What do you Mean by Success?

Success means a lot of different things to different people. Even the same person may see success as the achievement of different goals in different areas of life. To a large degree, our notion of "success" is shaped by the values of our society or community.

When we say of someone that he or she is a successful person, normally we attach to that ascription the accumulation of a certain amount of wealth or status. Likely we link the concept with some kind of achievement or award. Synonymous to success are notions about winning and conquest. Thus, a successful business organization would be one that has a certain degree of market share and a successful athlete would be an individual who has excelled competitively. When it comes to personal successes, perhaps acclaim and acknowledgement among peers would be important.

Often, we deem someone to be successful only if that individual has attained some recognizable achievement. For instance, the Buffalo Bills will forever be enshrined as a team that failed to win a single Super Bowl in four consecutive attempts. More recently, there was some small debate that arose among some section of the American public and media about Michelle Kwan’s success or lack thereof for having to retire from competitive figure skating without ever having won a single Olympic title. Apparently it does not matter that the Bills won four consecutive AFC Championships, a feat that no other team has ever done before, or that Kwan was a five time World champion and nine time National title holder. In the minds of some people, you are not a success unless you have reached a specific goal or achievement.

Public success is quite different from private success. There might be at least two levels of private success. One viewed introspectively by the individual himself or herself, and another as a general perspective on private or personal achievement. For instance, we might describe someone who displays strong character and evidences of great self control, discipline and a high degree of achievement in his or her private life, and think of this person as privately successful, but the individual himself or herself, who has a completely different set of standards in judging his or her life might think otherwise.

In thinking about success, how much does ethical or moral success figure in to our concept of success as a society, and what does that tell us about that society? We started off by saying our notions of success is intimately related to our value system. So, how important is it for us as a society to aim for enduring values – ethical and moral virtues, that go beyond the temporal and passing glory that comes with winning or achievement of this or that goal?

So, what is our definition of success today? What do we mean when we say of a person that he or she is a successful person?

What is your definition of success? Is it similar or different than what the general public think of success?

Are you a success? Why or why not?

That Dreaded Four Letter Word

F-E-A-R!

This unassuming little emotion can come up from nowhere and grip you so tightly to paralyze you before you know what has happened. It can happen just before an important meeting. Or before you are going to make that momentous presentation. Or when you need to be picking up that telephone to make those calls. Or before you pop the question.

It often rears its ugly head at the most inopportune of times and blindside you. Or cripple you rendering you ineffective.

How do you deal with it?

I remember in college, going on a "Wilderness Adventure" experience with a bunch of other freshmen and transfers. To prepare new college entrants the institution offered a course that involved a mountain climbing experience, a hike through the woods and a ropes course to teach lessons on dealing with stress, resolving problems and to build confidence in each other as well as in oneself. Lessons that are all very necessary to college and life as well.

One of the activities we were introduced was a "Totem Pole" exercise. There was a fifty foot telephone pole. Once we got our safety harness on (to catch us if we should slip and fall), we are supposed to climb this pole, and then stand up on one foot-by-one foot platform. About twelve or fifteen feet from the platform is a larger platform with a ladder leading from it that one can climb down to safety on the ground. In order to reach this platform, one has to jump and catch a hold of a bar that is just slightly out of reach and swing across to the other platform.

Sounds easy enough.

I was up onto the totem pole in no time. Once I got to the top, I was breathing quite heavily and the heart was beating rapidly from the strenuous effort of climbing up 50 feet. I sat down on the platform and suddenly realized that I was actually so far high up from the ground. My heart raced a little! Then I realized that there was a steady breeze blowing and the pole was actually swaying side to side as I sat out there. I took a deep breath and prepared to stand up on the platform in order to jump off it, grab the swing and get across to the larger platform and on to safety.

But to my chagrin I realized that my legs were weighted down! The adrenalin rushing through my system along with the acrophobia from the high altitude combined to grip me with immobolizing fear. I could not lift my legs up!

From below, my teammates were cheering me on and encouraging me, but my legs would not budge! I could not stand up! I pleaded with the leader to allow me to climb down but she told me that there were only two ways for me to come down. One was to get across to the platform and climb down the ladder or the next would be to fall off and be caught by the harness and then be lowered to the ground. Under no circumstances could I climb down the pole!

