The right thing. The right way. At the right time.
“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
– John Bunyan, (1628 – 1688), English writer and Puritan preacher
It doesn’t have to be grandiose. It doesn’t even have to be overt. Heck, it might not even be noticeable. Today. And when there comes a time, then the difference has been made.
“We live in an era of weakly-formed, strongly-held opinions.”
Carey’s a pastor, yet a lot of what he writes could be taught in B-School…
Buyers are ever more informed, and whether their opinions are spot-on or “weakly formed and strongly held” – it’s never been more important to honor relationships over transactions.
The temptation is to “tell through” the story. But we have to be careful about using our own weakly formed, strongly held positions to challenge anyone with whom we’d be better served by a productive exchange of ideas. Remember, long-time subscribers: Ideas are the currency of Difference Makers.
A market pullback is evident. Extended sales cycles, price, and margin pressure—we could go on for multiple paragraphs to describe what’s happening in our businesses. Even high-growth companies are exercising caution.
In times like these, many companies will become transactional at the expense of what sustains them: being relatable and relational. They will double-down on their own weakly formed, strongly held opinions.
Instead, triple down on asking questions and seeking to understand. Getting to the why and the “why behind the why.” If our outcomes depend on Clients buying Widget One — let’s make sure Widget One solves a real problem they face, especially if we help them identify that problem. And if a Widget One transaction helps us but not them, let’s be relationally aware enough to find a better way to solve their problem before we ask them to care about ours.
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
That thing we’re trying not to do, but doing, can trip us up when we’re plotting strategy – especially if we’re single-threading that strategy.
As we started to consider yesterday being able to pivot when things are getting wobbly is important — even at the same time as being committed to a direction until new information presents itself.
The common denominator is knowing what not to do.
“We need to improve the bottom line!” There are at least a few ways to impact that metric in almost any company — and deciding which ones won’t get considered is the best first step.
“We need to increase revenue but lower our cost of sales!” Do we go wider in our current Client base (less costly) and price accordingly to existing streams (more efficient), or do we hedge by going after key market-share plays to increase positive market talk and creating demand? Or, do we blend those strategies?
Blended strategies are more flexible, and make it easier to adjust to market shifts. A key is to not let the blend become distracting and divert us into doing that thing or those things we set out not to do.
It’s 56% art and 44% science. (As Larry The Cable Guy told us, by the way, 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Those two statistics, were, in fact, completely made up on the spot. But, you get my point…)
The blending matters. Art, science, growth, profit, staffing, Client-care — all ingredients worth considering, and in each case, from the perspective of what we decide not to do.
“The problem with solving the wrong problem is that it feels like success until you get to the bottom.“
If the problem is too clear, look around. It might not be the problem at all. One of my favorite DD lines of all time is by hockey player Dean McAmmond. “I don’t have a concussion problem,” he famously said. “I have a problem with people giving me traumatic blows to the head.”
How do we decide which problem we need to solve? How do we avoid treating the symptom at the expense of the cause of the pain?
A little success can be addictive. My favorite basketball team plays lights-out offense and often pretty pedestrian defense. When the shots aren’t falling, it’s really hard to pivot to stopping the other guys. My favorite football team plays defense better than any other team out there. That said, it’s become difficult to win counting on the defense to score points — even when The “D” manages to put a few points on the board. So, while we might want to get out over our skis on the great offense with the round orange ball, or the phenomenal defense with the pigskin, we’re never quite as far from the bottom as we’d like to be.
Solving the real problem usually begins with recognizing who’s giving us traumatic blows to the head, to use McAmmond’s example. And it usually takes a blended strategy to either avoid the blows or counter them with an attack of our own.
Revenue growth with unchecked costs? Bad math. Expense control so stringent that it limits growth? Different equation, same outcome.
Stepping back, looking around, asking questions — and adjusting course, speed or both — helps us solve the problem we need to solve in the manner that best serves long-term success.
“Life is only precious because it ends, kid.”
He was only 20-some-odd years old.
I met a young man named Michael two years ago on the golf course. He was tall, fit, athletic, charming, warm, and engaging. He was probably a bunch of other things, too. Positive things. All of them. He was, in fact, infinitely positive.
Michael was the kind of young man I hope our daughters meet and spend 100 years with.
I played golf with him a half-dozen times or so. Saw him at the gym at least twice a week. He was as comfortable with the old guard as he was his young buddies, and he was a bridge between the two groups.
Michael didn’t wake up Monday morning; if we’re reading this on Tuesday, we did. Heart issue. Surgery last week – and he seemed on a clear road to recovery until he wasn’t. If you’d have told anyone that Michael had a heart issue, they’d have thought you meant he liked people too much, was too positive, that his heart was so big it almost wasn’t fair the rest of us.
The post informing the world that Michael had left us was titled “Jesus Was His Caddy.” And so, Michael’s destination is set, and wonderfully positive, like he was. He’ll be there when we get there. Too soon, but he’ll be there.
