Escape From Excellence

This is my first post after a long hiatus, so let’s make it high value-added.

In tough economic times, like these, the stakes are high and the pressure is on leaders to make wise and sometimes tough decisions. Failure is both not an option, as well as a genuine possibility lurking in the doorway. The margin of error is diminished. We can’t afford to be wrong.

Ironically, for the big decisions, those with a straight path to the bottom line, the usual tools of management decision-making won’t suffice. Data, analysis, sophisticated models, and decision trees and matrixes will only get us so far. It’s kid’s stuff. These tools are not predictive. They are a cost of entry, never a differentiator or driver of sustainable competitive advantage (not even with the smartest consultants in tow). Moreover, these decisions never take place in a vacuum, and the complexities of real-time business life reduce our confidence in them. A leader trapped in mere excellence will typically over-rely upon these models, and then hope like hell that he or she is right. This undermines their own wellness and productivity, and that of everyone else working under the same conditions, which is to say their people.

There are two popular but unproductive and costly options that many leaders choose when confronting having to live with high stakes decisions:

1. Bluff/Spin/Blame. These managers have all the data and people lined up to take the blame if things go wrong.

2. Escape from Reality. These managers rely on force of will and ego in an attempt to sell themselves and the world on their vision and interpretation of events even when it is clear to any objective observer that they are simply full of it.

When the leader chooses it, the entire company lives with it. Please note: these two strategies are not limited to mediocre and failed managers; that’s too easy. Rather, we see them, almost daily, being practiced by excellent managers. That is to say, managers who have pursued and achieved excellence by practicing the Five Virtues of Excellence; people with a track record, senior leaders. This is what happens in the Excellence Trap.

There is a better way! Leaders in Mastery know that, after they have gathered and analyzed data and considered options, they simly choose a direction. Then they make it real. They bring the Five Pillars of Mastery (energy, expression, perspective, intention and wisdom), and that of every person in the entire organization to bear upon whatever path they choose, whatever context they are in; they engage, they flourish, they improvise and adapt, they inspire and align, they lead. It’s that simple, and that rare.

Try this: for every data point you consider when confronting a tough decision, spend as much time considering the Five Shifts of Mastery. Or let’s make it even easier: pick a direction and run with it. If you’re smart, capable, and have done a modicum of due diligance, you’ll succeed either way. Leadership Masters make their own reality, they don’t impose a fantasy on others. And to use the language of competition, a leader working to escape excellence and achieve mastery is already enjoying a powerful competitive advantage. Consider this: excellent managers try to  control the uncontrollable, and waste resources in the process. Masterful leaders create the future, establish the outcome, and gather resources as they go. It’s the leadership equivalent of creating opportunity while others panic (and let’s face it, most people, even excellent people, do panic. They’re panicing on Wall St as I write this).

That’s something you can stake your business on, particularly in tough times.

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.

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.

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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