many folks dream of retirement, work for the weekend, crave some serious R&R, or just need to trance out for a few minutes.

Solution: Passion and Peace aren’t an either-or; they are a both-and! In excellence, drive and rest fight with each other, but in mastery, they become Passion and Peace. In mastery, doing what you love to do and do best, getting to come from your passion, is itself peace. So we can be in motion or at rest, but in mastery we are always passionate and always at peace, at the same time! So while managing recovery  and pacing how we expend energy are crucial (in this regard, I like what The Energy Project is doing), this is limited to managing merely our capacity when we’re still in the Excellence Trap. Leadership Mastery gets past all that and combines Peace and Passion to successfully focus on our identity and Purpose. This focused drive is qualitatively different from what we experience in the Excellence Trap. It leads directly to the fourth and fifth P: Prosperity (personal flousishing) and Profit (return on investment and return on inspiration).

Summary: Drive and rest fight with each other when we are trapped in excellence. In Leadership Mastery, drive changes into passion, and rest changes into peace. They now feed each other, and this results in exponential increases in all desired personal and business outcomes.

Daniel Plainview, the character brought to life in a staggering performance by Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s celebrated new film, There Will be Blood, is an outsized character of mythic proportion. So, while we are unlikely to meet someone like Plainview in real life, he presents a lesson, example, archetype, or “plain view” that speaks to all of us. I saw the movie recently, at the precise moment when I was searching for an easy way to communicate what the Excellence Trap is like, and how we come to be ensnared in it. Enter Daniel Plainview.

Daniel Plainview fancies himself a leader, a self-made man who will create something huge, create jobs, make history, and maybe even start a movement. When we first meet him, prospecting for oil, he embodies the Five Virtues of Excellence: Effort, Proficiency, Commitment, Expertise, and Acumen. He displays vision, tenacity, a willingness to take risks, and an admirable individualism and determination. Failure and mediocrity are simply not on his radar. At first, I like this guy, until he opens his mouth, 15-20 minutes into the movie, and we meet the monster he will become. While most people trapped in excellence are in no way monstrous like Plainview, he does show us, on a grand and mythic scale, what we are bound confront if we aloow ourselves to think that excellence is the end of the road. If we are excellent, we are unlikely to turn into the likes of Plainview, but we will confront the same dynamics, each in our own way. You can bank on that in the same way Plainview banks on himself and his oil.

Plainview’s problems set in when he reaches the Five Limits of Excellence, those built-in ceilings which undermine the positive aspects of excellence:

• His Effort is limited by his physical limits: he is merely a man and, to drive the point home, he is hobbled for life by an on-the-job injury. He reached this limit early on.
• His Proficiency won’t set him apart. He knows this, and so looks with seething rage upon anyone who has a measure of proficiency in his chosen profession of “Oilman,” from the executives of Standard Oil to, eventually, his own adopted son.
• His Commitment saps his strength, and in Plainview’s case, his soul as well. His mono-mania about success cuts him off from other people almost completely, he is often drunk or at the verge of rage, and he subjects himself and others to unnecessary hardships and dangers, far beyond any practical reasoning or benefit.
• His Expertise lacks vision. Early in the film, he appears possibly to have the makings of a visionary. But his ego, fear, greed, and paranoia cause him to miss opportunities or to see the larger picture. His isolation increases with each major episode in the film, as he manages to sucker people into his plans, but fails to attract anyone to a vision, because there is no vision to be seen.
• His Acumen reduces strategy to tactics. His obsession about competitive jockeying takes over his entire person, and he ends up bitter, alone, and un-admired (he calls his butler his “closest associate”). He has no allies, defenders, zealots, partners, and no lasting legacy other than violence, deceit, and hatred.

(more…)

We can get a good picture of the Excellence Trap by considering a story that a friend of mine recently shared. Like being trapped in excellence, it’s an experience that many of us will recognize. After spending five days bouncing around the country at 36,000 feet, touching down in various locations for sundry meetings, he approached the gate for his final flight of the week (his seventh), and quickly decided he had earned a bit of comfort. His ticket was in coach, and the flight was only a few hours long, but seeing the Friday afternoon crowd, feeling ragged, and very much looking forward to getting back to his nice new home, he got in line at the check-in desk, eventually reaching the gate attendant, and asked for an upgrade to first class, intending to redeem some frequent flyer miles. “I’m sorry,” the gate attendant said. “There are no first class seats available.” My friend was a bit taken aback, but quickly recovered. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “You don’t understand. I’m a member of the super-duper-constant-traveler-presidential-admiral’s club! This is one of my earned perks. Just look at my frequent flyer miles! So I’ll take my upgrade now please. Thanks.” “Very well, sir” replied the gate attendant. “There’s just one thing. Can you help me decide which of the other members of the super-duper-constant-traveler-presidential-admiral’s club now now waiting in the gate area, who have already checked in and upgraded, I should ask to be reassigned to coach?” My friend took his original seat.

Excellence is a lot like this. If you’re excellent, you’re a member of a club that is simultaneously elite and surprisingly crowded, and unless you look closely, these excellent folks all look sort of the same. After all, you’re not spending much time surrounded by mediocre performers. You’ve studied, achieved, and implemented what you knew would make you excel and succeed. And it did. So far, so good. But then, in the middle of living the excellent life, you look around and realize that a lot of other fine people received the same memo, that moving forward isn’t so easy, competitive advantage is harder and harder to come by, and big, sustainable, innovation and exponential growth start to seem like a memory, or a fantasy. It’s too bad but, like my excellent friend, reciting your credentials, kicking up a fuss, having to take no for an answer, lowering expectations, escaping into a nap, resigning to work during the flight in lieu of other options, putting on a stoic face, flashing the Rolex, or just demanding extra in-flight snacks all won’t cut it. You did all the right things your entire life, up to and including today, and now here you are stuffed into coach with a lot of excellent people in the same predicament. There has to be a better way. It was supposed to be better than this. And it can be: escape the Excellence Trap, change the game, and make the transition to Mastery. Mastery is like having that great seat waiting for you all the time. Either way, I hope this story helps you get a sense of how unacceptable and unworkable excellence can be.