Is your business remarkable?

Are customers willing to pay a premium, make a selection, or spread the word about the value of your business (Seth Godin)?

If you can’t produce evidence to support your answer to this question, your business is probably headed for or already in trouble. You should have a system to track how remarkable your business is in the eyes of your customers, a system to continuously improve how remarkable your business is, and a system to continuously improve how you know what you know.

I’ve got some bad news for you – if your business is not remarkable, it’s most likely because YOU are not remarkable. Do remarkable employees consistently make an effort to come to work for you because of your leadership? Do your employees sing your leadership praises to their most trusted inner circles – their family, friends, and coworkers?  If you have to hesitate to answer “yes”, then the real answer those questions is probably “no.”

If you are a remarkable leader, you will attract and retain remarkable employees. If you enable those remarkable employees with remarkable systems to do their jobs with distinction, then those employees will impress the socks off your customers. If you impress the socks off your customers, they will tell others what a remarkable business you have. When your remarkable customers continually spread the word about what a remarkable business you have, your business will prosper.

If you and your business are not remarkable, then you are replaceable. When resources are constrained, the defective languish, the ordinary might survive, but the remarkable thrive.

Wishful thinking will never make you remarkable. You have to be willing to do things your peers are not willing to do, have the wisdom to learn from your mistakes, and the grit to treat the pursuit of remarkability as a marathon and not a sprint.

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My most recent article for The Student Branding Blog is now posted. In it, I recommend that students read Seth Godin’s new book “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?“  I reviewed the book previously here and concluded that although Seth’s message is not entirely original, it is still a powerful message.

Especially in tough economic times, if you are not remarkable you are replaceable. Because the overwhelming majority of your peers are content with the mediocrity that pervades their lives, including their work, it is not as difficult as it might sound to become the remarkable person in the crowd.

But it’s impossible if you don’t see your mediocrity and resolve to behave your way to excellence.

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The next meditation on followership from Ira Chaleff’s book “The Courageous Follower” is: If abusive leaders do not change their behavior, I can and will withdraw my support. If we don’t confront abusive behaviors, then we collude with the leader in the abuse. Our silence is construed as assent.

People that knowing and willingly abuse power are counting on the fact that no one will have the courage to stand up and challenge their behavior. A follower that has the courage to challenge bad behavior is a force to be reckoned with, especially if the follower is a stellar and purposeful performer.

Challenge bad behavior early, because the longer we wait the harder it gets. We challenge because we care about our leader and the organization we share stewardship for with her. We are willing to be patient with our leader as she struggles with the discomfort and fear of confronting her own weakness, but we must be resolute.

If the behavior does not improve, we have to be brutally honest with ourselves and admit that it probably never will improve. At that point, we have a choice to stick with our leader and the organization or to withdraw support.

If we stay, we need to understand clearly that we will NEVER have a voice. If we surrender our voice, we surrender the essence of our dignity. Without a voice, we have no hope of ever being remarkable. Is any job worth that?

If we confront the leader and tell her that although we will continue to perform our duties we no longer believe in and support her, we need to be prepared to have our employment terminated. But do we really want to work for people that don’t give a damn about us, that treat us as replaceable parts in an organization they are driving to the bottom? If we don’t quit a terrible job, we might survive, but we will never thrive.

We should plan our contingencies wisely, but don’t waste any more time than we have to working for people that disable rather than enable us. It is our responsibility to be prepared for the day we will be given the privilege to lead others, and we simply can’t be prepared if we don’t learn as followers how to recognize and confront an abuse of power.

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I caught the NBC Nightly News last night, and am glad I did; otherwise, I might never have known the story of Robert Howard.  Robert Howard is the only man ever to be nominated for The Medal of Honor three separate times for three separate acts of tremendous courage and bravery. Robert Howard died yesterday at the age of 70.

I hope you will take two minutes to watch this tribute to Robert Howard.  Acknowledging and remembering him is the least we can do for his life of service to others.

Cesar Garibaldo is an undergraduate student in the College of Business Administration at the University of Nevada, Reno.  He was recently selected as one of the top thirty-five business students in the United States by the Hispanic College Fund.  Thirty-eight thousand students applied for the award, six hundred received scholarships, and thirty-five were selected to receive the award.  That is quite an achievement!

Cesar was gracious enough to let me interview him about his accomplishments.  He is definately an example of leadership, courage, and grit.  Cesar is a very impressive young man with a very encouraging story. 

Please watch the video and listen to his story!

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Leadership and Grit: Dr. Raul Ruiz

I rarely watch the NBC Nightly News, but I just happened to be watching tonight when this story about an orphanage in Afghanistan aired.  The director of the orphanage, Andisha Farid, exemplifies courage, grit, and purposeful leadership.

