1. It’s as easy to do something big as it is to do something small, so reach for a fantasy worthy of your pursuit, with rewards commensurate to your effort.

• What are you working towards right now in your career? in life? If you achieve what you wanted, what rewards would come your way?
• How might you increase the size and scope of the goal you’re pursuing?

2. The best executives are made, not born. They never stop learning. Study the people and organizations in your life that have had enormous success. They offer a free course from the real world to help you improve.

• Which successful person are you learning from right now? Who has achieved the success you want to achieve?
• How can you continue to find high-quality people or resources to further your learning?

3. Write or call the people you admire, and ask for advice or a meeting. You never know who will be willing to meet with you. You may end up learning something important or form a connection you can leverage for the rest of your life. Meeting people early in life creates an unusual bond.

• Who can you reach out to today for advice or to connect?
• How will you make connecting with others a regular practice?  

4. There is nothing more interesting to people than their own problems. Think about what others are dealing with, and try to come up with ideas to help them. Almost anyone, however senior or important, is receptive to good ideas provided you are thoughtful.

• Think about the key people in your professional and personal networks. What problems are they grappling with right now? How might you be able to help them?
• Can you reach out to one of these people today to offer your ideas? 

5. Every business is a closed, integrated system with a set of distinct but interrelated parts. Great managers understand how each part works on its own and in relation to all the others.

• Do you understand every part of your business and how each part connects with each other? (Knowing your business has been advice echoed by Andrew Gorsky, Ken Chenault, and Mary Barra). 

6. Information is the most important asset in business. The more you know, the more perspectives you have, and the more likely you are to spot patterns and anomalies before your competition. So always be open to new inputs, whether they are people, experiences, or knowledge.

• What new experiences will you participate in to broaden your information base? List 3 specific new inputs for this month, this quarter, and this year.

7. When you’re young, only take a job that provides you with a steep learning curve and strong training. First jobs are foundational. Don’t take a job just because it seems prestigious.

• What new things are you learning from your job right now?
• If you’re not learning anything new, how can you adjust your role to get back to learning?

8. When presenting yourself, remember that impressions matter. The whole picture has to be right. Others will be watching for all sorts of clues and cues that tell who you are. Be on time. Be authentic. Be prepared

• What are you doing to manage the impressions people have of you? What clues and cues are you giving off to people? If you’re not sure how to manage this, this article on personal branding might help.

9. No one person, however smart, can solve every problem. But an army of smart people talking openly with one another will.

• Who are the smart people you talk to on a regular basis? If you can’t list anyone, what will you do to find these people? 

10. People in a tough spot often focus on their own problems, when the answer usually lies in fixing someone else’s.

• Whose problem can you help fix right now based on your skill set and resources?
• Can you take action today to fix someone else problem?

11. Believe in something greater than yourself and your personal needs. It can be your company, your country, or a duty for service. Any challenge you tackle that is inspired by your beliefs and core values will be worth it, regardless of whether you succeed or fail.

• What are your beliefs and core values? (This pdf and this article might help if you’re not sure.)
• What is the greater cause you’re striving for?

12. Never deviate from your sense of right and wrong. Your integrity must be unquestionable. It is easy to do what’s right when you don’t have to write a check or suffer any consequences. It’s harder when you have to give something up. Always do what you say you will, and never mislead anyone for your own advantage.

• Over the last 3 months, what situations have tested your integrity? What did you end up doing in those situations?
• What investments or sacrifices have you made over the last 12 months because it was the right thing to do?

13. Be bold. Successful entrepreneurs, managers, and individuals have the confidence and courage to act when the moment seems right. They accept risk when others are cautious and take action when everyone else is frozen, but they do so smartly. This trait is the mark of a leader.

• What is the last bold thing you did in the past 6 months? 
• What are you doing now to help you take quick action when the moment is right?

14. Never get complacent. Nothing is forever. Whether it is an individual or a business, your competition will defeat you if you are not constantly seeking ways to reinvent and improve yourself. Organizations, especially, are more fragile than you think.

• What are the specific things you’re doing right now to reinvent and improve yourself and your organization? 
• What are the inputs that have you decide what to improve/reinvent?

