Escape From Excellence

Imagine two successful leaders. Let’s call one leader S, and the other C. At this time, S is trapped in excellence, while C is in mastery. If excellence and mastery are like apples and oranges, these two will have very little in common. But not so fast; they’re both fruits, both grow on trees, and both start out life similarly. So it is with our two leaders. They share much in common, up to a point. But after that point, S became ensnared in the Excellence Trap, while C evolved to Leadership Mastery.

After the break, an article length case study follows that outlines in detail what the Excellence Trap and Leadership Mastery can look like in the real life of two CEO’s. Both pursued excellence. One became ensnared in the excellence trap, while the other achieved Leadership Mastery.

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This post shares a personal anecdote to make a point about Leadership Mastery, specifically the results of leading from vision in mastery, vs. managing in excellence. We recently moved to a new house that we are remodeling and renovating. The entire project gave me an opportunity to overcome my personal bad side (controlling, micro-managing, worrying), and gave me a chance to practice what I preach. An example of Leaderdship Mastery in action?

Background: We live at home, and we also work at home. In addition, we exercise at home, and my audio recording studio is at home. We’ll do pod and video casting from home. So it’s not just a house, it’s headquarters. Upon moving in, we immediately needed: a new kitchen, a new mudroom, a new roof and roofline, two new offices and a meeting room. We also needed a master plan for improved deck, patio, planting, bathrooms, and for a fourth floor media room. Also, the offices and studio would need acoustic treatments for soundproofing. My wife Michele and I collaborate on everything, and we really enjoy design. But the stakes are high and the budget is never high enough! Plus, we’ve already got a lot on our plates. Would this put undue strain on us? It’s a very enlightening micro-case study.

Managing from Excellence would have had us set big goals regarding scope, timing, and costs, do extensive due diligence, assemble and vet a crack team, closely manage the details, require hard work, seek efficiencies, confirm quality, confront unexpected crises, acknowledge emotional needs, and manage all of this against strategic goals based on our desired outcomes (multiple usage, business growth). Had we taken this approach, perhaps the team (architects, vendors, contractors, and sub-contractors) would have respected and admired us in the end, and maybe they would have feared us. We’d meet our contractual obligations, always act professionally, and maybe tip a few people. Either way, the job would be done on time, on budget and well. And it would have nearly killed me, and everyone who had to deal with me! The Excellence Trap would have extracted its inevitable hidden costs.

Instead we chose Leadership Mastery, leading to an experience in which the ”only-do-it-if-you-have-to-because-it’s hell” of remodeling turned out to be a piece of cake, a delight, with better results at a lower price, and at a lower personal and business cost. How did we do it? By leading from vision; by inviting, enthusing, and inspiring everyone we worked with to participate in that vision; by encouraging them to bring their vision to the project; and then by getting out of the way! More specifically, we made the Five Shifts of Leadership Mastery.

Here’s the story, as briefly as I can tell it: (more…)

What is it about business and words that start with the letter P? We all remember the 4P’s of marketing (I’ll spare you another recitation), and I seem to remember four new marketing P’s coming along several years back. Last week, in a flash of P-inspired insight, I discovered the Five P’s of Leadership. Check it out…

The formula looks like this: Passion + Peace = Purpose >> Prosperity + Profit. This means when a leader has moved past both drive and rest, to have both passion and peace, they will clarify and deepen their purpose, which in turn leads to greater prosperity and profits. This is based on the key insight that the often-overlooked both-and relationship between passion and peace is the key driver of results. If you understand and apply that, you will be closing in on leadership Mastery, and you will enjoy a competitive advantage vs. those who never figure this out.

Challenge: First, too many of us are driven by a passion that never gives us any real peace (probably because this passion comes from our old friends, fear and ego). Consider this: how many seriously driven people do you know who seem to be actually compensating for something, or trying to prove a point? Do they seem healthy and well? Are they effective? I suspect not. But second, often when we experience what we call “peace” (but is actually really merely “rest”), we soon get bored and need to get back in the arena and do something! This is because we’re meant to be creating and doing; it turns out that we’re bundles of energy after all. But nonetheless, so many folks dream of retirement, work for the weekend, crave some serious R&R, or just need to trance out for a few minutes.

Solution: Passion and Peace aren’t an either-or; they are a both-and! In excellence, drive and rest fight with each other, but in mastery, they become Passion and Peace. In mastery, doing what you love to do and do best, getting to come from your passion, is itself peace. So we can be in motion or at rest, but in mastery we are always passionate and always at peace, at the same time! So while managing recovery  and pacing how we expend energy are crucial (in this regard, I like what The Energy Project is doing), this is limited to managing merely our capacity when we’re still in the Excellence Trap. Leadership Mastery gets past all that and combines Peace and Passion to successfully focus on our identity and Purpose. This focused drive is qualitatively different from what we experience in the Excellence Trap. It leads directly to the fourth and fifth P: Prosperity (personal flousishing) and Profit (return on investment and return on inspiration).

