In the blog post "What makes you great at your profession?" I pointed out the importance of asking a fundamental question on what makes one great at your profession to improve. However, there is a negative side to being obsessed with being great at your profession. Again, I will use the modern classic "Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro as an example.

As I pointed out in the blog post, "What makes you great at your profession?" James Stevens gives a lot of thought to what makes one a great butler. He came up with two attributes: dignity and attachment to a distinguished household.

I wrote this blog post because there is a price one pays to be great at something. We always focus on the gain and not the loss of being great. But as you will see from reading this post, you always lose something to gain something. And sometime trying to be great at something can have deleterious effect on you personally, professionally and/or financially.

With Stevens, two monumental things are happening at the same time. One, he is about to lose Miss Kenton. Second, he is going to let his employer disgrace himself by being a Nazi sympathizer.

Stevens' employer has been hoodwinked by the Germans about their true intentions. He is hosting a meeting between the British Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, and the German Ambassador where a decision will be made. That decision will involve the British Prime Minister to appease Adolf Hitler and allow Germany to occupy part of Czechoslovakia, known as Sudetenland if, in return, Hitler promises to preserve peace but not invading any countries.  

For Stevens, two monumental things are happening at the same time that is going to give him regrets later but is completely oblivious of it as it is happening. He can't see anything besides what he is conditioned to see happening.  

Miss Kenton
James Stevens is about to lose Miss Kenton forever. She informs Stevens that she has received a marriage proposal. Miss Kenton is trying to gauge whether Stevens has any romantic interest in her. She tells Stevens on two occasions that she has still not made a decision. Stevens doesn't say anything to make her not accept the proposal.

Miss Kenton tries one more time to make sure that Stevens has no interest in her by asking, "But I can see you are very unhappy about my going out tonight." Stevens is focused on being a great butler for the big meeting that will be taking place in the mansion. He does not say anything to prevent Miss Kenton from accepting the marriage proposal.  

When Miss Kenton comes back from her meeting, she wants Stevens to know what happened as she asks him, "Are you not in the least interested in what took place tonight between my acquaintance and I, Mr. Stevens?" 

Stevens shows no interest as he replies, "I do not mean to be rude, Miss Kenton, but I really must return upstairs without further delay. The fact is, events of a global significance are taking place in this house at this very moment."

Stevens is only focused on being a great butler by maintaining his dignity and doing his job well, so his employer plays a significant part in serving humanity. To Stevens, Miss Kenton leaving him for another man is insignificant.

Significant Meeting
Stevens leaves Miss Kenton to attend to his butler duties when he runs into Mr. Cardinal. The latter is a young man well acquainted with Stevens. Mr. Cardinal is a godson of Stevens' employer. In his meeting with Stevens' employer, he learned the significance of what is taking place at the mansion. He tries to convince Stevens to do his part to save his employer from being duped and disgraced.

Like Miss Kenton, Mr. Cardinal gives Stevens several chances to save his employer from ruining his reputation as a Nazi sympathizer.  

Mr. Cardinal asks, "Stevens, do you know what is happening at this very moment as we sit here talking?"

Stevens has no curiosity at all about the significance of what is taking place. He just wants to be a great butler.

When pressed further by Mr. Cardinal, Stevens replied. "It is not my place to be curious about such matters, sir.' 

Mr. Cardinal asks if he has seen how his employer has been hoodwinked by the Germans for the last three to four years regarding their true intentions. To which Stevens replies, "I'm sorry, sir, I have failed to notice any such development."

Stevens could not save Miss Kenton from leaving him, nor could he save his employer's reputation. He was oblivious to what was happening that evening. From Stevens's viewpoint, he was very pleased with how everything turned out. He maintained his dignity and served his employer well so his employer could do his part in "helping" humanity. 

So my point in using this example is to show that being great at something is fine, but it has the potential to create blind spots that could make you vulnerable to losing something else. There is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to being obsessed with greatness. 

