Leadership When the Heat's On

Lesson Three

Lift Your Limitations 

“High performance is often a result of a sudden change in direction”

After reaching the number one position again, our office's production amazingly leveled off at exactly where we had been when I first took over.  Once we returned to our previous level of performance, we unknowingly reached our self-imposed barrier and went no further.  I emphasize the word self because the barriers I refer to are not company-imposed or customer-imposed.  They are self-imposed. 

Self-imposed barriers are not walls around our lives.  They are the margins of our lives where nothing has been written--yet.  A self-imposed barrier is nothing more than the dividing line between developed and undeveloped potential.  Yet, we look at that line as though it's a wall.  Imagine what the world would be like if explorers throughout history believed that they couldn't go anywhere for the first time.  That's what we were up against after my office was back at number one.  Our production curve leveled off once we were back at the top of the office's previous performance curve.  There was no tangible barrier. 

But, pushing production higher than it had ever been before meant venturing into uncharted territory.  We had reached the collective personal barriers of the team.  My people were not slouches by any means.  They were the best in the company and would have been the best in any company.  We were already receiving monthly awards for being the top office.  Success became a barrier for us.  Walt Disney is remembered to this day throughout the Disney organization for warning his staff against "…resting on our laurels."  Ralph Waldo Emerson put it even more profoundly when he said, "He who sits on the cushion of advantage soon goes to sleep." 

Another great executive once said to me, "Good is the enemy of best and best is the enemy of better."  When most people get to be good, they start to think, "What's the point of struggling to be best?  Isn't good, good enough?"  I challenged my team to break through their existing personal production records and they responded.  I asked them to focus on their own records on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis instead of other people's records.  When they did, energy, morale, and production skyrocketed.

As our performance received increasing acclamation and overall attention, I was asked where I got all of those great people and how I came to build such a record-breaking team.  Did I steal top producers from our competition or recruit at the top business schools?  The one word answer was, "no."  They were just ordinary people who discovered they could do the most extraordinary things with their newly discovered potential.  Here are some things you can do right now to help develop undeveloped potential in your team:

• Meet individually with your key people to set goals:  "Don't worry about breaking anyone else's personal record, just think about breaking your own record on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis." 
• Monitor each team member's progress continuously:  Help that person stay focused.
• Celebrate record-breaking performances: Do this on a regular basis to reinforce your support and appreciation for your team's effort.

"Accomplishment is your birthright. Limitations are adopted."

Leadership When the Heat's On Lesson Two

 

Use Problems to Enhance Your Career

I've broken the sound barrier over 1,000 times at the controls of everything from the F-86 Sabre, to the F-102 Delta Dagger, to the F-101 Voodoo to the F-16 Viper.  I have knocked off more than my share of plaster and broken way more than my share of windows.  My extra duty job in the Air Force was to speak to groups of upset, hostile civilians and convince them that those sonic booms were "the sound of freedom."

 Having built a reputation in the military as the "sonic boom salesman" I got into sales when I stopped flying. Those hostile audiences must have been an excellent training ground because the transition went smoothly.  I did so well at my first job as a salesperson that the company asked me to manage one of their sales offices after only one year of experience. One year later, the same executives who had put me in that little office the year before showed up again and told me I was being promoted to manager of the top office in the 36-office chain. 

That's when I started making the same kind of mistakes nearly every manager makes.  I urged my people not to think of me as their boss, but as a friend who was always right.  My goal was to turn everyone in that office into a copy of me.

 It made perfect sense at the time.  Turning the entire office into Danny Cox clones seemed to be what my bosses wanted me to do.  If I could get my salespeople to do their jobs exactly the way I had done mine when I was in their shoes, they wouldn't bring me any problems that I hadn't already solved. 

Under my management, the number one office plummeted to number 36 out of 36.  One day, as I was scratching my head trying to figure out the problem, my boss showed up in my office, unannounced, without his usual smile and pleasant demeanor.  "Cox," he said through clenched teeth.  "I can now see that it was a mistake making you the manager of this office and I feel it's only fair to tell you that I'm already looking for your replacement."

That was the shortest and most effective motivational seminar I ever attended.  I needed to learn how to lead­­­­––and I needed to learn fast. 

I sought out the counsel of many successful people and soon learned that I needed to work on myself, not the salespeople.  Salespeople get better right after their manager does.

The techniques I began using had such an immediate effect that within two weeks my boss stopped looking for a replacement.  We were heading back to number one.

 Here are three ways you can start turning problems into opportunities:

Think of a problem in the past that turned out to be, a positive.

Choose a problem that you can turn into a positive if you apply the right attitude and plan.

Decide on one thing that you can do in the next 24 hours to improve your leadership style.

“High performance is often the result of a sudden change in direction.”

