Embrace The “Suck!”

Our work in selling is tough. There are details to manage, conflicts to resolve, shifts in direction. Some of the work is tedious, even unpleasant. Much of it is exhausting.

When the work gets tough, our natural reaction is avoidance. At the same time, we mask that avoidance with busyness and activity. We avoid the hard things, occupying ourselves with activities–more emails, more research, more meetings. Activity makes us feel and appear productive, but at the same time, we are avoiding the real issues and problems.

We procrastinate until we are forced to do it–hoping that no one sees this avoidance, so we never have to do it. Alternatively, we seek hacks and shortcuts, minimizing the effort and work. Or we try to outsource it–other people, or using AI to do the work for us.

And through all of this we rationalize our avoidance. We revel in our busyness and activities, we establish KPIs demonstrating how much work we are doing.

But the hard work remains.

The hard work is deeply engaging the customer and understanding what they are trying to do. Helping them navigate their internal “suck, ” the politics, the uncertainty, the FOMU, and resistance to change. It’s working with our people in understanding the roadblocks to their performance. Or it’s looking across functions to improve alignment, redesign workflows; navigating our own internal politics, uncertainty, FOMU and resistance to change.

These are the things that drive success, but we tend to avoid them because they are hard. There are no easy answers. But it’s this work that matters.

It’s in this hard work where growth happens. It’s doing this hard work, collaboratively, that enables us to build trust with our customers, people, teams, and peers. It’s through doing this hard work that learning happens.

And nothing happens if we don’t do this hard work!

Knowing we have to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work, how do we make that work more rewarding?

1. The hard work feels less like a grind when we focus on the impact of that work. Connecting the work with a purpose, moving beyond the task makes the work more meaningful.
2. Recognize the struggle, the messiness. Take pride in the progress you (and the team) are making in unraveling these really difficult things.
3. Enlist others in the process. It’s always more difficult when we do things alone. Where possible, find opportunities to collaborate. Working with teammates, customers builds trust, connection.
4. Flip your perspective on the suck. Rather than rather than something we want to avoid, embrace the challenge. Get excited about the challenge successfully doing something really hard.
5. Celebrate success, when you and the team successfully complete the difficult tasks and get the job done.

The hard work will never go away. But if we change our mindset focusing on getting the hard work done, we not only get more done, we become better through it.

Afterword:  Here is the AI generated discussion of this post.  There are a higher number of hallucinations/mispronunciations than I normally hear, but none are serious or distracting.  It’s a great discussion!  Enjoy!