If there is only one thing you are going to dedicate more time to in the future, make it be listening.
Do not rush to tell your piece, learn to sit still with your assumptions and conclusions, give others the space to come up with their own version, accept that silence is not you giving power away.
Listen. Truly listen. To understand. To help the other understand.
It is the greatest gift of all.
When failure knocks at your door, you have to greet it, invite it in, make it feel comfortable, and eventually ask it to move in. Failure needs to be absorbed, somehow, in order for the learnings to become a part of you, to make you better, to prevent it from happening again.
If you deny failure, on the other hand, it will not simply go away. Soon enough it will spread, and your problem will become a problem for the neighbors, for the neighborhood, for the culture, for the village. It will transform into an existential threat. It will just be everywhere, always noticeable, never hidden, a memento of your own incapacity to accept.
Failure is not the end of the world. Pretending not to see it might just be it.
At the end of the day, all you can control is what you do. And all you can do is to behave in such a way that aligns with your core values, with what you want to achieve, with everything that matters.
Of course, this is something you have to figure out. The sooner, the better. It requires time, trial and error, failure, commitment. But once you are there, once you know what will make you sleep well in the night, just stick with it. Forget about the rest, forget about the others, and most importantly forget about the outcome.
Just stick with it.
Three ways to go about change in companies.
And change is so much more than this. But since none of the above ever gets done, you could try starting here before complaining that your people resist change.
When you ask dumb questions, people get often irritated and dismissive. But if you explain that you are asking simply because you do not genuinely know, they are usually happy to help. They can also go great lengths to make it click for you.
There are benefits in taking a dumb approach to things, new things in particular. Understanding why something is done in a certain way can unlock new meaning, and eventually you will become better at expressing yourself.
Next time you are in a meeting, and somebody nonchalantly asks “you know that, right?”, or says “you have certainly heard about this”, or mentions a term you are not familiar with. Instead of nodding and pretending, stop and ask the dumb question: “can you explain that, please?”.
You will not loose status. You will gain the possibility to learn.
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