Sometimes when we make a goal, the next thought is “what do I need to do to achieve this goal?”.  Usually, this is the wrong question.  The question you should ask yourself is: “who do I need to become?”.  The only way to move forward in  life, is to grow personally.  To move to the next level in our lives or our careers, we need to become different people.  Einstein once said: we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we had when we created them.  We need to learn to think differently and to do that, we need to grow.

To quote Jim Rohn:  If you want to have more, you have to become more.  For things to get better, you have to get better.  For things to change, you have to change.  Success is not a thing you pursue.  What you pursue will elude you.  Success is something you attract by the person you become.

This is why you see a person who is struggling financially win the lottery and a few years later they are right back where they started.  Or you might see someone lose a bunch of weight, only to regain it within the year.  Unless you change how you are on the inside, it is difficult to make lasting changes to your external world.

So, let’s say you set a goal to earn a salary of $200,000 per year.  The first thing is to see who you know that is at this level or above.  What do they do for a living?  How do they structure their day?  What books have they read?  What seminars did they attend?  Then you need to create a habit of reading those books, attending those seminars and patterning yourself after the people who have already achieved your goal.

Personal growth is something you need to do continuously.  It should be a daily practice.  Reading books, listening to audio programs, listening to podcasts, finding mentors and coaches, attending seminars, these should all be a  lifelong pursuit.  Many people go to college, graduate, start a career, and that is where they stop.  They don’t see the relationship between their own personal growth and the growth in their career, the growth in their marriage, the growth in their finances, etc…  But it is the internal changes, changing yourself, your influences, your habits and your thoughts that make external growth possible.

Dr. Edwards Deming used to do a demonstration called “The Red Bead Experiment”.  He would call up 6 willing workers and have them try to sort through a bin filled with white beads using a paddle.  In the bin were a mixture of red beads or “defects”.  The point was to show that no matter how hard the workers tried and no matter what things management put in place  (quality control people, training from HR, etc…) the statistical probability of having some red beads on your paddle never changed.

Deming was trying to make the point that no matter how good your employees are, if you have a broken system, you will never get the results you desire.

This reminds me of the story of NUMMI.  You can find the full story here.  In 1982, GM closed its Fremont plant.  This plant was plagued with labor issues and workforce problems.  Drugs, sex, gambling and alcohol were all present inside the plant.  Quality issues were rampant.  GM decided it had enough.  The following year, Toyota and GM started up a new joint venture.  GM wanted to learn how to build smaller gas efficient cars and the smaller Japanese company called Toyota was looking to see how their “Toyota Production System” would work in America.  At the time, GM was 7 times the size of Toyota.

The interesting part of the story is that Toyota agreed to hire back the exact same workers.  They believed that the system is the key, not the people.  Even great employees in a bad system will fail.  So, when NUMMI opened, 85% of the workforce was the same as when GM closed the plant.  Toyota began flying workers back in groups of 30 to learn the Toyota Production System.  They trained along side their Japanese counterparts on the lines in Japan.  They saw a completely different way of building cars where people were respected and empowered.

So, what was the outcome?  Initial quality numbers off the line at NUMMI were the best in America.  They were equal to those in Japan right from the start.

So, same plant, same workers and a completely different outcome.

You can see this play out in all sorts of arenas.  When Singeltary coached the 49ers, he was quoted as saying he couldn’t win with those players.  Vernon Davis, Alex Smith and the rest of the team.  When he was fired, they hired coach Harbaugh.  Harbaugh came to the team during the players strike and didn’t have the luxury of making too many personnel changes or even very many practices before the season started.  Yet, in the new “system” that he brought to the team, they were one game away from the Super Bowl that same season.

In another example, imagine your company had to hire kids right out of high school with no college degree.  It had no way to pay great wages and every 4 years or so all the people you hired and trained would leave and new people had to be brought in.  How well would your company operate?  Yet the US Military is one of the finest organizations in the world despite this “handicap”.

Not big on military examples?  What if you had a football team that could only draft rookies.  Also, every 4 years, you have to trade all of your best and most experienced players.  How well do you think you could do?  Well, between 1992 and 2004, the De La Salle High School football team won 151 straight games.  12 years of excellence with different players joining and leaving the team every single year.

The point is, a great system with average people will beat the best people in an average system every time.  Our companies are the same way.  How many managers wonder why their people aren’t getting the required results and yet the system the company and the managers have established is severely flawed?  Broken processes, silos between departments, lack of clarity and leadership, etc…

If you want to get amazing results, build a system that can deliver them.

