A colleague stopped me the other day after a meeting. She was worried about her son, still in elementary school. He’s competitive, and that has many benefits in the world in which he’s being raised.

Still, she thinks he may be becoming too competitive for his own good.

“He’s starting to be afraid to try new things,” she explained.

“He can’t stand to lose. He thinks that if he doesn’t try something new, but stays with what he knows, he’s far less likely to lose,”  she added.

Are you afraid to try new things because you can’t stand to lose?

Are you afraid of being a learner again? On the way to mastery of any skill, there’s always some uncertainty, experimentation, and failure that goes along with eventual success.

Is it possible that you’re too competitive for your own good?

You may actually be handicapping yourself, if you restrict yourself only to activities you can win.

If so, may be missing a lot of good experiences and great people.

And you may never uncover some of your greatest strengths, talents you never found you had because you chose the safe, known road rather than venturing beyond it.

Is it possible that you create unnecessary stress and competition in situations where it has no real value…to you or anyone else?

If you’re too afraid to try something new, you could soon be frozen in place (or frozen out of it), unable to adapt and change at the same pace as the rest of the workplace and world.

Don’t lose the race you’re trying to win by being afraid to try.

The skill it would be useful to master is learning how to learn well…and then knowing how to turn learning into valued results.

Here are some of the other things I advised my friend, the mother of the little boy who knows how to win, but is quickly becoming afraid to try:

- Applaud initiative, including good attempts and steady progress.

- Reward learning experiments.

- Encourage activities and learning where there is no clear winner.

- Look for ways to take competitiveness out of circumstances where it has no value, or may be a detriment to the desired experience or skill development.

Let the learner plan and dictate his or her learning path.

Reward the learning process.

Skills of the future include having the ability and initiative to direct one’s own learning  effectively, the ability to discern and gather high-quality information, the ability to synthesize much information, high quality decision-making and action taking.

Don’t handicap yourself by putting competition in places where competition doesn’t belong.

Ask yourself the next time you think your competitiveness maybe making things worse:

- What’s the point of competition here?

- Is competitiveness adding to the overall experience or taking away from it? How is it affecting the other people who are involved in the experience, in addition to me?

If you think you may be too competitive for your own good, try this test:

Let someone else be first in line once in a while.

You’ll survive the experience. And believe it or not, you may even find you enjoy it even more from that spot.

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Many companies struggle as they try to keep everyone focused and on the same page.

This is even more of a problem during times of great stress, growth, or other types of major change.

One tool you can use to overcome this not-on-the-same-page problem is to create a brief summary of your company, a Company Overview.

This brief overview of the company can help create a more consistent and higher quality experience for customers as they interact with people at your company.

It can also increase employees’ understanding and pride in the company they work for. The Company Profile can also be an important tool to managers and employees to discuss the value of employees’ work in creating company success.

As you create the Company Overview, you may discover strengths you hadn’t fully recognized or appreciated. You’re also likely to see areas where the company can improve.

If you’re thinking about creating a Company Overview for your organization, plan to gather and include information such as the following:

Who We Are and Why We Exist

- What is your company’s purpose, or the primary reason it exists?
- What is are you trying to accomplish, and for whom?
- What is your company’s vision of the future it is trying to create for itself?
- What is your company culture?
- What are your company values, or guiding principles and behaviors?
- What are your organization’s core competencies, or primary strengths? How do they relate to being able to fulfill your mission?

Our Customers and What They Want From Us

- Who are your primary customer segments? What do they need and expect from you?
- What are the main products and services you offer customers?
- How do you provide your products and services to customers?
- How do you provide customer support to customers who need it?
- How do you use feedback from customers to continually improve your products, services and support?

Our Company and Its Competitors

- What is your competitive position in your market?
- Who are your primary competitors now?
- What are the principal factors that drive success for your company, compared to its competitors?
- What are the major changes that affect your competitive position?

