“You’ve got to see yourself achieving your goal,” said the Guru of Success, as he squinted towards the crowd, his right index finger pointing to his eye for emphasis. “You can’t allow any thought of failure to enter your mind. The first time you consider not succeeding, you’ve ensured that you will not.”
“You’ve got to face the brutal facts, as Jim Collins said,” the business consultant explained to his struggling client. “If you don’t see the hurdles in front of you, you won’t have any chance of overcoming them.”
“Take every obstacle as a challenge, an opportunity”, the COO said to his staff, as they pored over the disappointing shipment numbers. “You can surmount any obstacle if you really believe you can.”
“You can’t teach a pig to sing,” said the long-serving engineer, when asked why his junior staff wasn’t completing the project on time. “Some people just can’t do what you want them to do, no matter how bad they want to do it.”
These are real life quotes, occurring close in time over the last few weeks, from a variety of sources. They form poetic prose, in contradictory couplets. But humans are nothing, if not paradoxical, and we can see the truth in each one, independent of the other. I had the occasion to try to reconcile the differences in these viewpoints for an organization that is experiencing difficult times. The question was, how do you maintain high morale in a situation where everyone’s best efforts are failing? What if the team has a strong vision, high expectations, is working longer and harder than anyone should expect of them…and yet the results are less than desired? What if despondency, frustration and even anger set in? How is a leader to lead people through such hard times?
Grandpa Roy once told me that life is the struggle between what we think we want, what we’re really willing to work for, and what we end up getting, irrespective of our efforts. We might imagine great things, and see those visions clearly. But we may or may not want to put in the long hours and years of effort to actually achieve it. And then even if we do devote a complete and committed effort, we may not ultimately achieve the vision we held for so long. Not everything is in our control, Grandpa said. Certainly, we’ll achieve more than we would have if we had no vision and then no will to work. These are necessary ingredients to any definition of success. But they are insufficient to guarantee that success.
“What is your definition of success?” I asked Alan, who was struggling with declining morale in a very hard working team.
“We have a set of metrics for revenue, margin and profit. We committed to the board and the shareholders to achieve those goals”, he said.
“Is there anything that your team is not doing now which could, if implemented, make a difference in achieving those metrics?” I asked.
Alan sighed heavily. “We’ve been through countless brainstorming sessions and we’ve acted on every good idea we could come up with. The results would have been a lot worse had we not done that. But nothing we can come up with is making enough of a difference to help us reach the goals.”
“So as the chances of reaching your objectives diminish, your team sees their success fading over the horizon, out of reach?” I offered.
“You sure know how to cheer me up…!” Alan sneered.
“Do you accept that your absolute best efforts can fail?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Alan said.
“When dedicated people who hold themselves accountable see that their massive efforts are not succeeding, they will get despondent, frustrated and angry, because they have defined their self-worth and their worth to the company by whether or not they achieve the goals they’ve committed to”, I explained. “The good news is that they are indeed accountable people who will likely walk through a brick wall if you need them to. The bad news is that their disappointment and low morale is reducing the chances even further that any new ideas will arise out of the group. Depression is withdrawal from a conflict, turning anger inwardly. It is self-destructive, and thus destructive to the team. The literal health of the team is also at risk. A leader has to change the group’s definition of success in such conditions, in order to improve the attitude of the team and thus the chances for reaching the goals.”
“How do you do that?” Alan asked.
“First, there are some things you shouldn’t do,” I began. “You shouldn’t tell them that seeing the goal is going to make it happen by itself. And you shouldn’t tell them to work smarter, not harder. That just elicits cynicism because it’s a platitude without material substance. Don’t tell them that every challenge is an opportunity, because they are stuck for ideas, not for the will to work. If they don’t already know the facts, certainly tell them. But if they do, don’t spend time brutally facing what is already apparent.
“Here’s what you can do”, I said. “Redefine ‘success’”.
“What do you mean”, Alan asked.
“If success is defined as the team working together, helping each other through the hard times, finding ways to become more congruent and effective, improving every day, doing their absolute best and more, with grace, humor and style….then whether or not the scoreboard shows the right numbers, the team can leave the field with pride. Success is the feeling that a team has when they have no regrets about their dedication and drive.
“If that’s the definition of success, you’ll find a team holding onto its high morale even when the bar is just out of reach. And they’ll take their cue from how you feel about it, so the first person who has to redefine what success is, is you.”