More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Feel free to read this book straight through. However, if you’d like to slowly learn the concepts in Business Made Simple, visit BusinessMadeSimple.com/Daily to receive a daily video that will coincide with each day’s lesson. In only two months, you will get a business education many people pay tens of thousands of dollars for by attending business school.
A Value-Driven Professional
We respect people who react a little under, not over, the level of drama a situation deserves. We trust people who can remain calm and de-escalate drama so that crucial energy needed to deal with a truly important situation is not wasted.
Here’s Today’s Business Made Simple Tip of the Day Value-driven professionals establish a routine in which they get feedback from people they trust. They then use that feedback to grow in their career.
A value-driven professional wants to be trusted and respected more than they want to be liked.
Character—Have a Bias toward Action A value-driven professional has a bias toward action. I’ve never met two successful people who are the same. I’ve met successful people who are humble and others who are arrogant. I’ve met successful people who are creative and successful people who are uncreative. I’ve met successful people with frantic energy and others who are so at ease you wonder how they ever became successful in the first place. Truthfully, becoming successful is more about fully being yourself than it is about any kind of formula. Different people have different superpowers, and when
...more
That said, there is one thing every successful person has in common: They have a bias toward action. What I mean by a bias toward action is they do not let ideas die on the vine. They take action to make those ideas happen.
Successful people make real things happen in the real world. They do not let their best life get stuck in their imaginations. In fact, it’s been surprising to me how many successful people I’ve met who I did not find to be especially intelligent. That is, as I’ve talked with them, I realized they were not well read or imaginative. And as I’ve wondered how such simple thinkers could end up with so much influence and money, I’ve realized it’s because of their incredibly strong bias toward action.
🌟
While others may have terrific ideas or be able to see an important issue from many angles, action-oriented people are good at getting things done. As you attempt to build your company or your career, know that you can beat just about anybody in the marketplace as long as you wake up every day and take action.
I’ve learned most situations we believe are confusing are not actually confusing. In fact, what masquerades as confusion is often our desire to avoid conflict and our unwillingness to take action.
The question we must ask ourselves in situations that seem confusing is this: If I were a different person, looking at my life from the outside, what would be the obvious right action to take?
Be Relentlessly Optimistic
The more optimistic you are, the more you will be willing to try—and the more you try, the more often you will actually experience success. High-impact people believe amazing things can happen. And when they try and fail, they forget their failure almost instantly because they are so excited about the next opportunity.
Show me a successful person and I will show you somebody who has failed more than most. Show me an unsuccessful person and I’ll show you somebody who quit after failing a few times. It’s counterintuitive, but successful people have failed more often than unsuccessful people. It’s just that they had an optimistic attitude about life and got back up.
Years ago, I interviewed Pete Carroll, then in his second year as coach of the Seattle Seahawks. I asked him about a specific belief he had, which is that every time he competes, he’s going to win. Whether in checkers, chess, or football, he actually believes he’s going to win every contest he enters. I couldn’t help but to ask, “Coach, what happens when you lose?” Coach leaned back in his couch and threw up his arms. “I’m shocked!” he said. “Every time. I mean, honestly, Don, I never see it coming.” “You’re shocked, every time?” I asked. “Every time. I never expect to lose.”
If you think about it, Coach Carroll’s philosophy is brilliant. By staying relentlessly optimistic, he sustains the energy to keep trying and to never give up. Only a year after I interviewed him, he and his Seahawks won the Super Bowl.
In fact, here is leadership in a nutshell: 1.Invite a team into a story. 2.Explain why the story matters. 3.Give every team member a role to play in the story.
🌟
The number one job of a leader is to wake up every morning, point to the horizon, and let everybody on the team know where the organization is going. The number two job of a leader is to explain, in clear and simple terms, why the story of going to and arriving at that specific destination matters. The number three job of a leader is to analyze the skills and abilities of each team member and find them an important role to play in that story.
Not only this, but as communal beings, every person longs to join a team on a serious and important mission. This is why dynamic leaders are able to attract top talent. Every dynamic leader you know or have ever heard of had a mission burning inside them that other people wanted to join.
Great leaders become great because their mission makes them great. There are no exceptions.
Because of these guiding principles, I do not wake up in a fog every day. I always know what I should be working on and why.
