Tag: mission

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Mission + Obsession -> Leadership

Leaders obsess about the mission, not the task

Don’t confuse your mission with your tasks.

Don’t give them equal energy.

Focus on your mission. Pay attention to everything necessary to complete it.

When you concentrate on the task, you put on metaphoric blinders, consequently making yourself ignorant to anything else. This tactic can work. However, it’s rare and often unhealthy. Ignoring doesn’t make something go away.

If you focus on the mission, you give yourself the opportunity to see a multitude of answers. You tap into divergent thinking. Divergent thinking can open the door to cool solutions. Furthermore, you’ll get insights you may have missed had you focused entirely on the task.

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A Look at a Task Focus and an Action Focus

Yesterday I discussed the “Hill Problem.”

The problem tackles how to get up the highest hill in a set of hills.

I put the issue in the Mission(goal)-Task(project)-Action(next step) framework and explained the reason a mission focus mattered.

There are consequences if you put that focus elsewhere.

Task focus:

The important part  – The Hill.

Whatever hill you find yourself facing now is “necessary.”

Great if you pick the right hill, but disastrous if it isn’t. Just focusing on the Hill is time-consuming.

Action focus:

The important part  – The step.

When you put energy in how each level feels, you have a metric to figure out how to go ahead.

The difficulty of each level affects your next decision, and you dwell there. You think about the step before, and the test after, and pretty soon, you’re carrying far more than your baggage.

It might be the completely wrong hill.

 

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The Hill Problem and Making it Count

Don’t lose the mission

A few days ago, I went over the Mission-Task-Action framework. The framework provides a heuristic to break down a goal into strategic and tactical parts. It is a fast way to organize a problem.

This morning, I thought about the “mission” part of that framework. It reminded me of a computer science problem that deals with selecting the right path.

There are many hills. The goal (mission) is to get to the top of the highest hill. So, how do you get to the highest one?

It isn’t as simple as just picking one and walking since there are more than two hills. While that may work once with luck, when we deal with computer science, we look at the scale. How can we consistently get up to the highest hill, especially if there are many hills?

The best way to solve it is completely counterintuitive. Instead of just picking a hill to start walking (luck), you walk up a random number of steps and check from time to time.

Once you are up a number of steps, look at hills around you. Start crossing off the ones you don’t see. If other hills around you seem taller, go back down and pick another hill.

This method is even more robust as the number of hills increase.

You want to test as early as much as possible, so you increase your chance of making the right answer. As a result of the increased chance, you end up with more time on the backend to execute.

It’s cut from the same cloth as Seth Godin’s principle of thrashing early*.

Only when you focus on the mission will you become confident.

Tomorrow I will talk about what happens if you spend time focusing on the “task” or “action.”

As a result of the wrong focus, there are consequences :-).

*If you want to know more – here is a great video on Thrashing from Seth.

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Figure Out What’s Next!

We are here, but what now?

The two-minute rule is fantastic. 

It means nothing if you can’t figure out the process’ next step. 

Use this exercise to help guide you through making the next move.

Exercise:

  • Write out your goal. [mission]
    • Example: I want to eat.
  • Write out a task that moves that goal forward. [task]
    • Example: Make Breakfast
  • Write out the actions associated with the “task” work. [action]
    • Example:  Walk to the kitchen, get bowl, pour cereal, add milk

The Mission, Task, Action Framework is a quick heuristic to find out what you can make the “next step” to carry out the two-minute rule. Later this month, we will talk about this framework at length.

Happy 4th of July :-).

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“No One Else Works Around Here”

“No one else works around here.”

We are all guilty of it. Sometimes we feel unappreciated. As a result, we begin to look for someone who isn’t “pulling their share”. We now have someone to throw our hurt on. “So and so isn’t doing any work – how dare they”.

I used to do it often. For me, it was an escape. I got to show my worth when anyone asked by pointing out my accomplishment compared to someone else. I would tell anyone who would listen, and I would look for some sort of praise when I did it. Sometimes, people would agree, and then we would have long conversations about who wasn’t pulling their weight. It’s intoxicating, telling yourself and others that you are the real hero. Getting positive feedback about it feels better still.

This is a waste of energy. I realized it when sitting by a water cooler (how cliché was that) I found myself, again, complaining. Nothing got done.  All we did was indulge ourselves with negative energy through gossip. It’s the stuff that feels good going down but paralyzes us coming out.

By focusing on what people “do” we take time away from doing what we can. We waste our energy on petty things instead of making ourselves a high performer. That energy could be used to create something remarkable. If the mission where you are inst critical, take the gossip time and start building your own thing. There is opportunity out there for people who can create through any circumstance.

With that said, if you find yourself where you are creating, and no one else is doing anything (this can happen), and the mission doesn’t make sense (this is just a job)… I suggest two options.

A) Go find a place where you aren’t shouldering all the work

B) If that isn’t so easy, do stuff that matters until someone can’t help but hire you.

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