Things That Haven’t Changed…..

We live in a world of constant disruption and change. It can be distracting as we struggle to understand and respond, or as we try to figure out how to leverage the disruption to better achieve our goals. We become focused on the change, the technologies, the new approaches/ideas, tools. We tend to be attracted to “bright shiny objects,” or the miracle cures, or the “secrets to my success.”

And this is natural and, sometimes, helpful.

At the same time, we tend to forget, there are things that remain constant through time. Things that fundamentally don’t change. When we forget these fundamentals we find all the new things we are trying to do, may not be as effective as we had hoped. Losing sight of these fundamentals, ignoring them, or violating them limits our abilities to achieve our goals. Or, more often, this ignorance causes us to fail.

A way to think about these is to look at math or the “laws of physics.” Despite the advances we have made in science and technology, these fundamental underpinnings always apply. Violating them causes failure.

In our business, selling, and GTM efforts, there are some underlying fundamentals that always apply. While they may not have the precision of mathematical equations, ignoring them or violating them is likely to cause failure.

What are these fundamentals? Here are some that I view as critical, I may have missed some:

1. Trust, trust underlies everything we do in business and society. If we don’t trust someone or something, we will do everything possible to avoid it. In talking about trust, it’s important to understand what drives trust/trustworthiness: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy, Self orientation.
2. Integrity, doing what we say, living up to our commitments, behaving consistently with our beliefs and values.
3. Caring, genuine concern for each other. We need others to care for/about us, as they expect us to care for/about them. We work in organizations made up of human beings, if we fail in caring for those we work for/with, whether they are in our organizations or outside, we fail ourselves.
4. Values: Things like honesty, respect, humility, courage, empathy. I tend to add some factors that everyone might not agree on, but these include excellence, perseverance, fairness, ethics, responsibility, generosity, curiosity, continued learning/development, adaptability, resilience, open mindsets, collaboration, responsibility/accountability, adaptability and boldness.
5. Clarity of purpose/intent. Without some purpose, we have no direction. Some confuse, wealth, comp, market cap, as a purpose, but there has to be something underlying these that enables us to create or accumulate those things.
6. Patience. Patience may have a time orientation. As I look at organizations that have sustained top performance, or individuals that stand out as consistent high performers, I see a common characteristic of patient impatience. In working with others, patience is critical.
7. Diversity, in its broadest sense. To be agile, adaptable; to have open mindsets; to grow and innovate, we have to engage people that may be very different from us. Our ability to be open to different ideas and perspectives, flexible in how we look at these is critical to our individual, organizational, and societal growth. Hanging out with people just like us limits us, we cannot grow and change, ultimately we fail.
8. Principles. This may overlap or underlie some of the other elements. As Rishad Tobaccowala says, “The point of principles is that they may cost us.” Principles represent what we stand for, having principles indicates we stand for something.
9. Respectful humility. If we look at the Dunning Kruger effect, people tend to have a cognitive bias to overestimating their ability or knowledge. We tend to underestimate our own incompetence. And those that are truly knowledgeable or expert recognize how little they really know–respectful humility.

These fundamentals underlie everything we do, all our relationships, and our abilities to achieve. Ignoring them will cause us to fail.

Yet too often we do ignore them focusing on the latest greatest–new technologies, new fads, new methods, new “get rich quick” schemes, ignoring these fundamentals. While we may see temporary success, we cannot sustain them absent the fundamentals. It’s amazing, when I work with organizations and individuals who are failing in achieving their goals, we strip things back to basic fundamentals, inevitably finding the path to more effectively and impactfully achieving their goals. Likewise, when I work with the highest performing organizations in their sectors, they are consistently looking for the latest technologies, methods, ideas to drive their innovation, but these are always rooted in these fundamentals.

And we get the greatest leverage and impact of these new technologies, methods, ideas, when they are grounded in these fundamentals.

Just like math or the laws of physics, these fundamentals are always part of everything we do.  We forget them at our individual and organizational peril.

Afterword:  Here is the AI based discussion of this post.  As usual, while there are a few minor errors, they bring some different perspectives to this article.  Enjoy!