While chatting with a young professional recently I experienced how tough mediocrity is to deal with when it rears its ugly head unexpectedly. The young professional and I had both been involved on a project that had stalled out for a couple months. From the beginning of the project I felt the project leadership was sending the team down a path of mediocrity. To combat this I offered to help brainstorm solutions to make the project memorable to which the project leadership reluctantly agreed to. I subsequently invested significant time brainstorming with the team and we came up with great ideas to take the project to the next level.
After talking about the stalled project’s status and reflecting on the course taken this far we both AGREED the root cause of the stall was due to a lack of vision and clear leadership for the project.
Our conversation then took an unexpected turn. I asked how we could kick-start the project and ensure the larger joint vision we brainstormed earlier could be implemented. The response?
…..well… our vision and ideas would make a huge, profound impact on the project… but… it would hurt the current project leader’s feelings because we would deviate too far from their initial plan… and, at this point, we should just follow the initial plan because it would be EASIER without hurting anyone’s feelings… besides, the project would still be considered successful using the initial plan…
Instantly, I was horrified. Instantly, I was offended. Instantly, my past work and contributions to the project were felt cheapened. Settling for a mediocre success scares the hell out of me.
Your personal compass for true success must be guided by more than perceived success. Achieving a true success is a hard, sometimes uncomfortable journey. One true success creates more personal satisfaction than racking up ten mediocre successes.
The curse of mediocrity, in my opinion, is the self fulfilling loop of mediocrity that happens when mediocre success becomes the standard your peers look to when holding you accountable.
Mediocrity living and thriving in projects we undertake will eventually takeover and determine the outcome. Mediocre expectations must get flushed out and dealt with at the start of a project.
I want my peers, mentors, and friends to speak up when I try to pass a mediocre success as good enough. Don’t you?
Categories: Leadership, Relationships.
Tags: impact, journey, Leadership, Mediocre, mediocrity, opinion, project, response, Settling, vision
By dshipton
—
September 15, 2009 at 8:30 am
If you were to examine a few of your peers to generate a list of people each of them respects personally or professionally, could you? Would you be able to put them into tiers or differing levels/kinds of respect? Until trying this exercise out for myself recently I would have said YES. The truth is, it can be very difficult. I spent a good deal of time thinking about each person I was generating a list for. In the end, a couple people only had one or two folks I could honestly say they respected with any level of certainty. I did however spot one glaring correlations when reviewing my lists.
The most interesting correlation revealed in my personal lists was that the more respect I had for someone, the easier it was for me to identify who they respected.
Who are the folks on the top of your own respect list? Mine includes but is not limited to:
Who are your most respected connections and why? What other correlations do you see when you start writing them down as I did?
Try making your own respected lists for the peers and colleagues in your life and leave a comment sharing what you found!
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Leadership.
Tags: Brett Trout, colleagues, correlations, mentor, Mike Ferrari, Neil Roberts, peers, respect, Teri TeBockhorst
By dshipton
—
August 21, 2009 at 2:05 am
Leadership requires attentive listening backed by an assertive communication. I believe the most effective leaders I personally know are all relatively soft-spoken individuals.
Delivering a narrow message to a broad audience using obtrusive communication channels creates a perception of pontification (and spam). True leaders do not pontificate onto others. True leaders do not need a volume knob to drown out critical opinions. True leaders defer to other leaders for matters outside their knowledge base or skill set. Most importantly:
True leaders target an engage-able audience by reducing the signal vs. noise ratio of the medium the message is being delivered through.
Being an assertive, soft-spoken leader is about finding and engaging the right audience or group who are willing to act and follow your lead. If you find yourself turning the volume knob up on a particular matter; examining your own knowledge base and skill set may help root out your personal leadership shortcomings.
Every situation a leader encounters will not be perfectly suited to their style of leadership. Recognizing and handling the ill fitting situations deftly with grace is a skill all leaders should strive to improve upon. Being self-aware of the moment you reach for the volume knob is an easy skill to learn….as long as your volume isn’t already turned up to 11.
What other advantages have you found by having a soft-spoken approach to leadership?
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Leadership.
Tags: advice, assertive communication, audience, feedback, Leadership, mentor, perception, pontification, skill sets, soft-spoken, volume
By dshipton
—
August 12, 2009 at 4:27 pm
1. Checkout source:
git-svn clone svn+ssh://path/to/trunk
2. Work Work Work then:
git commit (/path/to/file/or/dir/ or -a)
or
git add /path/to/file.extension
git commit (/path/to/file/or/dir/ or -a)
3. Repeat Step 2 Ad nauseum
4. Sync up with svn repository again or to sync up any time(see 7 for stashing uncommitted changes):
git-svn rebase
5. If there are conflicts:
Fix offending file/files
git-add offending file/files
git-rebase --continue
6. Commit work back to svn repository
git-svn dcommit
7. To sync with uncommitted local changes (stash, sync, restore stashed changes and delete stash)
git-stash
git-svn rebase
git-stash apply
git-stash clear
Categories: Open Source.
Tags: conflicts, git, git-svn, merge, Open Source, rebase, stash, working
By dshipton
—
February 25, 2008 at 11:20 pm