In closing, I want to use a real-world example in Deborah Birx, President Trump's White House coordinator for the pandemic response,  that shows when one is obsessed in serving one's employer, it can produce catastrophic result.  In the Op-Ed in Washington Post by Matt Bai titled "The Birx dilemma is a lesson for the ages,"  he writes that appeasement "doesn’t work for nations facing down aggressors. It doesn’t work for a political party that’s been taken over by a nativist bully. And it doesn’t work when you’re serving a president who demands unyielding loyalty and a willful disregard for the truth." The catastrophic result, according to her that more than 400,000 people didn't have to die from Covid-19.

Deborah Birx had earned her stellar reputation as doctor who was involved in the global fight against AIDs.  Because of her greatness, she was picked to advice President Trump.  And that's where she developed a blind spot in protecting him over the American people.  Though she may try her best to salvage her reputation, but most irreparable damage has been done. 

Sooner or Later, we all will face this dilemma like James Stevens in "Remains of the Day," and Deborah Birx in real life.  How will we handle it?  

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When was the last time you asked this question? You probably have never asked if you are like me, let alone even thought about asking this question. 

But how would you answer this question if you are asked at the final stage of your job interview? The answer could determine whether you get the job or not. I think it's a great question that will tell a lot about how you think, act, and excel in your profession. 

After reading the modern classic "Remains of the Day'' by Kazuo Ishiguro, I started thinking about this question. In the book, James Stevens, a butler, asks, "what makes a great butler?" He gives a lot of thought to this question as he is traveling in England's countryside.  
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He comes up with two attributes of a great butler: dignity and attachment to a distinguished household. 

Dignity
By this, Stevens means a butler gets the job done for his employer without anyone even knowing it. There are other attributes, such as competence, that are important, but it's dignity that stands above all for being a great butler. Stevens believes one could develop dignity through hard work, experience and self-learning.

Stevens gives three examples of what he means by dignity in a great butler. I will use two of the examples in this post.

The first one is a story Stevens heard from his father, who was also a butler. Stevens considered his father to be a great butler.

The story is about a butler who had traveled with his employer to India and the incident that showed the butler's dignity in handling a dangerous situation.

One afternoon the butler entered a dining room and saw a tiger relaxing below the dining table.
The butler calmly approached his employer in a drawing-room (today it would be called a living room) where he was having tea with his guests. The butler let out a polite cough to get his employer's attention and whispered in his ear that there was a tiger in the dining room. He asked for his permission to use a shot-gun to take care of the situation. 

Soon, three shots were heard.

A few minutes later, the butler appeared in the drawing-room to refill the teapot. When the employer asked if everything was fine, the butler replied, "'Perfectly fine, thank you, sir...Dinner will be served at the usual time, and I am pleased to say there will be no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time."

Stevens mentions that his father always laughed when he would repeat when butler added "no discernible traces left of the recent occurrence by that time." He was laughing since the butler is saying to his employer you don't need to explain anything to your guests since there is no evidence of anything occurring.  

The butler in the story did not panic. He got the job done and, most importantly, maintained his and his employer's dignity by not having the employer's guests get frightened and ruining their pleasant visit. 

The other incident of dignity involved Steven's father when he was a butler. This story was relayed to Stevens by someone named Mr. Charles, who was present when it occurred. One day Mr. Charles and two of the guests of an employer got in a car to be driven around by Stevens' father. The guests were drunk and got rowdy. They started criticizing Stevens' father for what they perceived was his driving mistake. They also started criticizing Stevens' father's employer. That was the breaking point for Stevens' father. He stopped the car, opened the back door, and just stood there showing his displeasure at the two guests.

The guests had no idea what Stevens' father was going to do next. He just stood there with the door opened. Soon the two guests realized that they were at fault, and one of them muttered. "I suppose we were talking a little out of turn there. It won't happen again." Stevens' father gently closed the door and continued his driving as if nothing happened.

Stevens shows that his father did not lose control, confront the guests, or return home immediately. He calmly handled a difficult situation with dignity. No one got hurt, and the employer didn't have to know what happened. Everyone's dignity was preserved.

Attachment to a distinguished household
The second trait to being a great butler is belonging to a distinguished household working for a renowned man. 
The reason for this is, as Stevens explains, that movers and shakers of the political and business world meet at such mansions where big decisions are made. A butler's job is to make sure everything goes smoothly. The great butler makes sure that the employer looks good and plays his part in solving big problems. 

