What If You're Not The Best?

Here's another guest entry from my good friend and fraternity brother David Spiegel. He's knows I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan, so it won't surprise him that his fine email today caught my attention.

Oh yeah, and the message is a winner, too!

" A time comes when you need to stop waiting for the man you want to become and start being the man you want to be"

- Bruce Springsteen

I was asked "do you regret giving up on music?" The question momentarily caught me off guard. Regrets? Unlike in the song, I really don't know that I have any. I try to never live in the woulda coulda shoulda world that comes when I buy into regrets. When I snapped back to the question my answer was a resounding no, not at all. I shared with my friend my thoughts and feelings and then we moved on.

Since then I have revisited the question. Why didn't I regret it? I was a good musician. No I was a very good musician. I was accomplished,dynamic and one might even say passionate about it. What I wasn't was great.And no matter how much I practiced and how much I wanted it , I knew I had reached the limits of my talent level. Yes with effort I could have become better. How much better? I am not sure. I just knew that no matter how much work I would put in,"great" was not in me. I have been around great musicians. They all had that something that makes them special. I no longer felt that burning inside of me.

The same can be said about athletes. Great High School ball players who just never get past their Glory Days. You find them, the really good ones, kicking around minor league or semi- pro ball fields for years, hoping for a shot. At some point they too realize it's time to move on.

There was no disappointment in it for me. I knew I had done unbelievable things in my musical career. I also knew it was time for me to seek out great. Remaining a good, even a very good musician would have been settling for less. Excellence is what I craved. Phenomenal. Unbelievable. Untouchable. For me it was about the wow factor.It's the difference between oooh and aaahhh!

I know what good is. I feel what great is.

As I write this I must point out that there were times during my "glory days" that there was greatness in my music. There was greatness in my performance. That was in my fish pond. In the big blue sea, it would not be the same. And I just was not willing to settle for being good.

I've felt that way about everything I entertain in my life. The passion is rooted in great, not in good. When the best I can muster is good, and when good is good enough, it's time to move on.

I suppose that is why I am enjoying life so much lately. I have found that fire once again.The challenge to be great is growing inside of me daily. The desire to be great, to be the best, to be outstanding, to be unbelievable, untouchable, unparalleled, phenomenal.

I get giddy just thinking about being the best David I can be.! And all without any regrets.

Off to another awesome start of the day!

David Spiegel

PS from Doug -- While I greatly enjoyed this piece from Dave, I would like to point out that we can still enjoy being musicians without being the best at it. I've been playing music for my whole life and couldn't ever imagine stopping -- even though I'll never be the Boss, I can still play some of his songs and write some pretty good ones myself. There's joy in music unmatched anywhere else. And the joy in doing anything is in the doing and growing -- whether or not I'm the best at it.

Thanks, Dave!

Comments

Perfect Relationships

Is your partner perfect? Are you? I've made enough mistakes in my life and in my relationships to know that the search for perfection is illusive at best and at worst, frustrating. There are no perfect people out there waiting for us, to fall in love with us, to fix us, to bring us what we need, to fulfill our dreams. But that's OK. In fact, that's wonderful. We don't need a perfect person in order to create love. Love creates the perfect person. -- Douglas Brent Smith

Strategic and Communication Skills

Supervisors often bring strong technical skills to the job. When they have worked in technical jobs prior to becoming a supervisor, they were often the best at what they do. They know the ground level part of their business well enough to solve problems and deal with day to day issues. Leading is all that and more. High performance leadership requires attention to detail AND a constant view of the big picture: where is your team, your market, and your customer base headed? What does the future hold? Strong supervisors learn to add strategic and communication skills to their technical ability. What are you doing today to develop your sense of the big picture? -- Douglas Brent Smith

Brace Yourself On The Edge

Do you pride yourself in being cutting edge? Do you try new techniques, stay creative, build innovation instead of comfort? Good for you. And if you said no, allow me to encourage you to push the edge a bit more. Get out of your comfort zone. The really big goals makes us just bit uncomfortable. We might even sweat. Push the edge, even knowing that sometimes when you push the edge you get pushed back. People might object to the radical new approach. They might take exception to your changes. Push the edge anyway. Leading often means going where no one else has gone. All the way to the edge. Pack a lunch, it could take a while, but do stay with it. -- Doug Smith

