Dennis Moseley-Williams

Earlier in the NHL season the hockey writers were asking Paul MacLean, the new head coach of the Ottawa Senators why the team was playing so well, and what his coaching philosophy was.

My beloved Sens were picked by all the hockey writers to finish dead last, they lost in game 7 of the first round to the New York Rangers – it was a good season for the boys, and I thank them for the effort.

Coach MacLean said something so brilliant that I scribbled it down, and since then I have been waiting for the inspiration to use it.

He said that rather than trying to win the game, they just try to win each shift.  Each line is on the ice for a shift that lasts about 30 seconds, and then they change lines. Just win the face off, don’t worry about the final score.

Win the race to the puck. Win the next 20 seconds of the power play, or the penalty kill.

Essentially what Coach MacLean did was break the ultimate goal of winning the game down into measurable, achievable steps.

It’s so simple it’s brilliant. Just keep winning little battles, and if you win enough of them you should win the game.

How do you break down your success as an entrepreneur?

I know a lot of incredibly successful entrepreneurs, and I know a lot of other people who want to be successful entrepreneurs but they mostly just talk about their ideas. Those who are incredibly successful keep score. They track progress. They win their shifts, and their own race to the puck.

Learning to keep score is part of achieving The Great Leap Forward. There should be some internal tension or pressure that you feel, an invisible force that is pulling you from where you are to where you want to be.

You might read “tension” and think that you don’t want to feel that, but you are mistaken. You are going to feel tension; the question is what tension do you want to feel? The tension from measuring your progress, or the tension that you feel when you can’t say for sure just how well you are actually doing? It’s your choice.

Keeping score helps to ensure that you are actually getting closer to your achievement. So much of your success is going to be a direct result of what happens inside your own head.

When you get on a roll, you are eager to get to work, to win the shift, to make the call, to finish the proposal, to reach out to another decision maker and move everything along.

When you don’t keep score, then everything is just an idea, and when the achievement of goals is spoken of, it’s in vague terms “So I will probably pick up a client there, do some consulting here …” Or my personal favorite “I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire.” I don’t even know what that means.

When you are unclear, it becomes a little too easy to sit back and wait. You can get afraid to find out the score – to admit that your irons in the fire are just conversations and nothing more.

Here at DMWSC, we keep score on everything. We started the year by laying out our goals for various initiatives. For example, how many days of speaking will Dennis do? How many private consulting clients will we bring on? How many workshops will we host this year? How many new corporate relationships will we engage in this year?

We have our score card meeting once a week – because of my travel the day may change, but we try to have it weekly. I have learned to love it.

When you are an entrepreneur, you learn to trust the magic, or your gut feeling, or yourself. I would be willing to bet that one of the most commonly muttered phrases by an entrepreneur is “It’ll work out.” I know that Seth Godin made me realize that it was not only acceptable to not have a Plan B; it was detrimental to have a Plan B.

“It’ll work out.” And sometimes it does.

However, when you keep score, it always does. You see that you have booked 66% of your speaking goal, and you are 50% through the year. Or that in Q1 you didn’t bring on as many Private Consulting clients, but you can also measure that when you a adjusted your process, you brought on a bunch, so you can then track that through Q2. If you are unhappy with the results, you can identify a constraint and tweak your process, it isn’t even a big deal.

You might realize that you are not achieving your goal – which the distance between you and your desire is increasing not decreasing, and you risk falling into the gulf between you and your goals.

So what? Get a new goal.

You know you can do that right? Scrap it. Start over. Admitting that “this idea isn’t going to work” isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing. Spending time, money, and energy on bad ideas that you haven’t figured out are bad ideas is a crime. You are robbing from yourself and those you care for, and are responsible for.

Begin, as we all do by dreaming and creating an inspiring vision of success.

Then get real.

Get some targets written down.

What has to happen, right now, to move the ball down the field a little?

Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Mary is my friend, and I love her. Mary is a big part of my life, and to this day I think of Mary and some of my other friends from another time in my life every single day. That’s the truth, and I just wanted to say it.

The other day I was emailing with Mary, at one time I worked for her, then we worked together, then she worked really hard to get me to be her boss. It never worked out and I regret that to this day. What could have been and all of that.

Mary is unhappy because her career isn’t winding down the way she would like. She feels like she isn’t appreciated, isn’t understood, and works for people who just don’t get it. The details are irrelevant, I know Mary, and I know her organization and I know Mary is right.

So after a career of more than 25 years she is walking away a little wounded. For more than 20 years she has put her entire life into her job – truly there will be a lot of people, including myself, who will wonder how anything can happen without Mary. I suspect that Mary’s departure will usher in a new era; it will be too different for too many of us.

After thinking about it a little, I sent Mary an email with the following points and it occurred to me that this might help one of you so I am posting it.

Why Managers/CEOs/Presidents and Directors have to be the very best.

On a scale of 1-10 where 10 is best, a “person of authority” who is a 7 or 8 out of 10 will never hire a 9 or a 10. A 7 or 8 will most often hire a 6 or a 7 whereas 9s or 10s hire other 9s and 10s. This is why the very top officer of any organization has to be more than incredible, they have to be inspiring. Or as a friend of mine once said so poetically “They have to make you want to stand a little taller on the dock.”

Before we go too far, let me make an important point. A 7 or 8 out of 10 can be a fantastic person and employee. Fantastic. They can be #1 in their company for sales, or patients served, or on client satisfaction surveys. They can be everyone’s favorite person. A 7 or 8 can be a cabinet minister, but they can’t be Prime Minister. A 7 or 8 could be the best teacher the school has ever had, but that doesn’t make them a good Principal.

