This Issue: People Have Different Ways of Achieving Results

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

--Aristotle

We all have different ways of accomplishing things. Some people deliberate for a long time and then move quickly. Some people make a quick decision and then take a long time to act on it. Sometimes the results are exactly the same. The old saying “to each his own” is right; there is no right way or wrong way.

In one of my books, I wrote about a copywriter who would spend most of his time looking like he wasn’t doing anything. He would gaze out the window for hours, sit at his desk doing nothing, and make no attempt to look busy. This drove his co-workers up the wall. Finally, they complained to the boss. The boss asked them how long this behavior had been going on, and then told them to see if they could get the copywriter coffee, lunch, anything, to make sure his day wasn’t interrupted. The co-workers became irate over this preferential treatment. Then, the boss told them, “The last time he acted like this and the time before and the time before that, he came up with ideas worth millions of dollars. Whatever you do, don’t disturb him!” To each his own. We all have our own processes. The results are what matter.

If someone wanted to review my work process, they might say, “Well, he spends a lot of time on the telephone.” That’s true. I’m on the phone and talking a lot. That’s how I do business. It’s not that I’m just chatting on the phone all day. It all depends on the way you want to see something or someone. You can color the situation or behavior in a favorable or unfavorable light. But the bottom line is that I get a lot accomplished. That’s my style. If you want to say that all I do is have daily chat fests and still manage to rake in the big bucks, that’s fine with me. My achievements still point towards effectiveness.

Find out your most effective way of working for yourself. I don’t mind working hard, but I see no merit in working stupidly. Looking like you’re working hard is a waste of everyone’s time and talent. What’s the best way to accomplish your goals for that day? Some people work very hard for several hours and accomplish more than other people do in two days. It’s all a matter of focus.

After awhile, people will know you by your habits or your habitual behavior. These habits can be qualities, as Aristotle points out. If your behavior is consistently of a high standard, your particular quality may be integrity. That’s a good way to go. So review your habits and make sure they are leading you in the right direction. In other words, make sure you are working towards the results you want to see, and know that your way of achieving them will be distinctly your way. It’s also a great way to define your own boundaries without being influenced negatively by anyone else.

Someone once told me that the clearest way to see people and events was to be non-judgmental--to just see and record the facts without coloring them with “this is right” or “this is wrong” or telegraphing the desired reaction to other people. It’s a journalistic approach--journalism in its purest sense. In other words, it's news without a slant. This approach requires a little more thinking, but we need to do a little bit more of that these days.

We should never think our way is the only way, whether we’re talking about work ethics or politics. We should be grateful for the diversity we have in our lives, and take the time to hone our own natural talents. Sometimes we don’t know how hard someone has worked to achieve something. There are very few “overnight success” stories. Just because someone is suddenly famous one morning doesn’t mean they haven’t been working for ten, twenty, or fifty years already. Unless we know the full story, we shouldn’t be so quick to judge.

Results are what matter. The bottom line is the bottom line. Thomas Edison once remarked that he knew a lot about results because he found several thousand things that didn’t work on his way to finding something that did. So, it’s not always a straight line to achieving the results we are looking for, but a series of efforts that will add up to experience and achievement. Set your pattern now for achievement of the highest quality. That’s your task for the long term.

I did it my way.

--Frank Sinatra

What is the difference between people who reach their goals in life and people who don’t? Ultimately, the difference is that high achievers break the rules that stand between them and their dreams. They do things their own way.

At the same time, highly successful people know they can’t break all the rules. Because today’s business world places a high value on cooperation, they pick their battles--and you should too. If you work as a sales representative for a company that wants you to input a summary of each sales call you make into your company’s database, you could refuse to obey that rule. You could insist on submitting a scribbled summary on a sheet of crumpled paper, or you could refuse to submit a summary at all, but behaving that way would be idiotic. You would actually be asking to be thrown out the door.

