3 Wise Sayings You Need to Stop Saying Today
Some ‘wise’ sayings are evil affirmations that staying the same is a good thing. They’re dangerous because they’re half true.
#1. We did our best.
Bull crap! You didn’t do your best. You don’t even know what your best is.
“I did my best,” is an opiate that affirms poor performance. Don’t soothe it. Use it. Lean into discomfort.
Don’t console failure. Ask your team, “What are we learning? What will we do better next time?”
#2. You can’t hit a home run every time.
“You can’t hit a home run every time,” is a loser’s excuse for accepting halfhearted effort. It’s permission to ease up.
A few months ago I bought into this evil lie with a team I work with. I realize now that it gave me permission to expect less from them and myself. NO! NO! NO!
When you don’t hit a home run, don’t excuse it by saying, ‘You can’t hit a home run every time.” Instead ask:
- What does a home run look like?
- Who brought the most value? How will we better leverage their energy and talent next time?
- Who held us back? What will we do to elevate their performance next time?
- What will we do differently next time?
- How can we pour energy and talent into things within our control?
- What are we learning?
The trouble with, ‘You can’t hit a home run every time,’ is it’s true. You can’t. Now that we have that settled. How will you hit more home runs?
Don’t use ‘wise’ sayings to affirm lackluster effort.
#3. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
No! A little knowledge is the first step to a lot of knowledge. Yes! People with a little knowledge make mistakes. Isn’t that the point?
How have these wise sayings hindered progress on your teams? In your own leadership?
How might you adapt these wise sayings to make them even wiser?
Something I say is “The best you can do is the best that you can do, as long as it’s the best you can do.”
I believe that you are correct in saying “We did our best” is an easy cop out. As a follower of Christ I am responsible for the input. How much work I put in and the quality of my work. That allows me to trust God with the outcome. I feel that correlates to anyone no matter your beliefs. To a certain extent, we can only control what we can control. I believe you even said something like that a couple of weeks ago, that worrying about things out of your control can lead to elevated & unnecessary stress levels.
the catch with my saying is that you need to have accountability & integrity for it to work. You must honestly be able to say that you left it all on the field. I do my absolute best and trust the outcomes to Him.
Thanks for joining the conversation Josh. The topic of giving our best is interesting to me. You’re best might be a 10 on one day and an 8 on another. There are personal factors like diet or rest. There are also team factors like who is around us. Some people help us bring out our best. Others slow us down.
I keep leaning toward the idea that getting better is the answer to doing our best.
Another one, “It is what it is.” Accepting a situation as static, offering no explanation or solution, a cheap way to try and end a conversation and not explore anything further.
Thanks Margaret. Love that. You remind me that some wise sayings are half true. Surely “It is what it is.” But, if that’s the reason to play dead, then it’s a disgusting bit of foolishness.
Ouch.
Thanks Mark. I get that.
“There is a time and place for everything,” and sometimes, you “just need to go after the low-hanging fruit.” “Things today aren’t like they used to be,” “So, get over it and back to work.”
I actually remember reading in Inc or somewhere an article about bad metaphors in business. Maybe we should start up a list of GOOD metaphors for impacting people and performance and put them into context like what you shared. The glass is half full, you know, and there is NOT too much glass.
But can you hit a home run in soccer / football? And a 3-pointer is a different deal in basketball than it is in golf. But that gets me into a discussion of whether golf is actually a sport and we play 7-man football around here.
Time’s fun when you are having flies, though, if you are a frog.
Perspective. Breakfast of Champions and one more mixed metaphor.
And a little leadership is a dangerous thing.
(grin).
Thanks Scott. I have to say I enjoyed reading your comment. Of course I have the attention span of a chipmunk on steroids, so the bouncing around works for me!! 🙂
Just to turn your three examples around:
“We did our best.” turns into “We can do better!”
“You can’t hit a home run every time.” turns into “Hard Work + No Excuses = Success”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” turns into “Tell me something new you learned today.”
Thanks Mary Ellen. You’re nailing it. I feel the power of being forward-facing.
Love this thanks Dan!
Thanks for the good word, Tim!
You bet Dan! Hope all is well with you!
You hit a home run today!! THANX!
LOL!! Good one! Thanks Dayna.
Dan
I hear what you’re saying – we need to be careful of excuses, enabling behaviour, and meaningless buzzwords. “Servant-Leadership” is one of my least favourites – and not because it isn’t a good notion in the way the originator, Robert Greenleaf, described it. But rather because it’s become a term of false humility, often miss-used and abused by leaders who “talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk” and are far more committed to asserting their authority than being a ‘servant’. But …. that’s a whole other topic
I encounter some folk who use a variety of excuses for poor performance/behaviour, but honestly – that’s a pretty small group.
