Escape From Excellence

Thsi weekend, I devoured Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography of Albert Einstein. This excellent book does a great job of helping us to understand both the science and the man. While Einstein was imperfect and a bit eccentric (he hated socks), his mastery is unquestionable. There were many excellent scientists in his circle who got close relativity, but Einstein had the decisive breakthrough primarily because he had escaped from excellence. He led with energy more than with effort (although his effort was herculean), and with intention rather than mere commitment. He also went beyond proficiency and expertise to attain true expression and perspective. And, even though his strategic moves are legendary, acumen was child’s play to him; he always sought wisdom in his science and denigrated science that lacked this wisdom.

But late last night, while in the last chapters, the elements of a new equation that explains so much of Einstein’s mastery leapt off the page at me. Here it is: C+A=W>M. To have fun wth symbols, let C be curiosity, let A be awe, and let W be wonder, with M as, you guessed it, mastery.

Einstein had a boundless curiosity, but it was always accompanied by an almost religious sense of awe. He was no mere puzzler, but needed to see to the heart of things. This curiosity and awe added up to a sense of wonder, a humble and almost child-like sense of that ’something more’ that transcends the mundane. And this wonder, even more than his technical genius, his brain, or his independance, is the driving force of his mastery. He had a sense of the beauty, of the possibility, of the sublime in nature, and he saw it as both his mission and his gift to understand nature, from atom to cosmos, and be devoted to it. He saw this as an act of artistic creation. This was his Dynamic Essence. He couldn’t not follow it. He built his life around it, and achieved mastery. The results were exponentially greater than what had come before. He also enjoyed, in his reknown, legacy, and “profit,” an exponentially greater reward. And with his unfailing good humor, he demonstrated that the costs of excellence were left far behind.

What a guy.

Like millions of others, I was shocked and saddened by the sudden and tragic death of NBC News Washington bureau chief and long-time Meet the Press host Tim Russert. As I took in the coverage from his passing to his memorial, and had a chance to listen the comments of his family, friends, and colleagues, it quickly became abundantly clear that Russert had escaped from excellence and achieved mastery, in a big way. Those who knew him were not merely mouthing the appropriate pro forma testiments to his professionalism, character, and success that we’d expect in circumstances like this. This was much more. This was another level. As a way to pay tribute, and to extend his legacy by holding him up as an example of mastery, let’s take a closer look.

First, Russert was clearly excellent. He is given wide credit for his effort, proficiency, expertise, commitment, and acumen, which together  comprise the Five Virtues of Excellence. His work ethic, preperation, knowledge, savviness, determination, standards, and skill are legendary.

But Russert was more. Close associates referred to his uncanny ability to build genuine relationships, to his unflagging good humor, to his inspiring yet demanding leadership, and credited him with those rare human qualities that clearly set the great ones apart. And former GE (NBC parent) CEO Jack Welch said he made sure Russert made more money too.

Russert was a master: he manifested the Five Markers of Mastery (fearlessness, gracefullness, generativeness, effortlessness, and intuitiveness), in spades. And he clearly had shifted to the Five Pillars of Mastery: Energy (the guy never lost his enthusiasm, and loved where he was and what he did; he never seem to tire); Expression (he was his own man, followed his own path, and spoke his mind, with dignity and joy); Perspective (he saw to the issue, beyond the facts, and mantained personal and professional vision); Intention (he used soft power, a feel for the truth, and a sense of mission to stand up to anyone and ask tough but fair questions, and was able to attract the people and resources to perform at his best), and Wisdom (he never lost sight of his task, his responsibility, and as a result got the job he was born for, set the standard by which others shall be judged, and left a professional and personal legacy that will be both inspiring and hard to match). He took great joy in the success of others, and in the needs of his audience, his fellow citizens. He lived and worked from his Dynamic Essence. And he enjoyed enormous and unexpected rewards.