Summary: Drive and rest fight with each other when we are trapped in excellence. In Leadership Mastery, drive changes into passion, and rest changes into peace. They now feed each other, and this results in exponential increases in all desired personal and business outcomes.

We’ve all heard the old saying about how success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. That’s true, but it’s really only true if you’re in the excellence trap! Sure, it takes work to bring a good idea to life. And it takes skill. The Big Book of Failure is full of ideas that never saw the light of day because their creator had no idea how to take ideas from concept to reality. But when in the excellence trap, inspiration really is front and center only 1% of the time. And that’s too little. Only 1% inspiration keeps innovation rare, change small, and growth incremental. And worse, most people in excellence don’t really know how to be inspired, only driven. And there’s a difference!

Think about it. Drive is about commitment and effort, two of the virtues of excellence that get corrupted into entropy and fixation, and so become costs of excellence, specifically depletion and misalignment. On the other hand, true inspiration is about both unexpected, non-linear, innovative thinking, and genuine enthusiasm to do something with it. It comes from the Five Virtues of Mastery (energy, expression, perspective, intention, and wisdom).

The masters I know are about inspiration 70% of the time, and the rest of the time they bring it to life, more efficienlty and effectively, with lower costs and greater results. Look at the efficiency of the perfect golf swing, the effortless expression of the great saxaphone player, and even the lose-track-of-time quality of doing what you love.

Do these people look like they’re working? We’ve all known people who say, “That’s why they call it work.” But I have never met a master who says that! Only failures and mediocrities say that. They may be nice hard working people, salt of the earth, but they’ve lost the plot. Instead, masters say, “All work in sacred.” If you interrupted, say, Tiger Woods or Charlie Parker during a training or practice session, they’d likely tell you how hard they are working, and they are. Then ask them if they’d rather be doing anything else. Anyone want to guess what they’d say? (Hint: rhymes with snow). Their work and their inspiration are one. That is sacred work. That is mastery.

Each 1% increase in inspiration can create an exponential return. So let’s maximize return on investment by increasing Return on Inspiration.

Everybody is replaceable, right? Well, 99% of the time this is true, even when talking about successful, excellent leaders. But this weekend, in episode four of the series John Adams on HBO, I watched with interest as Thomas Jefferson corrected Ben Franklin by telling him that he could never replace Franklin as US Representative in Paris, but could only succeed him. Putting Jefferson’s own future achievements aside, this one line speaks volumes: masters can never be replaced, only succeeded. The goal of any master is to be succeeded by another master. And each master is unique. Jefferson at once recognized Franklin’s mastery, and made an implicit claim for his own!

But excellence is replaceable. Always. Because excellence is based on things like skill and effort, however advanced, it is replicable. In this way, “succession planning” may be a useful nicety to spare our feelings, it is a misnomer. It should be called replacement planning. That sounds bad, but it tells a difficult truth. If you are excellent, whether you’re the crack new recuit or the successful CEO, you are replaceable. And of course, that is good for the ongoing health of the excellent business. If excellence were good enough (it isn’t).

But masters leave a different legacy. Masters can only be succeeded. If they are succeeded by another master, all will be well. If not, the company throws the dice and hopes for the best, dealing with excellence, mediocrity, and failure over time and in turn. But in great mastery traditions, unlike business, for example in martial arts, music or comedy improvization, and monastic Buddhism, and probably in symphony conducting, there is a process of identification, initiation, and development into mastery, beyond excellence (you already have to be excellent even to be considered). In these places, mastery is planned and demanded. No mastery, no mantle.

But most so-called corporate “succession planning” only deepens the excellence, and the excellence trap, of the candidate for leadership; and in this it often succeeds. Unfortunately, the excellent leader then spends his or her time in leadership dealing with the limits and costs of excellence (read all about them here). 

We need Mastery Planning. A leader must work to develop mastery before taking the helm, or as quickly as possible thereafter. And the bench must include other masters in training, while the entire organization develops a culture of mastery, not just of success. Band-aids like “Lessons from Company X” pale in comparison to what would happen if a leader (and everyone else) learned and applied the lessons of a genuine mastery tradition. That would be something! This could be approximated by appropriating the methods of the various mastery traditions. But in practice this is usually a force fit when applied to business, and often fights with business. Business needs it own mastery; business needs to become a mastery tradition in it’s own right! A better way may be to check out what we’ve created, specifically for business, here.