And until we get there, let’s make a conscious decision to honor a young man who made a difference, and who went home before he had a chance to make a difference over the longer haul with whatever we do next.
If we’re reading this, we woke up this morning. What will we do to make sure that if we don’t wake up tomorrow, someone will remember us the way we’ll remember Michael?
“To one who has Faith no explanation is necessary. To one without Faith no explanation is possible.”
– St. Thomas Aquinas
It bears repeating. To one with Faith no explanation is necessary. To one without Faith no explanation is possible.
To some degree, in our workaday lives, what we believe dictates what we can accomplish. In the grander scheme of life, what we Believe (upper case “B”) dictates who we are.
A friend of mine and Brother in Belief suggested the Twitter hashtag “#itisdone” for Easter. And, he’s right. It is.
It. Is. Done.
No greater gift could ever be given. No level of appreciation could ever be enough.
Yet we’re not called to appreciate. And we’re not called to reciprocate. We’re called to love. To follow. To Believe. To live with the knowledge that with one, incredible, heroic feat borne of love — nothing else matters.
Whether no explanation is necessary or whether no explanation is possible, it is done.
And no greater difference will ever be made.
#itisdone #Heisrisen
Editor’s Note: This is the 23rd or 24th Good Friday that this Daily Difference has posted. Some minor variations, but pretty much these words in this order every year. Upper-and-lower case letters matter in this post.
“Ideas are the currency of difference-makers.”
There sure is lots written about currencies these days. Recession’s impact on the value of a dollar. The dollar in comparison to other nations’ currencies. Crypto currencies…
Markets fluctuate, ebb and flow.
Ideas grow in value, especially when they’re sought out, nurtured, celebrated and rewarded, even if they’re not all great.
Ideas, I’ve long maintained, are the currency of difference makers.
Long-time subscribers know my dad was a farmer. Prep the soil, plant the seeds, do everything you can and then hope for good weather. An exercise in Faith if ever there was one.
As leaders, are we prepping the soil to be ready for ideas to be planted? Are we encouraging our teams to bring ideas forward. Are we nurturing, fertilizing, and caring for those ideas?
Some will grow to bear great harvests. Some will never sprout. Some will show up as a shoot and then not survive the light of day. Their value is shared. It’s combined. The great harvests are borne off the volume of seeds we plant, and if we try to hand-pick the seeds that we just “know” are going to be big winners — we’ll fail.
Ideas are the currency of difference-makers. And their value grows, the more we seek them out.
“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”
Willis Reed passed away earlier this week. My earliest “goose bumps” memory is of May 8, 1970, when Willis came limping out of the tunnel in Madison Square Garden to lift his New York Knick teammates to a world championship over the mighty Los Angeles Lakers and some dude named Wilt Chamberlain.
Our grainy, black and white TV and the crappy over-the-air signal it drew down to our farmhouse couldn’t betray the murmur, the buzz and then the ground-shaking roar of the Garden’s capacity crowd, and for a nine-year-old boy who loved basketball and sports in general — the impression was permanent.
I’m not big on “heroes.” I only have one, and He passed a couple thousand years ago. That said, Willis Reed, Tom Seaver, Muhammad Ali — made an impression that shaped the way I’d think, work, and play long after they were done in the spotlight.
Someone is watching us “come out of the tunnel” today. Someone will notice the way we pick up a teammate or whether we don’t.
It probably won’t be broadcasted (although in today’s world, who really knows, right?) and it probably won’t be reviewed on social media 53 years from now. But someone will still be watching. Someone will still notice.
Let’s make it as noteworthy as we can.
Gitomer is a good one, usually a relatively clear voice in the static. Even with an over-emphasis on the word “answers,” he covers the spectrum well here, and more importantly, he touches on the holy grail of sales professionals.
Ideas are the currency of Difference Makers.
Ideas transform challenges into strategies. Ideas move us forward, and if we end up moving in the wrong direction, fresh ideas will allow us to course-correct, keep moving and stay in the game.
I’ve never been a “system” guy, or a “methodology” guy, and it’s because ideas have always trumped the system or the method.
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”
Truer today than ever, perhaps?
One, Galbraith was a diplomat, and diplomacy is in short supply these days. In fact, with all the talk of supply chain issues, why don’t we focus more on the short supply of diplomacy, grace and presumption of good intentions?
Two, even if selling is our career, the act of changing our mind might still serve us better than proving our point. See, as sales pros, we not only get focused on making the sale, we can get wrapped around the axle on how the buyer decides to make the purchase. If we just know that their motivator is “x” we focus all our energy on making that the focus of our “why you should buy.”
What if the buyer gives us a sign that something else is more important? What if we realize that some other element of that thing we sell matters more than the boss or the marketing materials suggest it matters?
In buying and selling, it’s about bringing people together for a common good. In life, politics, love, relationships, it ought to be about the same thing.
Changing our mind — not necessarily our principles or values, and certainly not our morals, but changing our mind within those boundaries — might be the best way to create a safe environment for others to change theirs.