Leadership When the Heat Is On: 24 lessons in high-performance leadership

                                                      

Lesson One
Leadership When the Heat's On

Only a few feet separate the lead pilot's tailpipe from the nose of my supersonic fighter as we rip through the sky at speeds in excess of 500 miles per hour. I feel the blast from his engine vibrating through my feet on the rudder pedals and through my right hand on the control stick. There are seven more jets behind me packed just as tight in our nine-ship formation.

Almost with one motion, the nose of each fighter gently drops below the horizon. The airspeed builds until the lead pilot pulls back on the stick. The nose of every fighter rises in perfect symmetry as the G forces build. I feel the blood being forced into my legs and feet. All nine of us are now experiencing the same 5 G force ––5 times our body weight. We tighten our leg and abdominal muscles to keep blood in our upper extremities to avoid blacking out.

I concentrate on keeping my hand on the throttle. If it slips off, the G force will push it down between the side panel and my ejection seat. I will lose my ability to make minor throttle adjustments and hold precise position. As we curve over the top of our perfect loop, the world switches places with the sky. The G forces diminish down the backside. I steal a millisecond glance at the two rear view mirrors. Everyone is still tucked in tight. The G pressure builds again as our lead pilot pulls the nose back up to level flight and eight pilots follow in perfect unison.

The lead pilot takes us through a series of horizon tumbling rolls followed by a formation shift to a nine-ship diamond. It's my turn to fly center position as we make a high-speed, low-level pass over the airfield. The noise of eight other jets in front and back, and on both sides, flying two to three yards from wingtip to wingtip is deafening. It's high performance flying right to the edge. There is only one word to describe it: exhilarating. WOW! How I love it!

It's the ultimate team experience. The difference between life and death can be how well we learn from our successes and failures. Our synergy comes from courage, creativity, and being there for each other, no matter what. After leaving the Air Force and entering the corporate world, I had to transfer the principles of individual and team high performance to new challenges.

I had to make some tremendous adjustments, but my drive to again be a part of a high performance team was strong. I sought out advice and counsel from the most successful people I could find in various industries. What they taught me, along with some innovations of my own, put my new team into a supersonic climb. In five years, we increased production 800 percent, morale soared and turnover dropped to nearly zero.

Consider this your supersonic flight plan as you discover how my team broke the old records and continued to break the new ones. You're going to find out how to become the lead pilot for your team and a barrier-breaking leader.   

"The managerial moment of truth comes when you realize that, as the leader, you are the trigger for change in your organization."

Leadership When the Heat Is On: 24 lessons in high performance leadership by Danny Cox
http://www.dannycox.com 

If It's To Be, It's Up To Me!!

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“Success is the realization of the estimate you place upon yourself.”

                                                     Elbert Hubbard

Sometimes, people set up goals for themselves and then find reasons to keep themselves from making any meaningful progress toward those goals. Perhaps you’ve run into people who have established “deserve levels” for themselves—levels of income, or happiness, or career satisfaction that they never go much above or much below, despite the opportunity to do so.

Think about financial goals. Even people who have work situations that allow for wide disparities in monthly income totals—salespeople, say, or home entrepreneurs—somehow manage to keep themselves from moving much outside of this so-called “comfort level.” Although people will say that they want to be able to increase their incomes, they’ll often find some way to link the attainment of that goal to someone other than themselves, and their small steps won’t match up with the big goals they’ve set up. The distance between where they are and where they want to be is measured in excuses: “If only someone would take over the job of organizing things...” “If only our financial system were better targeted...” “If only I had the energy I once had...”

There are far too many unfortunate souls on this earth who think that, once they figure out what life’s all about, they’ll be able to press the “rewind” button and run themselves back to, say, age 21—or any other time when “things were better.” Sad to say, people don’t come equipped with such a button. For these poor folks, life slips by, day by day, as they wait for someone or something to show them the way.

What they’re waiting for, when you get right down to it, is the “guy on the white horse”—the person who will tackle all the mysteries, solve all the problems, ride in and rescue them. While they’re waiting for this person to show up, they disengage. Let me share a secret: You have instant access to the “man or woman on the white horse”—the person on whom our safety and success depends—at any time. All you have to do is look down, and you’ll see that you’re sitting astride that “white horse.”

You are the guy on the white horse! You are the only person who’s qualified to change your present and, thereby, change your future. Don’t wait for great occasions to step forward as your own hero; don’t assume that someone else is blocking your way. Seize common occasions for positive personal change, and make them great.

The time to commit yourself to developing the most efficient plan possible to achieve your goals is right now. And the person who must carry out that plan is you. As someone once said, “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

Immediate Action: Think about how can you take action, today, to address a challenge you had once believed to be someone else’s responsibility. Waiting for someone else to achieve a goal for us means abandoning that “molded-in-clay” goal—before it’s been put into permanent form!