We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

I heard this quote again today and it really got me thinking.  I think one of the key things in life is to get into some routines.  I’ve written before about my morning routine and that process has really helped me with a number of my goals.  By the time I leave for work, I’ve done over 1000 crunches, done my pull-ups, push-ups and dips, walked a few thousand steps and listened to over an hour of interesting and stimulating audio content.

I’ve also established some “standard work” on my Friday mornings at the office.  Fridays are a planning day at Walters & Wolf.  All the PM’s spend the morning reviewing and updating their schedules and checking status on their orders.  So, while it is quiet, I decided to set up a routine for myself also.  We have a management meeting each monday and I have several deliverables.  On Friday morning I create my report on any over budget items we had that week, I read my chapter for the book we are working on and write my 2 or 3 key points to share in the meeting, I make sure I’ve sent out my written compliments for the week and I create my improvement video for the week and publish it to YouTube.

The practice of just doing a small thing each day is gratifying.  Our minds are designed for the small wins.  The little accomplishments that happen consistently over time.  It reinforces success each day and making and keeping small commitments helps you feel empowered.

I think this is a lot of what happened at Fastcap for Paul Akers.  He started the morning improvement walk and the morning meeting at his company.  He did these consistently every single day and never gave up.  Those disciplines, done consistently over time, resulted in excellence for his company.

So, try establishing some small habits that you can commit to each day.  Even if it is something as small as flossing your teeth or doing a few push-ups.  Begin working toward excellence by creating a habit.

How often are you failing?  Most people would not want to admit to failure.  We all want to acknowledge the successes that people have.  We want to celebrate the “wins”.  But in reality, if you aren’t failing, you probably aren’t taking enough risks.

Failure spurs growth.  In the last month or so, I’ve experienced a couple of key failures.  First, we hired a consultant to help us with a project and it did not work out.  We spent a lot of time looking for the right firm, we then spent a day with the top two companies, we all agreed on who we should hire and we brought them on to help us.  We began the project with the best of intentions, but after a couple of weeks, it was apparent that we had made a bad decision.

Now, in most peoples worlds, this was an epic failure.  Look at all the money that was wasted.  Not to mention the time spent by all the people involved.  But in fact, there were some great things that came out of it.  First, it helped our team understand exactly what we want.  We were not clear on this before we hired the consultant so we did not get the expected result.  We also learned a number of things about ourselves.  We gained a lot more trust within the group and we were able to make the decision quickly and admit our mistake.  So, while we did have a failure, it actually helped us to know exactly what we really need to move forward.

We also had a major failure with our new curtain wall system.  We had designed the system, created all the dies and then began building our first units and putting them into the test booth.  The first problem we found was that the gaskets weren’t seating right.  We managed to work through that and start our testing.  Half way through the structural test, one of the floor line clips failed and we blew out the units.  So here we are having spent all that time and money to build the units and test them, and we can’t finish the test.

Again, pretty bad, right?  But actually, the failed test allowed us to research the gasket problem further.  It turns out that it was actually worse than we originally suspected.  We were able to get new gaskets designed and delivered before we built the second set of units.  The second test went exceptionally well.

As my boss is fond of quoting:  Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently (Henry Ford I think).  I really find this to be true.  First, if you aren’t pushing hard to stretch your limits, you probably won’t find yourself failing.  Each failure helps you see where the limits are and helps you find a way to get around them.  This in turn spurs your growth and your knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

So what will you fail at this week?

Everyone has heard of the golden rule:  Treat others the way you would want them to treat you.  Not as many people have heard of the platinum rule:  Treat others the way they want to be treated.  The difference is subtle but profound.  In most of our communication and interactions, we approach things from our own paradigm.  We don’t often stop to think about the other person’s paradigm.  Our paradigms are the lens through which we see and interact with the world, and we are all different.

How does this apply to the construction world?  In construction, we are constantly being assigned to new projects.  Each project has a different set of external people (Architect, Contractor, Owner, etc…) and a different set of internal people (Engineers, Drafting, Vendors, etc…).  You can’t take a “one size fits all” approach to either your external team or your internal team.

What I typically see, is that people tend to interact in the way that works for them.  If you like email, you tend to send emails.  If you like face-to-face conversations, you tend to do that.  Some of the time, this may work out for you because the person you are interfacing with just happens to have a communication style that is similar to yours.  Many times though, I find that the problems we get into on our projects come down to poor communication between the team.

One way to look at this is through the DISC model.  If you aren’t familiar with DISC, there are tons of resources on-line that can give you a complete overview.  Basically it is a way of looking at peoples preferences when it comes to interacting with each other.  In brief, people fall into 4 categories.  High D is command and control.  Usually your CEO types.  Think of General Patton.  High I will be more like your consummate salesman.  Extroverted and loves to interact.  High S is your more feeling types.  They will be concerned with other people on the team and making sure there is harmony.  The high C’s on your team are more engineering types.  They love data and detail.  This is a complete oversimplification and most people have a mix of these but you get the general idea.