 Tim Russert wasn’t the coolest guy, as it is defined by the tragically hip. He wasn’t edgy, dangerous, or personally glamorous, and this by choice. He didn’t wield power brutally (even though he held great power), chase the spotlight, show off, act puffed up, or take revenge for minor slights. But it would be wrong to think that he was only about humble blocking and tackling, merely excellent, much less merely a fortunate mediocrity. That would be a terrible misreading of his modus operendi, and gladly I’ve heard no one make this mistake. Instead, the combination of ease and outcome, of low cost and high return, that we saw in Tim Russert is evidence of true Leadership Mastery.

The only outstanding question is whether Tim Russert was one of those rare people who was simply born that way. Did he ever spend much time experiencing the high costs of excellence or wasting time with the five failed strategies of excellence? I suspect not. I believe he may have been one of those few who have mastery built-in to their makeup, and whose transition from excellence to mastery is seamless, apparently either hardwired into his very nature or, perhaps, becoming part of his awareness at a very early age.

As a master, in his job, he won’t be replaced, only succeeded. 

God speed, Mr. Russert. Your legacy will include your witness to mastery for all of us.

Imagine two successful leaders. Let’s call one leader S, and the other C. At this time, S is trapped in excellence, while C is in mastery. If excellence and mastery are like apples and oranges, these two will have very little in common. But not so fast; they’re both fruits, both grow on trees, and both start out life similarly. So it is with our two leaders. They share much in common, up to a point. But after that point, S became ensnared in the Excellence Trap, while C evolved to Leadership Mastery.

After the break, an article length case study follows that outlines in detail what the Excellence Trap and Leadership Mastery can look like in the real life of two CEO’s. Both pursued excellence. One became ensnared in the excellence trap, while the other achieved Leadership Mastery.

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We’ve all heard the old saying about how success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. That’s true, but it’s really only true if you’re in the excellence trap! Sure, it takes work to bring a good idea to life. And it takes skill. The Big Book of Failure is full of ideas that never saw the light of day because their creator had no idea how to take ideas from concept to reality. But when in the excellence trap, inspiration really is front and center only 1% of the time. And that’s too little. Only 1% inspiration keeps innovation rare, change small, and growth incremental. And worse, most people in excellence don’t really know how to be inspired, only driven. And there’s a difference!

Think about it. Drive is about commitment and effort, two of the virtues of excellence that get corrupted into entropy and fixation, and so become costs of excellence, specifically depletion and misalignment. On the other hand, true inspiration is about both unexpected, non-linear, innovative thinking, and genuine enthusiasm to do something with it. It comes from the Five Virtues of Mastery (energy, expression, perspective, intention, and wisdom).

The masters I know are about inspiration 70% of the time, and the rest of the time they bring it to life, more efficienlty and effectively, with lower costs and greater results. Look at the efficiency of the perfect golf swing, the effortless expression of the great saxaphone player, and even the lose-track-of-time quality of doing what you love.

Do these people look like they’re working? We’ve all known people who say, “That’s why they call it work.” But I have never met a master who says that! Only failures and mediocrities say that. They may be nice hard working people, salt of the earth, but they’ve lost the plot. Instead, masters say, “All work in sacred.” If you interrupted, say, Tiger Woods or Charlie Parker during a training or practice session, they’d likely tell you how hard they are working, and they are. Then ask them if they’d rather be doing anything else. Anyone want to guess what they’d say? (Hint: rhymes with snow). Their work and their inspiration are one. That is sacred work. That is mastery.

Each 1% increase in inspiration can create an exponential return. So let’s maximize return on investment by increasing Return on Inspiration.

Let’s talk about the crucial idea of the Falling Point. This is where the rubber meets the road, or really more like where the poop hits the fan. This explains just how and when the Excellence Trap gets us.

When we surpass the built-in limit of any of the Virtues of Excellence, which inevitably occurs, we reach the Falling Point. When this happens, our lifelong upward arc gradually takes a new direction, and at first we don’t even notice. This is the great irony of being excellent; eventually it bites us, and we don’t know why. But, like a subatomic particle or distant star, we can’t see it directly; we can only “see” it by its effects.

These effects include all the costs and challenges that we observe confronting those hardworking, well- intentioned, capable, successful, and excellent people we mentioned earlier: struggling to achieve the extra 5%, sustain peak performance and innovation, while confronting merely incremental change, marginal outcomes, limited advantage, and inconsistent inspiration, focus, and alignment with values and goals.