Point to Ponder Before You Go On: Remember: A bad habit—like waiting for the guy on the white horse—can become so strong that it can be mistaken for destiny. Don’t let that happen to you!

Excerpted from Danny’s book, There Are No Limits: Breaking the Barriers in Personal High Performance

The No Limits Story of Mary Lawrence

Mary Lawrence was no stranger to tragedy. For five years after her husband’s death she wandered through life with no real direction. Then late one night, a driver ran a stop sign and what had been two cars was a mass of twisted rubble.

When one of the paramedics found her broken body, he said, “Get the others. This one’s gone.”  But she wasn’t and her spirit was uninjured.  On the way back to town, an amazed medic had discovered she had a pulse!  At the hospital the doctor said she wouldn’t live through the night. She did.

She spent the next year in the hospital. Her teeth and facial bones wired together. Later they performed fifteen root canals. They explained they had to do two facial reconstruction surgeries where no anesthesia could be used. Her response!  “Let’s get started.”

A year later, she was released. Her doctor told her to go home and “take it easy.” You don’t say that to “No Limits” people unless you get out of the way first!

When she went shopping, her face still swollen, she would see people she knew were friends. She couldn’t remember their names because of the permanent brain damage. They didn’t recognize her and turned their heads rather than look at her.  She said that really hurt.

Her memory was so bad she concentrated on each word of a sentence so she wouldn’t forget what she had said at the beginning. She discovered that getting a California real estate license was very difficult because of the memory work. Typically, she said that’s what she’d do.

She would read each page of that thick real estate manual fifty to sixty times until it was engrained. She passed the full day test the first time!

Mary went to work for one broker who terminated her after a month because she was slow in memorizing the inventory. At the second company, it was the same scenario.

An hour after the second termination my phone rang. This very determined voice said, “I’m Mary Lawrence and I want to work for you.”

She was in our three-week training program a few days later. After she graduated I placed her in one of my offices. WOW! Her sales were incredible.

A year later at our annual banquet I announced her name from the stage as one of our ten Outstanding First Year Salespeople. She came up on the stage. As I handed her the plaque, she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Save me a place.  I’ll be back up here next year.”  As I watched her walk away, I thought, she means that.

The very next morning Mary bought a long pink dress to wear one year later. She hung it up in the very center of her closet to remind herself daily of her goal.

The next year I stand on that Grand Ballroom stage of the Disneyland Hotel. I tell the back-story that she had finally told me only a month before. At the end of this triumphant story I announce that she is #1 out of our 700 salespeople in listings taken, listings sold, sales and gross commission. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mary Lawrence.”

Mary, a true “no limits” champion floats across the dance floor in the beautiful long pink gown that had acted as her daily inspiration. To add to this triumphant moment, the band is playing “The Impossible Dream” and several hundred people rise in a roaring, standing ovation. Not a dry eye in the audience!

She stands in the spotlight at center stage of the Disneyland Hotel. I move toward her with the large Number One trophy. She turns, looks me in the eye and says, “I told you I’d be back!”

Point to Ponder:

Adversity sometimes strips a person only to discover the person.

Higher up and farther on!

Danny

Fear vs Courage

"Once when Marshall Ney was going into battle, 
looking down at his knees which were smiting together, 
he said, 'You may well shake; you would shake

 worse yet if you knew where I am going to take you.'"      

                                                                     Orison Swett Marden

What or who builds self-imposed barriers?  A stonemason named Fear, one who is highly skilled in building powerful barriers from nonexistent stones.  Where does this craftsman live?  In our minds.  He's always there, but it's up to us whether he lives in the back of our minds or the front of our minds.

Fear is the sworn enemy of adventure, which is perhaps the most exhilarating force driving no-limits achievement.  And Fear goes exactly where we tell him to go.

We move Fear from the back of our minds to the front of our minds by shifting our concentration away from our own courage, and choosing instead to focus on that which frightens us.  Not only does that action change Fear's location, but through the process of concentration, it means we actually start to strengthen Fear.  Fear has no strength of its own; its only strength is that which we choose to give it.

When Fear defeats us, it does so because of our own mental focus.  And unfortunately, the strength we pass along to Fear is the very strength we need to overcome it!  If, on the other hand, we choose to push our goals, wrapped in courage, to the forefront of our minds, then barriers break.

You already possess sufficient courage to initiate this process and see your personal adventure through.  A person may not be born with an overabundance of talent, but he or she will certainly possess all the courage needed, whether used or unused, to develop the talent that is there.  Long after passing on to the next world, we will be remembered by family and friends, not necessarily for our inborn talents, but for the amount of courage we used, especially during our times of trial.  The strength and vividness of the memories our loved ones and friends hold of us after we are gone will be directly proportional to the amount of courage we have chosen to use.

Immediate Action: Starve your fear!  Feed your courage!  Embrace your adventure!

