“Treat Triumph and Tragedy the Same… They Are Both Imposters.” Focusing on Winning and Losing Distract from Focusing on Great Performance by Tim J
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“Treat Triumph and Tragedy the Same… They are Both Imposters.” Focusing on Winning and Losing Distract from Focusing on Great Performance By Tim J. Murphy My daughter had the honor of serving on the “Old Masters” host committee while she attended Purdue University. This was an annual program where Purdue brought back to campus alumni who had achieved great success in their chosen field. As parents of committee members, my wife and I were invited to the event and were able to mix and mingle with the former alumni. I recall meeting the President of McDonald’s USA (who later became McDonald’s CEO), the Business Manager for the “Red Hot Chili Peppers,” (supposedly a big deal, but Fleetwood Mac or Steely Dan and I would have been impressed), and the then Chairman and CEO of UPS, by the name of Michael Eskew. Over a beer with Eskew, I asked him the very simple question. What advise could a guy like him, the CEO of an organization that at the time had over 400,000 employees worldwide, give to a guy like me, a manager in charge of a small little region in the Midwest with 150 employees? He simply said, “Treat triumph and tragedy the same, they are both imposters.” In his explanation he further explained that too many times people get focused on the end result. While keeping focus on the goals was important, simply executing and giving your best every day was more important. Markets change, and while they always won’t be great, they always won’t be bleak. But great managers must manage in both environments and unless you are managing to or beyond your potential daily, long term success will be tough. I thought his advice was pretty good and I placed in my personal “Leadership Lessons” for future filing. (Download Full Article) For years I credited Eskew for this wisdom, but I found out later that Rudyard Kipling had the following words in his poem “If.” “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same…,” Kipling wrote. He spoke of many “ifs” in that poem, all of which led to his final verse, “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and…which is more…you’ll be a man, my son!” Now I have never been a great follower of Kipling, nor any other poet for that matter. Eskew must have loved poetry! What we are talking about here is managing people to set goals, but not to become outcome focused. What’s worse are managers whose style is outcome focused. I’ve had my fair share of managers in my career who lived by the words, “I don’t care how you get there…just get there.” As many times as I’ve heard those words, they never did tend to motivate! Wouldn’t it be great if we were able to manage employees to gauge their success on their ability to deliver their very best…their performance versus their potential every day? Too many times we are guilty of coaching employees into believing that achieving or not achieving a parts fill goal is the measure of success. Too many times we put a market share target on a region or a territory as the gauge of success. I can think of many things outside of an employee’s control that affect parts fill or market share. In the scheme of things, would market share be something we would even be worried about if we knew that every employee was delivering to their respective department the very best of their potential every day! To that point, how many times have you seen a person or company focus on a yearly market share goal…achieve that goal…only to give it all up the next year? When I look at successful companies, I see companies who have their employees doing the little things right every time. These are the same companies who have conversations with those employees as to what is it they are trying to accomplish, and the role that each individual employee has in achieving the company goal…which is not market share…not parts fill…not service billing efficiency. No those are all tools that help us gauge whether we are on the right track of running a successful business. The goal that every company should have employees focused on is giving such great support and service that the customer wants to come back! Some would say that’s hard to measure. Not really, just go back and look at who bought from you in the past that is not buying from you anymore…and go ask them why? Customers are brutally honest. They will tell you. Vince Lombardi was arguable one of the greatest football coaches of all time. Sure, he is quoted as saying “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” But Lombardi didn’t measure his players on the number of wins or losses, or the number of NFL Championships. He measured them individually on whether they were putting forth the effort that they were capable of. I’d prefer to remember him for another one of his quotes…, “perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can achieve excellence!” If each employee in each department is focused on their respective department goal…and measures your company’s success on achieving that department goal, then I’m afraid you’ve fallen into the Triumph or Tragedy Trap. Conversely, if each departments goal was focused on providing the type of service that made it difficult for your customer to go elsewhere, then my bet is that is a very successful company. Some would say “nonsense, a shipper / receiver in the warehouse never sees a customer.” I would suggest whoever says that go sit down and talk with your shipper / receivers. Ask them about their job. Find out what frustrates them in their job. Ask them what gets in the way of allowing them to do their job better. Show them how what they do affects customer service. In my former career I did that. In fact, I role played every job in the equipment dealership from technician to accounts payable and I learned more about our business than I ever did pouring over financial statements and reports. What I learned from the shipper / receiver was all the “stuff that got in the way” of transitioning parts from truck to stock, to a waiting technician or to a customer waiting for a part. To the Parts Manager pouring over reports trying to find a way to increase parts fill…put down the reports and go out and talk to your shipper / receivers! To all managers, take a cue from old Vince. Let your teammates know how much they are valued. Let them know how much they mean to your customer’s success and to the success of your business. Finally, find out from them what you can do to help them be successful and you may never get to perfection…but you will get to excellence. I promise you, never again will you lose sleep chasing triumph or lamenting tragedy as it pertains to achieving your business goals. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tim J. Murphy spent 42 years in the construction and forestry equipment industry. He worked in for manufactures and distributors in senior leadership roles for Pioneer Machinery, Blount, Inc. and the US operations for Hawker Siddeley, Canada prior to joining Nortrax, Inc., a John Deere construction and forestry dealer. While at Nortrax, Tim was VP / General Manager for the Midwest Region for 13 years. He was promoted to President & CEO, where he served for 6 years leading their multiple US and Canadian operations. He retired in February 2019. Tim has been involved with multiple industry groups serving as an Executive Committee member of the Forestry Resources Association, and guest speaker for the Association of Equipment Distributor’s Young Executive Conference featuring his “Ten Leadership Lessons from the Real ‘World.” Feel free provide your comments to Tim at [email protected] or by phone at 715-829-5000..