So how do you apply this?  First, you will find your communication will be more effective if you communicate in the other person’s style.  For instance, if the general contractor is a high D, it will probably not help you to hit the job site on Monday morning and start asking how his weekend was.  However, if your superintendent is a high “I” it will probably help if you spend a bit more time talking about the weekend rather than just launching into your list of questions.

I was in a PM’s office and they were complaining that one of their team members had not followed his instructions.  I suggested that maybe it would be good to confirm the verbal instructions in writing.  This did not go over well.  He didn’t understand why he should have to document what he had told someone verbally.  It seemed like a waste of everyone’s time.  So, I asked him:  What is your preferred communication style?  His answer:  Verbal, face to face communication was his preference (he is a very high D).  I then asked him:  What is your team members’ preference.  He said he wasn’t sure (he had never asked).  I then asked him:  What is this person’s first language?  It turns out, it isn’t English.  So, I said, if you were living in their country, don’t you think it would be good to be able to read the instructions also to be sure you fully understood what was needed?  He actually agreed with me.  Looking at what would be best for the other person would greatly increase the effectiveness of the conversation.

Communication is what the listener does.  You are not communicating effectively unless the person you are communicating with actually got the message.  By being agile and changing your communication style to match the other person, you may find that you get much better results overall.

One of my favorite ways to get new ideas and learn new things is through podcasts.  I’m always amazed at the number of people who are not listening to them.  Back in 2005, when I was new to my position, I was looking for information to help me be a better manager.  At that time, podcasting was fairly new.  I discovered a podcast called manager-tools and I was hooked.  There is so much great information out there and it is all Free!  I thought I’d share what is currently on my playlist:

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminars  This is a podcast from Stanford University.  They bring in a speaker each week to talk about starting, funding or running a business.  The content here is amazing.  I’ve gleaned so many great ideas from these podcasts.  I always recommend this one for a start:  What I wish I knew when I was 20 from Tina Seelig.  I really find it inspiring and I find myself going back to it all the time.

Manager Tools  and Career Tools  This is one of the first podcasts I found.  Every podcast is actionable.  It really gets to the heart of how to become a great manager.  There is so much content it can be a little overwhelming so it might be good to start at the Basics page.  This is where I learned the power of having weekly one-on-one’s with my team.  Great resources on interviewing, managing and how to be a great employee.  Can’t recommend it enough.  They do tend to talk a lot, but if you can get past that, it’s great.

HBR Idea Cast  These are from the Harvard Business Review.  They pick one of the articles from the magazine and do an interview based on it.  Lots of interesting content.

The American Innovator  The podcast is from Paul Akers at Fastcap.  As you know, he was one of the inspirations for our lean journey and he has some great information on his podcast.  Sometimes he interviews people and sometimes he takes you on one of his trips.  Lots of great stuff here too.

Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast  I found this when I was searching for leadership information.  Andy Stanley is the pastor of Northpoint Church.  He has a great way of distilling concepts down to simple phrases.  I really like his approach to leadership.  His idea of one sentence job descriptions is excellent!

The Entreleadership Podcast  This podcast is from the Dave Ramsey group.  He mixes interviews with authors with ideas from his seminars.  Again, good information for leaders and managers.

Mark Graban’s Lean Blog Podcast  Mark applies lean to healthcare but he interviews people from all industries.  This is where I first heard Paul Akers ideas on 2 Second Lean.  It is a good podcast and will help you learn more about the lean movement.

Read to Lead Podcast  I just discovered this one at the end of last year.  Interviews with people who have recently released books.  I get a lot of ideas on what to read from here.

A few others that I subscribe to are:  Beyond the To Do List, The Leadership Dojo, Managing the Grey, This is your Life, The Accidental Creative, Chris LoCurto, LSS Academy Podcast, Prolific Living Media – The Daily Interaction and North Point Church podcast.

As you can see, there are lots of interesting things out there.  Most podcasts run 20 minutes to an hour.  The things I listen to have changed over time.  Some podcasts have ceased and lots of new ones have started.  Some have just too much talking and some don’t grab me.  But for the most part, the ones you see above are in a steady rotation for me.

I suggest using the Downcast app on your phone.  You subscribe through the app and then it will automatically download the episodes so you can listen to them when you are in your car or out exercising.  I’ve tried other apps but this one works great and does everything I need.   You can also get all these through the iTunes store if you like that method better.

I’d love to hear what podcasts you listen to for ideas and inspiration!