After what seemed an eternity, I agreed to fall off the platform because I just could not get myself to stand up! My leader challenged me to fall backwards as that was another experience of trust. I did that, but as I fell backwards and then was caught by the harness it suddenly occured to me that I was actually quite irrational. Fear had so overcome me that I wasn't thinking right!

Why was I so afraid of standing up? I was afraid I would fall! Then what was I doing then? I was falling! What craziness! So, as soon as I was lowered to ground level, I begged the leader to let me try again, climb right back up the pole, stand and jump to grab the swing and swing across to the other side. This time I was able to do it without much hesitation and with much cheering from all my teammates!

You see, I was so fearful that I began to imagine wild things that would happen to me and fear so sidetracked me that I wasn't thinking right anymore. So, next time you are fearful, stop to ask yourself. What are you afraid of? Feel the fear and do it anyway!

The Importance of Alignment

Several years ago, someone robbed our house while we slept! I will always remember that night. It was a warm, muggy evening in Perth, Western Australia. The temperatures were in the high 30's on the Celsius gauge (that's nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit). I had been working in a room with a window facing the front yard. I had opened the window to let the air in as it was getting unbearably stuffy and hot as I worked.

When I decided to turn in for the night, I forgot to close the windows. In the middle of the night, my wife and I were rudely awakened by flashlights shone onto our eyes. As I peered out of my sleepiness, I heard these rough voices barking behind the flashlights, "Police! Police! Wake up! Wake up!"

At first I thought some crazy friends were playing a joke on us. I even entertained the thought that we might have been victims of some shock segment of a popular late night TV show.

However these fleeting thoughts were quickly squashed when I realized that they were the voices of a couple of real life cops who had evidently entered our home. Apparently, they were called by a passing taxi driver who saw the front yard of our house strewn with our belongings, and our front door wide open.

You see, burglars had crept into our house while we slept through the opened window, and had taken out our drawers and chests and emptied them in the front yard, looking for cash or valuables.

By the time the cops woke us, almost every room in the house had been ransacked. We were shocked out of our minds and devastatingly overwhelmed with feelings of having been violated.

You can imagine that I was very much tuned in to security consciousness in the next couple of days. So when I heard a radio advertisement for a residential security system, I quickly jotted down the phone number and called for an appointment.

I got a busy signal. Their ads must have been too effective! So I called my wife to ask her to call while I went to my business meeting. My wife called and spoke to a receptionist who responded that someone would call back. We waited a couple of days for the callback, but no one did. So my wife called again, getting the same assurance. Yet another day passed and no one had called. So my wife tried again the next day, and this time explained that she had already called twice earlier. The telephonist became defensive. She told my wife that everyone was busy so she should just be patient and wait! But, no one ever did call back.

Neither did us! We decided to take our business elsewhere!

Here was the issue: that company failed to align their systems and their team with the message of their ad campaign.

They may have a brilliant product. They may have a compelling message. But, if their system fails them (my call couldn’t get through the first time I called), and then their people do not follow through, and worse yet, even turn people off(!), then the company has failed to realize the full potential of their investment.

This works the same for any team: whether you’re an athletic team, or a group, or even a family, you need to align your vision, and know your shared goals so that you can pull together to leverage each other in order to achieve what you all desire together.

It is espcially critical that there is alignment in a business. For instance, many business leaders talk about empowerment. They talk it, they believe in it, but when it comes to practice, the empowerment may not be fully executed because the systems and structures within the business organization inhibit empowerment of the employees in critical ways. If employees do not have access to critical information, for instance, they are then not truly empowered to act in the best interest of clients and/or their company. If they are permited access to key information, but the systems fail them, then the empowerment may just be "all talk" and turn out to be "pseudo-empowerment". Worse yet, if the talk about empowerment is not followed up with business practices and attitudes among both the executive and line management that are empowering.

So, what do you think? Do you have examples to share where a misalignment between the vision, systems and people affects the effectiveness of the group? Or do you have anything to add to the above, or any comments? I appreciate your feedback!