You Fall to the Level of Your Systems

"You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." - James Clear, "Atomic Habits"

Goals are great. I love goals. They give us something to strive for and they motivate us. I would encourage everyone to have goals at work and in life. The problem with goals is that we ask too much of them. Goals alone can't keep you motivated when things get really hard or you get really busy. The thing that determines whether or not we see our goals come to fruition over the long-term is our systems and habits.

Let's say you have a goal to workout and lose weight. That goal will be good to motivate you for a little while but eventually you'll get busy and it will be hard to stay motivated. What will keep you going is a consistent habit of going to the gym every day at the same time. If you can develop a good habit of going to the gym, then it won't be motivation that fuels you and keeps your goal alive, it will be your system.

The same can be said for organizations. Big ideas and motivational speeches are great to get everyone pumped up, but it's the commitment to a good, consistent system over time that leads an organization or a team to success. Just like a chain breaks at the weakest link, a team will fall down to the level of their poorest systems.

If you want to lead a more successful team, or if you want to see your organization be more profitable, focus on improving your systems. Make more efficient workflows. Create better channels of communication with your team. Create systems that run in the background, creating operational efficiency.

I am a systems junkie and I try to apply a good system everywhere I can. I have seen huge fruit in my life and my business by focusing on better systems.

If this has piqued your interest, go ahead and order a copy of "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. It's a fantastic book and an all time classic in my opinion.

Good, Fast and Cheap - Pick Two

Today's tip is simple, yet hard. When you are making purchasing or managerial decisions, you have three primary factors: good, fast and cheap. Unfortunately you are rarely in a situation where you can have all three. Typically, you can only have two of the three, with the third factor acting as a sacrificial lamb.

Let me give you a few examples:

You can have fast and cheap. I like to call this the "fast food option". You get it fast and it doesn't cost much, but you definitely sacrifice food quality.

You can have fast and good, but it probably won't be cheap. This is more like the "emergency open heart surgery option". It'll be fast, and hopefully the surgeon is really good, but I can promise you it won't be cheap. If it is cheap, run away!

Finally, you can have cheap and good, but it won't be fast. A classic example of this is DIY home projects. Assuming you have the skills to do the project well, you can save a lot of money by not hiring a professional. But between working a full-time job, and all of life's other commitments, these projects tend to take a long time to complete. I can speak from experience on this one!

The big takeaway with this is that if you try to get all three: good, fast and cheap, you will find yourself very frustrated and disappointed. You may get promised all three, but you probably won't get all three in the end. Pick the two that are most important and sacrifice the third.

Is there a decision where you are struggling to find all three? I take some time to evaluate which two elements are most important be willing to sacrifice the third.

Spend Time On Things That Have a Long-Term Impact

Engineering Tip: Spend time on things that have a long-term impact and endure the test of time.​
I am a Penn State alumni and I bleed blue and white (WE ARE!). I also love wrestling, especially Penn State wrestling. Our coach, Cael Sanderson, produces some of the best wrestlers in the world and some of them go on to wrestle in the Olympics. You can imagine how exciting it is for me to watch these guys wrestler on the world stage, and remember how fun they were to watch back in their college days.

Recently, I had the chance to watch a former Penn State great, David Taylor, wrestle in the gold medal match. David was undefeated going into the finals and had dominated every match up to this point. Now he had to wrestle an Iranian superstar and 2016 gold medalist, Hassan Yazdani. The match was close the entire time, and my boy David Taylor was down 4-3 with about 20 seconds left. Then an amazing thing happened: David Taylor summed up the energy to shoot a brilliant double leg takedown and take a 5-4 lead as time expired, to win the gold! It was awesome.

So what does this have to do with engineering?

David Taylor had endurance. Late in the match, when his opponent was exhausted, David Taylor had the extra strength to push through and make the necessary move to take down the champ. But here's the thing, this endurance didn't happen overnight. What we don't see when we watch Olympic athletes compete, is the countless hours of training and hard work. As they are training, these athletes have a long-term goal that is far more important than any short-term pain they experience. The result is a chance to complete in the Olympics, and for the very best like David Taylor, they win a gold medal. They focus on the long-term and don't let themselves get bogged down with short-term problems.

I think that far too often we get caught up focusing on urgent, short-term problems and we neglect the things that could really have a long-term impact. What if we spent less time putting out small, annoying fires, and more time building systems that help us make more informed decisions, or help us cut costs without sacrificing quality? What if we spent more time training up the next generation of engineers so that they can take some of the small stuff off of our plate, and allow us to focus on bigger issues?

How much more profitable could our organizations be if we focused more time on the things that had a lasting impact, and left the short-term things to someone else (or no one else, perhaps).

If you're interested, you can watch the highlights of the match here. The winning takedown is at the 2:40 mark.