On every team I lead, inevitably we will do an activity early in our time together where we go through a principles exercise. These are the 5 things that if we follow, success is inevitable. This process takes about two months to do a few exercises, draft the first set of five principles, live them, share lessons learned, refine them, and then roll them out. While this can sound like a lot on top of your “day job”, I will say it has been a miracle worker in every team I’ve led.
Principles help us make decisions by asking, “If we were living by our principles, what is the answer?” It helps with culture by establishing norms and how we work together. And it aligns the organization to work more efficiently by having principles that they can use to empower their own decisions. I’d ask – what is a better use of time?
In several of my last teams, one of our principles centered around enjoying everything we do. The point of this principle is that when you are enjoying your work, you are more creative, the connections you have with your teammates is higher, and likely the work your are doing feels meaningful and aiding in overall success. It isn’t about telling more jokes, or having another happy hour. (Though those things are important and have their place). It is about every single person on the team really thinking about if they are enjoying this meeting or that project. And if they aren’t — likely others aren’t either — so call it out, and then work with your teammates to fix it!
At some point this principle got nicknamed #10%. It came from a question I kept asking the team every time they would say they didn’t feel enjoyment in some part of work. I would ask, “what would it take to enjoy this 10% more right now?” This would often help them realize, they don’t have to do big things, just take the next step, make it 10% more enjoyable right now. If you do that over a few times, you’ve got a pretty great way of working!
Fast forward to life outside of work — my oldest is in 6th grade and he’s gone out for track. He’s a natural athlete – good at every sport he tries. Well, except for basketball. As a sixth grader, he’s mostly competing against junior high boys in all of his events. And he’s doing great! He’s won the 800m, run a 6:20 in the 1600, jumped almost 12 feet in the long jump. He’s awesome.
I show up at these track meets trying to coach him on what to eat – “Ummm potato chips aren’t a great in between race food. How about an orange?” Trying to coach him on what are the right set of events to capitalize on his strengths, and give him good recovery time between races. And cheering him on with an intensity that wants him to win. For him of course!
And the child keeps eating potato chips. And beef jerky. And ham. And york peppermint patties. And when he knows I’m looking, he eats that orange too!
He signs up for about every event he can. The last meet was the 4x100m relay, the 100m, 400m, 800m, 1600m, discus, and long jump. Holy wow! He’s working towards a decathlon and doing it in a 2 hour track meet as a 12 year old!
I was feeling myself getting ready to try to manage the situation again at the last track meet and I caught myself and just watched him for an hour.
He ran his races. Not always winning, but always smiling. And when he finished his race, he stood at the finish line yelling with whatever air he had left to cheer on his mates. Once his race was over, he wasn’t focused on finding a spot to stretch or recover… he was running across the track to find his mates to either hang out together in the sunshine or to cheer them on in one of their field events. Always happy. Doing everything with #10% or more.
And he’s having plenty of success, and teaching his mom that 1st place isn’t the only way you win in life.
Jaime Waydo 