Our Resources and Governance

- What are the primary groups of employees in your company?
- What are the primary motivators that draw each group to your organization, and engage them in supporting your mission?
- Where the key benefits you provide employees?
- What are your main facilities, technologies and equipment?
- What is the regulatory environment under which your company operates?
- Are there any occupational health and safety regulations that govern your company?
- Are there certification or registration requirements, industry standards, environmental, financial, and product regulations with which you must comply?
- What is your organizational structure and governance system? What are the primary reporting relationships between your senior leadership, board, and parent organization, if you have one?

Who We Work With

- What are your key types of suppliers, partners, and other collaborators?
- What role does each of these groups play in your company’s success?
- What are the primary ways you communicate with customers, suppliers, and other key stakeholders?

Our Challenges and Strengths

- What are the primary challenges and advantages your company has now?
- How do you monitor and improve performance at your company?
- What are your key business, operational and human resource challenges and advantages?
- What are the key challenges and advantages for your company with respect to organizational sustainability?
- How do you monitor, manage and improve your company and its products and services?

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Could your company use a glossary?

“That’s ridiculous!” you reply?

You might be surprised.

As a consultant, I must go into a company and quickly learn as much as I can in order to come up to speed rapidly on foundation knowledge.

More often than you might guess, as I’m going through the rapid-cycle learning process as I begin a project with a new company, I’ve found that employees don’t know, or don’t agree on the meaning of some of the company’s most-used terms and acronyms.

Consider these examples:

For one project I had one day to “crash learn” as much as I could about the basic technology and terms involved in a major process. I was leaving the next day for a three-day offsite where I was helping the client company finalize a cross-company product delivery process.

To learn as much as possible, and as rapidly as I could, I dove right into all available information about key terms, processes, roles, responsibilities and other knowledge that was important to have for the process design and improvement work to be successful.

Eventually, I’d gone as far as I could in the process of learning on my own. I needed to clarify some things and met with a few people to close the gaps in my understanding.

I asked one manager fairly high up in the organization what one key acronym meant.

She admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that she didn’t know.

And the tough thing was, she was outside of what might be considered, unofficially, as the “statute of limitations” on when she could safely admit she needed to learn some of basic information at the company, too. I could ask the question she needed to because I was clearly in learning mode. She was supposed to have “graduated” it already.

At some point, it’s somehow assumed that people know what they need to know to do their jobs.

But if they don’t, and they’re afraid to ask, where do they go?

And who asks the question of the employees who work for them (and makes it safe for them to answer it honestly), “What do you need to learn, or know, that you don’t, to be successful in this job?”

In a second example, I was helping to create onboarding tools for a rapidly growing company.

The learning processes and tools I was helping the client company create were designed to help the cross-functional teams get established quickly and consistently, and start performing well together as quickly as possible.

We were editing a final draft of one product in the set of team tools.

In a meeting with two fairly senior people in the group, we discovered that each thought a key acronym meant something different.

They realized that many people in the organization were using the same acronym to mean different ways, and that it may have been just one of many miscues in a job and role that required excellent communication.

Is it possible this is happening at your company?

Eliminate the primary causes for miscommunication wherever you can.

One easy place to start is to make sure is to make sure that commonly used acronyms and terms are consistently defined.

In addition, make sure that other foundation knowledge that it’s important for employees to have is readily available. At a minimum, this is important to have when new employees join the company, or move to new jobs inside the company and need to get up to speed quickly and consistently.

Here’s how you can make your own glossary:

1. Make a list of key terms and acronyms.
2. Assign a person to complete the glossary by gathering and writing the definitions for the terms.
3. Ask a few people to review the glossary, noting additions or changes that they think need to be made to it.
4. Refine the glossary, reconciling any differences of opinion about what terms or acronyms mean.
5. Post the glossary on your website in a place where it will be easy to access and use.
6. Include contact information for anyone who needs to get more information about any of the terms, or to contribute new terms to the glossary.

In the process of creating and publishing the glossary, you may find other information you need to share, or to train people on.

Do everything you can to ensure that communication is clear and effective for the people working in your company. It can make a far bigger difference in effectiveness and business results than you expect.

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Delegating is no big deal. And giving good directions to others is a “piece of cake.”

Is that what you think?