As Stevens gives more thought to this, he says, "association with a truly distinguished household is a prerequisite of 'greatness.' A 'great' butler can only be, surely, one who can point to his years of service and say that he has applied his talents to serving a great gentleman – and through the latter, to serving humanity."

What makes one a great public speaker?
I am a public speaker, so I thought about this question like James Stevens.

I believe a person is considered a great public speaker if he or she achieves the following:
1) moves people to action
2) speaks the truth
3) takes personal risks
4) changes the world in a positive way
5) becomes immortal through his or her speeches

Based on these criteria, the list gets very narrow, and we're left with Socrates, Jesus, Lincoln, Gandhi, JFK, MLK, and Malcolm X. 
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The negative side of being great at your profession
There is also a negative side to being obsessed with being great at your profession. To learn more on how this obsession ends up hurting James Stevens, I encourage you to read my blog post titled, "Being great at your profession creates blind spots."

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Timing is very important.

Daniel Pink wrote about the importance of timing in his excellent book "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing."

As Daniel Pink points out, there are tons of books on how-to but very few on when-to. In his book, Pink throws a lot of science at you. In this post, I will throw some literature at you to show the importance of timing.

Timing is important, but your approach is also important; hence, there are two parts to success: when-to and how-to. You could do everything right, but you are likely to fail if it does not take place at the right time. But if you get the timing right, then how-to may not be that important. But you don't want to wing it either just because you got the timing right.

Ideally, you want to get both when-to and how-to right when you want something.

In this post, I am going to use an example from a modern classic novel. I will look at the situation James Stevens, a butler at Darlington Hall, finds himself in the book "Remains of the Day" written by Kazuo Ishiguro. 

Since we deal with this situation occasionally, I will present the example as situation, problem, solution, outcome, and lessons learned.

Situation
A butler named James Stevens has a new employer of Darlington Hall, Mr. John Farraday. Farraday suggests to Stevens to get out of Darlington Hall and take a journey in his car from the countryside of England to the West Country. Farraday will cover the cost of the gas.

While Stevens is thinking about it, he receives a letter from a former housekeeper named Miss Sarah Kenton. Stevens reads in the letter's content that Miss Kenton may be open to coming back to her old job at Darlington Hall. He also learned that Miss Kenton resides in the countryside where Farraday suggested he take a trip. 

Stevens wants to bring this up with Farraday that he will travel to the countryside. He also wants to bring up whether Farraday would cover the cost of lodging, meals, and snacks. Furthermore, Stevens also has a professional reason to make the trip.

Problem
How to bring this up with Mr. Farraday? Stevens wants to make the trip and would like to hire Miss Kenton if she is interested. 

Stevens is thinking about the timing. If the timing is not right and Farraday says "No," then Stevens believes it would be difficult to bring it up again. Stevens has concluded that it is one and done.  

Solution
He decided that he will bring it up during the afternoon tea. This was the right time. Stevens got the when-to figured out. 

Outcome
Stevens was right on the timing but was off on the how-to. He did not work on that part right which bothered him.
It did not go as he expected.

Stevens did not take into account that Mr. Farraday likes to banter at that time of the day. Stevens mentioned that a former housekeeper resides where he was planning to travel. 

The conversation went in a different direction than he anticipated. Stevens realized he made a mistake bringing up Miss Kenton before explaining the situation first and the need to hire an additional staff member.

Farraday commented, "My, my, Stevens. A lady-friend. And at your age.'
Stevens did not want to make a second mistake by saying anything more. 

Lesson Learned
Timing is important. But how-to is also important. Stevens gets an "A" for timing but an "F" for his approach.
What should he have done?

How-to
Stevens could have done the how-to it as Lisa Earle McCloud writes in her blog post on LinkedIn titled "How To Get People To Buy Into Your Ideas." In the post, she recommends you do it in the following order: context, framing, and content.

Context -- Present the situation.
​Framing -- Help someone understand the situation better.
Content -- Show how to address the situation.

