Category: self-help

The role of integrity

Fabrizio1 Comment

There is no such thing a minor lapse of integrity.

Tom Peters

At some point in life, you have to become extremely clear on what you stand for.

It’s not about knowing what you will become, it’s more getting serious about the how. Will you lie? Will you look for shortcuts? Would it be ok to blame a peer for someone you know they did not do, if that would mean getting a promotion? What if tomorrow you wake up with 10,000€ in your bank account due to a favourable mistake? And say you have 10,000€ in your account after saving for 10 years, what would you do with that? If you see somebody in pain, how do you react? If you see somebody in difficulty, how do you react?

We are all capable of giving top-of-mind answers to those and other similar questions, but there are two additional difficulties.

The first is aligning actions with words. Everybody would say they would help somebody in pain, and yet would they if that would be more than an hypothesis? How would they react to actually witnessing somebody in pain?

The second is making the answers absolute. Acting maliciously to get promoted to the role you have been worked for all your life is not more acceptable than acting maliciously to get promoted to a role you do not care about. If the mistake gives you an additional 10,000€, it’s the same as if it would give you 1,000,000€.

When achieving that kind of clarity around the journey, things get a lot easier. And when you maintain clarity even when it is darker, when cheating would be easy, when nobody is watching, then you’ll understand the role of integrity in defining who you are and what your part is in the lives of others.

There is no particular age at which this gets easier, so start today if you haven’t already.

When you have an idea

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When you have an idea that would demand any type of effort from anybody to implement (most ideas do), the sooner you get out of the “this-is-the-best-idea-in-the-world-everybody-will-love-it” mindset the better.

Instead.

Clarify what others have to gain from the implementation. Most ideas do not exist in a vacuum, and so side effects are to be expected. Identify the positive ones and state them clearly to the people who could reap the benefit. Mitigate the negatives.

Bring people onboard before actually presenting the idea to a wider audience. You most likely have some allies (if you don’t, drop the idea). It’s all about finding them and involving them early in the process. Make sure they understand what’s in it for them and how they can contribute to be part of the success.

Praise positive results of ideas that go in different directions. Change is difficult, and it cannot be lead by a fanboy. All ideas have pros and cons. Be honest about the cons in what you want to do, and most of all be outspoken when it comes to good results achieved by what’s been done so far, or could be done with the same resources.

Offer unconditional help. Perhaps you cannot do much to bring the idea to life, surely you can facilitate the work, shield the team from politics and petty discussions, bring more people on board as needed, champion the idea with internal and external stakeholders, reiterate the vision and the reasons why the idea exist in the first place.

You are close to real change.

Dispersing energy

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How much energy do we spend trying to come out on top?

Being the best in our class, in our team, in our company; walking faster than others to try to get a best spot in the queue; paying for something we don’t need with money we don’t have; winning that argument that is draining the energy of our peers; speeding up as the traffic light gets yellow to pass just in time; refreshing the page to buy the tickets first, or to comment on the video first. Is there satisfaction in this? And if so, how long does it last?

How much energy to we spend giving external factors the keys to us being on top?

Wishing our partner would be more loving, our boss more caring, our colleagues more helpful. If only that thing would work out this way. If we could only win one more customer. If only the weather could be good tomorrow. I wish I had 10,000€ more to afford that car. Or some more time to spend with my family. My team won, and I am happy!

I choose to be responsible for my experience. In other words, the weather does not upset me. I upset myself because I am attached to beliefs about the weather. I believe it should be sunny and not cloudy. I am the source of my beliefs, and I am attached to being right about my beliefs, and when the world does not cooperate, I upset myself.

Jim Dethmer, Leading Above the Line

Coming out on top and letting external factors determine what the top looks like are incredibly tiring activities. Most of us live in a constant fight, one in which we have no power (we don’t get to change the weather) and the prize for which is not really something we are looking forward to.

There’s value in coming out second, third, fourth or ninehundredninetyninth. It’s for us to decide.

Secret recipes

Fabrizio1 Comment

Sometimes I wonder why so many people decide to share their secret sauce online. Why should they give away what made them and their organisations successful, particularly if they are still in business? Why not keeping it all for themselves, compounding edge on competitors and alternatives?

Then I immediately realize, of course they do.

They know that 99.9% of the people that will consume their content will do absolutely nothing about it. Even when you read that to be rich there are three things you totally have to do, or that to get more leads you need to follow a four-step strategy (success guaranteed!), or that the future of work demands you to most definitely have these ten characteristics, getting to implement that requires an effort that the vast majority of people are simply not ready to put in. An Italian saying goes something like “there’s a whole sea between saying and doing”, and that is the case here. Just because you know something, even if it probably would benefit you, does not mean you are capable of applying that and make of it an habit.

The remaining 1% also do not represent a danger for those who share. The power of context, timing, luck have to be factored in the recipe, and that is something nobody can replicate. Looking back at what happened in the past and pinpoint some key success factors is easy. A lot more challenging is to be at point zero and figure out how to proceed from there towards success.

The point, I guess, is that if you have something to share, something that people might find valuable, something that might help somebody somewhere, go ahead and share away. Even your most secret ingredients are safe in plain sight.

And if you are one of the consumers of content, be mindful that things that are shared are usually a sensible starting point, but to make them work for you it’s not enough to put in the work, you’ll also have to figure out how to make them work for you.

Find the challenge

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It’s pleasant to hear we are right, to be praised for the great work we are doing, to be surrounded by people who let us do what we believe is worth doing.

And yet, it’s a position in which we should feel uncomfortable.

As nobody is perfect, and most of us are far from it, if all we hear are praises and applauses one of two things is happening: either the criticism and the alternatives are being hidden from us or we are in an environment that lacks diversity. In both cases, we are not hearing the other side of the story, the one that would make our understanding rounder and more effective.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.

John Stuart Mill