Recall a time when you were assigned a new job or task, and the person making the assignment had:

- High standards
- A tight timeline before the work had to be complete
- Little or no time for you to ask questions of them, once the task was assigned to you so you were completely dependent on the instructions and resources they provided you

Now, recall:

- What directions did you receive for that work?

- What resources did the person provide you for guidance, in case you had problems you couldn’t resolve as you worked?

- How did it work out? Were you able to complete the assignment successfully?

- If so, what are the main reasons it worked out well?

- If there were problems with the project or its result, what made the work difficult?

I had the experience of starting a new job at a new company right into middle of the busiest season of the year in the department where I had been hired.

My manager had very high standards and I knew I would learn a lot there, which a big reason why the job appealed to me.

But I was also going to have a steep learning curve in this job, which I knew, and my manager knew, too. And I was not the only one like that in the department.

Delegating well, and providing effective guidance to new employees were leadership skills that were essential for success with this particular team.

Because my manager didn’t like to take the time to provide instructions or send employees to training, people in the group fairly often found themselves caught in a proverbial – and preventable – thorny thicket of problems.

One particular time, he and I had no alternative but to stop and correct something that had gone very wrong with a big deliverable on a tight timeline.

Suddenly there was no choice for him but to pause, slow down, listen and teach patiently and attentively.

He had many other leadership strengths that we knew, but no one had ever seen this one before.

And suddenly, with calm direction and teaching, the work now seemed easy to me. The problems seemed clear, the solutions achievable.

I learned a lot in that department, surviving the boot camp he’d created, perhaps unwittingly. And it prepared me well for other jobs at that company. But looking back, I still feel that the same thing could have been accomplished far less painfully.

Here are a few guidelines for you to provide good instructions, if you delegate work to others:

When you make the assignment of a project or task, provide this information to the person who will be doing the job:

1. Who needs this work? What will they do with the product, service or information that is being provided to them?

2. What are the customers’ standards for a high quality job, such as timeliness, cost, and quality requirements?

3. When does the customer need the work to be complete?

4. Is there a process or procedure they must follow to do the work? Where are the specific instructions for that?

5. Are there constraints they need to know about?

6. Are there materials or tools they need to do the job? Where will they get those?

7. If they need further guidance while doing the work, where should they go or whom should they contact?

8. How can they reach you as they work, if need be?

9. Will someone check the work before it goes to the customer? If so, who will do that, and when will that happen in the overall process?

10. What questions do they have? Do they need to have any information explained in another way to fully understand the instructions for what they must complete?

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What can consume hours of time, oceans of creative and productive energy, and still produce nothing useful?

Worrying.

Maybe you don’t waste your time in worry, but many people do.

Some are pretty experienced, and dedicated worriers – professionals, almost.

It’s easy, mid-worry-stream, to think that you’re doing something useful for someone, or some situation, somewhere.

My younger sister once said to me when I was in college and getting little sleep, “If you don’t quit staying up so late, Mom and I will quit worrying about you!”

She’d seen her worrying as a sisterly service she was doing for me.

It wasn’t making any difference, of course.

Worry isn’t work.

Here’s how work is defined in physics: work = force x distance.

Worrying doesn’t change things unless it is a force that moves people across some distance, to change, to become different in a positive way.

Here are a few things you can do to turn worry into productive results:

1. Understand your own motivation for worrying.

What are you trying to accomplish through your worrying?

Is it to entertain yourself, perhaps through the steady updates in a local drama that keeps everyone wrapped up in details of a story you share?

Is it to distract yourself from something you should be doing, instead, but are afraid of?

Consider what else you might be doing with the time you are wrapped up in the lives of those around you. Consider, also, what part of your own life isn’t not getting full attention because you are distracted in this pursuit.

Are you afraid to say what you really think?

If so, muster up your courage and figure out what your truth is. Then figure out how to tell it to the people who you think need the information in a way so that they can hear you, and feel your concern.

And then it is up to them to use the information, save it for a later time, or reject it as not being right for their lives. And you might not like it, but they do have that right – to make their own choice about how they will live their own lives.

