I just recently started listening to the new podcast “How Leaders Lead with David Novak,” and this past week’s guest was Tom Brady. Now I’m a Patriots fan and I’m not at all ashamed of this. I honestly believe the Patriots are the best sports franchise in history for being able to achieve what they did (six championships) in the short time they accomplished it. Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about football; I’m not going to regale you with stories of what our house was like when the Pats were down 28-3 in the Super Bowl against the Falcons, or what it was like when they came back to win that particular game.
Now that this guy doesn’t play for my team anymore, I will willingly admit that he’s not super likable. Who sits like that?! And what is that rug?!
But man… can he win football games.
Instead of talking about football, Novak was questioning Brady about his leadership style. And while we can have an argument about Brady’s place in history, every quarterback is a leader on their team – I think that much is indisputable for anyone who watches football. In fact, we often talk in the office about who is “going to quarterback” a project – meaning they will be leading the effort. Brady talked a lot about how he leads by example – which I believe is probably true insofar as he is known for being relentless on the team – showing up early, putting in extra reps, watching hours upon hours of video, and structuring his whole life around football excellence.
I was listening with the same interest I usually listen to a podcast with as I was grinding out my hour of exercise on the bike, when Brady said something that hit me as extraordinarily important for all of us – whether we’re leading or not. “Are you acting on your priorities? Everybody wants to win, and the question is: ‘if winning is the goal, do your actions match your priorities?’”
I had to hop off the bike for a second to write it down, because I feel like this is exactly the kind of simple thing that almost everyone loses sight of continuously. In IT, we can define “winning” in an almost endless assortment of ways. After all, an IT career with so many different avenues, specialties and interests bears only so much resemblance to professional football. Still, while we may not be playing on the gridiron, each of us have goals that we want to hit or priorities we say we have. However, much like an aspiring athlete that doesn’t train hard enough when off the field, we often act in ways both in and out of the office that aren’t conducive to hitting those goals. In other words, we set a goal to achieve something, and we may even come up with a plan to get there - but then we don’t follow-through.
As a hypothetical example to illustrate my point, let’s consider a desktop support technician that wants to make the leap to being a network engineer. They write on their self-evaluation that they want to get into networking and are looking for openings in that team. They hold an informational interview with the team lead of the routing group, and realize that there’s a need for someone with better wireless skills. And then… they go home and play on their Xbox instead of studying for a CCNA exam. Or maybe a ticket comes across that could offer an opportunity to work directly with a wireless engineer, and they transfer it off to someone else because it’s on the other side of the city at Site B. Do you see the disconnect? Their actions don’t ultimately lead to the goal they set for themselves.
There are an endless array of examples of this, and I can list a few from things I’ve seen around me. For instance: how likely is success for someone who wants to become a cloud expert but spends all of their time exploring different server hardware? Probably not very likely. The same is true for someone who wants to manage a team but never enrolls in a management training seminar – they didn’t put in the reps to achieve the goal. I’ve seen all of these examples and the thing they have in common is that the actions are not aligned with the desired outcome.
Don’t just plan what your goals are,
Plan what actions will help you hit them, and do those things
Now, before this sounds like I’m trying to call anyone out and shame them for doing any of these things, I need to state for the record that I am personally guilty of this myself on multiple occasions. I am certainly not placing blame on anyone for falling into this trap. It’s easy to slip. It took me a few years to get my first VMware certification because I kept spending my time working in Microsoft technologies – I wasn’t aligning my actions with my goals. I think this is something that we all need to be acutely aware of; we may not be executing in line with our goals – so make sure you stay focused.
The opposite is also true. If your actions are in sync with your goals, you’re far more likely to hit them. In my incredibly unscientific examination of people who have been very successful in whatever field they are in, their actions are always aligned with their goals. If they want to be the most successful investment banker in the world, they are constantly consuming, processing, and acting on investment information. If they want to be the best quarterback of all time they put in the reps and focus on doing each one to the very best of their ability. If they want to become an internationally renowned IT expert, they toil relentlessly in the lab and share what they’ve learned by blogging and they start speaking at VMUGs in their local area.
Simply stated: if you want to hit your goals, then your actions need to be aligned to those goals. Don’t leave anything on the table and don’t waste your time doing things that don’t lead you on that path. Find out what you need to do to get you towards your goals and then start doing those things.
Here’s the best part: there’s nothing at all stopping you from putting this in gear right away. New Years’ resolutions are a joke, so don’t wait for them. I don’t believe in January 1 having any magic power for you to start walking down a path towards your dreams because it’s an arbitrary date. Every day is a day you can start to attack your goals. Every day is a day that you can get out and learn Kubernetes, if that’s what you want to do. Every day is a day that you can go to bed a little closer to your goals than when you woke up. You can start putting in the reps tomorrow. Screw that, you can start putting in the reps today – right now – to move yourself towards your objectives.
You probably already know what the next steps are towards where you want to be. The only question is if you’re going to start working towards your goals intentionally with focused effort, or if you’re going to sit on the sidelines and watch others head that way and then wish you were them. Sadly though, the joke is on you if you want to watch. Unlike football, they don’t sell tickets so you can watch an IT career from the stands.
Some questions for reflection:
What goals do you have? Can you pick one to focus on?
What activities can you do to move you towards that goal? Are you doing them consistently, intentionally and with focus?
What activities or behaviors are you doing that are hindering progress towards your goals, or are taking up time that you could be using to achieve them?
