H3 Leadership

Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle.

Brad Lomenick

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780718088507
• eBook ISBN: 9780718022266
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Skills
• Index: Business

The patterns we cultivate shape the person we each become.

Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Always Hustle. These powerful words describe the leader who is willing to work hard, get it done, and make sure it’s not about him or her; the leader who knows that influence is about developing the right habits for success.

Brad Lomenick, former president of Catalyst, shares his hard-earned insights from more than two decades of work alongside thought-leaders such as Jim Collins and Malcom Gladwell, Fortune 500 CEOs and start-up entrepreneurs.

Operating within the framework of three core character qualities – humble, hungry, hustle – Lomenick identifies 20 essential leadership habits that help readers embody those qualities, including:

• Staying open and sharing the real you with others
• Owning your convictions and sticking to your principles
• Developing an appetite for what’s next
• Pursuing innovation by staying current, creative, and engaged
• Demanding excellence by setting standards that scare you
• Fostering collaboration with colleagues and competitors

Offering practical steps to embrace these habits, H3 Leadership provides a simple but effective guide on how to lead well in whatever capacity the reader may be in.

HUSTLE:

HOW WILL YOU GET THERE?

THIRTEEN

A HABIT OF EXCELLENCE

SET STANDARDS THAT SCARE YOU

When an organization hires me as a consultant to evaluate their personnel, policies, and practices, I often feel they expect me to act like a business school professor. After a full review, they wait expectantly to hear my feedback and expect a detailed explanation of how they should restructure their organizational chart or a bold, ten-year plan to triple annual revenue. More than one customer has been surprised when my primary advice consists of only three words: “Stop being average.”

I agree with Martin Luther King Jr., who once said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted . . . that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Establishing a habit of excellence begins with a core commitment to set a standard that scares the daylights out of you. Some people think excellence means being as good as the next guy. These leaders will take a product or philosophy from someone successful and replicate it. This happens often with pastors who are just trying to be as good a communicator as the preacher down the street. It happens a lot with salespeople who strive to have better numbers than the person in the cubicle next to them.

Greatness is not a destination. It’s a journey. You never arrive at greatness. The goal is to set a standard that scares you to death and then continue trying to raise that standard.

But scary standards aren’t weighed against the nearest competitor. They are derived from what the best of the best might look like in your context and calling. If you’re coaching the Baltimore Ravens, for example, you don’t want to be as good as the New York Giants. Your standard is to win the Super Bowl.

As Nick Saban, the famed coach of Alabama, who has won three national championships in the last five years, stated, “We aren’t competing against an opponent necessarily. We’re competing against perfection.” So set a standard that scares you.

Being the best and pursuing excellence isn’t about being big or having the largest budget or costly expense accounts. Excellence is ultimately about effort. For Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden, success wasn’t just winning; it was the pursuit of the best. Achieving a standard was how Wooden measured success. The quality of his team’s effort to realize their potential counted first and foremost. Coach Wooden was more upset with not playing up to the team’s potential in a win versus playing as well as they could before a loss.

I also saw this growing up with our Bristow High School football team. Since my dad was one of the coaches, I had an inside track on seeing the pursuit of excellence. Basically, no budget was available, yet a standard of excellence was constant. They watched what college teams were doing and learned from the best, all the while realizing an average dressing room and broken-down weight machine was reality. My dad and the coaching staff didn’t have any bells and whistles, but the one thing we could do like the great college teams was hustle. They conducted practices with army-like precision. Every drill was done to perfection. Sprints were run, and run a lot. Hustle from one part of practice to the next during two a days in one-hundred-degree Oklahoma heat was required. Our mind-set was greatness. And it showed. From 1975 to 1995, Bristow was one of the winningest programs in the state of Oklahoma.

SCARY STANDARDS AREN’T WEIGHED AGAINST THE NEAREST COMPETITOR. THEY ARE DERIVED FROM WHAT THE BEST OF THE BEST MIGHT LOOK LIKE IN YOUR CONTEXT AND CALLING.

Excellence is what helps a leader and an organization move from competent to exceptional, from good enough to soaring heights. What are the barely attainable standards you can turn into benchmarks? How can you begin pointing to the farthest points on the horizon and then motivating you and your team to race there? These are the practices that will make your organization unusual and force your average competitors to begin mimicking you rather than the other way around.

Once a client gets over the initial shock of my blunt advice, they follow up with a comment and a question: “We didn’t know we were mediocre.” and “How can we stop being average?” The answer to their query depends largely on the organization and where they find themselves, but many principles are universal.

Author and screenwriter Neil Gaiman, in a 2012 commencement address at the University of the Arts, said that excellence in business can be boiled down to three simple things:

1. Be Efficient: Turn in work on time.

2. Be Effective: Do great work.

3. Be Congenial: Be a pleasure to work with.¹

Gaiman added that even mastering two of the three will take you far. If you do great work and are a pleasure to work with, most people will forgive you for missing a deadline. If you’re always on time and a pleasure to work with, most people put up with less than perfect work. If you turn in great work on time, most people will put up with you being unpleasant.