Then, let your advice and worry go. Know that the people you are trying to help via your advice and concern will choose and take their own actions. That’s how they’ll become strong. That’s how they’ll learn and grow.

And you want that for them, don’t you?

2. Know what the real problem is, and what evidence you have to know that it is real.

State what you think the real problem is.

Now, consider what evidence you have to know that the problem you describe, of the magnitude you describe it, is actually happening?

If you don’t know, or can’t find evidence of a problem, there may not be one at all.

Then, go back to considering what this worry might be distracting you from…or trying to.

That’s where your problem-solving attention might best be invested…in the problem you don’t want to think about, at all.

3. Know why you believe the bad news scenario is most likely.

If you have a real problem, and have evidence of it, why do you think that dire circumstances will be the result of the issue?

Good outcomes could also occur.

Think through what the chances are that your worries will come true, and why you believe it.

4. Think back to your most productive worrying time, and what the outcome was.

Sometimes worry is productive in that it gets us to consider alternatives we hadn’t thought of before. Or it may make us aware of a risk we had, blithely, brushed off as not likely at all.

Worry gets us to focus and consider possibilities we might not want to think about, at all.

5. Take the persistence and creativity you’re investing in worry, and turn it into something productive.

Direct that effort to doing something tangible about the problem.

Take your concerns, if they prove to be valid, and turn them into a plan of action to take the cause of the problem away.

Then, take the actions you planned, using your resolve to make the problem go away.

Your worry may, in fact, lead to a change that might not have happened any other way.

6. Get more exercise.

Treat yourself to some endorphins.

These are the hormones your body releases when you’ve had a vigorous run, walk, swim, bike ride, or other physical release.

7. Get more sleep.

Good sleep refreshes and rests your mind and body.

And it gives you the reserves to provide a good, calm, long-term assessment of the situation, providing a perspective on problems that might loom when you’re tired, and tempers are likely to be shorter.

8. Find a diversion that’ll keep you from going into worry so deep.

Make yourself so busy you aren’t available for worry duty.

Well, not so much, anyway.

Take your own big goals and break them down into very tangible small-term milestones.

Work on those.

9. Make something.

When you produce something tangible, it can go a long way to make you feel good about yourself, your abilities, and what you can do.

Besides, it gives you something you control. And that helps siphon off worry energy, too.

You may not be able to control the big thing you’re worrying about, but when you make something, you often get an increased sense of control about your portion of the world.

10. Find someone else who has been through this thing you’re worrying about. Talk to them.

They’ll give you some perspective.

They’ll probably tell you that if the problem actually happens, you, or the people you’re worrying about, will live through the experience, and you’ll be stronger in the end.

And that it may not happen…so the worrying didn’t help.

11. Set a daily worry budget, and when the time is up for the day, change the subject.

You think I’m kidding.

If your daily budget covers one hour of worrying, set your timer when worry time arrives.

Worry big for that hour.

And when that hour is up, change the subject. Don’t talk about the thing you’re worried about. Don’t text about it, think about it, imagine it.

Move on.

You can pick up it up again during worry time tomorrow.

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Assumptions.

We believe we shouldn’t make them, but we do.

Our assumptions go with us into almost any new situation, relationship, or interaction.

They’re part of any decision we make, and any planning we undertake.

Knowing what your assumptions are is important.

They can work in your favor, if you know how to set and use assumptions well.

Consider a decision you made that turned out not to be a good one.

Now consider when you made the first wrong turn in making that decision.

Often, that first off-track turn occurs when you don’t question and eliminate or correct the initial assumptions on which the decision is based.

Here are ways to work with your assumptions so that they work for you:

1. Record them.

First, acknowledge that you have them.

Then, record them, and note why you believe them to be true.

What facts do you have that back up your belief that these assumptions are true?

Keep a summary of your assumptions in a place where it will be easy to find and use them again. You may need to return to them later, as the decision plays out, for better or worse.

2. Test them.

If there’s a lot riding on whether your assumptions are right or wrong, find a way to test them early in the process of using them.

What research can you do?

Is there something you can observe?

