Back in my World of Warcraft days we had a phrase for what the business world would call excellence. We called it “Being pro”. Being pro meant doing whatever was necessary to gain just that little extra advantage. It meant that you took the biggest area of improvement in your game and you worked on it until it no longer was. Then you switched over to the thing that would make the next biggest difference. Then the next and so on and so on. There was no stopping, every time you thought there was no possible way to improve your character or your performance you kept looking until you found something else. Months turned into years and while some advantages came and went as the game evolved, some stayed and became part of your personal repertoire and was what made you a great player.

I’ve heard this called many things. Both excellence and mastery spring immediately to mind. I call it the “pursuit of pro”. They are all variants of the same thing with very similar tenants. It is not a goal, it is not something we hope to achieve. It is an all encompassing philosophy of how you do things. It is the little voice in the back of your head that constantly says “How can we do this better? Faster? More efficiently and with less effort?

Leadership is a sales job as much as anything. You must sell your people that the vision you are espousing is possible. That YOU have the ability to make it possible. How do you sell that ability? How do you show people that you can do what no one else says can be done?

Clearly you must sell your ability as a leader of people, to be able to deal with people on a regular basis, to motivate, to coordinate and resolve disputes. Obviously you must be able to persuade, empower and make people feel good about themselves. But it is not enough. As a leader you must not only be able to show you have the people skills but that you embody the belief systems that will forge the team into what it needs to be.  As much as anyone can be, the leader IS the team. Its beliefs, its morals and its modus operandi. Everything from your ability to attract the best talent to being able to develop and motivate the talent you have is dependent on being near the top of the game yourself. If not at the top then defiantly on a par with the top. Note that you don’t have to be at the top of the same game as those in your team. Obviously if you are a marketer and you have a programmer in your team you don’t have to know programming at his level in order to earn his respect and belief. But you damn well do need to know marketing at his level of programming and be able to improve at the same rate as him. The bigger and grander your vision the greater the importance to attract a team of the best and in order to do that you need to be the best yourself. That is the entry ticket to play the game. And that is where the pursuit of pro comes in.

It is what allows you to reach the highest level of performance. It is the purpose in purposeful practice talked about in the book “Bounce” by Matthew Syed. In this book Syed builds on many of the principles found in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers”. He adds that the 10,000 hour rule of world class performance only applies if the practice being done is purposeful (see this post for more on the 10,000 hour rule). That is to say, if the practitioner is actively trying to improve. If he is just going through the motions then he might as well not be doing anything. This is what separates a world class performer from just another guy who has 30+ years experience in this or that industry.

I recently read “The Leader Who Had No Title” by Robin Sharma and I loved 10 pages in particular, 64-74, when the characters discuss mastery. They introduce the concept of FMOB (the First, the Most, the Only and the Best). To me, striving for that ideal just about sums up what the pursuit of pro is all about.

Here are my favorite quotes from those 10 pages.

“Mastery, Anna offered. ‘committing yourself to mastery at what you do, mastery at your craft–whether your craft is selling staplers or educating children–is the only standard to operate under in these change-rich times. Anything less and you’ll be left behind. The comedian Steve Martin said it really well when he advised, ‘Be so good that people cannot ignore you’”

“Expect more from yourself than anyone around you could ever expect from you. Play in the big leagues, Blake! Just fly up into the thing space of rare air. Most people set such low standards for themselves. They aim so low–and then, sadly, reach that goal. And so you’ll find that you don’t have a lot of company out on the extra mile.”

However you look at it, the pursuit of pro is the first step to great leadership. After all, if you cannot bring out the best in yourself how can you hope to bring out the best in others?

So how do you go about developing the pursuit of pro mindset? You can do it in many ways. By far the best way I’ve found is to immerse yourself in an environment where the pursuit of pro is an integral part of the communities DNA. Even better, to be part of a team that is likewise and where the group performance rests on the individual ability of every team member. Your teammates will, over time, pound the following mantra into your head. “Be better” “Practice harder and smarter” “Never quit” “How good I was yesterday means nothing only how good I am being right now.” That’s what WoW did for me. It’s what team sports did for many of the top performers of the last few generations. It’s what the military and often the general will to thrive and thus survive did for generations before that. What it is that gives you the attitude matters not. All that matters is that you get it.

Of course this is not to say that you must have had an experience like this in order to be able to understand and live the principle. Another quote from those 10 pages mentioned above….

“BIW just means Best in World. In my work here at this hotel, I continually ask myself a very power self-coaching question: “What would the person who is the best in the world at what I do be doing in this very moment?” Once I get the answer, I immediately refocus myself and get down to the business of doing only that which will create the largest results and the biggest impact. My goal here, each and every day, is to be the best in the world at my craft of housekeeping. And that’s how I continually move closer towards mastery,”

…. Just forming the habit to constantly ask yourself this on a regular basis can do the job. Attach the thought to an object or action that you often do throughout the day, whenever you do that action, pass that place or see that object, ask yourself that question. Eventually it will become as much a part of you as the food you eat and air you breathe.

George Leonard, author of “Mastery – The Keys to Success and Long Term Fulfillment” got it first from his flight training and experience and latter from his practice of Aikido. “Mastery” is a great read by the way, indispensable to anyone who is series about developing the pursuit of pro attitude.

Gordon Ramsay got it first from his cut-short football career long before he opened his first restaurant.

Donald Trump got it from playing varsity football, American football and baseball.

The list goes on and on and on.

Wherever you get it, however you get it.  Find a way to go and get it. It’s THAT important.

- James

Books. A brilliant way to access the wisdom of great thinkers and doers.

Cheap (with Amazon), accessible (with Amazon) and plentiful (you get the picture). Very very plentiful. The best guess I could find for number of book titles in the world is 65 million.

That’s a lot of books.

How on earth is anyone who is in the “I don’t know what I don’t know” phase of leadership development meant to know what is worth reading and what isn’t?

Well, for quite a number of years my approach to reading was a stumble and pray strategy and it produced “some” good results. Most of the books I read though, while  not useless to someone who knew next to nothing, could have been much better. The result of this lack of guidance was a factor in why I didn’t read as much as I could have for quite a while.

However, I then got a stroke of good luck (yay for serendipity). I tripped over Josh Kaufman’s Personal MBA (PMBA) website. Josh created this website with the vision that you don’t have to spend a fortune on an MBA to get a good business education. While I was stumbling around not reading much, he was reading books by the thousand! Josh has created a list of what he considers to be the 99 best in the categories he considers of most importance for a successful business leader.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. - Sir Francis Bacon

All of the books on the PMBA that I have read so far, fall very much into the last category. The list’s brilliance is down in most part to Josh’s own laser sharp understanding about business and leadership, which is very evident from his own blog articles, videos and projects.

Since I started my quest to understand leadership development I have read a lot of books and I usually have some trepedation before starting one (I hate not finishing books once I’ve started them).However everytime I pick up a PMBA book I know that it’s going to end up on my “I can’t imagine myself not having read this book” list.

So far I’ve read 16 of the 99 total. I’m thinking of some way to show my progress on this blog since it’s something I really want to complete.

So anyway, go check out the PMBA manifesto, start reading, and become just a bit more awesome with every page turn!

- James

PS. This is not an attack on MBA programmes, I think they have their place and can be very good choices for many people. However I also feel that in today’s world, the idea that you can have a monopoly on knowledge is silly. If I ever take an MBA I’ll let you know my opinion of MBA vs. PMBA but until that time I’ll take the knowledge I can get a hold of right now.