15. Sales rarely get made on the first pitch. Just because you believe in something doesn’t mean everyone else will. You need to be able to sell your vision with conviction over and over again. Most people don’t like change, so you need to be able to convince them why they should accept it. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

• What vision would you like to sell to people?
• When was the last time you sold this vision or ask people for what you want? How are you selling that vision right now?
• Who is one person you can pitch this week?

16. If you see a huge, transformative opportunity, don’t worry that no one else is pursuing it. You might be seeing something others don’t. The harder the problem is, the more limited the competition, and the greater the reward for whomever can solve it.

• What transformative opportunity do you see?
• What is one thing you can do now to capitalize on that opportunity?

17. Success comes down to rare moments of opportunity. Be open, alert, and ready to seize them. Gather the right people and resources; then commit. If you’re not prepared to apply that kind of effort, either the opportunity isn’t as compelling as you think or you are not the right person to pursue it.

• Are you connected to the right people and resources? How can you secure enough “dry powder” to take advantage of the opportunities when they come?

18. Time wounds all deals, sometimes even fatally. Often the longer you wait, the more surprises await you. In tough negotiations especially, keep everyone at the table long enough to reach an agreement.

• If you’re in an active deal or negotiation right now, what can you do to close the deal so both parties are taken care of?
• What might you be doing that needlessly jeopardizes the deal? 

19. Don’t lose money!!! Objectively assess the risks of every opportunity.

• Do you have a good process to objectively assess risk? 

20. Make decisions when you are ready, not under pressure. Others will always push you to make a decision for their own purposes, internal politics, or some other external need. But you can almost always say, “I think I need a little more time to think about this. I’ll get back to you.” This tactic is very effective at defusing even the most difficult and uncomfortable situations.

• What decisions do you have to make right now? 
• Which ones can you make faster and which ones should you slow down?
• What is your decision-making process? (see rule #22)

21. Worrying is an active, liberating activity. If channeled appropriately, it allows you to articulate the downside in any situation and drives you to take action to avoid it.

• What might be worth worrying about? 
• Are you worrying in a productive way?

22. Failure is the best teacher in an organization. Talk about failures openly and objectively. Analyze what went wrong. You will learn new rules for decision making and organizational behavior. If evaluated well, failures have the potential to change the course of any organization and make it more successful in the future.

• What was your last failure? What did you learn? (Growth mindset book summary might be helpful)
• How recent was your last failure?

23. Hire 10s whenever you can. They are proactive about sensing problems, designing solutions, and taking a business in new directions. They also attract and hire other 10s. You can always build something around a 10.

• How many 10s are you working with right now? 
• Who are the 10s in your network? 
• Where can you find 10s in you need to recruit them?

24. Be there for the people you know to be good, even when everyone else is walking away. Anyone can end up in a tough situation. A random act of kindness in someone’s time of need can change the course of a life and create an unexpected friendship or loyalty.

• Who can you be kind to right now?

25. Everyone has dreams. Do what you can to help others achieve theirs.

• What are the dreams of the people close to you? Can you do one thing to move them forward in those dreams? 

Take some time and answer the questions for each of these rules. Then take action aligned with your responses. One action I’ll take to support you in your dreams is to offer you the e-book version of my Dreams to Reality Fieldbook free. Just email me and we’ll send a copy over to you. 

The post 25 Rules for Work and Life from Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone appeared first on Robert Chen.

Below is a list of useful resources I often review and send to high performers who want to continually improve themselves:

Leading People and Organizations

• Mindsets and practices of the best CEOs (McKinsey – pdf version)

• What makes an effective executive (Harvard Business Review)

• Google’s new manager training (facilitator guide, slides, and workbook)

• An atlas of strategy traps (Boston Consulting Group)

• What makes a leader (Harvard Business Review – pdf version)

Communicating Effectively

• Think fast, talk smart (video – Stanford Graduate School of Business)

• Three strategies for introverts to speak up in meetings (Fast Company)

• How to have difficult conversations and stay true to yourself (Lean In – guide)

• A plain English handbook (pdf – Securities and Exchange Commission)

Managing Your Career

• How to pick a career (that actually fits you) (Wait but Why)

• Top 10 practical tips for managing up (LinkedIn)

• The brand called You (Fast Company)

• Why you hate work (NY Times)

Mastering Yourself

• Managing oneself (Harvard Business Review – summary)

• How to get strong (NY Times)

• Why procrastinators procrastinate (Wait but Why)

• How to find a hobby (NY Times)

If you want to go beyond articles and dive deeper into any one of these topics, check out Robert’s book recommendations. If you know of other highly practical resources that you reference frequently, feel free to send them to us or share them in the comments section.

