A to B Competencies_Scrappy Probey and Pushy +1

Hello and welcome to the Change Science Academy channel where we explore and discover alternative ways of thinking to drive measurable value in executing our personal and organization strategies. In this channel, we look at what it takes to get from point A to point B. Point B could be a dream, it could be an aspiration, it could be a project that you need to get done. Hey, it might be just mowing the lawn today. Whatever it takes, what is your B? In this channel, we look at trying to make that line as straight as possible without taking too many twists and turns along the way. Today, I want to talk a little differently than I have in the past because I want to talk about you and your teams and what competencies it takes to get from point A to point B. If we talk about competencies, it's kind of a weird term because people have a lot of different opinions about what competency is. The definition of it basically is the ability to do something efficiently and successfully, which is basically a competency is what you need to do to get from point A to point B. I did a competency project at one of the major airlines. I was a consultant for 30 years, and one of the projects we did was competencies for 40,000 people in thousands of jobs to match the people to job openings. When we talked about competency, we had a lot of discussion about what it actually means. My own personal example of that, I was a chemical engineer a gazillion years ago, decades ago, and I took a lot of calculus classes in college. I might think that my competency in mathematics is high level. It's like calculus. If you put a calculus problem in front of me today, that trigonometry sum algebra, I may not be able to get it right. My competency in mathematics actually is slightly low. Slid back over the decades of not using it. Competency is something that you can actually demonstrate. Something that if you gave a test to somebody, they could do the calculus right in front of you, or speaking, they could do something amazing in front of a large group of people. Part of this is, what is the demonstratable skills, the demonstratable competencies to do a job? A lot of times when we staff projects or think about our own competencies to do something, We think, we go first to functional skills, you know, like sales or marketing, or technical skills like, you know, programming or coding, and then we might also think about industry skills like the personal development industry or oil and gas or banking. And you know, we need to staff people that have the requisite skills to do the job, no doubt about it. But those skills alone won't be the skills necessary to get from point A to point B. We need to look for A to B competencies as well. Now, I've staffed hundreds of projects, maybe thousands of people on projects over the 30 years I was a consultant. And, you know, we staffed for so many things, but I wanted to really, over the years, explain what I found is 3 and a secret ingredient, a 4th secret ingredient of really what it takes to get from point A to point B. So I'm going to show those to you right now. What I'm looking for is scrappy, probie, pushy people. I've got a secret ingredient down below that I'm going to talk about in a second. When I talk about scrappy people, I'm looking for people who you give them 10 tasks to do, very little resources, very little direction, and they get it done. Now, they may do 10 things, you may give them 10 things to do, and they might get 8 right and you have to correct 2 of them. I would take those kind of people 10 times, 100 times over the folks that you have to describe every little thing to, to everybody, to each of those 10 things you need to do. Part of this is, I'm looking for scrappy people, people who just get done with a lot of scarce resources. The second thing I look for, probey people, people who probe. A lot of times when you talk about doing interviews with people, clients or other folks, They go, "Well, how are you feeling?" They go, "Well, I feel fine." Well, they're not satisfied with that answer of just fine. They go, "Well, what does fine mean for you? What does that look like for you? Do you feel fine most days? Do you feel fine most of the time? Do you feel fine now? Will you feel fine 3 hours from now?" They just keep asking these probing questions to get down to the meat of the thing, to get underneath it. They're never satisfied with the easy answers. They want to go find and probe the real gold and gems underneath. So they mine for those things. That's a probing person. And then pushy may sound awful, you know, I don't want pushy people, but what I mean by pushy is people who push for deadlines, people who push to get things done. And it's those people who go that final mile, and which is the toughest mile in a race, right, is to get past that, get over that last mile to finish the race. And I look for those people who just are pushy. And so if you add up these 3 things, scrappy, probey, pushy people, what you get is a bunch of arrogant people, which is not what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for arrogance. You have to add the secret ingredient down below. That secret ingredient is I look for authenticity. I look for people who are authentic. What do I mean by that? I look for people who care, who care about who they're talking to, who care about the project that they're doing, They believe that what they're doing will be successful. They believe that what they're doing is going to make a