Have you ever been in a situation in which you are either going down in flames or winning beyond your wildest dreams?
The fear of failure can be overwhelming. Your vision can narrow, and your brain literally stops working. You just want to run away.
But if you can harness that fear, it can become a powerful motivator. The trick is to use it as an engine for a "no choice but victory," all-out campaign.
Einstein showed that time is not absolute, and that time varies depending upon how fast you are moving. But—obsessed as he was with science—the great man narrowly missed discovering a scientific principle that can have a much greater impact on your life, especially at work. It is:
When you are talking, time moves faster than when you are listening.
Ask any speaker how long it feels like to deliver an hour-long presentation. The answer: about 17 minutes.
You have, no doubt, experienced the opposite effect. Think of your boss or CEO going on and on about leadership blah blah blah integrity blab blah blah and those wonderful things his high-school coach said. Endless, right?
Once you understand this principle, there is only one logical course of action. The next time you speak:
Stop talking before people stop listening.
When we worked together, my friend Don Peppers used to sometimes say that I reminded him of George Ball, Under Secretary of State to President Lyndon Baines Johnson in the 1960s. Ball was always asking questions about the policy of escalation in Vietnam. Johnson usually listened carefully to Ball, appreciated his questions, and then ignored him.
I took this as a compliment, with full knowledge that it was not entirely intended that way.
Asking the right questions is never easy, because most people ask the wrong questions. This is not because they are dumb or naive. It is because the right questions often lead to more time, energy, and resources than seem to be available.
For this reason, the “most logical” short-term course of action is often to stick with the wrong questions. But such easy questions—and answers—will lead you into a box. They are the reason why seemingly successful companies fade into obscurity, and successful professionals “suddenly” find themselves out of a job.