bcg blog

Chase the Who

It always ends the same way.

You spend days deliberating the perfect destination, make all the arrangements to see the most amazing sites, and make reservations for the very best evening meals. The sunsets are gorgeous and the dinners, to die for. However, those memories soon fade and we are left with the most significant factor of a great vacation: who we spend it with.

You start a new season, full of hope and promise. You settle on the perfect offensive system and agonize over all the details of the best defensive packages for your team. The plan is in place and the team executes on it, or they don’t, and you win some and you lose some. As the season nears a close, reality becomes starkly clear: the most memorable part of the last five months was never the results of the game, but who you shared the struggle with.

You buy a new house and begin planning for the move. You make arrangements for renovations at the new place and begin packing at the old place. As you remove the pictures from the walls, you have flashes of emotion as you recall the moments each captured. You smile a little, tear up a little. But, once again, reality settles you: it’s never about the house you live in, but the people you share it with.

It always ends the same way.
Wouldn’t it do us well to mind that from the start?

Why Should We Care?
We live in a world consumed with measurable results. It’s what gets rewarded so it’s what gets chased. The luxurious vacation destination. The win total. The square footage. Those things are easy to point to as markers of success. Who you're with is often an afterthought as we pursue.
This is the trap for leaders especially. We build systems. We chase the records. We obsess over the plans. All of it matters, but none of it matters the most. Your people won't remember the exact defense you ran or the numbers on the best deal you closed. They'll remember whether you knew their name, whether you noticed when they were struggling, whether you were someone worth being led by. The results fade much faster than the relationships do.
The who is never as urgent as it should be. The people around you rarely announce a deadline, so they get pushed to whatever time is left over. And the time left over is usually nothing. We treat the who like it will always be there, but it won’t. People move, drift, and eventually they're gone too. We don't get an unlimited number of hours with the people who matter most, we just live like we do. 
Since our time is finite and our relationships are the most valuable things we have, wouldn’t it make sense to prioritize both?

REAL TALK - Action Steps
Knowing the who matters is easy. Living like it does takes intention. Here's where to start.

• Who First 
  
  • Let the who shape the what, not the other way around. If you can't say who you want next to you, you're not ready to plan yet. The who should be the first consideration, always.
    

• Notice Sooner
  
  • You don't have to wait for the last day of vacation or the final buzzer of the season to notice who's beside you. Say it out loud while you're still in it. A good leader points out the people who matter in real time, not just after the fact.
    

• Trade Results
  
  • Trade a result for a relationship. Just once. See what it costs you. See what it gives you.
    

It always ends the same way. Might as well start that way too.

Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!

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