Winning on the Uphills
You’re sick. You’re tired. You came in to work and find that the hard drive on your computer is fried (and you don’t have a backup). Your voicemail is overflowing, including a complaint from one of your most profitable customers. And to top it all off you got in a fender bender on your way out to lunch.
Sometimes life is like riding a bike up a steep hill—very difficult. Using this analogy, business blogger Seth Godin gives us encouragement for those kinds of days:
Interesting business lesson learned on a bicycle: it’s very difficult to improve your performance on the downhills.
I used to dread the uphill parts of my ride…Now, I look forward to the uphill parts, because that’s where the work is, the fun is, the improvement is. On the uphills, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety.
Check this next part out…it’s very instructive:
The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn’t just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn’t work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you’re hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy.
Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn’t.
Thank you Seth for the good reminder.
Application Action: Take a sticky note or index card and write on it, “I win on the uphills!” Put this in a place where you will see it often (i.e. on your computer screen, dashboard, etc.). It is amazing what a little trick like this can do to align your focus.
Read the whole post.
