The Illusion of Choice: Success Takes What It Takes
Football season is underway, and the fall of 2024 marks the first time in fifty years that the legendary Nick Saban is not coaching a team from the sidelines.
When Saban announced his retirement last season, there was a flurry of articles about his remarkable career and how his Alabama teams won an incredible six national championships and nine SEC titles in 17 years.
These guys, they all think they have this illusion of choice. Like I can do whatever I want to do.
You have a younger generation now that doesn't always get told no. They don't get told this is exactly how you need to do it. So they have this illusion that they have all these choices.
But the fact of the matter is, if you want to be good, you don't really have a lot of choices. It takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful.
Theory and Practice
Many in this younger generation are entering the workforce with their own preconceived paint-by-numbers path to professional success.
But, as Yogi Berra once said, "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice, there is."
The truth is that being successful in the real world isn't a game where you make your own rules.
Yes, I realize that you feel it's unfair because your roommate works full-time remotely, and you have worked here for six months, and we still won't let you work Fridays from home. But it's best for our customers (and your career) that you come into an office and surround yourself with experienced people who will make you better every day.
I know you have this idea that you should be able to do all of your training during work hours, neatly check off the boxes on your onboarding plan, and automatically get promoted on your schedule. But please don't cry the victim when your co-worker who puts in extra hours on nights and weekends quickly flies by you.
Don’t Wait for the Game to Come to You
I'm reminded of a situation at our company in 2008 when Apple released the iPhone and their App Store. At that time, if we had polled the 100+ developers at our company, almost every one of them would have immediately raised their hand to get the opportunity to build the first iPhone app that we sold to a customer.
When that first sale came in, many of our developers immediately contacted their managers, asking to get trained in the new Objective-C and Swift programming languages needed to build a mobile phone application.
Who got the chance to lead that project?
The guy who told his manager that he could start right away. He didn't need more training because he already knew those programming languages. He had been teaching himself at home on nights/weekends for six months because he was so excited to learn it.
That guy is still the head of our mobile application group sixteen years later.
Tough Love, Not Therapy
What these youngsters need is a manager who is stern but fair, someone who can give them a dose of tough love.
They need a manager to say "Career path? Listen, you've only been here a couple of months. Do a great job for your customers. It's that simple. Do that, and we will never let you go. The money, the role - trust me, all of that will take care of itself."
Unfortunately, adult managers like this are presently in short supply.
Things really go off the rails when the young college graduates are assigned a manager who also comes from a participation trophy generation.
The not-yet-adult managers attempt to pacify the demanding newcomers by listening to them whine over drinks about how overwhelming it is to fill out a daily time card.
The result? These so-called managers are getting run over like a freight train, never recovering from their defensive posture.
What's Next
Our company is looking closely at how we handle people fresh out of college so that we are more direct and firm with them.
We certainly want to keep hiring young people - most of our best employees are people who have worked with us for their whole careers (or close to that).
We love nothing better than when young people come into our organization, and we can mold them to our culture. It resembles Major League Baseball players coming up through a team's farm system.
It works.
Meanwhile, for our company's sake and the good of the world, we hope the tide turns and more parents/teachers/coaches listen to Nick Saban's message and start taking on more of the load here.
People don't want to hear it, but being successful takes what it takes.
Sugarcoating it isn’t helping anyone.
Image credit: Shutterstock
Sharing Midwestern values through the stories of a hard-working single dad, all for the glory of God.