Leaders are losers.

As leaders, we often credit the esteem we have with others to our successes, our output, our wins. And while there is truth to that, the reality is that most leaders lose much more than they win—and that’s why they attract followers.  

No one can be excellent at everything.  Gifted leaders are extremely focussed about where they want to win and where they are willing to lose.

Responding to every opportunity, every request, every criticism, every acknowledgment of your shortcomings (perceived and real) is like trying to play four sports in one season while also getting a culinary degree and remodelling your bathroom.

photo credit: Wired man via photopin (license)

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Frogs for breakfast

After waking up with a sore throat, my oldest daughter got a positive strep test back from the clinic the other day. We were sent home with a bottle of liquid penicillin and a 24 hour quarantine.

My daughter has a notoriously limited list of foods she finds acceptable—most of her favorites range in the white to slightly off-white color spectrum. So we weren’t surprised this morning when we found her staring at the tablespoon-serving of medicine with a pained look on her face trying to will the whole situation away.

She’s capable of maintaining this posture for hours at a time.

I broke it down for her: 

“You can gulp the medicine down now and get back to happily reading your books. Or, you can stall, put a half hour of worry and anxiety in your pocket, and then take the medicine.

Which option do you like better?”

She’s a smart kid: she choked down the meds.

Mark Twain is credited with the line, ““Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” 

Actually, Nicolas Chamfort deserves the true credit for the line and in his version it was a toad. Nonetheless, the notion behind it is to start your day with something terrible in the aim of moving towards something great.  

Often the frog rule gets misconstrued as a masochistic ritual of self-torture. While I think there is benefit to taking on some tasks simply to remind ourselves we can do hard things,—I don’t think that’s where the core value of the “frog rule” lies.

All projects, even the ones that we know will make us better, come with distasteful parts. There’s often no getting around those bits—they need to happen. Swallowing one small frog each morning is a way to spread them out, to drink the whole bottle of medicine one tablespoon at a time.

Here’s a suggestion:

Try taking a few index cards or sticky notes and write a “frog” on each one. The frog should help get you closer to some key goal you’ve got. It may be around a professional project you’re working on, some physical or psychological health goal, or a relationship you are trying to improve.  Chances are, you already know several key steps towards getting you to those goals and at least one or two of them don’t taste too good.

Don’t make this a mental list—write them down. Things often lose some of their emotional potency once they’re on paper. 

Put them on individual pieces of paper. You’ve got to make them bite-sized. One frog you can handle. A crate-full of them living on one legal-sized sheet of paper is overwhelming and will get hidden under that stack of memos, articles, and parking tickets you don’t want to think about either.

Pick one frog each morning and “eat it” by the end of the day. Do it in the morning, and you can go through the rest of the day without the anxiety.

Any great endeavor is going to come with some frogs. You can eat them sooner or later, but you’ll have to eat them. Might was well get it done with and enjoy the rest of your day.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Forget, "What's the goal?" Focus on, "What's the frame?"

There’s a great cafe-style seafood place not far from my house. At the registers, they don’t have one tip jar, they have two. Each jar has opposing categories that change periodically (Boxers or Briefs, Seahawks or Patriots, Country or Jazz, Rice or Beans).

I’ve heard that places that employ this tactic increase their tips by more than 30%! People can’t resist assigning themselves a group.

We love categories. We can’t help it. It’s key to our evolution. Sure, our ancestors got good at building strong and protective social communities, made things like the wheel and fire, and charted important cyclical events like weather patterns and seasons—but what allowed for all of that was a knack for pattern recognition. We see what makes things similar and what makes them different.

The first words in almost all languages we know of, first made a distinction between humans and non-humans. The next words that develop are almost always category words, as well--distinguishing non-humans (animals) into sub-categories that either fly, swim, or crawl—something along the lines of bird, fish, snake.

These categories, or what I like to call frames, are still essential to how we perceive and describe the world around us. They’re tremendously useful. (Imagine the time you are saved when you tell people you need a plumber recommendation, not just a human-with-a-wrench recommendation).

When I am hosting an improv show, I almost always use a frame to help focus the audience and get them creative when trying to get a suggestion for a scene. If I ask them to “Shout out something!”—there is virtual silence. If I ask them to shout out “something red,” a cacophony of ideas bounces back: “Firetruck!” “Apples!” “My car!” “Strawberries!” “Cinnamon candies!” “Mars!” “The Red Baron!”

Frames both limit and open up possibilities.

But when frames become unconscious to us, they can lead to trouble. Unknowingly, we start casting our votes amongst a limited number of virtual tips jars.

When setting plans, instead of looking for goals that are at the essence of what matters to us, we start looking for goals that fit categories like, “Things the board likes to hear,” or “Things that will impress the neighbors.”

