Today we’re going to do a bit of reverse engineering to see just what it is that makes us tick. Ready? Here we go:

Our life—which includes our job, our relationships, our income, our health—is determined, to a large extent, by our actions.

Our actions are determined, to a large extent, by our beliefs.

Our beliefs are determined, to a large extent, by our thoughts (and vice versa). But what determines our thoughts?

Our thoughts are determined, to a large extent, by the questions we ask.

And most of us ask bad questions.

If any of this rings true for you, then it really comes down to one simple equation:

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I had a speaking engagement in Indianapolis this past Saturday, which meant that I flew in to the Indianapolis airport on Friday. At least, that was the game plan. Those of you who watched the news over the weekend know that much of Indiana was devastated by massive thunderstorms and tornadoes. The actual weather conditions ended up being much worse than the forecasts, which is how I found myself in a small regional jet bouncing violently up and down while dodging lightning strikes on our left and right. After finally making it out of the thunderstorm, we got re-routed to Chicago—and when O’Hare also proved to be “unlandable,” we were re-routed again to South Bend, where we were finally able to land and get some much needed fuel.

Now, I say “we,” but in actuality I had very little to do with the ultimate success of that flight. No, it was the two guys up front—the pilot and co-pilot—who had to rise to the level of “award-winning performance” in order to get us safely through the storm. Literally.

You have storms in your business. They may not be literal storms, but they’re very real. A customer complains; that’s a storm. A competitor opens across the street; that’s a storm. A major supplier goes out of business; that’s a storm. You face storms—some large, some small—all the time.

How do you handle them?

Do you, like the two young pilots on my airplane, rise to the level of “award-winning performance”? Or do you crumble and fold? When the storm hits, do you find a way to fly through it, or do you throw a tantrum, or avoid the problem altogether by going to a movie?

My pilots didn’t have the option of crumbling and folding, of throwing a tantrum, of going to a movie. They couldn’t avoid the problem, because there were lives at stake. The situation demanded award-winning performance, and that’s what they delivered. I’m a private pilot myself, and I’ve flown through some bouncy weather. But never a full-blown, national news making thunderstorm, and never with one hundred lives at stake. I’ve never been under the pressure that these guys were under on Friday.

There may not be lives at stake when the storm hits your business. But you’re the leader—you’re the pilot—and your business, your team, and you yourself should expect award-winning performance. In fact, you should demand it.

Thanks to those two pilots, I made it to my speaking engagement; it was a huge success, and my audience and I had a blast. But more importantly, thanks to those two pilots, I’m still around to write about it.

It’s easy to be a good leader when things are going well. (Well, easier.) But if, like my two pilots on Friday, you can achieve award-winning performance when the storm clouds hit—that’s the day that you’ll become a great leader.

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Seth Godin wrote an interesting blog today pondering whether there will ever be a time when being uninformed is cause for shame. It’s a good question, particularly in a culture that seems to equate “uninformed” with “real.” A culture that thinks having an “elite education” is a bad thing (and it’s especially galling when these invectives come from graduates of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale). A culture that watches only Fox News or only MSNBC and considers itself informed. Here’s a secret:

If you’re only informed about one side of an issue, you aren’t informed.

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You don’t need an award to have award-winning performance.

A couple of friends and I went to a little jazz club in Seattle on Saturday night. The quartet, led by vocalist Greta Matassa, was outstanding. My friends and I had a wonderful time, but here’s the thing that really struck me:

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Branch out.

That’s my mandate/order/request/challenge to you today. Branch out.

Let’s face it, most of us live our lives on autopilot. We get up at the same time every day, we eat the same things for breakfast, drive the same route to work, listen to the same radio stations, read the same books, talk to the same people. And the sad thing is that we seem fine with that.

Whatever happened to curiosity? Curiosity about the world, about other people, about other ideas. Whatever happened to the idea of being a well-rounded person? (Not just a round person—we all know that there’s a weight problem in America.) It’s been replaced by the new gold standard: specialization and expertise. We get really good at one thing and one thing only.

Don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing wrong with specialization and expertise. There is something wrong with specialization and expertise to the exclusion of all else!

