For the past 15 years I have made the sole purpose of my awake time to be as productive and competent as possible, to keep pushing towards my goals one inch at a time. Although I must emphasize the “as possible”, the commitment and constant trying is there.
And then something gets off of my radar and I realize I f**ked up somewhere.
One of the things that the management life has taught me is to find acceptance in relative failure, simply because one can’t control everything, make everyone equally happy or because you’re simply juggling too many balls and some are always going to drop. Having said this, the only way to accept those failures is the solace of having given it your best and learn from it. Now, this doesn’t always happen and it’s very tempting to drop the guard from time to time, specially if you are a solo entrepreneur or if you have a certain amount of freedom to manage whatever you are managing.
One trick I use consistently to have myself in check before someone else does, thus preventing that dreadful moment of “how the hell did I not see this? I should have done better”, is to perform some theater-like reenactment (minus the drama) where I have a business of “whatever I am doing” and an external Auditor or Coach is brought to assess what can be improved or mentor something into shape. Basically, someone is onboarded with the sole purpose of calling your BS.
Some people say that if you can’t make a decision one should flip a coin, and by doing so, we immediately discover which side we hope it to drop on. This is exactly the same scenario. Once in this subtle but really different mindset, one immediately know which things we hope the Auditor doesn’t find, or even start to plan excuses for findings A B and C. These areas are exactly the areas we know are being neglected and are embarrassed by it.
Andy Grove talks about something similar in High Output Management — the idea that the best form of quality control is not external audits, it’s building the inspection into the process itself. The difference here is that you are both the factory and the inspector, which honestly makes it harder but also a lot more honest.
Having found those, and driven by some personal embarrassment, the work starts.
Follow up
We tend to make silent and unconscious excuses that quiet our critical voices until these are voiced by somebody else. This very simple exercise creates that someone else that can point fingers to anything you also know you could be doing better.
Failing at something we haven’t understood how to do or simply have no skills to Ace is part of the personal growth process. This is welcomed. This is fine.
Failing to solve things we know and can solve, is neglect. This is not welcomed. This is very much not fine.