The Falling Point is sort of like the point of diminishing returns, except that it is really more like the point of incurring and accruing hidden and unnecessary costs. Big difference.

The moment we reach the Falling Point, on any one of the Virtues, the Corruptions of Excellence set in and the Costs of Excellence come racing behind. This explains why good people aren’t enjoying a life of mastery. And this is precisely what forces the choice between 1. falling back into mediocrity or 2. ascending to mastery, if you’re even fortunate enough to make the choice; most driven people just stick it out in excellence, not knowing what hit them, until the costs become too high. In the meantime, they ride the roller coaster, play the odds, and try to beat the clock, all the while wasting time with the Five Failed Strategies of Excellence.

But take heart, every master was there once. Then they escaped from excellence.

 Remeber this: We don’t cross the Falling Point because we have failed in any way. Quite the opposite. We only cross it if we are excellent! And that is how excellence traps us, every time.

Everybody is replaceable, right? Well, 99% of the time this is true, even when talking about successful, excellent leaders. But this weekend, in episode four of the series John Adams on HBO, I watched with interest as Thomas Jefferson corrected Ben Franklin by telling him that he could never replace Franklin as US Representative in Paris, but could only succeed him. Putting Jefferson’s own future achievements aside, this one line speaks volumes: masters can never be replaced, only succeeded. The goal of any master is to be succeeded by another master. And each master is unique. Jefferson at once recognized Franklin’s mastery, and made an implicit claim for his own!

But excellence is replaceable. Always. Because excellence is based on things like skill and effort, however advanced, it is replicable. In this way, “succession planning” may be a useful nicety to spare our feelings, it is a misnomer. It should be called replacement planning. That sounds bad, but it tells a difficult truth. If you are excellent, whether you’re the crack new recuit or the successful CEO, you are replaceable. And of course, that is good for the ongoing health of the excellent business. If excellence were good enough (it isn’t).

But masters leave a different legacy. Masters can only be succeeded. If they are succeeded by another master, all will be well. If not, the company throws the dice and hopes for the best, dealing with excellence, mediocrity, and failure over time and in turn. But in great mastery traditions, unlike business, for example in martial arts, music or comedy improvization, and monastic Buddhism, and probably in symphony conducting, there is a process of identification, initiation, and development into mastery, beyond excellence (you already have to be excellent even to be considered). In these places, mastery is planned and demanded. No mastery, no mantle.

But most so-called corporate “succession planning” only deepens the excellence, and the excellence trap, of the candidate for leadership; and in this it often succeeds. Unfortunately, the excellent leader then spends his or her time in leadership dealing with the limits and costs of excellence (read all about them here). 

We need Mastery Planning. A leader must work to develop mastery before taking the helm, or as quickly as possible thereafter. And the bench must include other masters in training, while the entire organization develops a culture of mastery, not just of success. Band-aids like “Lessons from Company X” pale in comparison to what would happen if a leader (and everyone else) learned and applied the lessons of a genuine mastery tradition. That would be something! This could be approximated by appropriating the methods of the various mastery traditions. But in practice this is usually a force fit when applied to business, and often fights with business. Business needs it own mastery; business needs to become a mastery tradition in it’s own right! A better way may be to check out what we’ve created, specifically for business, here.

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.

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A recent short article in the January, 2008, Special HBR Centennial Issue devoted to Leadership and Strategy is an unwitting example of the Excellence Trap in action. And it gives us a great opportunity to dispel a few myths floating around in the self-limited world of excellence, using the content of the article only as a jumping off point. The article is called Love and Fear and the Modern Boss, by HBS Prof. Scott A. Snook, and can be summarized like this: ever since back before Machiavelli wrote The Prince, leaders have wrestled with the difficult either-or choice of whether it is better to be loved (the soft style) or feared (the hard style). For a long time, fear won. In recent decades, however, there has been an established trend among top thinkers and leaders that favors love rather than fear as a management style. However, the author concludes, the successful leader will know how and when to use each, and will seek stretch assignments that help them develop untapped strengths. End of article.

