Hey You,
In the Matters of You, Great or Right.
Recently I spent some time with some young people in business. . . They are incredibly bright and savvy. The kind of talent you would see leading a the founding the next silicon valley unicorn.
We had gone back and forth on a couple of unknowns in their business and it there were incredible business cases to be made for either side.
I realized in this moment how many times so many of us struggle in life and business with these challenges. . . It’s not a clear black and white decisions that can be easily seen, but the ones that are more gray in nature that we struggle with in a type of mental flip, flop, over and over back and forth.
The stalemate seemed to shut down the entire room, the frustration was palpable and I realized an incredible insight. We were obsessed with being right instead of great.
The fear of failure becomes paralyzing force in ourselves and in our culture. . . It’s almost like every move we make and mistakes could potentially be broadcast for the world to see. . . and in today’s time of social media maybe it could.
Here is the problem with this paralysis, in business alone Bryan Tracy used to say “fully 75% of the decisions you make will eventually be wrong”. . . and its the people that decide and move that see the real success.
Its like there is this universal force that rewards ” the decision to move fail, pivot and attack again” is the real formula for success and being right is really a formula of justifying the lack of action.
I think there is a basic choice. . . You can seek to be right, or you can seek to be great in business and in life. . . In business being right is fleeting. It’s a false moniker people seek because the media holds up these incredible personas of people who have made all the right decisions and ended up on top without seeing the ugly underbelly of all the mistakes they have made along the way.
As Ryan Holiday would say “The Obstacle is the Way”, we need to embrace the mistakes we will make for growth. Greatness “Embraces the Suck”, the challenges, the missed steps and the occasional mistakes.
Decide to be Great and let being “Right” come where it may.
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