Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

perspective

Questions

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What is the core business? Who are the support teams? Who holds accountability, and how are they influenced?

How are the complainers dealt with? The over-analyzers? Does seniority count the same as impact?

How often is appreciation shared, and why? Are decisions justified with pragmatism? Are they justified at all?

Does your degree matter more than your impact? Does your degree matter at all?

Are there rewards to be had? If so, which types of behaviors and results need to be exhibited to get them? If those behaviors don’t align with your values, are you prepared to leave?

Is your work part of your identity? If so, how sure are you that you define it? Do you want to relinquish the definition of any part of your identity to someone else?

These are good questions to ask yourself, right after you ask this one:

What am I doing, and why?

Stand up

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You always have a point of view.

You don’t always have a chance to share it.

Look for the chance, and take it when it presents itself.

Luck and shortcuts

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Between the origin and the destination, shortcuts are an oasis in the desert. They’re a sleight of hand. A prestige.

Luck is a tailwind. It’s a cloud when the sun is hottest. A mist when the climate is driest.

When you take shortcuts, you wind up needing to start over again and retracing steps. Shortcuts require you alter your course. They’re a distraction from the end goal.

When luck shows up, it enhances what you’re already doing. It’s encouragement to keep moving boldly ahead. It’s unexpected and welcome.

Neither luck nor shortcuts are dependable.

When you set out to do something, it’s not so crazy to believe you might get lucky, but watch out for shortcuts.

Speed or mastery?

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“Wow, that is fast,” people say, marveling at the effortless ability to solve a problem.

“That took me 20 years,” thinks the master, who has spent her whole career learning, growing, and caring enough to be good at this thing.

When you see someone who makes something difficult look easy, that’s mastery. When you see someone acting fast and then dealing with the consequences, that’s speed.

It’s easy to confuse the two, but it’s critical that you don’t.

The opportunity

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The opportunity that you’re imagining has parameters that all fit your life at the right time, in the right place, for the exact right amount.

You expect it to be obvious; a no-brainer that allows you to keep being the same person tomorrow as you are today: a house in the right neighborhood that’s the right size, a job like the one we have now but with a bigger paycheck and a better boss, a business idea that’s so unique and so compelling, it’s a guaranteed success.

So when we look for opportunity we have this tunnel vision, and rather than recognizing that we are limiting our field of vision to a perfect situation (one that is unlikely to ever come along), we think there just aren’t any opportunities.

But the problem isn’t lack of opportunity, the problem is that the opportunities available to you don’t look exactly like what you expect.

The house is a little small or stretches our finances, that job means relocating and a long distance relationship, that business idea means just being the most customer-centric veterinarian.

That’s why it’s hard to buy low and sell high. That’s why it’s hard to time the housing market. That’s why your career change is stalled. Because in order to do those things, you have to do something that is different from your expectations.

Seeing opportunity requires us to be flexible, to pay attention to adjacent disciplines, to talk to someone different, to behave in new ways, to be a little uncomfortable, to shine the light of our unique perspective in different directions. If we can do that, we open our aperture and can see that opportunities are everywhere.

The best part is that my opportunity isn’t yours. You’re different than me. We know different people. We see different things and we are moving through life in different stages. We have different experiences seen through different lenses and are comfortable with different degrees of risk.

When we look for an opportunity to help, to build, or to grow, we use all of these differences to be able to identify an opportunity and understand what it means for us.

So when an opportunity presents itself, know that it won’t be exactly what you’re looking for at exactly the right time. But pay attention to the ones you notice, they might be trying to tell you something.