My Side of the Desk

You Get What You Deserve

One of the defining moments of the last year taught me a glaringly simple, yet startlingly powerful principle:

“You get what you’re committed to.”

Not matter what filters are applied to a situation–socioeconomic, educational or otherwise, the fact remains that when all is said and done, those who are determined to succeed are standing on the correct side of the finish line when the smoke clears. All the rest seem to have is excuses.

Our heroes in America aren’t the ones who got breaks, they’re the ones who surveyed their given circumstances, made a commitment, held their breath and made a stand. Rosa Parks didn’t wait until it was easy to stay sitting at the front of the bus. Was FDR an incredible leader for America because of his family’s wealth, or his courage through crippling disease?

Facing downsizing? Has there been a gap in your employment? Is your team not responding to your leadership? Is your family-relationship as strong as it could be? You get what you’re committed to, so what is it you want?

Seth Godin wrote an incredible piece that captures this for me perfectly. I’m having a hard time just copying this whole post and wishing I wrote it:

Like most things, there’s a spectrum of approaches. In this case, I think the two ends of the spectrum are an approach of Abundance and an approach I call Technically Beyond Reproach (TBR).

Abundance means that you look at every problem spec and figure out how to make it bigger.
TBR tries to make it smaller.

Abundance means that you spend a lot of time imagining how you will overdeliver.
TBR means you start from the beginning making sure that the work you do will either meet spec or you’ll have a really good excuse.

Entrepeneurs have a hard time with the TBR approach, because it has never ever worked for them. VCs and customers and competitors give few bonus points for excuses, even really good ones, so the only approach that wins is the abundance one.

An abundant-approach employee shows up early so she won’t need the “train was late” excuse on the day of the presentation. The TBR employee gets a note from the Metro. (true story).

…

I think what it comes down to is the first question you ask yourself when you see an opportunity or a challenge.

Is it, “How can I make this bigger, do it faster and change the outcome for all of us?” or is it “If this doesn’t work, will I get in trouble or will I be okay?” [full article...]

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