I don’t Lose. I Either Win Or Learn
The thoughts I’ve recorded here have all been inspired by the wise people I’ve met, books I’ve read, podcasts I’ve listened to, people I’m coaching and the insight they have given me. I thank them all of them for going deep to find their wisdom.
My goal is to match their generosity by sharing some brief ideas, quotes, as well as a recommendation each Friday for you to ponder.
The concepts are taken from years of daily journaling and in the moment note-taking in my Moleskine journal.
With every endeavour, any heartfelt effort, there comes a new ‘point of departure’.
Nelson Mandela said:
“I don’t lose. I either win or learn”.
Any sincere effort will pick you up somewhere, and leave you somewhere else.
As an artist, it’s the feeling that threatens to overwhelm when shaping-up to a canvas and all its expectations. The only defence from its intimidation is the brittle piece of charcoal in my hand and my monkey-mind imagination, with ambition and capability mostly miss-aligned.
I wonder about the compatibility of comfort and creativity, particularly when our inboxes fill with ways to short-cut, or ‘hack’ our way to superior outcomes with less effort.
While I’m all for efficiency when it comes to growth and learning, I cannot think of anything genuinely worthwhile that doesn’t push to a place of discomfort. But then, we also need some base level comfort as our platform for this endeavour, and from experience, this was the growth and belief that emanated from the last effort, which established a new “point of departure”.
No effort, no discomfort, and there is no growth, and our’ point of departure’ never changes. We stagnate.
Does effort guarantee success?
Of course not…”I don’t lose. I either win or learn”, said Mandella.
I like to mix novels into my reading routine. I am often surprised by the learning opportunity fiction provides, often complex and layered, and most likely outside of the intent of the writer.
I recently read the Trent Dalton’s debut novel ‘Boy Swallows Universe’, and loved it. Great ‘coming of age’ yarn, complex and vivid characters, and Australian suburban nostalgia, kind of Paul Kelly meets the Godfather.
One of the key relationships is the child Eli’s friendship with a family friend named Arthur “Slim” Halliday, a convicted murderer and prison escapee known as The Houdini of Boggo Road. As it turns out, “Slim” is an actual person, and the writer did have a childhood relationship (he was his babysitter!) with the Houdini of Boggo Road, so named because he escaped Boggo Road Prison in Queensland on two occasions.
In the book, Slim is explaining to Eli what is required to break out of jail, his “four factors to a clean escape”. They are:
Timing
Planning
Luck
Belief
These could well be the four factors required for any successful endeavour, but the process I have explained plays heavily into the final ingredient:
Belief
In this regard, I use a model I call ‘Something to BE’ as it relates to building capability.
The first of the ‘be’s’ is because…our current state. No judgement, “I/we are here because…”.
With the focus on goals and ambition, the next be for most people is beyond.
I am convinced we cannot go from because to beyond, without the most important be, belief.
The goal is to find belief, and this means going through a process known as “productive struggle”, sometimes described as the learners sweet-spot, or hard-fun, the place we discover how to apply grit, grind and think our way through, to build on our learning in the classic sigmoid curve, and find our “new point of departure”.
Once established, our new belief could well mean our beyond needs redefining. The bar can be reset, perhaps even higher than we imagined, buoyed by our recent growth.
As someone who has spent a lifetime attempting to predict the ‘beyond’ for young footballers, and having made many errors, I know the difference ‘belief’ makes. Lack of belief has reduced the most gifted and talented while amplifying the gritty and thoughtful battler, who manages to find a way.
So belief needs a plan, the second of Slim’s Four elements. I sense that the other two components, timing and luck, are far more likely to follow, as the cliche goes:
“The harder I work, the luckier I get”.
I always enjoy the opportunity to talk all things culture and high-performance, and the development of leaders to achieve it.
Here are a few of ways to start the ball rolling:
I like to share the ‘bruises’ of my lived leadership experiences as a 25 year CEO in the AFL with leaders as part of our Learning Leadership event for senior leaders. We have run this event for the past few years, and the feedback has been excellent. We have now transitioned the event online. There is no cost as we recognise that time allocated to learning is perhaps our most precious resource, and therefore we have also provided a number of dates from which to choose, please use this link.
Sign up for the “More to the Game” weekly email, and receive a copy of my “What business can learn from football” White Paper. The emails are short leadership reflections, no more than a couple of minutes to read and we will always treat our communication with respect. Please use this link.
Download my book “More to the Game”. In this publication, I have combined my writings and drawings with the beautiful imagery of Michael Willson, the premier AFL photographer. It is free to download (no sign-ups) at “More to the Game – What leaders can learn from football”
You can also contact me at cameron@designCEO.com.au and let me know how you think we can work together.
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