Photo by Syd Wachs

The post Timeless resources to help you be more effective at work (updated Jan 2020) appeared first on Robert Chen.

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

– Rumi, Persian Poet, Theologian and Scholar

The post Today I am wise, so I am changing myself appeared first on Robert Chen.

Exercise for your future health? Continuous learning for your future career moves? Time spent with your loved ones for your future relationships?

 

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

– Abraham Lincoln, American President

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What are you willing to do now that others are not willing to do? These actions and sacrifices will be what separates you from them in the future.

 

“Today I will do what others won’t so tomorrow I can do what others can’t.”

– Jerry Rice, American Football All Star

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Walmart’s phenomenal growth wasn’t because of some secret sauce or tremendous luck, but rather it stems from a consistent application of hard work, continuous improvement, grit, client service, and strong financial management.

If you’re interested in building a sustainable business or career, apply Sam Walton’s 10 rules for success:

1. Commit to your business

Find something you’re passionate about and stick to it. If you’re a top performer, you’ll have many options and it’s easy to be enticed by the different opportunities that come your way. Resist the bright shiny objects in your career path and commit to your life’s work.

If you’re not sure what that work might be or what you’re passionate about, sign up for my free Know What You Want course. It’ll get you moving in the right direction.

Once you commit, be biased towards taking action and expect to win. When you are optimistic about your chances to succeed, it makes it easier for you to be resourceful and to persist until you win.

2. Partner with your team

To succeed, it’s paramount for your employees, peers, and stakeholders to be invested in you and your company or project. To get their buy-in, find ways to share credit and profits with your team so they feel better off when you and the firm are doing well. People follow leaders who will leave them better off.

Walton echoes British entrepreneur Richard Branson, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

3. Challenge your team

To build a world-class firm or career, set high goals and expectations for yourself and those around you. Encourage competition and find ways to keep the score to build accountability. Value hard work, innovation, and integrity and build teams that exude similar values.

As you institutionalize best practices, don’t be too predictable. Always keep things moving forward so your people and firm stay fresh. To hold people accountable, identify measurable performance indicators that connect to the value added to the firm.

4. Communicate openly and thoroughly to your team

Proactively empower your team by being transparent and sharing important information about the business. The more your people know the more they will understand how to focus their energy on the right things. Sam Walton believed the value for empowering your employees far outweigh the risk of competitors gaining access to the inner workings of your business.

Communicate often through staff meetings and written updates. Use these touch points to share information in a timely manner, provide a sounding board to your people, and boost your team’s morale.

5. Appreciate everything your people do for you and the business

It never hurts to be thankful.

To effectively show gratitude, be observant and notice when those around you are doing the right things. Then depending on the person, show appreciation either publicly or privately to recognize their specific actions. Specificity shows people you’re paying attention, which also shows that you care.

6. Celebrate your successes (and failures)

When you reach the top of the mountain you’ve decided to climb, take time to soak it in and celebrate. Reflect on what you did right and what you could do better. Thank all the people who helped you achieve your success and share credit with the people involved.

When you fail, take responsibility but don’t take yourself too seriously. Find humor in the situation and have fun. If you’re in a business you’re passionate about (see #1), know that any setback is only a small part of your overall journey. As long as you learn from your failures, each one will be a building block for your future success.

7. Listen to everyone

To be successful, find ways to listen to everything that’s going around you – in your department, company, and industry. Build trust with people around you so they open up to you and feel safe to share what they see is happening. If you have employees who report to you, push power down and pull info and ideas up. When you hear great ideas, share them with others in the firm.

Throughout his career, Sam would often visit his competitors to learn from their best practices and implement them in his stores. Sam’s Club was a direct result of listening to his competitors. Don’t be afraid to build on what others are doing. Everyone has a lesson to teach you.

8. Exceed your clients’ expectations

Give the people you serve what they want and a little more. This means constantly updating your understanding of what matters to your clients. Show that you appreciate them. When you make a mistake, apologize, and don’t make excuses. Just fix the issue and make good on your mistake.