Stevens could have done it as follows: 
Context -- Increase in workload at Darlington Hall
Framing -- Need to hire an additional staff member
Content -- Explore whether Miss Kenton would be interested in coming back as a housekeeper when he travels to the countryside

That is how he would have liked to present it, but it didn't matter. In his case, the timing was more important than the approach since he did the smart thing by not saying anything during Farraday's bantering about Stevens mentioning Miss Kenton.  

But this is literature, and it worked out for Stevens.

Real-Life Situation
Here is a situation many encounter: When and how to ask for a raise?

First, when is the best time to bring it up?
Second, how do you do it?

Context -- Department was not closing a lot of deals before you joined
Framing -- Department closing more deals after you joined
Content -- Salary raise is justified based on performance

In real life, you want to focus on both when-to and how-to if you want to increase your chances of success.  

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We are often told that questions are more important than answers. This is because you can quickly get answers from so many places such as Siri, Google, Internet, Quora, LinkedIn, and other expert sources. Today, you can get answers to just about anything fast. If you want to succeed individually or organizationally, you have to become good at asking questions.

Asking questions is good, but what is better is to ask bold, provocative questions that make people think. They are often not asked for fear of how others will react to them. But they must be asked if you want to come up with breakthrough ideas. If you want to think like an entrepreneur, solving customer needs that they may not even know they have, starts with a question. That's what entrepreneurs or those with an entrepreneurial mindset do. 

In his book New to Big by David Kidder, he writes that the idea of his company Bionic started when he asked a provocative question to GE's CEO, Jeff Immelt, at their annual conference in Boca Raton, FL.

Here is the question David asked when he was part of a panel, and Jeff Immelt was sitting in the front row:
"Jeff, how many fifty-million-dollar startups did GE launch last year? ... I bet the answer is zero ... And if that's true, I would be terrified if I were you. With ninety billion dollars in the bank and three hundred thousand employees, how does this not happen all the time?"

Instead of David Kidder becoming a persona non grata at future GE events, he was surprised when Jeff Immelt said at the end of their annual conference: "That was the most important question in the history of this leadership conference."

Suddenly, David realized that his idea of creating an entrepreneurial mindset within large companies had to be pursued as a business.  Many large companies had to become good at New to Big (taking an idea from concept to growth business) rather than being just good at Big to Bigger (taking a growth business and scaling it). 

He and some of his team members he worked with at the startup Clickable that David had co-founded decided to start Bionic. Bionic's mission was to help bring entrepreneurial mindset within larger companies using Growth OS (methodology they created from their startup experience, so the large companies are not only Big to Bigger machine, which they do well, but New to Big machine too. Becoming a New to Big is not something companies can and should outsource. They have to learn to develop that core competency if they want to thrive in the digital world in which we live. Bionic went on to work with many companies, including Microsoft, P&G, Citigroup, Nike, Exelon, etc.

The idea of starting Bionic would not have happened if David did not have the guts to ask that bold question in a high-stakes environment at GE's leadership conference. Sometimes the risky thing to do is to ask a question that many people are thinking about but not asking. If you want to have an entrepreneurial mindset, ask a provocative question as David Kidder did, and you can change the world for good.

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Do we build products, services, or courses, and then find out after launching it that there are not enough paying customers to make it profitable? This is an "Oh sh*t" moment that many go through. Some will grudgingly accept failure and learn from it. Others will continue to plod along, hoping for a success. But the market is brutal. It is telling you that they don't like what you have to offer. By the time you figure it out, it will prove to be a very costly lesson in time, energy, money, and confidence.

Alberto Savoia, author of "Right It," knows this well from his experience. He writes, 
"Most new products, services, businesses, and initiatives will fail soon after they are launched—regardless of how promising they sound, how much their developers commit to them, or how well they execute them." 

(You will also find my interview with Alberto Savoia in the blog post "Five Questions for Alberto Savoia: A Man on a Mission to Prevent Failures Among Entrepreneurs.")

So how do you eliminate failures right from the get-go? You have to pretotype that Savoia popularized and writes about in his practical book. The idea of pretotyping applies to all of us, not just entrepreneurs. Why fail when you don't have to? All you have to do is pretotype, gather data, make a go-no-go decision. It's not that complicated. 

What is Pretotyping?

