by design, not by default

The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. 

Greg McKeown 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.7

command and feedback

In the Corps, I was taught to use the concept of "command and feedback." You don't control your subordinate commanders' every move; you clearly state your intent and unleash their initiative. Then, when the inevitable obstacles or challenges arise, with good feedback loops and relevant data displays, you hear about it and move to deal with the obstacle. Based on feedback, you fix the problem. George Washington, leading a revolutionary army, followed a "listen, learn, and help, then lead," sequence. I found that what worked for George Washington worked for me.  

Jim Mattis

MATTIS, J. (2019). CALL SIGN CHAOS: Learning to lead. S.l.: RANDOM HOUSE. 62

not all pain matters

There are people whose attention is consistently drawn away from their purpose and toward their pain, like a moth to a light. Such people, who pay attention to every annoyance and obstacle in their way, are usually unsuccessful in their endeavors. In extreme cases they are mentally ill. A healthy person, a flourishing person, learns to move past a lot of annoyance and a good deal of pain.

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.168,169

what is a personal calling?

What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream.

Why?

There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it's still there.

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn't work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: "Oh, well, I didn't really want it anyway." We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?

Because once we have overcome the defeats - and we always do - we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said: "Each man kills the thing he loves." And it's true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people, who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal - when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.

Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist, HarperCollins 1993. p.x-xii

a hero

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.


Christopher Reeve
Still Me. Ballantine Books, 1999

unnecessary sources of stress

Smart employers ask employees “What do we do that drives you crazy?” and “What do we do that gets in the way of you doing your job?” Employee energy squandered on overcoming bureaucratic hassles and other obstacles is not available for innovation and productivity.

It’s also energy that could make the difference between employees facing challenge with a “Bring it on!” attitude rather than an “I can’t handle another thing on my plate!” perspective.

So, to remove unnecessary sources of stress by asking employees about which rules, red tape, need to go. Ferret out and remove any and all unnecessary obstacles. Doing so will recover a massive amount of employee energy that can be channeled to productive use.

David Lee

"How To Build A Resilient, Stress-Resistant Workforce" TLNT 2/24/2014

the great north wind

It was the great north wind that made the Vikings. 

Scandanavian Proverb

As quoted in Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls, Simon and Schuster, 2009

life is a storm

Life is a storm.. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. 

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo. 1844.

seemed utterly prescient

A new round of technical setbacks stalled Plan A. As technicians rushed to change the hammers and head of the drill another three days were lost. Though Plan A was now less than 328 feet from the men, few engineers bet that the much-hyped original rescue plan would win the race. The slow but steady original drilling operation was now headed for third place. Both the other drills have proven faster in the unique conditions of the San José mine.

Plan C also faced a setback when an errant drill led the shaft far off track. Using a smaller drill bit, engineers devised a plan to curb the tunnel back on course, then return to drilling with the full-sized bit, which would bore a tunnel wide enough for the Phoenix. In total, nearly a week would be lost. But the speed of Plan C was not compromised by the inability to keep the massive rig on course.

All bets were now on Plan B, which by day 59 had reached 1,400 feet and appeared to be the most reliable technology in the epic operation. With Plan A and Plan C facing major challenges, President Piñera’s decision to operate three separate technologies now seemed utterly prescient.

  

  

Jonathan Franklin

33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners. Putnam 2011. p.214, 215

managing vs. leading

Companies manage complexity first by planning and budgeting-setting targets or goals for the future (typically for the next month or year),establishing detailed steps for achieving those targets, and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans. By contrast, leading an organization to constructive change begins by setting a direction - developing a vision ofthe future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision.

Management develops the capacity to achieve its plan by organizing and staffing-creating an organizational structure and set of jobs for accomplishing plan requirements, staffing the jobs with qualified individuals, communicating the plan to those people, delegating responsibility for carrying out the plan, and devising systems to monitor implementation. The equivalent leadership activity, however, is aligning people. This means communicating the new direction to those who can create coalitions that understand the vision and are committed to its achievement.

Finally, management ensures plan accomplishment by controlling and problem solving – monitoring results versus the plan in some detail, both formally and informally, by means of reports, meetings, and other tools; identifying deviations; and then planning and organizing to solve the problems. But for leadership, achieving a vision requires motivating and inspiring – keeping people moving in the right direction, despite major obstacles to change, by appealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values, and emotions.

John P. Kotter
“What Leaders Really Do.” Harvard Business Review. 1990.