Most of the folk I engage with and work with who say things like “I did my best” are responding out of sense that their contribution hasn’t been valued or from a place of fear where they feel threatened and they need to justify/defend their work and/or contribution. Folk who say “it is was it is” (I’m one) are often expressing frustration with a system or process that isn’t working, that they’ve tried to get changed or influence leaders to change, but instead have had to keep plugging away with a process that doesn’t work. It is often the first step in accepting what you cannot change, and preparing to move on.
We tell folks “failure isn’t an option” and then wonder why folks don’t take risks or display initiative. Leadership books tell us to be visionary, go after “big hairy audacious goals” …. but when we try to change a process that isn’t working we hear from corporate leaders “it takes a long time to turn the big ship around.”
A few thoughts from the bleachers.
Thanks Mark. I’m thankful you joined in. Your perspective on “I did my best” makes sense. Perhaps that’s what makes these saying interesting.
I was so angry with myself that I accepted the dark side of ‘you can’t hit a homerun every time.” (Even though it’s true.)
You’re observations re: failure isn’t an option are powerful. Frankly, if failure isn’t an option than neither is innovation. Innovation is a series of failures – if not failures it’s at least a series of falling shorts.
So glad to hear from the bleachers!
Mark,
There are many things that are great concepts, but are misused by people. One thing we need to do as leaders is to NOT blame the tool for the failure, unless the tool is truly broken. Nine-point-nine times out of ten, failures or abuses are not the failure of the tool, but a failure of the person using the tool. I hear the same thing about Strengthsfinder, or The Leadership Challenge, or Emotional Intelligence. It’s bad because people can misuse it. Same with Servant Leadership. The fault lies not with the system/concept but with the person misusing it.
Love the rest of your comment. Spot on!
One time our CEO said that we have to get ‘lean’, do more with less, so “B” work will have to do. Can you imagine?
Thanks Sandy. It’s pretty hard to get excited about doing mediocre work! Ugh
Dr. Scott Simmerman brings up a good one: “Low hanging fruit.” I’m so tired of hearing about that silly fruit (which is probably spoiled by now.) I understand the concept but it gets o-l-d. At some point, you need to climb a little higher and attack the root cause of the problem/issue/challenge. The “easy” stuff within reach doesn’t equate to a viable or long term solution.
I reckon there are many score; trite pedantries that folks really ought to stop repeating.
Bring it my friend! I love this article. You are absolutely on point that when we say things like, “We did our best!” that we are giving ourselves permission to fail. Maybe the result wasn’t what we wanted, but the real question is, “What did we learn from this experience that will help us raise the bar next time?” Thanks for the great post!
Great post! I enjoyed. When I was a kid, I used to believe that these wise sayings are true and I should apply them in life. But as I got older, I became more critical and realized that they’re not at all true or maybe just half true. This is one realistic post!
Great Advice. Nothing to add. You said it very wisely and clearly.
The last one i definitely agree with, I’m a big supporter of fail your way to success
“We did our best” …. while I think that participation prizes are a load of bollocks, if your a leader you should be supporting your team and saying this kind of thing… if you need to say this to them then they are probably beating themselves up about whatever already.
And the home run to be honest kinda just feels like filler bud.
It’s a plot!
We used to say, “Sometimes your best isn’t good enough. Sometimes, you must do what is necessary.”
On not winning them all we used to say, “From 9 to 5 we are about as good as the other guy. But, from 5a to 9a and from 5p to 9p, we kick their d!¢k$ in the dirt!
On knowledge, how’s this? “If something you knew to be true wasn’t, would you want to know?”
I agree that these are not wise words and I like the approaches suggested here! I have also been thinking a lot lately about two phrases that I hear regularly from leaders who maybe believe an “aloof” approach is an influential approach. The first phrase often goes something like this “you are great at your job, and I’m glad I don’t have to do it”, or “thanks for doing a great job with the work that no one else wants to do”, or “I am so glad you are here so I don’t have to do that job”. These comments are damaging to the team member and are pretty transparently intended to make the leader feel important by diminishing the work through a poorly veiled compliment. Leaders should thank the team member for their work, and leave it at that. Another is “and when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘you’”, which adds an unnecessary power dynamic that is not motivating or empowering, but meant to put someone in their place, reminding them that they are in a hierarchy.