Each set of guiding principles I’ll teach you includes five components: 1.Create a mission statement that actually excites you. 2.Create a set of key characteristics that will guide your development. 3.Create a list of critical actions that will ensure you accomplish the mission. 4.Create a story pitch that attracts resources to your mission. 5.Define a theme that will serve as the “why” of your mission.
A good mission statement is short, interesting, and inspirational. Otherwise, it’s worthless.
In addition, your mission statement should position your effort as a counterattack against an injustice. It should explain what you are doing to serve people and why that effort matters.
The soldiers landing on the beaches of Normandy were on a mission. The Freedom Riders traveling across the South during the Civil Rights era were on a mission. The astronauts redefining human limitations were on a mission. As was the auto manufacturer Tesla by disrupting the combustion engine industry with electric cars and Netflix with streaming movie services. The book you are currently reading is disrupting Amer...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Here is a formula for a good, short mission statement: We will accomplish _____________ by ____________ because of ___________.
Define the key characteristics you’ll need to develop in order to accomplish your mission and you’ll transform yourself and your team.
When you define the key characteristics you and your team need to develop, make sure they are both aspirational and instructive. When I say aspirational, I mean they don’t have to be characteristics you currently embody. They can be characteristics that demand improvement and change. And when I say instructive, what I mean is they should be immediately actionable when somebody hears them. A positive attitude is instructive, as is disciplined about making sales calls or quick to greet customers at the door. If your key characteristics are too vague, team members will not know how to act on them
...more
As part of your set of guiding principles, define the key characteristics you and your team need to develop in order to accomplish your mission.
Define three repeatable critical actions every person in your organization can take that will contribute to your mission
Of course, every team member has a different list of actions to take, but by defining three critical actions every one of you can take, you create a sense of alignment you would not otherwise feel. Not only this, but by defining three critical actions every person on your team can take every day, you collect and focus energy toward the accomplishment of your mission.
In my personal guiding principles, my repeatable critical actions are that I get up early, I write, and I say “after you.”
Those three critical actions establish a way of life that if repeated day in and day out ensures success.
Know how to attract people to your mission by telling your story.
Telling the story of your company or project is important because in telling your story you attract resources.
When you tell your story, people decide whether or not to buy from you, invest in you, or even spread...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Most people and most companies, though, do not know how to tell their story. Often, they make the mistake of telling their history, complete with bullet points and boring asides. But your history is not your story. Your story is different. Your story is a way of e...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
In the most simple form of story structure, a story features a character who has been destabilized by an event and then overcomes a series of challenges to restabilize their life. This is the story line for Star Wars, Romeo and Juliet, Tommy Boy, all the Avengers movies, and any rom-com you can name. Why do storytellers use this formula? Because it’s the most powerful tool in the world to captivate an audience’s attention.
Start with the problem you or your company helps people overcome. 2.Agitate that problem to make it even worse. 3.Position yourself, your company, or your product as the resolution to the problem. 4.Describe the happy ending people will experience if they use your product to resolve their problem. This simple formula has been proven over and over to engage an audience. When you filter the “facts” of your company through this story formula, all that’s left is the good stuff. For instance, let’s say you run a pet boarding business. You might tell your story this way: Most people hate leaving
...more
Do you see the formula? We started with a problem, made the problem worse, positioned the product as the resolution to the problem, and then described a happier life because the problem had been solved.
What problem does your company solve? How is that problem making people feel? How is your product positioned to solve that problem? And after that problem is solved, what do people’s lives look like?
Answer those questions, in that order, and you’ll tell the story of yourself, your business, the division of your business, or your product in such a way that people will want to engage.
How to Lead—Define Your Theme and Your “Why” Define the theme of your mission so you and your people will know why your work is important.
The theme is the why of you or your organization.
For centuries, playwrights, novelists, and, more recently, screenwriters have defined a theme for their stories. A storyteller will define their theme, mainly, to keep them on track as they write their story. If a bit of dialogue or a certain scene does not support the theme, they cut it out of the story. The theme of Schindler’s List, for example, is that every human being has infinite value and should be saved. As the screenwriters wrote the screenplay, they had to filter every scene through that central idea. When a writer defines a theme, their story gets more meaningful and more clear. If
...more