difference. They believe that what they're doing will change the way people work and live. Part of this is, who are these authentic people? They have to be authentic to themselves, which drives them to be scrappy and probing and pushy people because they want to deliver that high quality because that's authentically who they are. Those are what I'm looking for, scrappy, probie, pushy, and authentic people. I'm going to put that in the context of a story for you. I was staffing, this is a number of years ago, but I was staffing a project at an industrial manufacturer. I went to the HR person and I said, "I need to do some sales ride-alongs, interviews for people, and I'm looking for staffing 5 people." The HR person came back to me and they said, "Okay, so basically you're looking for senior people with sales background, industrial manufacturing background, and available in 2 weeks? Yeah, we got nobody. See ya." I was like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's back up. A, I don't need sales experience. I don't need senior people, and I don't need anybody with industrial manufacturing background." She goes, "What?" I said, What I want is scrappy, probie, pushy, and authentic people. And she said, what? So part of this was I had to describe what I just described to you, what scrappy, probie, and pushy people and authentic people I was looking for. And she found them. 5 people, great team. So we met on a Monday in Minneapolis with my team and with the client at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And we start this meeting and I go in for the first 15 minutes describing what we're going to do. —these sales ride-alongs, what the value we're going to see out of this thing. And the VP of Sales stops me cold dead and says, "Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure what these girls here will be able to tell my salespeople about how to sell better." And that was the first time I realized I'd staffed 4 out of my 5 team members with women. Now, in this industrial manufacturing environment, at that time, Women weren't looked at as being credible with the sales force. They were really worried that they would just spit them up and spit them out. Part of this was, "Let me make a deal with you." I told the VP right there in front of the meeting, in front of all his direct reports, I said, "Give my team a week. After a week, if you don't like what we're doing, if you don't think they add any value, then fire them." then you can go away and we won't charge you a dime. He goes, that's a deal. So when we went into our debrief room afterwards, I told my team, hey, great meeting, great prep, that was awesome. And they were like, hey Patrick, thank you for standing up for us, this is great. And I was like, oh, the burden's not on me. I made a promise that you need to keep. So they had to go out there, and I told them, you need to go out there and care about the people you're talking to. You need to be really scrappy, probey, pushy. You need to really go for the gold. And really think that you're going to change these people's lives because we have the opportunity to do that on this project. To take what they really care about, put it in a form, and then change the way they work so that they can improve their work lives. So they went out there, first week, did all these ride-alongs, reported in, and then I met with the VP of Sales at the end of the week and I said, hey, you know, I just wanted to catch up with you. How do you think my team's doing? They're awesome. They ask great questions. They're telling them stuff that they wouldn't tell us. This is great. That's a great story of how you bring the competencies for scrappy, probing, pushy, and authentic people to the game. Now, I want to take this back to your world. Going back to your point B, your dream, your aspiration, your project, whatever that is. Actually, you might be asking yourself, "Man, I don't know if I'm scrappy, probey, pushy, and authentic." I want to do this little exercise with you and maybe even close your eyes and think about a success, an accomplishment that you've had that you're really proud of. Think about that one and say, "Hmm, what is that successful project I did?" And then I want you to think about what made that really successful for you is you probably overcame some major barriers. And what were those barriers? Those things could have been lack of resources, people not, you know, following through on their commitments, whatever it is. And then I want you to sit back and think, hmm, what did I need to do to get from point A to point B that made this a success? And my guess is is that you have the scrappy, probie, pushy, and authentic person all built inside of you. I think, and I trust, and I believe each person has that. Part of that is just to remember and remind yourself that you have that inside you, and then take those skills and competencies and put them into getting to your new point B. I hope this was helpful for you, and if it was, I'd like you to like this channel. I'd like you to subscribe to this channel. Best of all, what I'd really like to do is ask for comments down below. I say Scrappy, Proby, Pushy, and Authentic people, but what are some other competencies that you think are important to get from point A to point B? I'd love to hear that in the forum down below in the comments section. That's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. As I always do, I'm going to leave you with this: Learn continuously and live your life 100% empowered. Until next time.