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Think through what-ifs
One of the things we can do as individuals as we move forward in our careers and in our lives is to really think about what are the possible elements that might occur in my life or in my career? What are the challenges I might face? And you address those in advance of them actually being the problem. I refer to this as anticipating problems and I love using my wife as an example here. So she’s phenomenal. Anytime we go on a trip or do anything — we’ve got three young kids — you better believe she has gamed out all the possible scenarios of what might occur, and she has a plan for it. So it’s almost like her version, as a mother, of Murphy’s law. You know, anything that can happen will happen. So if it does happen, what are we going to do to make sure we’re successful? Start taking this risk-based assessment of the world around you.
It puts you in a mindset that you acknowledge and recognize that, no matter how good you are in life or how controlled you think your life might be, challenges will always arise. Things will always happen that you didn’t anticipate. And don’t just rely on yourself to come up with those what-if scenarios — talk to people who’ve walked the path you’re on before you, people who are several years ahead in their career, maybe even several decades ahead, and find out what were the types of challenges they faced? How did they overcome it? Who do they use as a resource? And that will help inform your response in that moment of crisis, but simply by just challenging yourself to constantly think about what would you do in those what-if scenarios typically means your decision-making when you are faced with adversity will be better than if you had never practiced it in the first place.
Drive the show
One of the things that is kind of a corollary with anticipating problems is actually doing something about it. As a TOPGUN instructor, when you would find yourself in a tactical situation — you’re in your aircraft, you’re dog fighting against another simulated adversarial aircraft — you would want to drive them to a position that you found advantageous. And you do that by taking specific actions as a fighter pilot. You’re operating in three dimensional space and you throw in the element of your speed, right? So there’s all these things you’re juggling. But if you can force the other pilot’s hand by taking very proactive steps. In this case, maybe you would arrive at a situation where you’re going faster than they anticipated. And you’re below them. You take all the moves that they might make in that situation. And you start to close that down into a lot fewer moves that they have available to them if they want to succeed. And so what that allows you to do is start to drive the show. You can take a position of control that you might not normally have if you gave them the full array of options and left those available to them.
So that same thing applies to our daily lives. A lot of times, if you can anticipate problems, if you think about what might be coming, what are the proactive steps that you can take to then put yourself in a situation to succeed? How can you not only determine what might happen, but then do something in advance to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the first place. It’s that ability and willingness to take those positive steps. They’re going to help you succeed as you move forward in your career.
Consider ripple effects
One of the things that I observe throughout my career is that a lot of times, we’ll make decisions. And you don’t necessarily think about the ramification of those decisions. It’s just kind of, here’s where I am right now. Here’s the decision I’m faced with, okay, I’m just going to make it. It’s almost like playing whackamole, you know, a situation pops up and you try and hammer it down and you move on to the next one. And it really becomes an important part of your level of success is to start expanding that aperture thinking outside of just that point a to point B mentality, it’s kind of like throwing a rock into the pond and you see the ripples that come out from it that becomes your second and your third order effects. There’s usually going to be some other outcomes and decisions that occur because of what you made the decision on. And you see this all the time in headlines where a CEO or someone from any industry makes a decision that they think is fairly straightforward. And suddenly it takes on a life of its own. It goes in a direction they had no intention of it going.
And I’ll never forget, before I went to Japan to take command of my own fighter squadron, I reached out to a person who’d had that same level of command, say five, six years prior. And I said, “What were some of the big lessons you learned from your time in squadron command?” And he said, “Man, be careful what you say, because people are going to hold you to it. You know, I wanted to be a very family friendly organization. So my number one rule was that sailors come first. But unfortunately the unintended consequence of that, the second- and third-order effect is that they held me to that on everything. So if someone asked for time off and I had to deny it because we were going to go overseas and be in the Middle East, well then suddenly I was accused of being a poor leader because I wasn’t putting the sailor first. I was putting the mission first.” He said, “So just make sure that you’re thinking very clearly about what you say, how you say it, and how people are going to interpret it because those types of things matter. And so one of the things you want to try and do is provide yourself as much decision making space as you possibly can.”
So I have a decision facing me. I know what my gut’s telling me to do, but let me reach out to some additional resources. Let me find out what am I not thinking about. Once I make this decision, who’s it going to affect? What are the unintended consequences? So by creating that decision space by trying to become as proactive as possible, you can actually get to a lot better outcomes in general.