I recently spoke with the members of the senior management team of a global industry leader, all of whom described the team, each other, and even themselves, as all but paralyzed by fear. The fear of being called out by the CEO, criticized by the CEO, thrown under the bus by the CEO (or each other), of making alliances, of taking a stand, of not knowing something, of the person below them who wants their job. As with any senior management team at a successful company, this is a group of highly accomplished, well compensated, confident players with strong personalities and a take-the-hill mindset, individually and collectively. So what the hell is going on? Labeling the CEO a tyrant is most likely true, but it’s a cop out. Why? Because masters have no fear. If there was ever a group of people trapped in excellence and back-sliding into mediocrity and failure, this was it.

We are all hardwired for fear, as a way to protect ourselves. This is good. But in a business setting, strategic acumen is too often replaced by crippling fear. Not good. Let’s take a look at fear from the perspectives of failure, mediocrity, excellence, and mastery. Only mastery has no fear.

For the failure, fear takes over. The fear of a failure is terror. Terror paralyzes us into inaction, and defeats us. We become weak in the face of fear, choosing a flight response. The actions we do take are desperate, leading nowhere. Metaphor: the Deer, frozen in the headlights.

For the mediocre, fear manifests in swagger or bravado, which only denies fear and overcompensates with a fight response. The mediocre person rallies themself and blusters their way into a fight. Their actions are misguided and wasteful. They are aggressive and mercurial, and at times violent. But it is only themselves they are hurting. Metaphor: the Stinging Bee.

In the excellence trap, we see bravado evolve into bravery. Bravery is good insofar as it draws upon our internal character to find the strength to face fear. Excellent people do what they have to do, despite fear, and they work hard to do it well. Metaphor: the Adventurer. The problem is that they are still in fear, and fear takes a toll. No person functions at a peak level in fear, whteher they face it or not. No leader innovates, makes wise decisions, and holds a vision at a masterful level when in fear. They can only hope to maintain or, at best, grow just a little. Any it appears that many excellent leaders are in fear much of the time.

In mastery, the leader has no fear. He or she doesn’t give in to it, attack it, or even face it; they simply don’t have it! A leadership master reframes fear as an illusion and rejects it. Everyone else around them is either shaking in their boots, lashing out, or living with a knot in their stomach, but not the master. He or she replaces all this fear with trust: in themselves, their resources, other people and their ability to work with the best in people, and in life itself. This is not a naive trust, but rather a wise equinimity or unflappability in the face of challenges or imagined dangers. Masters know that fear is a con. Metaphor: the Acrobat. They use all that the absence of fear leaves them with to soar high, dazzle, and inspire.

So when a wise sage says, “Have no fear,” they mean exactly that! They didn’t say “Be brave,” as admirable as that is. Instead, they called us to change the game.

So I ask the terrified and terrorized managers: what’s worse? getting your ass handed to you by a tyrant, or losing your mojo? Being embarrased, and maybe even punished, or sacrificing the best of you on the alter of  mediocrity and failure, at best pushing the boulder uphill while stuck in the excellence trap? ”Hey, I want to keep my job and get promoted so I can be good to my kids” some of them might protest. Give me a break! No kid wants or needs a compromised and fearful zombie dressed up as an exec for a parent. And no wise CEO will promote one. No, better to work toward mastery, so fear simply goes away. Masters ALWAYS flourish. And a group of Masters in one place is unstoppable. I recommend that this management team work to that goal, and I work with all of my clients to exactly that goal. I must say, maybe the CEO isn’t a tyrant. Perhaps he is challenging them to get past fear, however clumsily (Hmm..can there be a zen tyrant? Probably).

Here’s an exercise. Try this at home, or during a commute or trip. Make an inventory of everything you have decided in the past day, week, month, year, decade, or lifetime (focus only on bigger decisions as the timeframe expands). Be brutally honest, and then put each decision into one of two columns. Column one represents the House of Fear, and column two is the House of Faith (or Trust). Bluster and bravado will only screw it up, so put that aside if it shows up. And bravery, while excellent and admirable, carries a cost. Be honest.  Do any decisions seem masterful, truly fearless? Put them in the House of Faith column. Let’s work for more of that!

I live for Leadership Mastery, and I invite you to experience it. But what is it?

Let’s start with mastery itself, and what it is not. Mastery isn’t the pinnacle of excellence. You don’t reach it by being most excellent, in Ted-speak. That will only keep you out of mastery. Mastery is different from excellence not in degree, but in kind. Every master knows this; but nobody else seems to be in on the secret. As Charlie Parker said, “Learn all this stuff (to be excellent) and then forget it (to be a master).”