Your business and career grow because your clients support you. Keep looking for ways to serve your customers better than anyone else. What else can you do to guarantee your client’s satisfaction?

9. Control your expenses better than your competition

If you want to succeed in business and in life, manage your finances and operations effectively. Whether it’s your company, department, or project, the ability to understand the drivers of your business and create sustainable profits is what will boost your value to the company.

If you’re not sure how to read financial statements or manage a P&L, take a class or consider an MBA. If you don’t, you won’t be able to compete and competition is unavoidable. To win, be passionate about competing and compete to win.

10. Swim upstream

When you feel strongly about a trend or idea, stick to your convictions even if it means going against the crowd. Leaders lead by changing and improving the status quo. Anytime you’re leading change, there will be dissuaders.

Keep an open mind and don’t be afraid to change your mind if you realize you’re wrong.

If you’re passionate about being successful, take inventory on how you’re doing on these 10 tips. If you found these ideas useful, consider tips from these other top CEOs – Ken Chenault (American Express), Alex Gorsky (Johnson and Johnson), and Mary Barra (General Motors).

The post 10 Reasons for Walmart’s Success – Sam Walton: Made in America appeared first on Robert Chen.

Beyond workaholics, this phrase puts off more people than it excites. When people think of the grind, they envision their routine commute and their brainless, repetitive tasks. Not exactly a motivating image.

Yet, the grind is needed for success.

Most of your working life will consist of the grind with achievements peppered throughout. Your career is similar to a watch that keeps running and only gets recognized when you’re looking for the time or when your alarm goes off. It’s not glorious but it’s the way things work. You can’t shortcut the time it takes to get great at something.

With that said, surviving the grind isn’t as bad as you think as long as you choose something you want to do. A nostalgic example that comes to mind for me is Super Mario Brothers (the original version on the Nintendo Entertainment System). Like most young children, I had a short attention span. Yet I would spend countless hours repeating the same exact stages over and over again because I wanted to “beat” the game and impress my friends. That was the grind.

What allowed me to keep going with this seemingly mundane task was making progress in the game. As long as I was moving ahead, the grind was paying off.

If you begin to question your daily grind, there is a good chance that you’re not seeing improvement or progress anymore. This should alarm you because you’re probably on the cusp of burning out or you’ve already disengaged from work. Neither one of these outcomes will bring you long-term success.

To succeed professionally, find meaningful work that will help you grow. How willing you are to embrace the grind will help you determine if you’re on the right track. Below is an excellent reminder from Paul Graham’s fantastic article on the shortness of life:

“Relentlessly prune bullshit, don’t wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That’s what you do when life is short.”

– Paul Graham

Photo by Joe Madonna

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You’re hardworking and confident in your abilities.

Unfortunately, if you’re working at a high-performing firm, everyone else feels the same away about themselves.

Ask yourself: Do others recognize me as a top performer?

If you’re not sure, then they probably do not. It’s not because you’re not good – it’s because most people are not focused on you. Like you, they are too busy working on their own careers. To succeed professionally, you need others to be aware of and acknowledge your capabilities.

I’m not asking you to pander to other people. Your self-worth is not determined by what other people think of you and to sustain excellence, it’s important that you do great work for yourself and not because you want to impress others.

Other people matter only because they can assess your value to them and they determine whether you get promoted if you work for a firm or win the business if you work for yourself.

To ensure your success, focus on these three core activities at work:

Continuously hone your craft

Whether it’s sales, research or design, you want to master every aspect of your job. Reflect on your work quality last year to assess how much you’ve improved. The more you are embarrassed by your work last year, the more you’ve improved since then.

To start systematically mastering your craft, break down your function into core elements. If you’re a consultant, your major buckets might be business development, industry knowledge, your specific consulting expertise and project management. For each of these elements, drill down to the tangible skills you can build.

For business development, you might include the following:

• Building rapport – networking
• Focused listening and needs analysis
• Qualifying the opportunity
• Organizing your approach
• Persuading others
• Pitching your ideas
• Negotiating

You can improve each one of these skills through guidance and practice. To hone your craft, you must develop a passion for it. In her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Wharton Professor Angela Duckworth sums up her research on top performers with two practical equations:

Talent x Effort = Skill

Skill x Effort = Achievement

To sustain the effort needed to turn talent eventually into achievement requires one to devote the time to practice deliberately. It’s difficult to put in the time needed if the interest is not there.