Are there people who will be affected by decisions you make, using these assumptions?

If a relationship or interaction will be affected by the assumptions you make, ask the people involved if what you believe about them or the situation is true.

3. Revisit them.

When you’re using assumptions as the basis for decision-making, return to them periodically to check and see if they’re still valid.

Governments for example, can make decisions about services they’ll be able to provide citizens, based on how much tax revenue they think they’ll collect in the future.

Building and service commitments can be made, and taxpayers’ expectations can be set about the services they will get for the taxes they paid. Then the economy can change, sometimes radically and rapidly.

At that point, changes must be made to adapt to the situation as well as possible. With a solid way to monitor and adapt assumptions based on current facts, the need for change can be eased or prevented.

4. Refine your assumptions if they’re no longer true.

If your assumptions turn out to be false or circumstances change so that your assumptions need to change, too, then change them.

A lot may be riding on your courage in facing facts, rather than plowing ahead with a plan of action that’s going nowhere fast, just because you don’t want to admit that, somehow, you’re wrong.

5. Improve your process of setting assumptions.

Revisit your process of making assumptions.

Check to see if you’re using good data to create and test the assumptions you use. Make sure you’re not basing big decisions on wild guesses or random conjecture.

Ensure that you have and are using a good process to synthesize the information you have to make decisions and take action, using your assumptions.

Communicate the assumptions well to those who may need to use them, such as in making forecasts.

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Think of the worst meeting you were ever involved in, whatever your role was. (Don’t worry…we won’t stay in this memory for long).

Now, think of the best meeting you ever attended, or were a part of.

Why did one meeting work so well, and the other one flop?

The odds are very high that the good meeting had a good leader. In addition, it’s likely a lot of careful planning was involved.

Beyond that, though, the group involved in the good meeting probably used simple ground rules to guide their work together.

If that sounds a bit too bureaucratic to you, consider how kids create a game at a playground. It might be a pick-up basketball game where they’re setting the boundaries and rules of play. It might be a new game they invent.

Either way, one of the early steps in getting the game underway is to set some basic rules, boundaries, and other guidelines.

Why is setting the rules and boundaries important early in the process of getting the play underway? It helps them to:
- Make the game clear
- Focus on playing the game, not continually inventing or refining it
- Make the game fair
- Increase the chances that the game will be enjoyable
- Make the game as much fun as possible

Ground rules don’t have to be complicated.

In fact, it’s far better if they’re not.

You want rules that are clear, simple, easy to understand and teach, easy to enforce.

Ground rules also set up expectations of the way you will behave together, and how you will treat each other. And they provide a solid foundation or “home base” you can return to if the group gets lost in a heated debate.

If you need a set of ground rules you can adapt to create your own, try this set. I’ve used variations of these ground rules with more than 100 teams, and they’ve served each group well:

– Be prompt. Stay focused.

– Be an active listener and participant. Ask clarifying questions to understand others’ points of view. Be clear about your own point of view.

– Act with mutual respect.

– Emphasize inquiry and advocacy.  Inquiry: exploration of an issue, reserving judgment about the outcome. Advocacy: pushing or selling one’s position.

– Stay engaged. Stay with the team and the work until there is an outcome all parties can take credit for designing. Be flexible to accommodate information you receive in the dialogue process.

– Take personal responsibility for results.

– Turn cell phones, pagers, and other electronic devices off while the group is meeting.

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Are you feeling overwhelmed by the need to make improvements in your business, yet you can’t seem to find the time to do so?

Have you lost the fun you once felt from doing work you loved?

Do you sometimes feel the need to have a team of peers to bounce ideas off?

If so, mentoring may be perfect to help you grow your focus, business skills and results.

Mentoring programs can bring you a level of performance and achievement. They provide a form of accountability and focused attention that can be hard to get in other ways, when the winds of change and daily demands swirl around you, and threaten never to give you a moment’s peace.

Mentoring can help you overcome challenges that have seemed insolvable, and time pressures that somehow result in the urgent overwhelming the important.

Get back to the work you love. Let a mentor help you.

