In my first post I promised I would return to the idea of what “being successful” is. I covered a little of what I wanted to say in my 6th post when I pushed the idea that you didn’t need to start your own business to be successful. But I felt that I was skirting the issue of this topic and wanted to get down into some details. What follows is a very personal view of what success looks like to me. I am sure that success will look different for most people and I think that is what makes it such an interesting subject.
At a superficial level there are many signs or milestones that would signify that someone has had success. My problem with most of these signs is that they may be true in the moment and may feel great at the time, but they don’t provide a guided path to a more holistic concept of success or how to continue to replicate that success over the course of our careers and life in general. What do I mean by this? You may be an athlete and winning a particular competition against the best in the world would be considered success. Breaking a world record in the process would give you a level of success that had never been seen before. Becoming a reigning champion for years in a row would put you up amongst the list of the most successful of all time. Coming out of retirement and tasting glory one more time despite the impact of age would possibly crown you the greatest of all time and you may transcend your sport and be compared with greats in other sports. But then what? Other than your record what makes you a success for the next 60 years? As new athletes emerge and challenge your achievements or the popularity of your event decreases with the public, is your success diminished? Does it sustain you?
I don’t want the benchmark for my own success to be so high that it is only achievable by the genetically gifted, or those with pushy parents, or those with deep pockets, or those who were so addicted to the exhilaration and fame that their talents attract that they fall into patterns of self-abuse when it ends. I want to be able to define success so that I can aim for it, hopefully achieve it and then use it to guide my actions to get the most from life.
I also want to separate the idea of success from fame and fortune. Making money can be a sign of success, but what someone does to make the money is what makes them successful. It is also true that being successful in some activities is not financially rewarding, that should not diminish the achievement if it is personally meaningful.
I think there are two components to feeling successful. Firstly, I need to believe that I am good at something, and secondly other people need to agree. This formulation gives us flexibility over what we target and what success means to us. It is similar to the notion of a personal brand, which is just shorthand for the story we tell other people about ourselves and how we want to be known. If your actions support your brand, then by my definition you are on the path to success.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I worked with a business coach shortly after transitioning into general management from finance. One of the areas we focused on was defining my personal brand. It works in a similar way to a mission statement for an organization. I would argue it is far more effective because it is a mission statement for one person and can be specific and customized to individual needs. Looking back at my career I realized that I was most engaged when things needed to change. Either setting up a new team, reorganizing a function to reflect market conditions, fixing processes that were broken or addressing underperformance. When things were running smoothly and everything was stable, I would start to get restless and need a new challenge. With this knowledge, I decided that my personal brand was to become the person trusted to deliver change. That was my first attempt and on recent reflection I realized that it didn’t quite match the story I told about myself. I have now modified it to the following: be the person who drives change and proactively helps others get things done. This may sound bland (and I think I will sharpen it up a bit), but to me it is powerful because it puts me where I want to be, it governs my approach to work, I can easily communicate it to others through my actions and it quickly establishes trust.
How does my brand manifest itself? I offer my help to every new business leader that joins the team. I will share with them any information that helps them get up to speed quickly, which can include insights or challenges that exist. I will offer up any part of my knowledge, experience, network, support to help them move things forward and be successful. If our areas intersect, I will let them know about decisions that need to be taken and dependencies. I avoid playing office politics and if a relationship with a colleague becomes competitive, I consider it a personal failure. I don’t want to build empires and care only that the structure and process works as efficiently as possible. I think I work hard to gain colleagues’ trust. I don’t focus on my ambitions other than where they align with my goals to make things better and help others get things done. This blog is probably an example of my brand in action. My aim is to share information and thoughts freely in the hope that it is useful, whilst challenging myself to publish regularly.
If you have watched any office-based drama series you will see some very competitive, dog-eat-dog portrayals of office life. Thankfully the culture at most places I have worked is not like this and I have consciously decided to work and act in a way that is the exact opposite of this. Over the last few years, I have fully embraced this approach, and it has given me a sense of contentment that I am doing what I am meant to be doing in the way that makes me happy. For me, that feels like success and as a result I feel successful. By design it’s not a bragging, look at me, look at what I have achieved version of success. It’s a quieter version where satisfaction is derived from making things better than I found them and helping others do the same. Most importantly I have tried to remove my ego from my work. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have blind spots or that I succeed at every task, and it doesn’t mean that everyone likes me. I don’t measure my success in terms of popularity (although as mentioned last week I do want people to enjoy working with me) and I don’t shy away from difficult decisions if they are the right course of action.
These are very personal views of success and ones that have come to me over the past few years as I continue to understand more about myself. They definitely won’t resonate with everyone and even where they do there may be other qualities or skills that are more important. The more I consider what being successful means, the more I believe it to be less linked with specific achievements and events and more our ability to develop the skillset to make those achievements routine or at least more likely to happen. If we can work out what those skillsets are, apply them whenever we can and communicate what we are doing to the people around us, then our chances of being successful should increase. When we view other peoples’ success we can apply the same rationale. Rather than concentrating on the wealth or fame they have acquired, we can determine and praise the talents and skillsets that made them successful in the first place.
I think this week’s blog has probably revealed more about me and what makes me tick than the previous 16 posts combined. I hope you don’t feel this was an over-share and I would love to know your thoughts and how you define success.
Next week’s post I am going to tackle working with a personal assistant for the first time. This comes with a long list of personal mistakes. The timing of this entry is perfect as I don’t currently have a personal assistant and therefore no one will be reading it and questioning our working relationship.