This is why there are fewer leaders than followers – because leaders are special.

The top job has to be a 9 or a 10 or your enterprise will suffer for it – sometimes for years and years until you get a new person at the top. Often when you hire the wrong leader, they alienate a lot of people and potential along the way, so getting it right is truly a critical decision.

The boss doesn’t have to know as much as anyone else – they have to be able to bring out the best in everyone else.

7s and 8s hire 6s and 7s for a number of reasons, and sometimes for all of these reasons. They hire less talented people so that they look good. They hire less talented people because they will not feel as threatened. Less talented people don’t have as many ideas, and their ambition is easier to manage.

A less talented manager who inherits a successful team will likely alienate the talent, and bring in their own people. Mangers who are 7s or 8s will dismantle success and put back together a worse system, but a system that doesn’t’ threaten them. Less talented managers like to have doers, not thinkers/askers/or seekers.

Leadership is about bringing out the most of all of your assets.

The CEO of an accounting firm doesn’t have to know as much about accounting as the most junior accountant – She just has to know how to get the most junior accountant to feel passionate about their job.

I have to give credit to both Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin for helping me understand this. Lousy Managers get hired because they have impressive resumes. Resumes tell people what your experience is, it doesn’t tell anyone anything about what kind of leader you are. In my opinion, resumes tell me what you CAN’T do.

When I want to hire someone, I ask to see something they have done. I want to see their work. I want to see a project they did, and I want to see that it is still working. I look for constant action with no breaks. I want to see a busy mind and a busy person. A red flag for me would be periods of idleness where the candidate didn’t produce anything. “So what did you do from 2009 until now?” would be a red-flag question.

Winners don’t sit idle. They are always doing something. Trying new things, tackling new challenges, swinging for the fences.

I want to talk to people who worked with you; I want to hear what they have to say about you. I especially want to hear that you are a good listener. I want to know that you understand this golden rule: Seek first to understand, before being understood.

I want people to tell me that things will not be the same without you. I want people to say things like “We could never have got that done without her.” I want to hear that you bring people together, that you are a team player and a delegator.

So what do you do if you work for a 7 or an 8 and you are a 9 or a 10?

First, detach. Accept that the only thing that is important is the contribution you have made, and understand why you made the contribution. It wasn’t for the 7 or 8 guy, it wasn’t because it was your job, it was because you really wanted to do it.

Then, get out before you get bell curved.

Get our before your spirit gets crushed.

Go lead and others will follow you.
Isn’t that the real issue? It’s not that you work for a 7 or an 8, its that you are a 9 or a 10.

9s or 10s are in short supply.

My daughter has been taking ski lessons. I had Ella on skis last year when she was only three, and this past Sunday we had a major breakthrough, Ella can now do The Pizza Slice, she can turn and stop. It’s all downhill from here!

Of course the goal hasn’t been to teach Ella to ski – the goal has always been to get Ella to LOVE skiing, ideally with me. The instructor’s job is to teach the mechanics, my job is to teach Ella how fun it is to be with me, to be outside, to exercise and explore and get into the wild woods. This has always been my purpose.

What I have to do has nothing to do with skiing and everything to do with French fries (Freedom Fries … Je me souviens.) and anything chocolate.

My goal is to have meaningful conversations with my daughter on the lift.

I want us both to want to get up and rip first tracks before the herd shows up. None of that has anything to do with me teaching her how to ski – I’m going to leave that to the professionals.

However an appreciation of the joy of it all – that’s my gig right there. The wonder. The hoar frost. The light. The sound. The poetry of movement. The adrenaline. The complexity and technical aspect of the truly gnarly, and then eventually the coldest best beer in the world served with ski boots on, the hot tub, the French restaurant and then of course the will to do it all again.

Too many entrepreneurs are trying to sell more, or move more, or cut more, or in some way get more when they should be thinking of giving more. Too many entrepreneurs want more people to talk to when they should listen more to the people they know.

You’re looking for answers? How about some questions …

What business are you really in? What are you trying to accomplish? Who should you get to help you? What isn’t getting done that you should do? What do your preferred clients want, and what do you presently deliver to them? What are you doing now that makes you different and truly unique?

If you will indulge me a little personal story. A week ago I went skiing with some friends and on our way home we stopped in at Le Chateau Montebello, a famous hotel that is near Ottawa.

I have been really lucky in my life, I have stayed at most and maybe all of the nicest hotels in North America, some of them several times, but Le Chateau Montebello is the only hotel that literally stopped me in my tracks in absolute wonder. Check out this photo of the lobby.

Wonder is powerful – it makes you stop, and take notice. Wonder transforms the ordinary to the extraordinary. Wonder makes anything stand out and wonder is so rare that it is refreshing. The care that someone takes to create this experience tells us more about the business and the people running it than anything else does.

A sense of wonder makes us feel good about ourselves. When I was standing there in that hotel I honestly felt blessed. I really did, I said to my friends “Can you believe this place, who are we anyway?” They all felt the same way. We were transformed by the experience.

Creating this experience requires courage – it’s so easy to do what everyone else does and leave wonder to the artists, or the film directors or the musicians or the hotel decorators but we shouldn’t feel that way.

When you think that way you sell yourself and your clients short.

Think again. You are a wonder.

Stop thinking of what you do for money as a job or career think of it as your craft – your life’s work, your art. Your business is your craft, and the experience you deliver is your art.