"Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings." - Arthur Rubinstein
When you read biographies of the great ones, the authors seem to linger lovingly over the failures, like Lincoln's election defeats or Disney's bankruptcy. I suppose it's meant to humanize them, but when I was a young man it did the opposite, leaving me thinking that in similar straits, I surely would have given up, making their perseverance otherworldly.
Then, you live a while, you fail here and there, and you start to get to know Mr. Disappointment. You don't become friends, but you learn to be gentleman opponents. You can say to him: "OK, you won that one. Sit down, have a beer, brag on how you did it, then I have to get up and be on my way." No, not friends, not allies, but you learn that disappointment is just another class in an education about what works in finding success.
What got me thinking about this was talking to a very successful guy, one of my favorite gifted bosses, Rick Hamada, the chief operating officer of
No one plans to spend decades with the same company anymore, and Hamada didn't either, he says, laughing at the memory.
"When I started, my idea of long-range planning was trying to figure out what I'd do that weekend." But what surprised me was when I told Hamada that I wanted to write about his steady rise through the years, he scoffed at "steady rise." "No, no," he insisted. "My career path has not been a straight line at an upward angle. I spent my time in the career cul-de-sac along the way. And not just the career cul-de-sac - maybe even the parking lot, or what some may call the penalty box." He wasn't being penalized for having done something wrong, but he was left out for having been involved in something that hadn't gone right.
Hamada said: "Early in my career, I was involved in a major new project that just didn't work out. So they rolled up the sidewalks and reassigned the people involved - which included me - into new roles. The one thing I realized is not to take it personally. It never became a matter of ego; I never felt insulted at having been put in a less-visible position."
I asked if he'd been demoted. He shrugged and said: "After I'd taken a risk on this new initiative that didn't work out, I was given an assignment that seemed so relatively meaningless that I started to wonder, 'Why are they keeping me around?' That feeling led to a real turning point in my career. I went to our group president and challenged him. I walked in thinking it was management's fault, feeling left out, wondering, 'What are they thinking?' But I walked out of that meeting understanding what they were thinking and wondering, 'What can I do to help?' That was the moment that my career changed."
Let's stop a minute to admire the moral of that story: From blaming to helping. That might be the secret of making the leap from an ordinary to an extraordinary performer, stated in just four words.
But back to the idea of confronting the boss. Hamada did it then, and he did it again later in his career. It's a tricky maneuver, this confronting upper management.
There's that old bit about "the squeaky wheel," but that saying originated when wheels were hard to come by. These days, the squeaky wheel is likely to be yanked off, replaced and left in the weeds by the road.
But here's the trick to such a conversation, as explained by Hamada: "I didn't go in to talk about me. I went in to explain how I could be of more benefit to the company." He added this advice: "Most people think, 'I'm a performer, they'll promote me.' NO! You have to seek out a challenge. You have to take personal responsibility and ask, 'What can I do to help?' "
That takes us full circle. How do you get out of the career cul-de-sac? The same way you get a promotion. By answering for yourself the question, "What can I do to help?"
Dale Dauten is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at dale@dauten.com.