Identify your interests and strengths and carve out time daily to improve yourself. Take courses, read books and talk to the masters in your field and industry.

Focus on the right stuff

If you’re talented, curious and ambitious, there is a good chance you will want to start new initiatives or be pulled into various projects to help your company improve and drive results.

As a team player, your tendency will be to join many of these initiatives. It’s important for you to understand that your time is limited and not all initiatives are worth it for you. To be successful, you want to align your energy to help your company achieve its top priorities at the given time.

Working on your firm’s priorities helps you gain the right visibility because top initiatives are typically staffed with and overseen by key leaders. To figure out what your firm is focused on, listen attentively to the CEO town hall and closely observe what the top leaders at your firm are working on. If you work for a public company, read your firm’s annual report and the CEO’s letter to the shareholders to glean insights on the core focus for your firm.

Also, ask your boss where you can best contribute. Make sure to ask for details so you fully understand the necessary outcome. Your goal is to find out what you should be doing and how to go about it. Ask your boss for specific examples to gain insights into the behaviors and results he’s looking for.

Once you know your firm’s top priorities, join those project teams and deliver results.

Build a reputation for being helpful

The reputation of the lone wolf might sound appealing but it rarely gets you to the top.

In a recent conversation with the Head of HR at a Fortune 100 bank, she highlighted the importance of taking on cross-functional projects to build up the right relationships:

“As you move up in your career, your goals will have a broader scope requiring coordination across different functions and lines of business. The more you’ve helped others, the easier it’ll be for you to marshal their help for your projects.”

To better help others achieve their goals, continue honing your expertise and widen your network so you can add more value. Be generous with your time but be judicious as well so others don’t take advantage of you (I recommend reading Adam Grant’s Give and Take to learn how to spot a Taker). Your goal is to become a true resource for others around you.

Do others come to you for help? If not, then you might need to work harder on your reputation as a trusted giver.

Working on these three areas consistently requires perseverance:

• Deliberately practicing your skills every day can be a grind.
• Working on your firm’s top priorities even when you may not completely agree is difficult.
• Giving your time and energy to others takes time away from your own projects and interests.

If you can stick with these three activities, you will stand out from the rest.

Inspired by Change Anything by Kerry Patterson and Grit by Angela Duckworth

Photo by Banalities

The post 3 Effective Ways to Stand Out as a Top Performer appeared first on Robert Chen.

In every Olympics including this year’s games, new world records are being set by those who continue to innovate the way they train and perform. In renowned expertise researcher, K. Anders Ericsson’s, book on performance, Peak, I came across this quote that served as a great reminder.

“Progress is made by those who are working on the frontiers of what is known and what is possible to do, not by those who haven’t put in the effort needed to reach that frontier.“

To innovate and be better than the best, first emulate the best (like Ben Franklin).

A few easy-to-understand-yet-difficult-to-do tips:

1. Practice purposefully by staying one or two steps outside of your comfort zone
   • You know you are at the limits of your ability if you are engaged in an activity that requires your FULL concentration and effort
2. Study the best performers in your field and learn their mental representations
   • What are the thoughts and practices they developed about their craft that allows them to accurately assess and fix their own mistakes?
3. Find a way to get concrete feedback for your performance so you can track your progress and pinpoint where you are falling short
4. Believe you can be better than the best
5. Work harder than everyone else you know

“When you want to achieve something and you believe that you can, you work harder”

– Philip Zimbardo, Stanford Psychologistm in The Time Paradox

In your quest to be better than the best, don’t be surprised if you hit a few plateaus. When you do, step further out of your comfort zone to reveal the particular gap in your skill set. Set up your practice to work on the isolated issue only. This should help you move beyond the plateau.

To make the world better, we should all strive to be better than the best. If you follow the steps above consistently and persistently, you have a good chance of getting there.

Photo by Marco Paköeningrat

The post When you want to be better than the best … appeared first on Robert Chen.

or

when everything you touch turns to gold and you can’t seem to fail,

remember these words from Churchill

and

keep doing the small things that matter.

keep pursuing the big things you love.

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