Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

Influence

A decision made

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Decision-making can be quick, pragmatic, slow, careless. You can hear all the arguments or not. You can do the analysis or rely on intuition. You can mix these approaches.

In any case, if you’re the one deciding in the first place you’re likely to benefit. It’s difficult to undo a decision made. That’s a positive and a negative depending on where you stand.

If you’re going to burn the boats, it’s a risky bet with upside if you’re right. If you achieve first-mover advantage, it’s hard to beat, at least for a while. And in both cases, being wrong will quickly be forgotten and being right (or lucky) is sure to bring reward.

So the lesson is to look for opportunities to decide – rather than to simply react to a decision someone else has made.

Negotiations

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If you have a job, you’re a negotiator. Here are some examples:

  • Vendor contracts & relationships
  • Product sales
  • Performance reviews
  • Starting a new initiative
  • Cross-functional projects
  • Scheduling time on the calendar of a high-level person

Some of these negotiations are easy and some are hard, but they’re all scenarios where 2 or more people have different contexts and are seeking outcomes that may coincide a little, a lot, or not at all.

Being a good negotiator requires preparation and strategy. It means knowing what you want ahead of time. It means understanding what the other person wants and figuring out how to align their goals with yours. It requires being a great communicator – actively listening, precisely articulating, and diligently executing.

If you go unprepared into a situation that looks like a negotiation, don’t be too surprised if things don’t come out exactly as you’d hope (unless your goals overlap almost perfectly with the other negotiating parties).

Editing

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As soon as we learn our first words we start telling stories. We tell stories to our families, our friends, and to strangers. We tell stories to ourselves.

The stories come in all shapes and sizes: short, long, fast, slow, tense, funny, sad, and on and on.

Stories can create connections and end relationships. They can build start-ups, get dogs adopted, or inspire a congregation. Stories can pass the time or pass on legacy.

Stories can be planted in peoples’ minds and they can grow there, for better or worse.

It’s worth considering what stories are planted in your mind and whether or not they’re helping you. You may not always be the original author of those stories, but you are certainly the editor and you decide what goes to print. So how a story got planted and what it says isn’t really the point, the point is that it’s relatively easy to make useful edits — a first step in giving yourself a happier ending.