Experience Is Irrelevant. Accomplishments Are Everything: Are These Really The 9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People?

In his article in Inc. Magazine titled “9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People,” Jeff Haden offers what he believes are the core values that distinguish the high achievers from the rest of the world.

While it is an interesting read, there are a number of points with which I am not in complete agreement.

To start, with the “time doesn’t fill me. I fill time.” assessment, it is suggested that the person will take the maximum length of time to complete a project even if they could do it sooner. This is easier believed than it is true. Today, people are so overwhelmed as a result of major layoffs and being expected to pick-up the slack for departed co-workers, that they are lucky to get the multitude of assignments done in the requested time frame.

Another absolute with which I would give a deserving pause is “volunteers always win.”

While I understand the principle that is being expressed, I hate the words always and never. Volunteering does get you noticed, appreciated and motivates others to reciprocate. However intent cannot be overlooked. I believe that the “if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mindset is wrong. It is when you do something from the heart based on the values of your personal mission statement that ultimately resonates the longest and the loudest.

The mercenary mindset associated with the belief that “as long as I’m paid well, it’s all good,” is another point that I would debate. As with the true volunteer’s mindset, performing a task based on your values can go a long ways towards differentiating your brand in a crowded market. Now I am not suggesting that you put yourself in the position where you will be taken advantage of, as integrity of pay is as important as the integrity of your work. However, with the emergence of the relational collaboration model in which there is an open and transparent dialogue between service provider and client, the focus is on mutual respect and shared gain. In these instances, the “you don’t get what you deserve you get what you negotiate”adversarial interaction is replaced by one of cooperation of purpose and understanding of needs. A when you win, I win scenario. Like any relationship this doesn’t mean that it will always be equal in that you may choose to undertake certain tasks for which you will not seek remuneration. The point is that with an open channel of communication you will be able to adapt to changing needs including financial considerations, as opposed to reducing the relationship to one of dollars and sense.

People who pay me always have the right to tell me what to do. What can I say . . . YOU ARE NOT A DOORMAT!

The suggestion that you must somehow sacrifice your voice, especially if you provide expertise in an area that the client may not have is a valuable part of the relationship. As one senior executive from IBM once told me, “if the two of us agree on everything, then one of us is redundant.”

I am also not a big fan of the suggested pay to dictate undertone associated with “the right to tell me what to do” statement. This isn’t an episode of the Jetsons where Mr. Spacely can seemingly at a whim hire and fire George based on his performance relative to unrealistic assignments.

Yes I do believe that you have to deliberately seek working relationships with those individuals with whom their goals and values align with your talents and values. But true success is based on a win-win mutual respect relationship as opposed to a subservient one.

There were of course several points with which I did agree including the assertion that one has “never paid their dues!” I believe that this statement relates to steward leadership and that believing that you have paid your dues is actually reflective of an attitude of entitlement that destroys peoples brand and reputation.

The following are the remaining 9 beliefs in which Mr. Haden and I are in agreement.

The people around me are the people I chose. With the exception of family, where you can at least limit your interaction with those that are energy wasters, you do indeed have the ability to choose with whom you interact on both a business and personal basis. While I agree with the writer’s last statement that “Remarkable employees want to work for remarkable bosses,” and that “Successful people are naturally drawn to successful people,” when it comes to customers and co-workers absolute statements about choice take on an added dimension.

For example, what about customers and colleagues with whom you are asked to work? If they are difficult you can of course choose to quit your job, allow them to be a reason for your termination or just put them in the right perspective and not personalize the relationship. In my experience I have found to what should be no one’s surprise, how you treat people is typically how they treat you back. When you raise the bar in terms of being professional in your words and actions, they will have to know that you deserve to be treated well. In this regard it is all about how you speak with people, even in difficult situations.

This being said, you cannot enlighten the unconscious and you can’t make someone fix a problem that they do not believe exists. As a result, you have to know when to let it go (in the business world at least), and move on.

Failure is something I accomplish; it doesn’t just happen to me. I wholeheartedly agree in that my best lessons have been when I failed, or at best messed up.

The best way to view success is as an outcome of past failures as much as doing the right things at the right times. This is why I celebrate my failures as much as my successes, because I know I am wiser, better prepared and infused with energy to constantly improve and ultimately excel.

In this way, failures, challenges and set-backs are truly opportunities to learn and get better. After all, Colonel Sanders was refused 1,100 times before someone agreed to try his recipe for chicken, while venerable brands such as Disney and Hershey’s actually went bankrupt.

Experience is irrelevant. Accomplishments are everything. In the past I have talked extensively about the importance of focusing on accomplishments over affiliations (re; experience).

To be as succinct as possible, it is all about accomplishments.

A resume can play a role in terms of identifying what you have done that is measurable, and therefore open doors of opportunity for you. However, you can easily find yourself leaving as fast as you came in if you stand for nothing and fail to produce results. Or to put it another way, experience may get you the job, but results or accomplishments will enable you to keep the job.

The extra mile is a vast, unpopulated wasteland. This goes back to the “integrity of your work.”

Integrity, like trust is earned by actions, and there are going to be occasions where you will come to a point of service delivery that differentiates just being good enough from being great. In this context, going that extra mile is not based on effort but on your personal values and ethics. Do you believe that you did the best job that you are capable of doing?

Think of going the extra mile like the end of a 100 yard sprint in the Olympics. In almost every instance the athlete who finishes first is the one who stretches forward and crashes through the finish line often times beating the second place finisher by that extra push.

To truly succeed, you cannot stop short because you have satisfied the technical requirements of a contract or an assigned task. You have to push yourself to be the very best and give your very best to your company, boss, co-workers and customers. To me this is the true definition of going that extra mile.

I'm curious on how to best credentialize things like resilience and the extras in the extra mile.

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Heidemarie Vos

Book Author /published Chilli South Africa, Passion of a Foodie /commissioned work Taste the World a at Heidemarie Vos

9y

A lot of it has to do with common sense, which by the way has become the most uncommon. I do believe that having volunteer experience or having had a part time job whilst attending university, can give one a little bit more sense and can be counted as experience. In answer to Rosemary, companies want to pay the lowest salaries and get the highest return. Hence "new blood" will always get in before "old blood" is considered - because "old blood" has a track record and an attainment of salary standard who could probably do the job of 2-3 of the 'young blood". Makes no sense other than to the cheapness of the company. Never mind that the 'old blood" could train and teach the "new blood" .

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Albert Tan Peng Huat

Concept Designer at 12 Zodiac Premiums

9y

Without experience, you cannot tell where the mistakes lie and some mistakes are too costly for current graduates to undertake without experiencing trial and error

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Heidemarie Vos

Book Author /published Chilli South Africa, Passion of a Foodie /commissioned work Taste the World a at Heidemarie Vos

9y

Too true. it's a show and tell not a tell than I can show.

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