What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

by Marshall Goldsmith

You can now listen to people’s answers to your questions without judging, interrupting, disputing, or denying them. You do this by keeping your mouth shut except to say, “Thank you.”

Pick the one behavior that you would like to change which would make a significant, positive difference in your life.

Describe this objective in a one-on-one dialogue with anyone you know.

Ask that person for two suggestions for the future that might help you achieve a positive change in your selected behavior—

If you’re talking to someone who knows you or who has worked with you in the past, the only ground rule is that there can be no mention of the past. Everything is about the future.

Listen attentively to the suggestions. Take notes if you like. Your only ground rule: You are not allowed to judge, rate, or critique the suggestions in any way. You can’t even say something positive, such as, “That’s a good idea.” The only response you’re permitted is, Thank you.

You can do feedforward with as many people as you like. As long as people are providing you with good ideas that you can use or discard (but which don’t confuse you), feedforward is a process that never needs to stop.

Until you get everyone who is affected by your behavior on your side and working to help you change, you haven’t really begun to get better. This is why the concept of feedforward is so important. Feedforward eliminates many of the obstacles that traditional feedback has created. It works because, while they don’t particularly like hearing criticism (i.e., negative feedback), successful people love getting ideas for the future. If changing a certain type of behavior is important to them, they will gobble up any ideas that are aimed at changing that behavior. And they will be grateful to anyone who steps forward with an idea, not resentful.

Successful people have a high need for self-determination and will tend to accept ideas about concerns that they “own” while rejecting ideas that feel “forced” upon them.

It works because we can change the future but not the past. It doesn’t deal in wishes, dreams, and conquering the impossible. It works because helping people be “right”...

Unlike feedback, which often introduces a discussion of mistakes and shortfalls, feedforward focuse...

people do not take feedforward as personally as feedback. Feedforward is not seen as an insult or a putdown. It is hard to get offended about a suggestion aimed at helping us get better at what we want to improve (especially if we are not forced to implement the suggestion).

When all you’re allowed to say is “Thank you,” you don’t have to worry about composing a clever response.

who among us doesn’t enjoy giving helpful suggestions when asked? The key is when asked. Feedforward forces us to ask—and in doing so, we enlarge our universe of people with useful ideas. Asking, of course, gives the other person a license to answer.

An old Buddhist parable illustrates the challenge—and the value—of letting go of the past. Two monks were strolling by a stream on their way home to the monastery. They were startled by the sound of a young woman in a bridal gown, sitting by the stream, crying softly. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gazed across the water. She needed to cross to get to her wedding, but she was fearful that doing so might ruin her beautiful handmade gown. In this particular sect, monks were prohibited from touching women. But one monk was filled with compassion for the bride. Ignoring the sanction, he hoisted the woman on his shoulders and carried her across the stream—assisting her journey and saving her gown. She smiled and bowed with gratitude as the monk splashed his way back across the stream to rejoin his companion. The second monk was livid. “How could you do that?” he scolded. “You know we are forbidden to touch a woman, much less pick one up and carry her around!” The offending monk listened in silence to a stern lecture that lasted all the way back to the monastery. His mind wandered as he felt the warm sunshine and listened to the singing birds. After returning to the monastery, he fell asleep for a few hours. He was jostled and awakened in the middle of the night by his fellow monk.

“Oh, her,” laughed the sleepy monk. “I only carried her across the stream. You carried her all the way back to the monastery.”

“I’ve learned that the key to your job, Marshall, is client selection. You ‘qualify’ your clients to the point where you almost can’t fail. The deck is totally stacked in your favor.” It surprised me because he wasn’t talking about himself. He was turning the tables on me. Then he said something more profound. “I admire that kind of selectivity because that’s what I do here. If I have the right people around me, I’m fine. But if I have the wrong people, not even God can win with that hand.”

contemplating the mechanics of success and wondering why some people are successful and others are not, you’ll find that this is one of the defining traits of habitual winners: They stack the deck in their favor. And they’re unabashed about it.

When you’re talking about interpersonal behavior, people’s common sense gets fuzzy and opaque. They lose sight of their true mission in life. They have trouble identifying or accepting the behavior that’s holding them back. They don’t know how to choose a strategy to fix the problem. And they often pick the wrong thing to fix. In other words, they stack the deck against themselves. The following seven rules will help you get a better handle on the process of change. If you obey them, you’ll be stacking the deck in your favor.

Rule 1. You Might Not Have a Disease That Behavioral Change Can Cure

Rule 2. Pick the Right Thing to Change

giving people unlimited choices only confuses them. Faced with too many options, they go back and forth among the options, trying to maximize their choice. Successful people hate being wrong even more than they like being right.

Rule 3. Don’t Delude Yourself About What You Really Must Change

there are five reasons people do not succeed with their diet and fitness goals. They mistakenly estimate: • Time: It takes a lot longer than they expected. They don’t have time to do it. • Effort: It’s harder than they expected. It’s not worth all the effort. • Distractions: They do not expect a “crisis” to emerge that will prevent them from staying with the program. • Rewards: After they see some improvement, they don’t get the response from others that they expected. People don’t immediately love the new improved person they’ve become. • Maintenance: Once they hit their goal, people forget how hard it is to stay in shape. Not expecting that they’ll have to stick with the program for life, they slowly backslide or give up completely.