Everybody knows that guy: a friend, a colleague, or even a boss, who seems to be able to accomplish anything. They can walk into a room and inspire people to be better. Their company loves them and seems to open every door for them to walk right through. No matter their setting, they command respect from the people around them. And while they’re extremely hard on themselves, it’s more like a positive encouragement with really high standards than it is self-loathing disappointment. Being around these people can be very inspiring for some, but for others it may seem daunting. What they do seems more like natural personality traits that you don’t, and won’t ever, have. Just the thought of comparing yourself to them creates too much anxiety to investigate them further. You may even despise them.
In the Marine Corps, I had the benefit of being trained by and serving with some of the best leaders I’ve ever known. Since then, I’ve spent the better part of a decade consulting with leaders of large corporations on project management and corporate strategy. I see these people daily. My background as a Nice Guy has given me a somewhat unique experience to not only study these people from my perspective, but also to learn and apply the habits to myself and see the results. The good news is that this type of behavior is learned. Yes, some people are naturally more intelligent, so they pick things up faster. They might have been raised in a way that confidence and social skills come more easily. But make no mistake, the techniques they use daily and consistently over their career to lead their peers, improve themselves, and succeed in life, are obtainable by anyone. The bad news? It’s hard work. Maybe even harder work for you if you lack some of the advantages others have.
I’m going to lay out two of the techniques I’ve learned to be absolutely essential for success. Apply these to your business, your career, your life at home, and everywhere in between, and understand that you are never finished. The guy you were a day ago must always be weaker and lazier than you today. Your competition is truly with him.
Goal Setting
This header probably seems predictable and way too cliché, but the details of HOW we set goals is more important that you can imagine. It cannot be overvalued. Most people mistake goals and dreams.
Your dreams give you general direction and motivation, but that’s about it. To be successful, you need to lay out dreams in a rigid process. Some of the best goal setters I know put it in writing with incredible detail and they revisit their goals often. This refocuses them with the new opportunities that have been revealed now in consideration.
If the dream is to become a surgeon, then you start by setting up your long-term goals and then backward planning until you get to the smallest detail of short-term goals. You need to get to medical school, so you need to complete an undergraduate degree. To get there, you may need to start at a community college for a year. To get there, you need be accepted to a school over the next three months so you can start in the upcoming semester. In the next month, you need to decide on a school that has the classes you need. In the next week, you need to complete applications for schools and for potential scholarships. Tomorrow, you need work out a sustainable plan for paying for your education without racking up a lot of debt. Today, you have to write down all of these goals in exhaustive detail, complete with identified needs and challenges. To say that this process CAN be applied to any of your dreams is wrong. To be a constantly successful person, this approach MUST be applied to every facet of your life.
The interesting secret is that your biggest dreams are rarely realized, but that’s actually a good thing. The young college student with dreams of being a teacher may not know the first thing about the stock market, but the achievement of their goal to complete their math degree gives them the opportunity to eventually work on Wall Street. The man improving their public speaking and leadership in the military may not know how much they will love their career in consulting, but it would have never been possible without that step. You may have started improving yourself to work on your marriage, but found it opened up new opportunities with your career and social life. It’s an accumulation of small accomplishments and a constant revisit and recalibration of your goals. The late author Zig Ziglar said “Go as far as you can see. When you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.” Doing this every single day will make you successful in ways you never imagined possible.
OODA-Loop Your Life
In the military, there is a concept called the OODA Loop. It is a decision-making process coined by an Air Force pilot who used it for success in aerial combat over fifty years ago, and US military leadership still teaches it today. It stands for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, but it is much more than just a sequential process for decision-making. It is a concept that puts focus on the disruption affecting on the world around you when you complete the loop and the importance of completing it faster. In the situation of the fighter pilot, if he is able to take in the situation and execute a decision, he has now changed the situation for the opposing pilot who now has to reobserve and reorient before they can even decide on what to do next. The faster and more continuously he can decide and act, the more chaotic and indecisive his enemy becomes. Before they can even decide how to respond to his last move, he has already made another.
Just like goal setting, very successful people apply this to every aspect of their life, even if OODA is not an acronym they know. They are constantly observing their surroundings looking for their next opportunity. They act decisively, confidently, and continuously, which builds their momentum. They are reliable leaders and typically command a room very well. What they understand is the impact of their proactive decision-making on everyone around them and, more importantly, on themselves. In the tensest boardroom meeting, the successful leader knows how to lead the conversation with a build up of points and even manipulate the momentum of the room. They know they set the tone because their quick, decisive actions knock the rest of the room off their feet. They can shut down off-topic or negative communication quickly.
You don’t have to be in a corporate boardroom to use this. Applying the OODA Loop in your career or even your own home is a very efficient way of becoming a better leader. It allows you to anticipate challenges and act proactively, rather than being surprised and reactive. One of the most important benefits is how it fights laziness at home. Instead of sitting around and waiting for the next request of chores or a family decision to come from your wife, you’re already an infinite number of steps ahead. You’ve planned your workout, your agenda that day, how the sink is getting fixed, and what is for dinner. Suddenly, your wife is coming to you for guidance and decisions, rather than to ask you to get your ass off the couch and help put the kids to bed.
Acting methodically and decisively toward a well-focused plan of goals is where you make your money. This is how you become driven, and ultimately successful. It’s the winning formula to becoming extremely focused and advancing yourself in every facet of your life. You will always be better than you were yesterday, but always striving for who you will be tomorrow.