I have what I think is a better model. It is, admittedly, an oversimplified model, but here it is:

Become a jack-of-all-trades and master of one.

That’s right—I said master of one. To achieve award-winning performance, you do have to have one area where you are an undeniable expert. You can have more than one, but you must have at least one. In many of my speaking engagements and private coaching conversations I challenge people to answer the following question:

What is it that you can do better than anyone else?

So that’s an important focus. But if that’s all you focus on, you’re missing the boat. When you branch out, you open yourself up to entire new worlds.

“So what?” you say, somewhat belligerently. “I like the world I’m in.”

Fair enough. So here are just three things you gain when you branch out and bring new information, new ideas, and new people into your life:

1. You start to see connections that the competition misses.

We all know how important creativity is in today’s ultra-competitive world. It’s a world where the next great idea wins, while the rest of us just play catch-up. But what is creativity, really? It’s nothing more than seeing connections that the others miss. And it’s hard to see creative connections through the myopia of specialization. Take your intellectual blinders off. Read outside of your area of expertise. Biographies are especially good (particularly biographies of people you think you have no interest in); so is great fiction. Once a month, have lunch with someone outside of your normal circle—and outside of your particular field. If you’re a businessperson, have lunch with a beekeeper. If you’re a retailer, have lunch with a history professor. If you’re a Republican, have lunch with a Democrat (and vice versa). Why? Because creativity is a game of connect-the-dots, and you never know where the next dot—the one that completes the picture—is going to come from.

2. You become a more interesting—and more successful—person.

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but people don’t want to talk about your interests. They want to talk about their interests. And to the degree that you can have a conversation with them about their interests, they will find you fascinating! Here’s my benchmark:

I like to know enough about everything that I can ask an expert an interesting question about their topic.

If you can do that, they’ll take care of the rest. I remember being at a party once where I found myself talking with a doctoral student in Russian history. I said to him, “I don’t know much about Russian history, but it seems to me that Czar Nicholas II was a great husband, but a very weak czar. What do you think?” That question comprised pretty much my entire knowledge of Russian history (I read a biography of Czar Nicholas II once, years before), but it was the catalyst for a wonderful half-hour conversation—a conversation during which I may have asked two or three follow up questions, but that’s it. The student did virtually all of the talking. Later on he said to me, “I’m so glad I ran into you; I was afraid this was going to be another one of those boring parties.”

Now, picture yourself in that same situation—except instead of a doctoral student, you’re talking the boss’s husband, or a potential big client. If you can find out what they’re interested in, and ask them an interesting question about that topic, you’ll be perceived as an interesting person in your own right—and one that they’ll want to keep an eye on. But you can’t do that if all you can talk about is your stamp collecting hobby.

3. You’ll enjoy life more.

It’s a rich world out there. I don’t mean just in financial terms, although that’s true as well. Our world is rich in art, in music, in history, in politics, philosophy, economics, science, and a multitude of other things. You are doing yourself a huge disservice if you choose to isolate yourself from 99.9% of what the world has to offer—and yet people do it all the time.

Have you ever had this experience? Somebody tells you—or maybe you read in the newspaper or a magazine—some little factoid, some little piece of trivia that makes you smile and think, “I didn’t know that!” For example, I just read that humans share 60% of their DNA with a banana (I think the percentage is higher for some of my friends and most members of Congress). That’s a fun little fact. And the world is full of them!

There are 7 billion people alive on the planet, and each one has at least one unique story that you don’t know. That woman that you just passed on the sidewalk? She might be the one with the missing piece to your puzzle.

Life is meant to be lived, and you can’t really live it from a hole in the ground. Come on up where the sun is shining. See what else there is to experience.

Branch out.

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What will your one thing be today?

Back when I was producing my sketch comedy TV show, Almost Live!, I had one cardinal rule that I followed, for each and every show, during the entire 15-year run. That rule was this:

For each show, there had to be at least one element that would make the audience think, at the end, “Now that was worth watching!”

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First, a status report. My cheese is fine. Nobody’s moved my cheese; my cheese is right where it’s always been.

