In this short motivational talk, Tom Guarriello, Ph.D. explains that success in today’s complex world requires navigating a paradox: you must both stand out and fit in. He outlines three concrete actions to stand out—rethink everything, simplify processes, and communicate more effectively—applicable to any job or business. He then presents three complementary practices to fit in—maintain a positive attitude, build and sustain strong relationships, and ensure the people around you feel part of a winning team. By consistently applying these six behaviors, Guarriello argues you can resolve the paradox and achieve lasting success.
Chapters
Well, it doesn't come as much of a surprise to any of us to say that we live in complex times, right? Living in complex times sometimes means that in order to be successful, we have to be able to deal with paradox. And the paradox that I wanted to talk about briefly today is the paradox between having to stand out and having to fit in in order to be successful. Let's think about what it takes to stand out. I think there are 3 things you can do today to stand out no matter what your job is, no matter what your business is. The first one is to rethink everything. Look, every job, every business has a default way of going about doing it, the conventional approach to doing what you do. Now, standing out means not using the conventional approach. It means rethinking the way things usually go in your position or in your business. So number one, To stand out, rethink everything. Never accept the default approach to doing what you do without examining it. So that's number 1. Number 2, and maybe related to that, is simplify. Complex times, complex everything. How can you be successful? How can you stand out? Simplify, simplify, simplify. It doesn't matter what you do, there is always a way to make it simpler, simpler to do and simpler for your customer to use. So number 2, simplify, simplify, simplify. And number 3, to stand out, practice communicating more effectively. Look, to communicate today is everything. No matter what your job is, no matter what your business is, you must become and become a more effective communicator. So all 3 of those things— rethink, Simplify and communicate will really help you to stand out. But now, how about fitting in? How do you fit in today? Well, look, I think there are some tried and true things that you can do to fit in, and number one is be positive. Your attitude is everything, and your attitude is obvious, and it's infectious. So if you are not positive, the people around you are not going to feel comfortable fitting in with you. So that's number one. Number two, build and maintain great relationships. Look, we are in the business today of interacting with a lot of people, and the people who we can trust and who are likable are the people that we are going to want to interact with more. And the more people want to be around you and be in relationships with you, the more successful you're going to be. So work on building and maintaining your relationships. And number 3, and maybe a consequence of the others, is to make sure that everybody around you knows that you are always on a winning team. It doesn't matter, no, what it is that you're doing Your team is always going to be the team that wins, and when your team wins, everybody wins. So making the people who are in relationships with you more successful by being on your team is a key to fitting in. So stand out, rethink, simplify, communicate, fit in, be positive, build and maintain great relationships with others, and Always make the people around you more successful than they would be if they weren't around you. Do those things and you're going to be able to solve this paradox of standing out and fitting in. Take care. See you out there.