Win The Game

It would be nice to win the game. But, do you ever feel like you're in a game that keeps shifting the rules and making it easy to make progress but impossible to win? You've probably noticed lots of game elements creeping into service. Points, incentives, expiring coupons followed by new expiring coupons, leader-boards...on an on a relentless attack on service comes from playing a game designed -- you guessed it -- to maximize profit. If the customer is happy, fine, but the point is to make money. Not to put too fine a point on it but that's a lousy point. What if there could be something better? What if customer service excellence became playing a game where the customer always wins and that makes you happy? You don't have to. "give away the store" to achieve a winning game for all of the players. Just stop stacking the rules against customers and watch how much more they will want to do business with you. -- doug smith

Call Fewer Meetings

Do you have too many meetings? Many leaders do. Staff meetings, committee meetings, team meetings, project meetings, all-company meetings...the list goes on. Most of us can think of many meetings that were simply wastes of our time. Time is too important to waste is bad meetings. Do the people in your meeting want to be there? If not, maybe it's not a meeting that you need. Maybe there's another way to communicate your message. Maybe the work that is waiting is too important to wait. We can like the feeling of having a meeting. It feels like we're doing something. But if we're not -- if we are delaying real work, maybe we don't need that meeting after all. What scheduled meeting could you eliminate this week? Wouldn't it be nice to have that time to be...well, happy and more productive? -- Doug Smithy

Creating Alignment

What is the connection between your actions and goals? How do your goals connect to your overall mission and purpose? Do you have a sense that what you do matters and gets you closer to accomplishing what is most important to you? High performance leaders align their actions to their goals and their goals to their mission. It's how they get things done that matter. It's the filter of success. Does that task that someone is asking you to do contribute to your purpose? Then do it. If it doesn't, negotiate another path, another step, perhaps another set of hands to get it done. Our time is too valuable to spend it on anything that does not contribute to our happiness, and our happiness is largely dependent on doing what matters most to us and that contributes to the well-being of others. We can run, we can hide, but without that alignment of action, goals, and mission how will we ever reach our potential? Alignment creates that guidance that w...

Letting Go

Are you working hard on any goals that you shouldn't be? Are some things getting in the way of your success? It's easy to accumulate a full schedule of meetings and tasks surrounding goals that were not ours to begin with but now consume all of our time. Bold leaders weed out those types of goals. Strong leaders focus on the goals that they align with their mission. High performance leaders let go of goals that don't belong. When we let go of the wrong goals it makes room for the right ones. Maybe that goal made sense at one time. Maybe it was thrust to you from someone else who meant well but who was not fully away of your mission or the list of goals you were already working on. Maybe the goal just doesn't belong to you. What goal should you let go of today? -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

Time Changes Everything

Do you sense the pace of change? Is life vastly different than what you remember it to be when you were a child? Things do keep changing. Sometimes unexpectedly. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes not. As leaders, it's our job to facilitate change. We're here to lead others in the direction of improvement, for the cause of positive change. Not every leader acts that way, but some part of every leader does believe that they have the right changes to bring about. Part of every leader's job is to make certain that the changes we create ARE for the better. It's our strength of character that keeps our acts of courage helpful. To do that, we need to know how to best align our goals with our mission and our mission with our vision. We need to know what it is that energizes our people. And, we need to mobilize our people by inspiring them with an important mission to begin with. Change driven in the direction of our mission makes all the difference in the...

Start With Decisions

Do you share leadership? The most powerful teams share leadership responsibilities AND attitude. When you develop a team where people feel empowered to take charge, take responsibility, and take ownership you then no longer need to do all the difficult work. Delegation becomes easier. Collaboration feels more natural. Start with decisions. It's fast and easy as a leader to make all of the big decisions, but when you include your team in the conversations it takes to gain mutually shared understandings and collaborative decisions, you no longer have to "sell" your decisions --- people simply know what you as a team have decided and act accordingly. No passive aggressive resistance, no passengers on your team "bus" -- just fully engaged team members. Start with collaborative decisions. The rest will be much easier. -- Doug Smith

Keep Improving

Do you ever get impatient with small improvements and crave one big leap to the next level? Big changes are great. Geometric revolutions out-excite evolutions every time. But they're not the only way to grow. In fact, it's the small, incremental improvements that prepare us for the big leaps. It's the small changes that facilitate the greater gains. Incremental improvement is just as hard as geometric improvement -- and just as necessary. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership

Search This Blog