Here are a few things to consider when you choose the mentoring that will help you most:

1. What are your goals?

The better you know what you hope to achieve out of mentoring, the more likely you are to find a program that’s just right for you.

You may be looking for accountability, group support, a wise advisor, and feeling like you have someone at your back, in case the challenges you face sometimes make you feel very alone. Or you may be looking for just a few of these common benefits of mentoring.

2. How would you like to meet? How often?

Some groups and individual mentoring relationships work by meeting in person.

Increasingly, mentoring occurs by webinar or phone so that participants can meet from the convenience of their own offices, rather than building in the stress and time that commuting requires.

Many programs meet once a week. This enables you to learn, get feedback, and yet not spend great amounts of time doing so.

This is an important consideration when you’re adding mentoring to what is often an already full schedule.

At the same time, you’re very likely to find that mentoring which takes time, initially, helps you to sift, prioritize and focus, reducing feelings of overwhelm and an overly full schedule.

You are likely to find when you find the mentoring program that’s right for you, you create a worklife that’s far more enjoyable, and results that are far more satisfying, while being manageable to achieve.

3. How long do you want your mentoring to last?

You may be looking for a few sessions to help you correct course, refocus and learn quickly. Or you may want a long-term mentoring relationship.

Consider the work and learning support relationships that have enabled you to make the greatest progress in the past.

Talk to friends who have been in mentoring programs and get their advice, as you decide what you’re looking for.

4. Do you prefer one-on-one or a group mentoring experience?

Some people prefer one-on-one attention and support.

Others like the energy and motivation to make steady progress that they feel when they’re held accountable for progress in a group setting, and the inspiration they feel when they hear what their peers in the group have achieved week by week.

5. How do you feel about homework as part of your mentoring program?

If you want to apply the skills you learn and the advice you receive, look for a program that includes homework and clear accountability.

In a program a colleague and I recently developed and have co-led twice for small business owners in the San Francisco, CA, area, we found that homework was an essential important part of our mentees’ learning experience.

It helped them to try out what they were learning, and to get feedback on what they had tried.

Homework also helped mentees’ make steady progress through specific changes and improvements they had hoped to make in their businesses, but hadn’t been able to achieve, without it.

Another important part of the success of the mentoring program was a one-one-one mentoring call that each mentor held with each mentee during the last three weeks of the six-week program. This reinforced learning and helped to tailor it to each mentee’s specific needs.

6. What’s the value to you of mentoring?

Only you can answer this one. This also gives you a range of what you can afford to pay – and what you can’t afford not to pay – to get the support and make the progress you need to make, as a result of the mentoring experience you seek.

For example, do you believe mentoring will help you solve a problem that’s now costing you $200 a month? Or is the problem causing you something closer to $1000 a month or more? Whatever the facts show you about the cost of the problem to you and your company, and the faster and better you can solve the problem with mentoring, the more you’re likely to be ready to get it.

In addition, this problem impact fact-gathering gives you more information about what you’re prepared to pay – and expect to save -  once you have the support you need to make the problem go away, and stay away.

7. What is your role in the experience? What role does the mentor play?

8. How do you think you’ll feel, when the mentoring is done?

One member of a mentoring group I co-led described the feelings that others shared with us at the end of this webinar-based mentoring program.

“This was a WONDERFUL program! I’m so glad I did it!” she said.

Asked if she would recommend mentoring, she replied, “Absolutely! It helps you view your business from a fresh point of view and allows you to find where you are stuck.”

If you found this post valuable, please share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

When we’re around excellence, it helps bring out our own best performance.

Think back. Surely there are times in your life when this has been true for you, too.

It’s why there’s value in watching great sports performances, seeing excellent theater and movies, reading great fiction, going to art museums, enjoying wonderful food, and surrounding yourself even briefly in the beauty of nature.

There’s lots more excellence you can choose to immerse yourself in, too.

I recall one particular experience  during a summer when my husband and I played tennis almost every weekend when summer with friends from the company where he worked.

Hoping to get in just enough improvement to make the next weekend’s tennis matches easier and more fun, Gary and I went out to practice one day after work at a nearby park.

