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In first year Uni, I failed every subject in my science degree except biology. And that meant, I had to do makeup exams in my summer vacation after first year for every other subject (Maths, Physics, Chemistry), just so I could scrape by with a bare pass and be allowed to do my second year. And it wasn’t for lack of effort at all. I work my little tail off that whole year, and I’d be in jealous rage-awe at some of the other students who seemed to work as hard as me (like, in terms of hours), didn’t seem to experience the same white knuckle panic before the exam, and would pull off high distinction after high distinction. I didn’t get it. I had the right goal and I wanted it badly, I knew I was capable intellectually, but somewhere I was falling short. Now, while I may not have had the raw talent, I did have the ability to recognise an opportunity to ride coat tails when I saw it, and so I worked out if I was going to turn the ship around, I needed to befriend/stalk the students who seemed to do it be able to pull it off when it really counted and learn from them.
What this taught me was that actually, I didn’t really know how to study and I didn’t know how to take exams. Like, at all. Shadowing them in their study sessions, seeing the consistency, the discipline, the preparation and the process they went through, made me wonder what the hell I was doing with my time when I was deluding myself I was ‘studying’. By the time we got to exams, the anxiety was still there, but there was also a calmness, because I knew that I had done the work, I knew I had done the preparation, and there was nothing more to be done except just put it down on paper. By third year, I even managed to top my class, then I went on to get a PhD and become a scientist. I joke that this was really only to ensure I now have a perfect GPA (which a PhD provides) and erase the shit show that was my first year …but I’m only kind of joking.
A couple weeks ago I posted about above the line thinking, the first of the many learnings I took away from Gilbert Enoka, manager of the All Blacks. One of his other nuggets of wisdom, is one that I think in hindsight was what helped me turn around my academic pursuits. Let me explain.
Gilbert’s view is that for individuals to be high performing they must have three elements that are operating optimally and in harmony; skills, mindset and structure. Skills refer to the core skills needed to operationally execute, mindset is your psychological willingness, optimism, confidence and determination to meet your goal, while structure, is the framework and process that gives you the insurance that you have done the work and the preparation — it could be process, it could be superstition, it could be eating right, and training correctly, it could be a multitude of things.
Gilbert explained that for any individual who might be struggling with performance, one or more of these three things is not operating optimally or not in alignment. But the one that he believes is the most commonly disregarded or underestimated is structure. At an elite athlete level, it’s the one that most often separates the outstanding from the excellent, because to get to that level, most have the raw skills and the peak mindset nailed. In a rugby context, what this means, is the ability to, when faced with pressure or stress or a wavering mindset or injury, succeed by falling back on your foundations. For example, having to be the conversion kicker — yep its stressful and it’s a solo effort, but if you know you have done the preparation, you know how to kick that ball in that position, because you have trained to do that 80,000 times previously and by dialing into that in that moment, you can rest easy that you default to the process you know works for that kick. Structure allows you to focus on the elements you can and have controlled instead of the ones you can’t.
In business, this is no different. Whenever there is a crisis or a tough decision or things are going off track, it can be incredibly helpful to fall back on structure to help guide you out — whether this is going back to first principles of the core goal or strategy, auditing what elements you know are needed for something to be successful and determining where the gaps are, or simply setting and execute the right work and preparation beforehand, and having that mental insurance that all has been done that could be done to make this a success.
How many of you, have work your butt off to acquire the right skills, and develop the right sort of mindset for success, but haven’t yet determined (or even thought of) the right structures you need to put in place to maximise those skills and mindset when its really needed? I think (and correct me if I’m wrong guys) this is what the PeakPersona program that Peta Ellis and Aaron Birkby have developed is trying to achieve — helping you put the right, physical, emotional, temporal, psychological and operational structures in place to set you up for success.
So, one of my goals this year, is to plot, establish and then execute these structures for myself for each of the areas that I want to be successful (and that’s not just work). I think there may be a lot of trial and error but each will be a conscious step forward to ensuring that I’m not letting myself down with that third critical pillar and repeating a lesson I should have learned the first time round at Uni.
Poor, Misunderstood Structure was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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