Pretotyping is pretending you have a prototype of a product, service, or a workshop (in my example below) so you can find out whether customers are willing to pay. If customers are not willing to pay, you will fail. If you still decide to go forward, you will be taking a huge risk.  Great customers are those who pay before you even have a product.   

You can think of pretotyping as similar to what they use in manufacturing called build to order. In the beginning, you are building a customized product, so you have to build based on customers' willingness to pay. And that is what you have to do when you are trying to get valuable information from customers.

Tesla's Example of Pretotyping
Before Tesla built their Model 3 car, they pretotyped the concept to gauge customers' interest in the car.  They wanted customers to make a commitment by preordering it online by putting down $1,000 deposit. Over 115,000 put down $1,000 before even seeing the what the car would look like.  That showed Tesla that they can now build the car since there is not just passing interest but people were expressing it with cold hard cash.  It was time to build the car and they did.  Not only did I not preorder the car, I did not see this as a sign to purchase Tesla stock.  

My Simple Example of Pretotyping

Idea 
Have a one day workshop to teach people how to interview for a job.

Generating Interest
I gave a talk and asked people at the end how many would be interested in attending a paid workshop. 
Out of fifteen people who attended, I think close to ten raised their hands. So I thought I had customers. But raising a hand at a free talk costs one nothing. 

Test the Workshop Idea
I sent an email with one-pager advertising the workshop and the agenda. I priced it at $299, which I thought was very reasonable and would accommodate up to ten people. I knew that I needed at the minimum five paid customers to make it work. 

Response from Customers
I got only one response from someone who was ready to attend the workshop and was willing to send me the payment. Well one is better than none, but not sufficient to conduct a workshop, so I had to move to the back up plan if doing the workshop made no business sense.

Back Up Plan
I contacted the client and told him that the workshop idea will not prove very useful to him since clients have different backgrounds. Instead, I have decided to conduct two 75 minutes of one-on-one coaching sessions for the same price.

In fact, this client was getting an excellent deal. He would now get two one-on-one coaching sessions for $299, which would have cost him $499. The client gladly took the two sessions and liked it so much that he has become one of my best clients.  

For now, I have dropped the plan to do a workshop for now.  I may pretotype it again in the future before committing to it. 

 Lesson Learned
You have to pretotype to see if customers are willing to pay for your product, service, course, etc. If you don't get the numbers you need, you have to have a backup plan to take care of those who were ready to pay or already paid for it. You may lose a little, but it is better to lose a little by learning a valuable lesson than to lose a lot by not knowing whether you will get any customers.  You have to fail very fast. 

So pretotyping is something we should all do before we build anything. It can be as simple as my conducting a workshop or building a product or service. You need some data to justify building a prototype. Without customer data, you will be flying blind and crash. Pretotyping is a simple way to mitigate failures.
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"It ain't over till it's over." - Yogi Berra.
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In professional golf, technically, you are not done until you sign the scorecard. We rarely see that on TV. What we always see on TV is a player finishing his round by holing the putt.

Usually, a professional golfer does not make mistakes on the 18th hole, resulting in a big score or outrightly losing a tournament. So when it happens, it becomes a teaching moment not only in golf but in what we do as professionals.

So let's take a look at two examples of collapses on the 18th hole at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. One was at the recent U.S. Open, and the other one was at the last U.S. Open. 

In the third round of the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, one player did not finish well on the 18th hole. Danny, from New Zealand,  six-putted the last hole to get a nine on a par four 18th hole.  

If you watch the video, you will see that Lee completely lost his concentration when he missed the first putt that was only four feet away for a par. Pros usually don't miss a four-foot putt. Lee then proceeded to miss a few more putts. At worse, he should have walked away with a bogey, which is a good score on the difficult 18th hole. With a bogey, he would have finished with an excellent score of 74.  That is a very good score at this venue since only a handful will shoot par or below. Instead he ended up with a score of 78. These were not hard putts for a pro of Lee's caliber, but he just lost his concentration and subsequently his cool. He like Roberto Duran probably said as he was leaving the putting green "No Mas, No Mas," and withdrew from the tournament. 

