John Wooden: True to values = true success

John Wooden was an accomplished American basketball player and coach. He won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period.  At one point his teams had won a record 88 consecutive games. He was named national coach of the year six times.  However his greatest accomplishments live not in the pages of record books but in the lives of the players he coached and the people he touched.

If you have ten minutes, I would strongly recommend reading ESPN's tribute to John Wooden to get a glimpse into this man's life and impact.

Wooden defines success as:

"peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort do the best of which you're capable...And I don't think others can judge that.  I think it's like character and reputation.  Your reputation is what you are perceived to be; your character is what you really are."  

Principles didn't just guide John Wooden through life and coaching, they made up his character, and all his players knew that he had internalized the values he thought were most important to life.

Wooden's father gave him a "Seven Point Creed" upon graduating from grammar school.  Wooden carried it with him since.  He later went on to develop his pyramid of success which was the result of his own experiences, trials, successes, and failures.

What's important is not taking and applying Wooden's principles but taking the time this year to establish what success means to you.  From the time we start school to the workplace to our private lives, we often find ourselves conforming to what people expect or demand from us.  Yet ultimately, if we are to live a life without regret we need to determine what is most important to us and act in a way that reveals our priorities.

If you want an excellent article on this concept, head over and read Clayton Christensen's "How will you measure your life?"  Since when it was posted in July for the Harvard Business School class of 2011, this post remains consistently in the top five read articles week after week.

As another year approaches, let's not forget too quickly about the year that passed--and how we can use our own life lessons to make 2012 more personally meaningful and rewarding.

Application:
1.  Do you agree or disagree that there is a universal definition for success?
2.  How would you define success with a few short sentences?
3.  Are your current priorities (including the use of your free time) helping you achieve that definition of success?

Dan Pink: "Drive-The surprising truth about what motivates us"

I want to pose one question and present two ideas inspired from Dan Pink's presentation on what motivates us. 

Question: What structure exists in today's workplace to motivate job performance? 

If you're like me, much of what comes to mind are monetary incentives to do more, be more efficient, cut waste, etc.  Other rewards include personal identity--either with the work or with coworkers, a feeling of personal satisfaction from the nature of work, or a sense that one is contributing to society as a whole.


Most of us agree that such incentives either are too scarce or do not work very well.

1.  Pink reveals research showing that increasing monetary rewards resulted in better performance at mechanical tasks but WORSE performance when subjects were asked to perform even rudimentary cognitive tasks.  This test was repeated and the counter-intuitive results were reproduced in industrialized countries as well as developing nations like India suggesting basic tenets of workplace motivation transcend socioeconomic and cultural lines. 

2.  Instead he posits that we are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  As examples, he points to the widespread impact of organizations like Linux, Wikipedia, and Apache--organizations which are for the most part generated by people who contribute their time, talents, and energy without monetary reimbursement.  The rise of Mozilla, creators of popular web browser Firefox, is yet another example of highly skilled people with other jobs who decide to use their limited free time to serve a bigger purpose.

Whether that purpose is to challenge the existing status quo, or to be "disruptive..in the cause of making the world a better place," (Skype) or to "put a ding in the universe," (Steve Jobs), we find that we are all in search of something that makes us happy and feel like we are fulfilling some purpose. 

Application:
1.  What would you say that your purpose is in your current workplace?  Do you know what the organization's mission is?
2.  Regarding autonomy, mastery, and purpose, what is the easiest change you can implement at your workplace to be happier?
3.  What purpose do you think would motivate and give you energy this next year?