On this particular evening, the courts were all busy so as we waited for our turn. As we did, we watched one couple play. It was great fun  to see, for they played with great ease and excellence.

When they left, and we started to play on the court where they’d performed for many of us who were watching that day, our game seemed to be almost magically elevated in many ways.

It was as if the excellence they’d brought had been left on that court, and we were the beneficiaries of the momentary circumstance.

Eventually, their excellence seeped away from that spot and, well, our normal game returned.

But for that brief time, playing excellent tennis was fun.

And it showed us that we might someday reach an elevated state of play with consistency if we kept practicing, with consistency.

You can elevate your own game, whatever it is, if you steep yourself in excellence of any kind.

Here are a few reasons why:

1. It inspires you.

Excellence of any type is spirit-lifting.

Whether at the Olympics, the exhibit of a great artist, or at a major awards program  recognizing top performance in any field, looking at, and up to excellence can have the same effect. It raises your sense of what is possible when positive intention, the force of will, abilities, practice and preparation – and a bit of luck, too – are combined to meet challenges and create new opportunities.

That inspiring effect occurs whether the people who produced the great result were expected to, or theirs was in overcoming-all-odds story.

2. It teaches, or reinforces the excellence mindset in you.

Sometimes the best thing about being around others’ excellence is being steeped in the excellence mindset.

Top performance takes dedication, focus, and sometimes getting out of your own way to create or release excellent results.

Knowing what someone who produced greatness thought and felt, how they prepared  for it, and how they overcame their own nervousness or stage fright, if it was part of the experience, can be enlightening.

3. It gives you new ideas for yourself.

Excellence in other realms can increase your creativity, and spark new ideas for a project, goal, or challenge you’re working on.

And being around others’ excellence reminds you of the power of persistence.

There’s a lot to be said for not giving up when your courage is waning and encouragement from others is sparse.

Your will to succeed in a realm that is important to you, and the path to that achievement can be strengthened by being immersed in excellence of any type.

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Like a slow driver holding up many cars behind it in the fast lane, a “road boulder” may be clogging up the workflow and stopping progress for many other people at your company, or on your team.

It happens in many organizations.

“Road boulder” is a term I coined a few years ago in frustration about the people who drive more slowly than the flow of traffic in the fast lane on the freeway.

Often, there’s a mile or more of clear space – and pure potential – in front of them, but they stop the flow, even so.

The term also cropped up for me because I see road boulders of various kinds in companies’ workflows.

Road boulders not only frustrate the people behind them, but they can also create a very dangerous situation.

On the road, emergency response teams get caught in the no-exit-path logjam they create. In companies, people can be so distracted by problems caused inside the company that they miss significant signs of emerging problems outside the company.

The problem of road boulders can be corrected. And it can be prevented.

If you’re the road boulder at your company, you may be blocking others’ otherwise efficient, effective workflows by actions such as these:

- Providing too little direction, training and feedback to help employees stay on track
- Trying to control things you don’t need to control
- Not controlling things you should be managing closely, especially in high risk areas
- Poorly monitoring how well you’re meeting customers’ needs
- Poorly communicating with suppliers about what you need from them, and how well they’re meeting your needs

How can you find out – and correct the problem – if you or your department is a road boulder at your company?

Check in regularly with the people whose needs you’re supposed to be meeting. These are your customers.

They may be paying customers outside the company, or they could be customers inside the company who need your work in order to do their own.

Check, also, with your manager, if you’re an employee.

Check with your employees, if you’re a manager.

These are all potential customers of your work. You can accelerate their workflows through the work you do, or you can inhibit it. And you may not know what effect you’re having until you ask.

Ask the people who are dependent on the quality of work you provide them:

1. How well are we meeting their needs now?
2. Where could we improve?
3. What are we doing well?

Open the dialogue now, and continue it a few times a year.

You’ll find that the flow will grow as you radically reduce the chances that you and your department are company road boulders.

And in the process of gathering the feedback to make the overall system work better, you’re likely to collect a few accolades for your current work, too.

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