You rarely, if ever, see a pro like Lee miss six putts when the first putt is only four feet away. He is a professional golfer and knows how to finish a round well. We can all learn from his experience in the importance of finishing smart and strong. You are close to the finish line, but you have not crossed it so you have to stay in the game with your game face on.  And this is no different when we are working on a project or a business deal. You have to close it out well.

Lee realized later that he let himself, his fans and sponsors down with the way he exited the tournament.  He apologized saying, "It was very unprofessional and foolish... My frustration took over me and combined with injury I had to fight with it all week. … I shouldn’t have left it like that.” That was the right thing to do, as a start.  But he has a lot of work to do before people forget this incident.  Yes, we are all humans, but people don't expect that from professionals.  You are paid to get the job done as best as you can no matter how you are feeling or how well you are doing. 

Not finishing smart can even happen to great golfers like Phil Mickelson. Mickelson had a major disaster on the 18th hole in the final round of the 2006 U.S. Open played at Winged Foot. He double-bogeyed the 18th hole to lose the tournament. All Mickelson had to do was par this hole with a good golf club selection to win the tournament. But he elected to use a driver and sliced it that started his problem on that hole that you can see in the video.

Mickelson was having a hard time keeping his drives on the narrow fairways at Winged Foot, so the smart decision on this final hole was to use a long iron or fairway wood to keep the ball on the fairway. Then hit another long iron to put the ball on the green and two putts for par and win the tournament. But that is not what happened. Mickelson did not finish well and lost. He was cool, but he made a terrible decision off the tee. And he paid dearly for it. 

In 2020 Mickelson did not get a chance to redeem himself since he did not make the cut. You must capitalize on your opportunity when it presents itself since you don't know whether you will ever get another chance again. 

Both these examples show that whatever you do, you have to keep your focus and finish strong. These two players are professionals, and we can learn that being a professional means having good concentration and keeping your cool since a lot of money is riding on decisions you make, whether it's golf or business.
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​Not a day goes by that I read someone famous getting fired or go on a so called medical leave for some inappropriate tweet or social media post they sent out. 

Here is how long it typically takes to lose jobs for egregious behavior or offenses:
Sexual Harassment -- Years
Racism -- Years 
Insubordination -- Years
Incompetence -- Years to Never
Ageism -- Never
Inappropriate Tweet -- Hours

Social Media shows us who we really when we are all by ourselves and have no one to stop us from getting what we think off our chest fast by letting the whole world know. It is empowering, but  can be very destructive.  For this post, I will focus on Tweeter since it is the easiest.

And guess who made tweeting what we are thinking popular: President Trump.
He loves it.
He could not survive without it.
It's his drug of choice.  

Fortunately for him, he can't get fired from his job until November 3rd, 2020.  

Unfortunately, we can get fired in hours.

Just think of this for a second. You are out of a job in less than a few hours for expressing your well-guarded thought that no one would have ever known you had if it weren't for Tweeter.  People now know your innermost thought on topic that is unrelated to anything illegal you are doing.  

No one tweets I am sexually harassing this person.
No one tweets look what a racist thing I did at work by not hiring a person of color.
It rarely, if ever, happens.

But if you tweet about something offensive that is sexist, racist and homophobic, you are justifiably fired from a job. There are no excuses. There is no he said, she said thing here.  You will have a hard time proving that someone hacked your tweeter account. You are on your own to face the consequences for showing what you really think and believe. 

f you can't afford to lose your job, then don't post anything on social media. It's that simple. 

We naturally think it's a joke when we get fired for an inappropriate tweet.  We think who follows us anyway and even have time to read our inappropriate tweets besides two chickens and a pig in some barn in Idaho. 

But when we get up in the morning and turn on the news, we are the news. We have lost our job. How did that happen? What did we say to deserve this notoriety? We all like to be famous but not for being a world-class Tweethole.

And we immediately send a customary apology tweet --- thinking, hoping, praying --- that it will undo the damage. It never works. Next, we go on our favorite cable news shows to apologize. That does not work either. The cable shows love Tweetholes since it gets them good ratings. Some audience members will support you if you show some contrition with a tweet saying that you were unfairly treated. 

Damage is done. You are not likely to get a second chance soon since no company wants to hire a Tweethole if it knows how to do a quick Google search of our name. 

Tweeter is dangerous.