So, the key to success is not to break rules recklessly, but strategically. To do that, you need to make sure that these three conditions are present before you break a rule:

1. You have a good chance of attracting support from people in power.
2. You need to break the rule because it is stopping you from achieving a critical win or important goal, not because you are frustrated or you want to show people how smart you are.
3. After you break the rule, you will be able to sustain the new direction you have set for your career.

If you look at top achievers, you will see that those three factors are always present when they break a rule and score a victory on their road to success.

Look at Bob Levenson, one of the most celebrated advertising visionaries of all time. Back in 1963, he was a young copywriter at the now-legendary Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency in New York. When DDB won the Volkswagen account, Levenson and his team were assigned to create VW’s first major ad campaign in America. They created an ad that positioned a tiny, off-center photo of a VW Beetle over the headline “Think Small,” followed by some witty copy. (http://www.adslogans.co.uk/images/vw.jpg) The ad caused a sensation, changed the course of twentieth century advertising, and brought Levenson and his agency phenomenal success.

Notice that all three of the conditions I described above were present when Levenson and his team rewrote the rules of automobile advertising. First, Levenson understood the owners of his company and knew they would support his radical ad. Second, he knew that he had to break the rules of writing car ads that were in place at the time because they were absurd when applied to the Volkswagen Beetle. Third, he knew that he possessed the genius to create a steady stream of brilliant, highly appealing ads. He went on to prove it with “Mikey Likes Maypo,” “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee” and other prizewinners.

All well and good, you say, but what if you don’t know exactly where your greatest abilities lie? If you find yourself up against that roadblock, consider taking an online self-assessment test to discover your creative and career strengths. The tests listed below are excellent. (There is a charge for some of them.) You can get full information at the links below:

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Personality Test: http://www.myersbriggs.org/

Queendom.com career and personality tests: http://queendom.com/

Trump University’s Career Assessment Profile, Entrepreneur Assessment Profile and Leadership Assessment Profile: http://www.trumpuniversity.com/career/index.cfm

Diversity is the American way. It’s one of our best qualities, the thing that distinguishes this nation from authoritarian regimes, failed states, and old world societies where there is one "right" way to do things. The diversity of the U.S. isn’t merely an abstract idea or a common refrain of cynical politicians and business executives. It is a deep-seated value shared across our social, political, and economic landscape.

Diversity is an essential, all-encompassing American value in ways both subtle and obvious. While it’s true that social and commercial/professional exclusivity are hardly rare occurrences and rigid thinking is not without a home in these United States, diversity is still deeply embedded in the beliefs and practical lives of the majority of Americans.

Diversity has found such a hospitable climate here because it’s practical and sensible.

A good place to see diversity at work, unencumbered by the baggage of politics or ideology, is in the realm of entrepreneurship. It could be said that innovative business thinking and practice are this nation’s gifts to the world. The laws and economic structure of the country were designed to encourage free thinkers and those with new ideas to take chances.

The entrepreneurial mindset, intertwined with those classic American virtues of individualism, pragmatism, and ingenuity, has taken hold across the business sector. Many successful companies of all stripes, from young start-ups to old reliable consumer goods operations, have adopted this mindset. A big part of these organizations’ corporate cultures are initiatives to empower managers and their subordinates to be creative and share ideas, to “think outside the box.” This philosophy entails looking at different ways to achieve results.

The idea of diversity and flexibility is especially important in the new customer-centric business environment, where success means responding to customer needs quickly and thoroughly. To be customer-driven, a business must survey its customers at every opportunity and look closely at their behavior. It's not enough just to listen to your customers, however; that's only half the equation. You have to act on what they tell you and what you find out about them. You have to respond to the data. And you must act in a fashion that's nimble, which usually means responding rapidly. This nimble response may involve changing or scrapping a favored company procedure, or giving customer service employees more leeway for initiative that might have been originally thought advisable.

Americans are a results-oriented people. To most of us, it doesn’t really matter how we arrive at the place we want to go, as long as we get there. This idea is at the core of flexibility, as a value and a way of working.