Pixar has become known as the gold standard of filmmaking in Hollywood. But their films aren’t great from the beginning. They describe them early on as their “ugly babies,” but everyone wants to make sure they turn out great. And no one wants to be the first producer or director to have a film that stinks. Their culture of excellence has demanded habits of excellence. According to Ed Catmull, a cofounder of Pixar, “The first version is not perfect, but we have to keep making it better because the standard of greatness at Pixar creates a mindset that no one wants to let anyone else down.”² For the last twenty years, every Pixar film has opened number one at the box office opening weekend.

It’s difficult to argue with Gaiman’s analysis, which makes for a good starting point as you develop this habit. But excellence is also more practical. It’s the small actions in the everyday that help focus us on scary standards. Here are some principles I often give people that can help take your organization and leadership potential from average to exceptional.

• REMEMBER PEOPLE’S NAMES . . . FOR “PETE’S” SAKE AND YOURS. Whether you are dealing with clients or meeting with colleagues, always remember and address them by their names. In a moment when people are often viewed as job titles or potential sales, this will make a massive difference in your work.

• LOOK INTO EYEBALLS, NOT OVER SHOULDERS. Nothing annoys me more than talking to someone whose mind is somewhere else. If you’re scanning a room or checking your smartphone, it sends a clear message to the person you’re speaking with: you’d prefer to be somewhere else. It doesn’t matter if you’re chatting about the weekend with a coworker at the water cooler or chatting with a donor at the buffet table in a banquet hall; always look people in the eye.

THE BEST IDEAS COME OUT OF THE KILN OF DISAGREEMENT AND DISCERNMENT.

• LEARN TO ANTICIPATE. Excellence requires always being one step ahead. This is intentional and requires a constant answering of “What should I prepare for that I haven’t experienced but will?” Do something every day that you weren’t asked or told to do. And brainstorm with your team about what tomorrow will (likely) bring. This is true regarless of your role, title, or position. Leading from wherever you are means intentionally making decisions like you are in charge, most often without the perceived authority.

• EMBRACE PUSHBACK. The best ideas come out of the kiln of disagreement and discernment. Almost every successful leader I know wants their team members to challenge the process, question assumptions, bring new ideas to the table, and push back when they don’t agree. Don’t be afraid to do this. If you are unsure about whether you have “permission” from those above you to push back, ask for permission on the front end of meetings. If your leader is not mature enough to take this, that’s a problem.

• DEMAND FEEDBACK. Use every opportunity to improve. Whether it’s a presentation, negotiation, meeting with clients, or sales call, ask those around you how you can get better. Recently I was speaking in Atlanta at a staff retreat for a friend’s organization. A few of the Catalyst team were there with me, and I asked them what could be better about my talk. I wanted to hear what could improve, not what they thought was great. But I had to demand they give me a list of things I did poorly because their natural inclination was to tell me the things I did right.

• COME TO MEETINGS WITH SOLUTIONS, NOT JUST IDEAS. Ideas are great—they are the lifeblood of a habit of innovation, after all—but ideas must always lead somewhere. Do you have a finish line? Do you know what a win would look like when it comes to your ideas? Always move toward completion and not away from it. If your ideas don’t solve a problem, improve a process, or create organizational energy, they might as well never have existed.

• TAKE ON MORE RESPONSIBILITY. Ask for more involvement, and you’ll be lifting the load off your employer or boss. It’s always a welcomed conversation. Help by taking on more.

• CONSTANTLY IMPROVE. Great leaders and teams guard against complacency and acceptance of the status quo. Though you should always celebrate successes and goal achievements, these are also opportunities for you to set your sights even higher. Don’t allow mediocrity to set in. Push yourself daily, and create shared accountability for improvement across the entire team.

• REWARD EXCELLENCE WITH CULTURE. If you don’t create a culture of excellence, your team won’t have excellent ideas and create excellent products. On the front end of projects, set expectations of which goals must be achieved and which standards cannot be compromised. On the back end, find ways to pass on perks to your key team members who’ve gone the extra mile. Whether it’s tickets to an NFL game, a free golf outing, books, Moleskine notebooks, or a day off, show your appreciation by a few extra gifts here and there. And make sure to surround yourself with people who are way better than you at their role. Go and find the best. If you are the smartest person in every office in your organization, that’s a problem.

• CREATE CONSISTENCY. Excellent leaders who are great at what they do create excellent teams. Excellent teams then create excellent results. Excellence is about consistency. Remarkability is built from the continual steadfast pursuit of being the best. It’s not about lots of money or a huge staff. It’s a mind-set and a standard. If making copies, be the best copy maker ever. If mixing up a mocha at Starbucks, be the best barista in that city. If negotiating a new contract, be the best negotiator in the company. If planning a conference, put on the best conference in your entire industry. Set your standards so high that it may seem impossible to reach them, and stick to it. Be a yardstick by which all others measure their mediocrity. Jonathan Ive, the famed designer at Apple, says, “It’s very easy to be different, but very difficu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• 0. Let The Transformation Begin
• Humble: Who Are You?
• Hungry: Where Are You Going?
• Hustle: How Will You Get There?
• Appendix: The Hard Work of Leadership
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author