Cheese, you see, is the reward you get for making it through the maze. It’s the fun stuff. Cheese is:

• the glass of wine at the end of the day
• the weekend movie
• the summer trip to Italy

Cheese is the fun stuff. I’m not going to lose track of my cheese. It’s front-of-mind, and I know exactly where it is.

It’s the peas that seem to move. What are the peas? Peas are the things that are good for you, but that aren’t necessarily fun. Peas are the twists and turns in the maze; they’re the sweat that it takes in order to earn your cheese. They’re the hard work. Peas are:

• the 30 minutes on the treadmill each morning
• the sales calls you make to drive your business
• the extra hours you put in because “good enough” isn’t good enough

Peas get lost all the time. They get lost in phrases like:

• “I was going to go to the gym this morning, but I was just too tired.”
• “My friend invited me to a long lunch, so I couldn’t get that report finished today.”
• “I know that I said I’d call my parents today, but tomorrow’s fine; they won’t care.”

I’ve said each of these—and others like them—at one time or another, and I’m guessing you have too. And each time I’ve said them, it means that somebody moved my peas.

That somebody, of course, is me. Nobody else can move my peas, and nobody but you can move yours. You alone are responsible for your own sweat equity, both literal and figurative.

So my challenge for you (and me) is this: start making the peas front-of-mind. Rather than spend your day thinking about the glass of wine, rather than spend your week thinking about the weekend, rather than spend your spring thinking about summer vacation, focus instead on the job at hand. Focus on doing what needs to be done. And then do it—to the best of your ability.

Don’t move your peas. Eat them, enjoy them, relish them. Because when you do, the cheese will taste that much better.

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It’s that time of year again—time for my annual “Let’s try to see as many Oscar nominated movies as possible” drive. So last night I saw Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which is not exactly the front runner for Best Picture. Still, it’s nominated, as is co-star Max von Sydow for Best Supporting Actor. Conspicuously missing from the nominations, however, is 14-year-old Thomas Horn. Say what you will about the movie itself (some love it, some hate it), but this guy—in his first ever movie role—not only shows incredible range and is completely believable, but is also in virtually every scene and completely dominates the movie. If a “name” actor had done what Horn did, he would be a favorite to win Best Actor.

“And your point is…?” you ask rudely.

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What decision will you make today?

Every movement—forward, backward, or sideways—begins with a decision. The quality of that movement is determined, to a large degree, by the quality of the decision. Making a decision is like putting your car in “drive.” You’re not going to go anywhere until you step on the gas, but by shifting into “drive,” you’re making a declaration of intent.

That’s what a decision is, really—a declaration of intent. You’re saying to the world (or, at least, to your world) that this is where you’re going to go, this is what you’re going to achieve, this is who you’re going to be on the planet. Ideally, it’s a promise that you make to yourself. You may or may not share that promise with others (family, employees, colleagues), but you have to make it to yourself first.

A decision is, by definition, exclusionary. It sets things in motion down a particular path, to the exclusion of other paths. Once you decide to turn right, you cannot also turn left. Once you decide—truly decide—to commit to award-winning performance in your business, you can no longer phone it in. Decisions are not for those who want it both ways. But then, neither is success.

A leader can be defined as “one who decides” (George W. Bush’s infamous “I’m the decider” statement notwithstanding). So my question to you today is a simple one:

What decision will you make today? Consciously. Intentionally.

All too often we go through our days on autopilot, not making any conscious decisions that will move us forward. We fill our hours with activities that keep us where we are. We tread water, but we don’t swim.

I invite you to break that pattern today. I invite you to take a stand for something. I invite you to move forward in your business and in your life.

I invite you to make a decision.

What decision will you make today?

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Back in my Seattle TV days, I used to hang out occasionally with a guy named Dave Grohl, who was the drummer for a little trio called Nirvana. Last night, he and his current band, Foo Fighters, picked up five Grammy awards. While accepting the award for Best Rock Album, Dave said something that really struck a chord (pun intended, thank you very much) with both the Grammy audience and with me:

To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what’s important. Singing into a a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do. It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in a computer. It’s about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].

Dave Grohl and me back in the day

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