Do these three things and your life will change

Challenge

I’ve noticed there are two types of people out there. Those who gravitate towards ease, and those who default to challenge. 

One hurries through difficult tasks to get them over and done with. The other drills down into the difficulty to solve it, and understand it.

Both have advantages but, today, I want you to imagine the sorts of questions you would ask if you thrive on challenge. Here are four that come from my consulting colleague Rich Litvin, who’s the world’s leading ‘coach of coaches’.

He’s fond of asking:

1. What are you tolerating?

2. What's your breakthrough goal? (It's the ONE goal that, if you focus on it – to the exclusion of every other goal on your list – would be most likely that you’d achieve all the others, anyway). 

3. What’s one truth – that you’ve held back – that you know the world needs to hear?

4. How are you living a life true to yourself, rather than one that others expect of you? 

His experience is that challenge questions must be asked when you want to be ‘unstuck’, or want to jump to a new level of functioning or achievement.

Question: What are some brutally honest ‘challenge questions’ you should be asking? 

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Speed

My second ‘a-ha’ conversation with a fellow consultant this week was with Evan Bulmer, who helps family-owned businesses prosper.

I asked Evan what is the single most prevalent problem he finds himself solving.

I thought he’d say something like ‘under-capitalisation for growth’ or ‘inter-generational transfer’. Instead, he said, ‘speed’.

We ended up talking about three ways in which speed needs to be manifest in any business, or organisation:

1. Decision speed: Shortening the time needed to weigh up a direction towards a destination, against known criteria.

2. Speed of action: Directly acting, or delegating, immediately the decision is made: “What will change before the day is out?”

3. Speed of learning: Not every action will work. Therefore, speed up the cycle-time of evaluating action against desired direction. And, then, accelerate your course-correction.

I notice is that some organisations don’t have deliberate accelerants. They resolve, but don’t act. Or they delegate, but without urgency. Or they act but then fail to capture the learning and make the next iterations better - and better.

Question: What are your deliberate accelerant factors?

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Kindness

My mother entered residential aged care this week. Coincidentally, it’s also the week our government passed legislation to revolutionise ‘needs-based care’ and make our system more financially sustainable.

She’s 92, mentally sharp, but physically frail, and in considerable pain from various joint ailments. And, of all people I’ve ever met she possibly has the greatest capacity for gratitude.

The flipside of that is that people are — and always have been — incredibly kind to her. Within three minutes of arriving at the facility, she’d commented on the beautiful spring weather, complimented the admissions person on her outfit, and, to one of the nursing staff who later asked her how she was feeling, she replied with a smile, “You know, it’s simply good to be alive. How are you feeling?”.

And, that kindness she shows begets kindness in others. I’ve seen it all my life, from neighbours, vendors, various professionals, members of the public. They all want to go out of their way to help her.

But, now she’s somewhere she didn’t choose to be: in aged care.

However, just in a few hours today, I’ve seen the beginnings of how she’ll maximise the ‘care’ in ‘aged care’. The staff there are impressively attentive, eager to please, and there are enough of them to go around. It’s their job to ‘care’, yet I’ll be curious to see what level of ‘discretionary care’ she’ll manage to extract from them.

If anyone can do it, she can.

Question: How do you systematise giving your customers true kindness? 

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Let me know if you’ve enjoyed these three nuggets - I’ve used all three this week, and my life has changed. Drop me a line if yours does too.

See you next Friday,

Andrew