“Live every day like it’s the last day of your life…” is bad advice, according to one comedian, who said that, in that case, “We’d all just be running around all day yelling ‘help me – help me – I’m going to die!’ ”
Yet the soul of that advice is to “go for it.” In the workplace, that means to me to set a high bar. What would it take for you to set the bar as high as you can in your professional life? How can we bypass the relatively wimpy goal of feeling “okay” or “satisfied” with an outcome, and go straight to whatever it would take to feeling delighted? Do we even know how to feel delighted in our work? Do we even feel we have the right to be delighted? If the word “delight” turns you off, you can substitute it in your mind as you read ahead with “knocking the f**ing cover off the ball” or being “over the moon…”
Aiming high, it seems, is a lost art these days. We live in fear of setting unreasonable goals, and we were taught to under promise and over deliver. So we begin ten steps back from the starting line. We talk a lot about goal setting, about reaching those goals we set for ourselves and then setting new ones so that we don’t grow tired, old, or stale, but we are setting our sights too low, and getting exactly what we aimed for, in many cases.
While not the same for everyone, professional delight is a key factor in organizational success. Leaders who promote it give their firms an edge in the current results-or-else environment. That is because their employees and co-workers are energized by higher-energy goals; they feel it in their guts – and not just their paychecks – when they reach a goal. The sense of setting and achieving an extraordinary goal, like success, is inherently addictive!
Let's think about questions that include delight, and thereby set the bar higher?
“What would my job / career look like were I to be literally thrilled with where I am six months from now?”
“If we were amazed and thrilled with the new product, how would we measure that success? What would need to be true at product launch?”
“What would this project need to deliver for our clients and ourselves to be over-the-moon delighted with the results?”
“What would this company look like at this time next year for the board and our investors to feel that we, the leadership team, have literally hit the f**ing ball out of the park?!”
These questions raise the level of energy in the room! They get people signed on, and participating. They help us imagine a future greater, by a lot, than the present. But more tactically, the answers provide solutions that are actionable.
Now contrast those questions to the typical one: “What are our conditions of satisfaction on this project.” Zzzzzz. It makes me want to yawn and check my Crackberry.
When we add “delight” into the mix, we are then able to make choices that lead to greater balance and meaning for individuals and the organization. Recognizing the importance of setting the bar high creates both better results in the short-term and an enterprise that can sustain superior outcomes well into the future.
The “Set the Bar High” Edge is not just another cute phrase; it is a valuable approach to setting and attaining extraordinary results in a world where goals can quickly become meaningless and rewards ephemeral. Give your organization the edge; set the bar for yourself and others to the greatest future you can imagine, and imagine how to build!
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