purposeful | Lorne Rubis

Seriously, Are You Getting Enough Oxygen?

201122 Mar
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Posted inCharacter Triangle

You may have heard about Project Oxygen. A team of statisticians at Google gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers, across more than 100 variables, and crunched mountains of performance reviews, feed back surveys and reports, concluding in a comprehensive, research based, data driven analysis and framework on leadership effectiveness (for more read NYT, March 13 Business section). They have spent a year rolling out the results and translating them into a training system. Working for a weak manager is one of the major causes of employee turnover and low morale. The ability of the organization to recruit, hire, promote, and develop to the learnings of Project Oxygen can have a profound impact on Google’s competitive advantage and market leadership. The summary of the key lessons learned are not surprising but the heft of the research reinforces ways of leading I personally align with:

Applying the values of the Character Triangle supports the above analysis. The more one embraces and applies accountability, respect, and abundance, the more likely and easier is the connection to Google’s Big 8!
Character Move: if you want to be a strong leader, start applying purposeful practice in all 8 areas. Get feedback on each element and develop from there. It is not too late or early in your career to start.

Leading in the Triangle,

Lorne

What is Your Personal Excellence Framework?

201019 Nov
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Posted inBe Accountable

On a previous blog I introduced the great work of Matthew Syed in his book Bounce. The premise of Bounce, based on convincing data, is that purposeful practice and other attributes drive excellence and success more than raw talent. Now Tony Schwartz in an Harvard Business Review article proclaims that leaders can fuel excellence at anything.

The following is a checklist for our own personal excellence, combining Syed’s work, Schwartz’s leadership environment (which we need to develop for ourselves) and a few of my thoughts. It provides a framework for excellence. I challenge you to write out an outline for yourself before you mentally click off the blog!

1. Set our minds for achieving Personal Excellence.

You and I have to believe we can become masterful at what we’re doing. This is more important than being overtaken by words like “gifted” or ” talented.”

2. Define our driving purpose.

We need to tie our personal excellence objective to a larger goal or mission. What is our purpose in life? (Read a recent blog of mine on life purpose.)

3. Outline a very specific plan with milestones along the way.

Be specific. Be realistic but recognize that processes lead to results and everything is a process.

4. Practice with purpose; purposefully practice.

Have concentrated times of purposeful practice interrupted with appropriate periods of refresh.

5. Celebrate milestones.

Don’t wait for others to celebrate success. If others recognize us, it’s a bonus. We need to celebrate ourselves! I’m not talking about just feel-good mush. This is acknowledging meaningful, measurable, achievements along the way.

6. Get purposeful, objective, regular feedback. Apply the learning.

Get objective data. Develop a learning process. Practice improvements. Improve practice. Use coaches; we need outside viewpoints from people that care about our personal success.

7. Get masterful and don’t stop.

Keep raising the bar. Do 1 through 6 again. Get into our self-identified hall of fame. Enjoy the ride.

Being accountable involves a plan of action. We are respectful to ourselves by believing that we personally can become excellent. Be abundant. Focus on what we already have to be great, not what we don’t!

A framework and blog is easy to publish. Executing to excellence is darn hard. That’s what makes it worth it!

Live the Triangle,

Lorne

Landing on Our Butts 20,000 Times. Getting Up 20,001!

201029 Sep
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Posted inBe Accountable

The concept of what Matthew Syed calls, in his brilliant book Bounce… “Purposeful Practice” is really on my mind. It completely makes sense to me and meshes with my experience in business and sports. To be great at anything requires years of dedicated quantity and quality of practice. We not only have to practice a lot but practice the RIGHT things.

A metaphorical example might be provided by Shizuku Arakawa, the Japanese 2006 Olympic figure skating champion. It is reported that she fell over 20,000 times in her journey from 5 year old novice to gold medal winner. She fell because she, as all great champions do, was always practicing at the edge of her skill level; pushing herself to greatness. She not only practiced all the time, but she worked on practicing the right things and then pushed herself to break through. Hence 20, 000 spills. Of course she got up each time, brushed herself off and went back to purposeful practice. The end result: an Olympic Gold Medal, and the first Japanese gold medal in figure skating.

Purposeful practice involves:

1. Outlining in deep detail the processes that make up the desired expertise and end result.

2. Practicing over and over again every process; especially the ones we’re not good at.

3. Getting very specific process feedback and coaching on every practice so we improve rather than repeat.

4. Apply breakthrough creativity on how we might get better results faster.

5. Do it over and over again.

6. Have the right mind set (the CT!).

Whether we’re salespeople, grocery clerks, butchers, or golfers the same rules apply. If we want to be excellent we have to purposefully practice, and practice with purpose.

Self accountability and purposeful practice go together. The good news for all of us is that talent is over rated. Working at excellence with serious intent is not.

Living in the Triangle,

Lorne

Character Triangle

Our character is exclusively ours. We define it by how we think and what we do. I believe that acting with Character is driven by what I call the Character Triangle.

What, exactly, is the Character Triangle (CT)?

The CT describes and emphasizes three distinct but interdependent values:

Be Accountable: first person action to make things better, avoiding blame.
Be Respectful: being present, listening, looking again, focusing on the process.
Be Abundant: generous in spirit, moving forward, minimizing the lack of.