Andisha Farid grew up a refugee in Afghanistan, and now she is trying to make a difference in the lives of other displaced children through her work at the orphanage.  When asked if this was her life’s work, she replied:

Sure. Especially for our generation, we were born in war, we grew up in war, and we may die in war. But we really… I really want to do something. If we say, Ok, we have gone through a very tough situation and we are fed up. Just… we shouldn’t give up.

Stories like this remind me why I am passionate about leadership.  Leadership is not about rising to the top.  Leadership is about doing what needs to be done, often what others are unwilling or unable to do, to address tough issues and meet needs for which there may be few extrinsic rewards.

Leaders sow their seeds in the lives of others. Their reward is in the sowing and the preparation of those that must be responsible to reap and account for the harvest. 

Watch the video. It’s a great story.

Dr. Raul Ruiz has three degrees from Harvard – MD, Master’s in Public Health, and Master’s in Public Policy – the first Mexican American to achieve that. That’s on top of his undergraduate degree from UCLA where he graduated magna cum laude. Quite an achievement for the son of migrant workers that had mediocre grades and no money.

As a boy, he practiced typing with the phrase “all things are possible.” He asked his community for help funding his education and promised them he would return to serve them when he finished. He could practice medicine anywhere, but he kept his promise and now practices medicine at Eisenhower Medical Center, a not-for-profit hospital in his home community of Coachella, CA.

Dr. Ruiz’s perseverance and passion for long-term goals is a great example of both grit and leadership. We need more leaders and role models like him. I encourage you to take the time to watch this short video about his story.

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Committing to your goals

Yesterday I wrote about grit, the trait of being able to maintain focus on and passion for long term goals even when things get tough.  Grit has nothing to do with IQ.  I think we are better off crafting work that ordinary, gritty people can excel at than to search for extraordinarily smart and talented folks.  I’d much rather have a team of gritty folks that work well together and learn from their mistakes than a collection of prima-donna superstars that are too smart to learn anything new.

Carol Dweck’s work on self-theories I think supports the notion that we should encourage grit over intelligence.  I learned about Dweck’s research in Pfeffer and Sutton’s book Hard Facts and in this article at Bob Sutton’s website. 

Some people have a fixed theory, believing that their qualities, such as their intelligence, are simply fixed traits. Others have a malleable theory, believing that their most basic qualities can be developed through their efforts and education. Research shows that people with a malleable theory are more open to learning, willing to confront challenges, able to stick to difficult tasks, and capable of bouncing back from failures (Dweck, 2008).

Her research also shows that if people are praised for their intelligence, they are more likely to develop a fixed theory.  This kind of praise can make them more challenge avoidant, and when they face especially tough difficulties their confidence, satisfaction, and performance may decline.  But when people are praised for their effort, they are more likely to take on a malleable theory.  This results in eagerness to learn and resilience in the face of vexing challenge (Dweck, 2008).

I think Dweck’s research casts serious doubt on the entire strength based approach to leadership. As soon as people are labeled with certain kinds of strengths or talents, and told to only play to those strengths and avoid their weaknesses, it seems pretty clear to me they are moving away from a malleable theory. 

Your organization does not need a shrink to give you a psychological profile of people with the promise of finding their fixed strengths.  Instead, it probably needs some plumbers with the knowledge and grit to fix your “crappy” systems.

Grit is good.  Praise it when you see it in your people.

In the summer of 1995 I was preparing to take one of the biggest risks of my life.  I was six months into a new and excellent job with a telecommunications company in Spokane, but I had already decided to quit my job and go back to school full time for at least the next four years to work on getting a Ph.D. in management from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.

In June of that summer, a few weeks before I was going to give my notice at work, I was traveling on business in Oklahoma City and decided to drive up to Stillwater one afternoon to see if I could meet some of the faculty in the program. There was only one guy in the entire department in his office that day.  After introducing myself, the first thing he said to me was “I recommended we not accept you into this program because your GMAT scores were not very high.” What a blow.

I started the program that fall with the attitude that I would probably be the least intelligent person in any class I found myself in.  There was nothing I could do about that.  But I entered every class with the attitude that no one in the room was going to work harder than me. Four years later I was one of the only ones left from my original cohort of students – the rest had quit or transferred to a less rigorous program.

My success can probably be partially explained by grit. Grit is:

Perseverance and passion for long term goals.  Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.  The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina.  Whereas disappointment or boredom signals to others that it is time to change trajectory and cut losses, the gritty individual stays the course.  (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews and Kelly, 2006)

General mental ability, or IQ, is one of the best predictors of achievement.  Grit is not related to IQ, and studies have shown it can be an important predictor of performance beyond IQ.

Want to leverage grit in your workplace? Instead of searching for extraordinary people to do the job, partner with your folks to design jobs that ordinary, gritty people can excel at.