What’s most important to you? If you’re like most people you’ll answer with “family” or “faith” or something similar. If I asked you to name three things it might be a little more difficult. In fact, aside from the most obvious, very few people can name or articulate what’s most important to them.
I’m not dismissing those intimate, personal things. They’re important and crucial in their own right. It’s just that beyond those, the values we hold and base our work-life on could be the secret to our success or a catalyst for failure. I recommend we all identify the three most important things to us and learn how to protect and leverage them. For the sake of illustration, I’ll share mine.
After the family and faith things, here they are (in no particular order):
- Time. As a business owner, time is one of the key currencies I hold indispensable. With only 24 hours in a day, I do my best to use and protect the time I have. It’s why I get so frustrated with flight delays, traffic, and what my dad refers to as “domesticities” or the busy errand-running that seems to pop up. I’m happy to share my time and love meeting colleagues, friends, and strangers for coffee or lunch to share advice or ideas. I’m not happy though when people who want to meet up don’t value my time. A year or so ago I was contacted by someone who wanted to meet up with me to “pick my brain” on something. I arranged to meet him at a Starbucks at 9AM. I was there at 8:45 and at 9:15 he was still a no-show so I left. He called me about 30 minutes later and said he was at Starbucks looking for me. I told him I was there on time and waited 15 minutes, then left. He proceeded to blast me on the phone for not waiting citing “traffic issues.” Now mind you this was in Maryland where traffic is a certainty regardless of the time. He was mad, but I had to stick to my guns. Time is important to me and if I share it with you, I hope you’ll treat it as such.
- Relationships. Again, as a business owner, relationships are key. I have lots of colleagues and a few close friends. I also have some very trusted colleagues who I refer when someone is looking for a trustworthy vendor, consultant, or expert. I don’t want to sound pompous, but I do have an inner circle of some really great contacts. People often ask for referrals, but the key for me is to find out if you are really as good, trustworthy, and hardworking as you say you are. See, I don’t want to refer someone who I haven’t personally met or vetted. Relationships are very important to me and I want to make sure I don’t do anything to damage them.
- Expertise. I’m a real fan of expertise. One of the most impressive things to me is when I run across someone who knows a lot about a particular subject. I love watching Rick on Pawn Stars “call a buddy who knows a lot about this stuff.” It’s no different than wanting to send your family member to the best doctor or to hire the best attorney. Expertise is a very important currency and should be respected. In my business, I get paid for expertise. When I get hired to consult or engaged to teach a workshop or make a speech, I know that even though the client might want to be entertained, more than anything they have a problem that needs to be solved or an audience that needs to be engaged. Without expertise, I’m nothing more than a Krispy Kreme donut – all sugar and air with no substance. That said, building expertise is very important to me and pushes me to learn and create new stuff on a regular basis. I made a commitment last year to never again quote dead people (theorists and experts) in my keynotes and workshops – there is just too much new knowledge out there to be discovered.
You’re probably interested in what led to my Big 3. Each had a series of specific experiences that led to it. Value #3 for example made my list about 7 years ago. I attended an event in Washington DC called Get Motivated. It was a day-long event that featured a number of well-known speakers culminating in a keynote by Colin Powell. One of the speakers was legendary motivational speaker Zig Ziglar who went on shortly before lunch. By then Zig was in his 80s and it showed. He proclaimed that “I’m not retired, I’m re-fired!” which drew a standing ovation from the crowd but it was obvious that there was very little of that fire left. It was a bit sad. I made a commitment to myself that day to never become irrelevant and when it was unavoidable, to hang it up before others could see it.
But enough about me. What about you? Aside from those personal values, what are the three most important things to you? Whether you identify them or not, know that they do affect what and how you do your job and maybe more importantly, how others view you. Better to identify them and leverage them then to live your life on autopilot.
What do you think?