So what is it? Mastery is when performance increases exponentially, while costs fall dramatically. That bears repeating. In mastery, performance increases exponentially, while costs fall dramatically. It accounts for how the best athletes, performers, artists, sages, and even warriors can blow our minds with what they do, inspire us, and serve as iconic frames of reference, while making it look easy, with grace and style. It is what differentiates the best from the rest, decisively.

 But what is Leadership Mastery? This used to be a tough question because, unlike athletes, performers, etc., leaders have not had a vision or path to mastery. So most have been trapped in excellence. The only exception would be if a leader had achieved mastery in another field and translated it somehow to his or her own leadership in an organization. This is extremely rare because most people, if they are masters in a field (for example golf, acting, painting, music, thinking, or inventing) stick to that field; it is their identity.

Like all mastery, Leadership Mastery is defined by exponentially increased performance and dramatically reduced costs. In organizational leadership we see more innovation, alignment, efficiency, sustainability, focus, capacity, integrity, return, growth, and vision, and less struggle for that extra increment of performance, as well as dramatically less of the financial and human costs that characterize the merely excellent organization. The masterful leader aligns more, inspires more, gets it right more often, sees more, creates more, and keeps himself or herself whole in mind, body and spirit in a way that is remarkable to all who observe, follow, or compete with them. They soar high, while appearing relaxed and ready for more. Leaders in Mastery put incremental growth and marginal change, achieved at a high cost, behind them once and for all. And so do their teams, organizations, and partners.

It’s not magic, not a put on. It’s not superhuman. It’s not the result of cutting a deal at the crossroads. But it is rare. And it is teachable and reachable because leaders now have a path to mastery. This blog, my keynote speaking, workshops, and work with clients all focus on doing exactly this. If you are tired of seeing excellent people and organizations pay a high price for incremantal growth and marginal change, you’ve already taken the first step. So welcome!

We’ve all experienced the joy of watching a young child develop a passion. We see them bonding with one particular toy, banging on a drum without ceasing, dressing up like their hero, playing air guitar, or appearing to be glued to a tennis racket or baseball mitt. Eventually, one parent says, “For Pete’s sake, sign that kid up for some lessons!” Soon after, and usally as a card is about to be swiped, the “discipline talk” happens: “Well junior, (insert hero’s name here) had to work to get where they are. It’s wonderful that you love it, but it takes hard work, mastery of the fundamentals, practice, and discipline.” If the passion is real, the youngster takes this crucial advice to heart and begins the long journey to excellence.

Ah, but once inside excellence, as an adult, the relationship between discipline and passion is reversed. We’ve got the discipline, but passion can be in short supply, particularly when “vocation” and “career” are rarely the same thing. Think about it: We are surrounded by disciplined people who hold both themselves and others accountable to high standards and to an admirable work ethic. And the occasional junior or middle manager will even make quite a show of saying, “I have a passion for (insert business category here). ” But who really believes it? Ninety nine percent of the time it’s a put on, a crock, BS on toast. It fools no one, except maybe them. Many people trapped in excellence, meaning most of us, can say “I love my job” but then fantasize about exit strategies, seek compensatory rewards, and play the lottery anyway!

No, in business, we are mistaken if we assume that we and our people generate and sustain passion by looking forward to our paycheck, benefits, perks, prestige, and even our generalized passion for winning. That’s the Excellence Trap in action. Passion has to come from somewhere deeper, and Leadership Mastery unleashes it. A leader in mastery will overcome the narrow and shallow focus on discipline (and effort, skill, etc), to realize that the true driver of greatness for a leader, a team, and an entire enterprise, is the kind of passion that comes from the gut, the core, the soul. And this from each person, from the culture, and even from the market and the brands. As senior leaders, we need to connect with that passion, and help others to do the same. Otherwise, leadership mastery, enterprise mastery, and market mastery will elude us, and we will struggle for marginal advantage inside the Excellence Trap. So here’s to passion, and to profits. And here’s to finding both!

Daniel Plainview, the character brought to life in a staggering performance by Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s celebrated new film, There Will be Blood, is an outsized character of mythic proportion. So, while we are unlikely to meet someone like Plainview in real life, he presents a lesson, example, archetype, or “plain view” that speaks to all of us. I saw the movie recently, at the precise moment when I was searching for an easy way to communicate what the Excellence Trap is like, and how we come to be ensnared in it. Enter Daniel Plainview.