That’s it? We’re to do both fear and love well, and balance them skillfully? Where does that leave us? Putting aside any of our beliefs about the benefits of either management style, it leaves us with three popular myths to dispel:

Excellence Myth 1: When you confront an either-or choice, you must choose wither A or B.

Leaders trapped in excellence are smart to consider both sides of the classic big choices. Unfortunately, most people, most of the time, look at whatever A and B represent and consider these to be facts, realities, limits, something we must work within and choose between. This isn’t true, and can only be thought to be true by people trapped in excellence and ignorant of mastery. Mastery knows better. Mastery knows that 99% of all either-or’s are false. Just ask everyone from Captain James Kirk to philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (he wrote three big books to make a similar point point. I’m saving you the trouble of reading them). Mastery doesn’t ride roughshod over facts and ignore reality. Rather it transforms reality. Real masters survey the landscape and rewrite the map. Warning: don’t try to do this from a place of ego; it’s not the same thing. The macho leader will be tempted to shout, “Do both!” But that’s a pose and is doomed to fail (and in the case of using soft and hard styles, will get you labeled passive-aggressive, and just for the record, the recipients of passive-aggressive behavior can go a little nuts). It’s not about choosing one or doing both. It’s about making something new.

Excellence Myth 2: When you confront an either-or choice, you must balance A and B.

Nope. Balance is one of the Five Failed Strategies of Excellence, all of which try and fail to overcome the Limits of Excellence and mitigate the Costs of Excellence. (We’ll discuss all of this in detail in later posts. For now, the other failed strategies are Denial, Toughness, Acceptance, and Escapism). Balance is a cop out, or to quote myself in what I hope becomes a classic, “Balance is bullshit.” Balance is an energy-sucking juggling act that compromises everything and achieves nothing. Again, mastery looks beyond A and B, and creates a new reality. It discovers, discerns, and creates what people trapped in excellence fail to see and act upon. And then it leads.

Excellence Myth 3: Leadership is about greater skills and better application.

Hell no! Skills enable action, they don’t take action, and they sure don’t make choices or create possibilities. Skill is a jumping off point, a means, not an end. I know for certain that the last thing on the mind of a master when in the arena, in the game, on the stage, on the battlefield, or in the boardroom, is skill. Failure says, “I have no skill.” Mediocrity says, “I have to improve my skills.” And Excellence says, “My skills are excellent.” But Mastery says, “I can rely on my skills, but if I become conscious of them even for a moment, I am lost.” Instead, Mastery is in flow, mastery is un-self-aware, mastery improvises.

These myths exist in the Excellence Trap, but are nowhere to be found in mastery. Let’s face it, a leader can go far even if he or she stay in excellence; in fact, it’s necessary to pass though excellence; you can’t skip it. Excellence is excellent for a reason. The issue is this: can you have exponentially higher innovation, energy, sustainability, alignment, advantage, and success than you have now, then your competition, over the long haul? Not within excellence, not inside the Excellence Trap.

Oh yes, what about hard and soft management styles? It’s not either-or, and it’s not both-and. It’s funny to remember those job interviews where the interviewer asks the appilicant to navigate an either-or, a tough choice they are likely to confront on the job. The prepared job-seeker, pursuing excellence, proclaims, “Do both! It’s a both-and! In balance!” Impressive. They seem excellent. They get hired. “Great success,” to quote Borat. But later, when they pass the Limits of Excellence and incur the Costs of Excellence, and struggle for marginal advantage and incremental growth, they might then make the leap into mastery and realize that great leaders are neither hard nor soft; that’s the wrong question (hint: either-or’s are usually the wrong question). Masterful leaders focus on their vision, and the vision of others. They engage, inspire, and align. They look for the greatness that drives the great idea, and they create the conditions for it, daily. They do whatever it takes to ensure that the highest number of people will have, with stunning regularity, implementable, sustainable, differentiated business ideas that drive short term success and long term advantage. And for leaders in Mastery, that’s easy. They can’t not do it.