No one knows for a long time when we are drinking excessively in private, taking drugs, stealing, or even having affairs, but everyone knows very quickly and make a negative judgment on how we think and what we believe in when we send out an inappropriate tweet. And if enough people feel that way, you are toast. 

What to do?

Get off Tweeter and other social media. It's very addictive. If you can't, then become the President of the United States. Then you can tweet anything you want with impunity for four years and have lots of fun doing it. Otherwise, limit your use of Tweeter if you want to keep your job, maintain your livelihood, and not risk becoming a certified Tweethole.  

Simple Rules to follow to keep your job

• Hold a tweet for at least 24 hours. It is safer to be last when it comes to tweeting.
• Be happy with having a few followers so you don't want to be controversial.
• No one cares what you think or believe so why share your thought in a tweet? 
• If you do feel the need to share a thought, post a blog. It is hard, but you will only post it if you are scared. Tweeting requires no courage, and that's what gets people into big trouble. 

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In his book, "Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose," Joe Biden writes about the first time he met Barack Obama. This meeting tool place right after Obama became a junior senator from Illinois. Obama wanted to meet with Biden to pay his respects and express his interest in being on the Foreign Relations Committee.​

Biden was the top Democrat, and since there was an open seat, he could make it happen. Biden was already considering Obama for that seat because he felt that Obama would be a good asset to have on the committee. 

Since they did not have much time to talk when they met, Biden suggested they ought to get together soon for a meal together after work. Biden said he knew an excellent Italian restaurant nearby. And he further added, "It was not too fancy." Obama probably latched on to the word "not fancy," and said that we can go to a nice place, and added, "I can afford it."  

Biden latched on to the word, "I can afford it."

We have a future president and his future vice president developing a negative first impression of each other. And this is based on how both interpreted the phrase "not too fancy" and "I can afford it."

We all run into this misunderstanding when we are meeting someone for the first time. We latch on to every word or phrase and then develop a first impression that is very hard to change. Often, relationships start or end with the first impression. 

Biden initially felt that Obama was arrogant for saying, "I can afford it."  Obama probably thought that Biden thought that he could not afford to go to a fancy restaurant. 

So how did this first impression change? By getting to know each other a lot better.

But after Biden got to know Obama a little better, Biden was able to better understand why Obama would say, "I can afford it." Biden felt that Obama might have been offended that Biden took him for someone with limited resources to afford a fancy restaurant. But he points out that Obama probably did not know that he was indeed a man of limited resources that's why he said the restaurant he had picked out was not too fancy.

How often do we meet people, and things get said, and we develop a wrong impression? 

Biden and Obama invested time in getting to know each other better such that Obama picked Biden as his vice president and developed a strong friendship that he goes on to describe in his book. 

So learn from these two successful leaders that trusting relationships are hard to start and even harder to nurture. It takes a lot of work. And no one knows how to build and nurture relationships better than Joe Biden. That is his superpower. 
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In the comedy movie Bellboy, Jerry Lewis is in a double role. In one role, he plays himself, and in the other role, he plays Stanley, a bellboy, who runs into trouble by making mistakes. While Stanley is causing trouble, you don't see him talking to anyone. We find out why at the end.

At the end of the movie, the hotel manager, Mr. Novak, barges into a meeting that the bellboys are having to discuss what action to take against some hotel policy they are not happy with. 

Mr. Novak confronts Stanley since he was standing, and about to say something. Mr. Novak assumes that Stanley is the ring leader and starts yelling at him for being a screw-up. Stanley denies it by violently shaking his head. Mr. Novak has had enough of Stanley's shenanigans and asks, "What's a matter with you? Can't you talk?" 
Stanley, after a brief pause, calmly replies, "Certainly I can talk. I suspect I can talk as well as any other man, Mr. Novak."
The manager is surprised and asks Stanley, "In that case, how is it that we have never heard you talk before?"
Stanley replies, "Because no one ever asked me." And he leaves the meeting whistling, and the movie comes to an end. The message is clear that we can all look very silly when we don't ask. (You can view the video of that scene on YouTube.)

In the movie, Stanley did not see the need to talk since no one ever asked. Now the movie Bellboy is a comedy, and we can have a good laugh since we know this can only happen in movies. 
Are you sure about that? 