Daniel Plainview fancies himself a leader, a self-made man who will create something huge, create jobs, make history, and maybe even start a movement. When we first meet him, prospecting for oil, he embodies the Five Virtues of Excellence: Effort, Proficiency, Commitment, Expertise, and Acumen. He displays vision, tenacity, a willingness to take risks, and an admirable individualism and determination. Failure and mediocrity are simply not on his radar. At first, I like this guy, until he opens his mouth, 15-20 minutes into the movie, and we meet the monster he will become. While most people trapped in excellence are in no way monstrous like Plainview, he does show us, on a grand and mythic scale, what we are bound confront if we aloow ourselves to think that excellence is the end of the road. If we are excellent, we are unlikely to turn into the likes of Plainview, but we will confront the same dynamics, each in our own way. You can bank on that in the same way Plainview banks on himself and his oil.

Plainview’s problems set in when he reaches the Five Limits of Excellence, those built-in ceilings which undermine the positive aspects of excellence:

• His Effort is limited by his physical limits: he is merely a man and, to drive the point home, he is hobbled for life by an on-the-job injury. He reached this limit early on.
• His Proficiency won’t set him apart. He knows this, and so looks with seething rage upon anyone who has a measure of proficiency in his chosen profession of “Oilman,” from the executives of Standard Oil to, eventually, his own adopted son.
• His Commitment saps his strength, and in Plainview’s case, his soul as well. His mono-mania about success cuts him off from other people almost completely, he is often drunk or at the verge of rage, and he subjects himself and others to unnecessary hardships and dangers, far beyond any practical reasoning or benefit.
• His Expertise lacks vision. Early in the film, he appears possibly to have the makings of a visionary. But his ego, fear, greed, and paranoia cause him to miss opportunities or to see the larger picture. His isolation increases with each major episode in the film, as he manages to sucker people into his plans, but fails to attract anyone to a vision, because there is no vision to be seen.
• His Acumen reduces strategy to tactics. His obsession about competitive jockeying takes over his entire person, and he ends up bitter, alone, and un-admired (he calls his butler his “closest associate”). He has no allies, defenders, zealots, partners, and no lasting legacy other than violence, deceit, and hatred.

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We can get a good picture of the Excellence Trap by considering a story that a friend of mine recently shared. Like being trapped in excellence, it’s an experience that many of us will recognize. After spending five days bouncing around the country at 36,000 feet, touching down in various locations for sundry meetings, he approached the gate for his final flight of the week (his seventh), and quickly decided he had earned a bit of comfort. His ticket was in coach, and the flight was only a few hours long, but seeing the Friday afternoon crowd, feeling ragged, and very much looking forward to getting back to his nice new home, he got in line at the check-in desk, eventually reaching the gate attendant, and asked for an upgrade to first class, intending to redeem some frequent flyer miles. “I’m sorry,” the gate attendant said. “There are no first class seats available.” My friend was a bit taken aback, but quickly recovered. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “You don’t understand. I’m a member of the super-duper-constant-traveler-presidential-admiral’s club! This is one of my earned perks. Just look at my frequent flyer miles! So I’ll take my upgrade now please. Thanks.” “Very well, sir” replied the gate attendant. “There’s just one thing. Can you help me decide which of the other members of the super-duper-constant-traveler-presidential-admiral’s club now now waiting in the gate area, who have already checked in and upgraded, I should ask to be reassigned to coach?” My friend took his original seat.

Excellence is a lot like this. If you’re excellent, you’re a member of a club that is simultaneously elite and surprisingly crowded, and unless you look closely, these excellent folks all look sort of the same. After all, you’re not spending much time surrounded by mediocre performers. You’ve studied, achieved, and implemented what you knew would make you excel and succeed. And it did. So far, so good. But then, in the middle of living the excellent life, you look around and realize that a lot of other fine people received the same memo, that moving forward isn’t so easy, competitive advantage is harder and harder to come by, and big, sustainable, innovation and exponential growth start to seem like a memory, or a fantasy. It’s too bad but, like my excellent friend, reciting your credentials, kicking up a fuss, having to take no for an answer, lowering expectations, escaping into a nap, resigning to work during the flight in lieu of other options, putting on a stoic face, flashing the Rolex, or just demanding extra in-flight snacks all won’t cut it. You did all the right things your entire life, up to and including today, and now here you are stuffed into coach with a lot of excellent people in the same predicament. There has to be a better way. It was supposed to be better than this. And it can be: escape the Excellence Trap, change the game, and make the transition to Mastery. Mastery is like having that great seat waiting for you all the time. Either way, I hope this story helps you get a sense of how unacceptable and unworkable excellence can be.