Larry Weidel says pick a few guiding principles to shape your reputation. A city manager used predictable, decisive, and fair. Weidel's code: be the hardest-working person in the room. A clear code makes decisions easier and builds trust.
Let's talk about you. And the thing is, how do you want to be known? How do you want to be remembered? You want to make an impact? You know, we all want to go out in our lives and do something and make an impact. That means you're going to be remembered. People are not going to remember you. 45 things about you. They'll always be one or two. You'll have one main, if you make an impact, they'll be one main thing that stands out with people. In fact, it's good to remember that so you can kind of focus your energies if you want to make an impact. And the impact is like that is like if you want to make an impact, you can hit something with a hammer or you can hit it with an axe, which is going to make a bigger impact. Or cut into say the log or the tree. Hitting it with a hammer or sledgehammer or with an axe, a sharp one edge rather than a big dull flat surface. You want to have a one thing that you're known behind and one thing that you stand out as making a special impact for if you want to be memorable. And I got thinking about this because there was an article in the paper here recently about a guy who I guess he was retiring, he was talking about that, his three words for this guy. And it's just an example, but it's what for him. He had three words that he adopted as his code. And this was the guy who made an impact, was a guy who was a difference maker and he had three words. And this just is a great illustration for the idea and the impact of a code. One thing is he wanted to be predictable. When you're predictable, people can trust you. They know where they're going to get, they can rely on you, they can put allow you to take on more and more responsibilities because they're dealing with a known quantity. The other thing is decisive. He wanted to be known as somebody who didn't take forever to make a decision. You had enough confidence in himself, get the facts, call a shot, take responsibility, keep moving, not let issues come to him and stagnate because he was just too wishy washy to call a shot. And he wanted to be known as somebody who would make a decision. Because the great thing about that you make a decision, you can always, if it turns out wrong, you can always fix it and make an adjustment. And we're always having to make adjustments anyway. So be decisive, call a shot, keep the process moving. And this was a guy who was like in a city management position. The other thing is he wanted to be known as fair. No one is always going to be right. No one is always going to know the right thing to do. But the thing that you can be known for is being fair, not being unbalanced, you know, too lenient, too tough, too restrictive, or then too lax, where you let people get away with everything. You know, he wanted to be fair with people. He wanted to give them enough chances, but not too many chances to shape up. So these were things that he had in his code. And he said, and this is the great point of this, he said by having those three things to guide him, he said they made him very reliable and gave him a good career. So when you're, here's how this works out in life, as we go forward in life, we don't know the road of life. You don't know what's going to come. Little surprises, little incidents you're going to have to deal with. But you know, if you have, before you get to these question mark situation and staggering things that you have to deal with. If you go in with your values, you know what you stand for and you know what your principles are that allows you to stay on track. And there, that's what came from the reliability point of it. Because eventually what we all are on, we're all on a road in any job, or it's like life, one thing, we all know where we're headed. We're headed to the place where we're not going to be working anymore. And so when that happens, your legacy, what will your legacy be? So this is like a. Some people think in terms of a tombstone. What's going to be in my tombstone? What's going to be my epitaph? Well, in every job, no matter how long you're there, you're basically going to go out the door and you will have a business epitaph. You'll have a memory you'll stick in people's minds. And so by having positive, a few guidelines, principles that really makes sense to you, using these to stay on track. What this will do is send you out as someone that people respect and remember as a winner. No one's known as being perfect, but somebody of respect, someone you can look up to, someone who made a positive impact. Once you get paid, once you leave, what you want to do is leave the best possible memory behind. Having a code gives you the best possible chance to do that. Now what should your code be? I don't know. But I thought I did happen to think a lot about this when I moved from Atlanta to North Carolina and it was just me all by myself, sitting in an office, thinking about my business and where I was headed and when, of course, I wanted. You know, you start here, you start with nothing. And over time you want to have growth and you want to do big things, but you're also going to build a reputation. I knew that you're going to build. See, what we're talking here is your reputation. And so I wanted to have some kind of think. I was thinking of, what's the one thing I can hang. Hang my hat on. I knew I wasn't going to be the most talented. I'd been in the business long enough to know I wasn't going to be the most creative, imaginative, really particularly outstanding in anything. But I knew one thing I could hang my hat on, and that was I decided we want to be known as the most. See, I could control this most hard working. That was the main thing of my code. Of course, that implied moral. Doing the right things, right people, all of those things. But on top of that, see, when you're hard, you work hard. That shows you don't take things for granted. You don't expect things to be handed for you. You don't think you're above doing the nasty work that sometimes has to be done that you know, you'd expect to have to work for a short period of time and then, then you're on easy street the rest of your life. That there's always going to be an element of doing, not just work hard work, the kind of work that most people run away from. So for me, and this kind of paid off for me pretty well, this was my code. I don't know what you want for your code. I'm kind of simple. I can't think of a thousand things. This guy's pretty complex. He had three. I just had one main one that focused it all together and it's turned out for me pretty well. So if you don't have a code, you haven't thought about that. Think about it. It may add some starch and backbone to you. You're going to have an identity. It's like a will. You're going to have a reputation, you're going to have a business epitaph where you want to or not. So why not choose what do you want it to be and make it turn out that way. Get your own personal code. I'd be curious to hear what kind of codes or guidelines you may be using in your life. Or maybe you've never thought about it before and this gets you started thinking all of that would be interesting to hear about. Maybe we can learn from each other. This was just me thinking with myself coming up with a hard working thing. Maybe if I'd had some more input I could come up with something a little more refined. Fortunately this one worked out for me. But I'd be interested in hearing or reading your comments if you want to join the conversation.
