Swimming

“I’m underwater, Steve, and I have to figure out how to come up for a breath.”

–  one of my Clients, describing the reality of their current workaday life

Disclaimer:  There is a huge risk in taking this angle for today’s post, seein’s how I can’t swim.  Not a stroke.  Sinking?  That I do.  If “dropping like a brick to the bottom of the pool and staying there” was an Olympic sport, I’d be Michael Phelps in that one!

OK, where was I?  Ah, yes, swimming, in the bidness sense…

Part of what annoys me about not being able to swim is how effortless it looks for everyone else.  Yes, for me, it’s everyone else.  I am pretty sure I am the only person I know who can’t swim.  That has to be annoying for the executive or the sales pro who looks around whatever “pool” they’re swimming in, only to see their peers gently gliding through the water, all smiley and giddy and stuff.

“Why don’t you learn to swim?” well-intentioned friends ask me.  “You mean other than my extreme fear of deep water and my unique ability to drop like a rock when in said water?” I reply!

Granted, those fears can be overcome, just as the factors keeping us underwater at work can!  In the pool, I should have learned years ago.  Fortunately, I wasn’t as afraid or stubborn in the office.  In other words, in business, when we’re dog-paddling our way across what feels like the English Channel, why do we keep picking up brick after brick, wondering why we’re struggling to come up for a breath?

We gotta let go of some of the bricks.  The challenge can be in deciding which bricks we’re going to let go of.

So, here are six ideas to make our business life more like synchronized swimming, and less like flailing around in the water desperately trying to come up for a breath:

1. Get comfortable with the fact that those effortless swimmers around you might be using hidden flotation devices.  Comparisons to those about whom we don’t know the whole story is a risky pursuit, indeed!
2. Is there something someone else in your team could do better than you’re doing it?  Are you the right person to be leading the lunch-and-learn on _________?
3. Is there something you’re doing that doesn’t really matter?  Yes, that report you spend two hours on each week is flawless, but is it even a report we want, or should want?  Are we measuring what matters or what we’ve always measured?
4. Are there outside providers that could take on some of the load?  Somewhere along the way, “outsourcing” got a black eye, especially if “control” is what we seek.  Nowhere is it written, though, that we have to give up control when we hire someone else to do work we’re not well suited to perform.  Look for a resurgence in PEO’s — outsourced HR firms — as executives realize they simply can’t keep up with the compliance and benefits evolution.  Digital marketing is another area where leveraging help from the outside makes so much more sense than trying to re-train traditional marketing teams, especially in companies that give marketing the short-shrift anyway.
5. Replace a need for “control” with a “PPP” — prioritized plan for progress.  “In order to accomplish this goal / commitment to the bank / profit target or revenue level, we’d first need to __________.” Then, today, do what’s in the blank.
6. Sacrifice perfection for forward movement.  Control and perfection are both illusions, anyway.  Strive for good enough.  Stretch to be better than yesterday.  Decide to be more awesome than our customer expects us to be.