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Practicing Leadership: The Rule of 300/3000 [January 2008]

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Recently I introduced my coaching clients to a principle I call the Rule of 300/3000. It is one of the most important and least discussed principles in leadership development. I didn’t invent the concept. I heard about it from Richard Strozzi-Heckler’s book Leadership Dojo and then coined the expression. Here it is:

The Rule of 300/3000

  • If you want to get good at something, you need to practice doing it over and over again.
  • To be specific, it takes 300 repetitions to develop a bodily memory of a skill and 3000 repetitions to fully embody it.
  • Therefore start practicing right now.

Example: learning to drive stick shift. When you first learn to drive a manual transmission car, shifting from first to second gear (or from second to third) is incredibly challenging. When do you push your left foot down? Can you time it with your right foot? When do you move the gear? Does your hand even know which gear is where? Coordinating these movements is hard. As a result, initial attempts typically produce a combination of stalls, erratic acceleration, and multitudes of disturbing sounds coming from who-knows-where in the car. Do you know anyone who skipped this step in learning stick shift? I don’t. This is why some people give up and switch to an automatic. [Read more…] about Practicing Leadership: The Rule of 300/3000 [January 2008]

Shining through Cynicism [August 2004]

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A cynic, it is said, is an idealist who has experienced one too many crushing disappointments. After all, who among us has not at some point placed our trust in a person, organization, or idea and then experienced betrayal when reality fell short of the promise? Situations like these rattle the ground upon which we walk.

A dozen years ago, when first encountering such thoughts, I reconciled myself to the notion that cynicism is an inevitable end state of the human condition. We can barricade ourselves from it—some of us longer than others—but eventually it will break through. And once it does, it will hold dominion over us until the day we die.

I’m no longer so sure. Another decade of living and observing leads me to question whether this view is either valid or helpful. While witnessing many challenging events in others’ lives and my own, I have learned that pain does not always produce cynicism. Other responses are possible and—under the proper conditions—likely. Clients laid off from their jobs in disrespectful, even cruel,ways have turned these “hits” into “gifts” by rediscovering resilience and forgiveness within and networks of support all around. While feeling the pain(genuinely, in their bodies), they have also discovered reason to hope. In my own life, I have found that the experience of bouncing back from disappointment feeds into my body at least as much energy as was depleted by the disappointment. In short, breakdown does not need to lead to cynicism. It can lead to breakthrough. [Read more…] about Shining through Cynicism [August 2004]

Waking Up The World [March 2003]

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When movers and shakers in the world declare that they feel powerless, it is time to take notice. In the past week, several people I consider teachers and leaders of the highest order have made precisely this declaration with reference to the war in Iraq. I did not argue with them. Yet as the murmur of their words settled in my mind, I began to sense that this moment in history calls for a richer response. It is not that the feeling of lacking efficacy is untrue. Instead, this feeling is but one of many truths – and, of these, the least likely to be helpful.

When we say that we lack power and criticize people we think have it, we are engaging in what Harvard researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call the language of complaint. This language is pervasive in our organizations and families. Indeed, it is so common that we hardly notice it. It is particularly prominent when compared with declarations of what we truly care about, or the language of commitment.

What is wrong with a culture where it is more permissible to complain than to state our commitments? Nothing, other than (a) life becomes less fulfilling and (b) it’s harder to get things done. This is why it is so painful to be part of conversations lamenting the war and the futility of our actions. It is also why we can’t seem to find an alternative to them. [Read more…] about Waking Up The World [March 2003]