manage the part of you that wants to be in every band?
I own 37 guitars…
Your bar keeps moving every time you clear it, and YOU are the one moving it…
A David Gilmour. Two Jimmy Pages. A Jimi, an SRV, three SGs, a Fender Bass VI, a Marcus Miller bass, a fretless, and lately an EVH Wolfgang. For the time and money invested I should rival the professionals. I do not. Spoiler alert, the 38th guitar will not fix that either. Most of them sit there all Gently Weeping, waiting for just the right one to come along to help me Achieve my best Eric Clapton licks. For the record, this Saboteur is one of my own top 3, and I am still working through it.
Positive Intelligence has a name for the voice that bought them: the Hyper-Achiever. The Judge never works alone. It has 9 accomplices, Avoider, Controller, Hyper-Achiever, Hyper-Rational, Hyper-Vigilant, Pleaser, Restless, Stickler, Victim, and most of us have a favorite or two. Mine says you are only as good as your last result, so go get another one. Then it moves the bar while you are still reaching for it.
Everyone this year is managing something built on artificial Intelligence: a budget, a rollout, a model. This post is about managing the one thing no software will ever do for you, the voice that keeps moving your own bar the moment you get close to it. That is the human Intelligence this whole week is named for.
…and David was already in everybody’s band
David Immerglück was born in Berkeley in 1961. The Ophelias. Camper Van Beethoven, from 1989. Monks of Doom. John Hiatt’s band. And from the earliest Counting Crows records, the session player they kept calling back for guitar, pedal steel and mandolin. For years he was the guy in every room. That is a great resume. It is also a lot of bands to manage at once, and every one of them wants your best night.
In 1999 he left Hiatt’s band to commit fully to 1. He has been in it ever since.
He managed his career by subtraction.
Mr. Jones, and the wish that came true
Mr. Jones went out as a single on December 1, 1993. No. 2 on Modern Rock. No. 5 on Hot 100 Airplay. No. 1 in Canada. MTV’s Best New Artist the next year.
The Mr. Jones in the title was Marty Jones, the bass player in The Himalayans. Adam first called it “a song about my friend Marty and I.” Later he owned it: “I wrote a song about me, I just happened to be out with him that night.” A song about wanting to be famous, and then it came true, all at once.
By that spring it was already too much. When the news came about Kurt Cobain, Adam has said, “it really scared the hell out of me because I thought, these things in my life are getting so out of control.”
That is the Hyper-Achiever’s deal. It promises the next win will quiet things down. Adam got the biggest win of his life before he turned 30, and learned what it actually buys. “Winning a popularity contest cannot fix your life.”
The Hyper-Achiever promises the next win will quiet things down. It never has. Not once.
how I manage mine now…
My guitars are the harmless version of wanting to be Mr. Jones. The leaders I am working with right now do not buy guitars. They add….another initiative… another board seat… another stretch goal stacked on the stretch goal… and every one of them is self-imposed. MBA students who are there because… it seemed like the next step. To what… hmm… never thought about that…
manage is about getting the right information to the right people at the right time. The person who most needs better information about you is… you. The Judge is feeding you a very detailed report of all your failures, and the Hyper-Achiever is desperately trying to rewrite the headlines…
What effect pedal are you reaching for right now, the one you are sure will finally get the tone right? managing the Hyper-Achiever does not mean it goes quiet. It means you stop letting it hold the calendar, guitar wall included.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: this Tuesday night, look at your calendar and find the “band” it is time to leave, the way David left Hiatt’s in 1999.
Helping leaders contain the Hyper-Achiever and get back to the work they love is what I do now. Schedule time with me here.
How will you not become… Mr. Jones