Point to Ponder:  "Fear knocked at the door.  Faith answered.  No one was there."  (From above the fireplace at Hinds' Head Hotel, near London.)

Excerpted from Danny Cox’s book, There Are No Limits: Breaking the Barriers to Personal High Performance. $14.99 plus shipping, MC/VISA

Examine Your "Rushes"

Examine Your “Rushes”

“Your life is like a book. The title page is your name, the preface your introduction to the world. The pages are a daily record of your efforts, trials, pleasures, discouragements, and achievements. Day by day your thoughts and acts are being inscribed in your book of life. Hour by hour, the record is being made that must stand for all time. Once the word ‘fini’ must be written, let it then be said of your book that it is a record of noble purpose, generous service, and work well-done.”

Grenville Kleiser, author of Training for Power and Leadership

Lights, camera, action! Welcome to your own private Hollywood: You are making, right now, day by day, the movie of your life.

At some time in the future you will reach that great cinema in the sky. You will take a seat in that heavenly auditorium and watch the movie of your life as you lived it––playing out on the big screen to end all big screens. How will you feel about that movie as it unspools? Every night as I go to sleep, I find myself wondering, how will “The Life and Times of Danny Cox” look when it is played back? Will I be proud of that movie? Will I know in my heart that the central character pursued the right goals, for the right reasons? Or will I wonder why on earth that man on the screen made the choices he did? Will I find myself yearning for the chance to make another film––the film I should have made? What can I do now, today, to make sure that that movie is the best I can possibly make it?

Yesterday’s film is “in the can.” The choices we make day by day, the goals we set for ourselves, the way we act toward achieving those goals––those are the only factors that will affect the film that still remains to be shot.

So, how can we improve that film? One-way is to use the technique used by the Hollywood moguls to insure film quality; Look at the daily rushes.

What are daily rushes? They’re a moviemaker’s short-term answers to big questions: “Am I getting to where I thought I was getting? And if I’m not, where the heck am I getting to, and how do I get back?”

When Steven Spielberg sets out to make an exotic new adventure film, he doesn’t travel around the world, shoot every scene in his script, and then sit down and review all the footage from beginning to end. That’s a risky way to make a movie! Spielberg might just get to the end of the process and realize that the mood in scene 43A didn’t quite match up with the mood scene in scene 43B––and then ask himself why he didn’t notice that while he was still in Sumatra with the cast and crew.

Waiting until the last minute to review one’s shooting is a dangerous proposition. Instead, a good director takes a look, each day, at the rushes, the early film clips that reflect the work that was just completed. By reviewing the first prints of that day’s clips, Spielberg (and every other director worthy of the name) can evaluate each of the individual shots that will eventually turn into a movie––the movie that the director set out to make.

It’s close to impossible to put together a good movie if you don’t look at your rushes until the end of the production process. I believe the same principle applies to the movie of your life. And who wants to run the risk of sabotaging that release?

Rushes give filmmakers the chance to review each day’s work. For a director, looking at the rushes means sitting in a dark screening room and looking out for what worked and what didn’t. As he watches the images go by, the director asks questions. How should a scene be edited? What needs to be improved? How does what’s up on the screen affect the next day’s work?

In the same way, a barrier-breaker learns to ask questions about the “shooting schedule” of the day just past. Every day, at some point we need to ask ourselves, “What just happened? What brought me closer to my goal? What moved me further away from my goal? What worked? How can I get what worked to happen again and happen on a regular basis if I need it to?"

It’s just as important to ask, “What didn’t work so well? What would I edit out if I had the chance? What needs to be done all over again? What do I need to do to keep a ‘bad scene’ from happening again?”

Even more important is to ask, “What was the big lesson life had planned for me today?” Once you figure that one out, you can ask yourself, “How well did I learn that lesson, and what can I do to put it to work the next time I face a similar situation?”

Asking questions like that, once a day, is part of reviewing the day’s “rushes”––the actual events and decisions you made over the course of 24 hours. That’s the way to be sure the film of your life is shaping up, as it should. Watching your own daily rushes is the same as monitoring the progress you’ve made toward the important goals you’ve identified.  Again, taking baby steps is fine, as long as you go somewhere you intend to go!

Immediate Action:  At the end of the day today, ask yourself, “Did I move upward, toward positive role models and energizing goals, or did I move down, toward negative influences?” Be ruthlessly honest with yourself, and write down the answers you come up with on a sheet of paper. Find out whether there was net “gain” or a net “loss” in movement toward your constructive goal, and then ask yourself how you can maximize gains and minimize loses tomorrow.

Point to Ponder Before You Go On:  Examining your rushes is not an exercise in negative thinking it’s a way of fine-tuning your daily goals, and thus making progress toward your major goals. If this opportunity for self-evaluation becomes an opportunity for self-flagellation, you’re in trouble! Goals always look forward; discouragement always looks backward.