This often happens in life and business. We are all guilty of it. And we look silly when it happens to us.

I will give you one example from business that David Cote, former CEO of Honeywell, writes about in his excellent book, "Winning Now, Winning Later." He cites a story of not asking when he was working at GE.  

GE had developed Advantium ovens that combined the capabilities of a microwave oven and heat lamps of a conventional oven. But the question is how to make it work in the same size as a microwave oven. The marketing people came up with a way to do it with two doors, but it would have been clumsy for users.

Cote, who was running GE's appliance business, asked a technology guy if it was possible to have one cavity in the oven that could emit both microwaves and heat lamps using a switch? After thinking briefly, the technology guy said, "Yeah, we can do that."

The marketing guy was taken back and asked the technology guy, "Why the hell didn't you tell us months ago when we were first concepting this product?" The technology guy said, "You never asked." Cote gives this example to make a point that many companies struggle with communication between marketing and technology.

So we are all like people who interacted with Stanley in the movie, Bellboy.  They just assumed he could not talk. They were wrong.  They never asked.
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The first rule of communication is to: Just Ask, Don't Assume. 
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​If you want to win at the highest level, you must produce excellent stats that show that you are gaining on your competitors at each step toward a win. However, stats don't always predict a win. Still, it will undoubtedly tell you that you were in an excellent position to win. 

You must also be bold and need some luck. You can't play it safe when the competition is fierce. At the highest level, everyone has the talent and is driven to do whatever it takes to win. This is what you see on the PGA Tour every week. 

It is very difficult to make it on the PGA tour and even harder to make the cut in a tournament. Half of the players who play in a tournament do not get to play on weekends; hence, do not collect a paycheck. You not only have to have the game to be on the tour but not think that one shot could end up determining whether you make a paycheck or go home and try again.  No one deals with instant rejection way golfers do.  And remember players who play on the tour are top golfers in the world.  They all have the game to win any tournament. 

Each year, roughly 30 to 40 players win a tournament. At most, only four players can win major tournaments like the Masters, US Open, British Open, and the PGA Championship. Winning a major is a big deal since it puts a golfer in a very special category in golf. 

This is what I observed watching the 2020 PGA Championship won by Collin Morikawa. He led in key stats used in golf called strokes gained, but that alone did not lead to his win. It put him in an excellent position to win. To win, he had to make a bold decision and get a little lucky.

He pulled out his driver on the risk/reward 16th hole and said: "Screw it, let's make something happen." Indeed he did. He hit the shot of the tournament as the ball stopped 7 feet from the hole. He eagled the hole and went on to win the tournament by two strokes over Dustin Johnson and Paul Casey.

But when you look deeper, you see how close this tournament really was. And the hole that was pivotal in deciding who won the tournament was the 16th hole. We all are going to face a risk/reward 16th hole in what we do. Are you going to play like Morikawa to win? Or are you going to play it safe?

Luck trumps good stats and boldness
I will use two players who hit an excellent shot on the 16th hole. One was Bryson DeChambeau, and the other was Collin Morikawa.

Bryson Dechambeau hit a terrific drive, but the ball bounced and veered to the right and stopped on the fringe of the green pin high. Since the ball was on the fringe, it made the eagle putt difficult. DeChambeau missed by a little and birdied the hole.

Birdie is good, but eagle is better. 

A group later, Colin Morikawa hit a drive of his life that bounced on the fairway near the green and luckily got a good bounce, and the ball stopped 7-foot from the hole on the green making the eagle putt easier. Morikawa made the eagle putt and parred the next two holes to win the tournament.

Watching golf on TV lets you clearly see what we all need to do to win majors in our field. 

• You have to be very good. 
• You have to play well such that it is captured by an equivalent stat in your field to strokes gained in golf.
• You have to be bold and take calculated risks. 
• You have to be lucky. 

If you don't win, don't despair. Just do it again as golfers do every week. You are a pro at what you do, and as the Lotto commercial says, "You have to be in it to win it." This mindset not only helps a golfer like Collin Morikawa win the PGA Championship, but it can help you win in majors in your profession too.
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