Instead of looking for projects that fit into the frame “Problems we can help our customers fix,” we focus on, “Things that will sound great in an email announcement.”

If you’re framing a starting place, like a suggestion for an improv scene, the category is pretty arbitrary. If you’re framing a desired result, being intentional with your frame is critical.

photo credit: Tip Jars via photopin (license)

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Creating something is almost as great as the creation.

I just had to post this mesmerizing video of making paper art.

Inspired me to think about all the work we do and how we can apply the same sense of patience, craft, and intention. The results are worth it.

Post by artFido - fetching art.

Set Problems, Not Goals.

A few years ago, I had a Goal to run a marathon. Then I registered for one. Suddenly, I had a Problem: Somehow, I had to train my body to run 26 miles in a row in the 4 months. 

The want shifted to a necessity.

When a theater audience tells a group of improvisers to do a scene about aliens landing during the French Revolution, they’re not giving the cast a goal. They’re giving them a problem to solve.

A goal isn’t what got me across the marathon finish line, solving the Problem did.

I think “Goal” has become one of those words we use so often, it’s lost its meaning. 

Goals quickly become the equivalent of New Year’s resolutions with the same amount of actual resolve attached to them. Often, they lack aspiration and are just predictions based on our already established trajectory.

Problems demand action and imply urgency. Goals often become wall art.

So this year—instead of Goals—my work team is choosing some Key Problems. Not problems that are happening to us, but Problems we want to create for us.

(Bonus: Choosing Problems as the focus of the change you want shifts your response when the problems you didn’t choose inevitably show up. Instead of them feeling like unexpected enemies to your goal, they are familiar cousins that can be dealt with in the same manner.)

photo credit: Puzzle pieces via photopin (license)

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Step 3: Get experienced

You can’t make yourself smarter. You can only make yourself more experienced. 

What we generally describe as expertise doesn’t come from innate ability, it comes from the wisdom gathered by walking a road many times. That point where you can say, “I’ve seen this before…I know what to do next.”

But when you are making something new, there’s no way you can have seen it before. You won’t know with any certainty what the thing to do next is. You’ll just have to choose some thing that’s next. And a lot of times, you’ll find out what you chose was wrong.  And then you’ll choose something else.

The best way to find out which of your ideas are really good ideas is to tell everyone all your ideas and learn which ones are bad.

I’ve been trying to put myself in some new spaces lately. 

Going into them with the full knowledge that I’m going to look silly has been very helpful. As long as I remember that the best way to stop looking so lost is to keep walking the path until it becomes familiar, I can deal with the temporary embarrassment that comes with looking stupid. 

(The safer option, of course, is to just not walk the path at all. If that’s where you're leaning, see Step 1.)

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Step 2: Get Silly

As Amy Poehler says, “No one looks stupid when they’re having fun.” 

The key, I’m discovering lately, when stepping into the unknown, is to embrace the giddiness that comes with the inevitable experience of looking stupid.

When we take ownership of the stupidness it becomes silliness--and silly is a lot less scary.

Hopefully you’ve experienced the silly joy of watching a reckless three-legged race, or a campfire skit of middle-schoolers trying to tell a story with a mouth full of marshmallows, or the horrible singer who unselfconsciously and passionately belts out an AC/DC song at the karaoke party. 

Making something great will be scary, sure. And you’re going to look stupid along the way—there’s no avoiding that. But if you can also have fun along the way, you’ll find that most people—at least the ones that count—won’t ridicule your stupidity. They’ll celebrate it.

Pretending you know what you’re doing when you don’t is a form of lying. Apologizing for what you don’t know is unnecessary and turns people away. But celebrating what you don’t know draws people in.

We love to cheer on the underdogs, the folks who have no idea what they’re doing but joyfully trudge on anyway. 

It’s a significant part, I believe, of what brings in an audience in for an improv show. We love to watch people in way over their heads, battling on anyway, with a smile on their face.

It’s not the constant losses that drive diehard Cubs fans, it’s the hope of finally prevailing. 

Because we can see that their tolerance for failure will likely get them a win someday. 

p.s.--Here’s a great example of how doing it wrong with joy can sometimes make it better.

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This post is part 2 of a very short series on getting started when you don't know what you're doing. Here's Step 1, if you're interested. Or if you're Maria von Trapp and that's where you like to start.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Step 1: Get stupid.

“If everybody does it, nobody looks stupid.”

True. And not everybody is doing it.

That’s the reality of trying to do something new, something meaningful—something that hasn’t been tried before. When you’re the only one, you look and feel stupid.

But that’s certainly no reason not to do it.

I’ve never watched much of House on Fox, but I came across this line belonging to the lead character, Gregory House, the other day:

“If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you.”

The sentiment pairs well with Seth Godin’s recently released quasi audiobook, Leap First. It’s not a book, really—more of a collection of live essays he recorded this past year at a seminar in his office, but still well worth the listen.

