A good fit

This post has nothing to do with banks or Wall Street.

I’ve come to realize that no matter how good you are, there’s something to be said for a good fit. Work is like sleeping. What do I mean? I’m fond of telling people that I can “fall sleep anywhere.”

When I was in the Air Force, we’d go on these Army exercises where we’d train where they did. This often involved spending weeks at a time in the field, staying up for several days and simulating what we’d do in real life contingencies. During those times, I quickly learned how to adapt my personal quirks to the most austere locales and discovered things like how a chem warfare suit bag can be a useful pillow (not the suit itself. Only with the suit inside the bag) and how the ground is more comfortable than a military stretcher to lay on after you’ve not slept for a while.

The point of this story? Being in a situation where you can fully stretch your wings takes some adaptation. No new situation comes with an instruction manual on how to do it perfectly. You move, shift, grow and see how it comes together. But this doesn’t solely rely on your own talent. One of the things I’ve figured out coming to different cohesive communities over the years is how much my own success relied on the embrace of others within the community to enable me the freedom to operate as I do. 

This owes not just to leadership, but the freedom to express yourself. When this doesn’t happen, the situation becomes a lot more difficult. Not every community boasts the openness of others, every culture is comprised of stakeholders who have a vested interest in things remaining as they are with as little change as possible.

None of this matters if you’re a true change agent. You’ll find the spots where you can, make the changes you can make when you can make them. Not change for change’s sake mind you, but finding the areas where you’ve been called upon to assess the situations and grow them, evolve and develop programs and do your best with what you’ve been given. 

Sometimes, a good fit isn’t always about shaving off the edges to make yourself fit, but pulling on the lines enough to reach your destination understanding that you might fall an inch or two short of your goal and that often, that’s just going to have to be good enough.

Three goals for 2010

I sat down to ask you this question, so I’ll answer it first.

1. Putting work in perspective. Work became a bigger part of my life than I liked and I had to take a step back. I went from someone I thought was pretty interesting, to being pretty consumed with this nebulous thing called success. If I’d arrived there, I decided it wasn’t a place I wanted to be. Since the middle part of this year, I’ve discovered quite a bit about myself and what motivates me. For someone who has made a vocation from preaching the importance of being authentic in communicating your message, this is no small thing. 2010 will be better for me, as a result.

2. More social, less media. I’ve made a conscious effort to use social media more as a tool to inform my everyday life, rather than a stream of consciousness communications tool. The majority of the people in my active life simply don’t use social tools. Which is a bit strange, but…it happens. Those who do are primarily confined to Facebook and I think we’ve covered how I feel about that already. Over the past few months, I’ve done a lot more watching and reading, rather than participating. My interaction hasn’t decreased, I’ve just been more selective about what I say and when I say it. I felt more constrained by social presence and made a change to fix that. In 2010, I feel like there’s more balance in that area and it’ll result in better conversations, posts and content on the whole.

3. More interactions. I wasn’t able to do much on the conference circuit this year and it’s a gaping whole I intend to fix in 2010. In part because I’ve talked to so many people on the web that I feel like I already know, that it’d be nice to actually meet them. So this is a pretty big one.

What are your goals for next year?

Thanks for your comments, emails and other feedback this year. I’ve far surpassed my humble expectations for this blog, by simply knowing I’m connecting with so many people professionally and personally. Here’s to a whole new set of adventures!