Wrestle With Wreality

“I’m in favor of leaving the status quo the way it is.”

Yogi Berra

“The world belongs to the discontented.”

Oscar Wilde

I’ve Been Thinking. . . about the challenge and conflict these two divergent points of view creates.

I’m reflecting on a first class annual meeting I attended with a company who is a business partner.  Reflecting on the dozen years of their existence, Jeff displayed a power point slide that said, “If we had then what we have now, think what we could have done.”

“True,” I thought to myself, “But, just think what you would be (or not be) had you not capitalized on what little you had.”

This successful company took seriously their Anybody. . . Anywhere. . . Anytime. . .  approach to serving their customers.  Theirs was an unconventional strategy to become best-in-class and a leader in their industry.

Doing what everyone else is doing like everyone else is doing it might be comfortable but it’s certainly not the fast track to setting yourself apart.  Famed investor Howard Marks pointed this out in his book entitled, The Most Important Thing:  Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor.  Marks said, “Unconventionality is required for superior investment results, especially in asset allocation.”

Wow.  Let’s modify that a bit to fit any business scenario.  Unconventionality is required for superior performance.  Marks continued, “You can’t do the same things others do and expect to outperform.  Unconventionality shouldn’t be a goal in itself, but rather a way of thinking.”

Unconventional attitudes and thinking precede the potential for prolonged outstanding favorable outcomes.  Conventional practices definitely have their place.  Striving for the proper mix of conventional and unconventional behavior is a challenging recipe for success.

Inevitably, every leader has to find a way to rise above the pull of operating status quo, and the predictable misery that can result.  Any team proclaiming victory certainly emerged in some way from conventional thinking to become discontented and curious to experience what else might be out there.

Their Wrestle with Wreality prompted them to refocus.  On what? 

Write off all excuses for failure.

Wrap your arms around worthwhile awesome aspirations.
Wrinkle the status quo by writing a fresh future.
Welcome a Wondrous focus on what ‘could be’.
Wholeheartedly embrace perpetual reinvention.
“WoW” is the new minimum standard. 
Wreck contagious, complacent attitudes with a World class sense of urgency.
Widen the probabilities by opening the Window of possibilities.
Wittingly Wage War on anything that stymies that momentum.
Embrace a Woeful disregard for the Way it has always been done.
Passionately set the Wheels in motion to Widen your view of What could be.

If you want to produce unconventional results, you must Wrestle With Wreality.  Review the “W” list.  Forget what it is.  Think about what could be.  Where do you need to start to make exciting things happen in a new way?

Think what you could do with what you have if your attitude about what you have was unconventional . . .

“The more successful a company, the flatter its forgetting curve.”

Gary Hamel & C.K. Prahalad

What’s the deal with all the “W’s”?  Just call it unconventional.