Seth describes any work that matters, that makes a difference, that’s trying to do something new as art. I couldn’t agree more with him on this. He goes on to describe being an artist as a “serial form of incompetence.”

I think he’s right about that, too.

If you’re going to do something new, something that matters, you aren’t afforded the luxury of being an expert. If no one has done it before—or even just if you haven’t done it before—you’re going to be clumsy and inexperienced at the start and you will probably find yourself looking stupid along the way.

It’s unavoidable.

Best to just accept that as the admission price of entering the unexplored, of being one of the first. 

Steve Jobs encouraged us to be one of “the crazy ones.”

I'll second that and add to it:

Be one of the stupid ones.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

My interview on the This Moved Me podcast

As many of you know, my wife Sally Koering Zimney hosts a podcast called This Moved Me. She generously had me on as guest and the episode dropped this week.

Actually, this was her very first recording from when she was launching the podcast this summer. She wanted me as a test subject to practice her questions, pacing, recording equipment, etc.

As it turns out, we had an interesting enough conversation about the art of public speaking, presenting, and being present with your audience that she apparently found it air-worthy! (This despite the references to Nat King Cole and alien cows.)

Of course, I'm biased, but I think This Moved Me is a pretty great podcast all around. If you're interested in conversations about how we use our work and our voices to move the world towards something better, you should definitely subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or wherever else you connect your podcast wires.

Otherwise you can listen to the 17 minute interview on the This Moved Me website.

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© Andy Zimney and Leading Off the Cuff, 2015.

Being "Busy" Might Be a Big Warning Sign

A firefighter would never claim to be too busy to haul out the hose.

A surgeon doesn't skip sewing up an incision because she's behind schedule.

Pilots always find time to extend the landing gear.

For the past 20 years, I've had lots of roles and responsibilities as a business owner, manager, and executive leader that demanded I make choices about how I spend my time.

I've also spent about the same amount of time on stage as an improviser where I collaborate with other improvisers to create and perform stories on the fly for all sorts of audiences.

Over two decades of improvising, I’ve never heard any performer claim that they were too busy to make a great choice on stage:

“I was going to tell a better story, but life is just crazy right now.” 

Certainly, every improviser has gotten off stage many many times knowing that they could have done better, but lack of time is not an acceptable scapegoat.

When we know what is important, lack of time doesn't rate on our list of excuses.

Building a great story has plenty of challenges. Improvisers may be too distracted or too scared to make better choices—but never too busy.

In life, however, we all claim to be too busy to build better stories for ourselves on a fairly regular basis.

The truth is, whenever you say, “I’m too busy,” or “I don’t have enough time,” you don’t really mean either one. What you’re actually saying is one of 3 things:

Truth 1: "I’m deciding to use my time for other things that are more important to me.”

What it means: You’re on track and making choices in line with your values, goals, and priorities. You know the story you want to build and you're creating it in the best way you know how. 

Next questions: How, if anything, can I be more efficient so that I can do more of what’s important to me? Are there even bolder choices that would get me closer to the story I’m trying to build?

Truth 2: “I’m deciding to use my time for other things that are less important to me.”

What it means: Your goals and your actions are out of whack—you’re not doing what’s really important. It’s time to make some adjustments. Often this happens because you are more concerned about the reactions of your audience (your boss, your clients, your neighbors) than the greatness of the story. 

Next questions: What do I need to sacrifice for the sake of something more important to the story I’m trying to build? Am I choosing less important actions because they are safer and more comfortable? These questions require courage and brutal honesty. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that Truth 2 is about efficiency. Getting efficient at things that aren’t important to you just makes you ineffective faster and more often.

Truth 3: “I’m not sure what’s really important to me right now.”

What it means: It’s time to call a timeout and reflect. If you’re not sure what’s most important, it’s going to be hard to be very good at anything that matters. 

Next question: Why am I working so hard? What’s the story I most want to write for my life? These are purpose questions. (Doing a life audit is a great way to get clearer on these values.) If you believe you’re too busy to ask “Why?”, when will you have the time? Once you finish wrapping up all the distractions that don’t serve a purpose? Rambling stories that don’t drive to an intended conclusion often aren’t very satisfying—on stage or off.

What makes great improvisers so impressive is that they are always asking about the Why behind their characters and their stories. When they don’t know the purpose of the story that they are telling, they keep asking themselves questions and playing with their scene partners to figure it out.

When we as improvisers, entrepreneurs, employees, managers, spouses, leaders, and citizens are clear about our Why, we become great choice-making machines.

The great harm of telling ourselves we’re too busy is that implies that we have no choice. That’s hardly ever true. On stage or off. What makes it feel that way is not that we don’t know what we are choosing. It’s that we don’t know why we are choosing.

photo credit: Alan O'Rourke via photopin cc