Morning friend.
It’s late on Friday and I’ve just realised I didn’t preheat the oven for dinner.
Yet again I’ve lost a whole afternoon to words on a Mac and a dog snoring peacefully on the chair behind me.
Apparently, dogs sleep facing away from the person they trust most. Ziggy has been upside down for two hours, so presumably his strongest relationship is with the floor, not me.
Early this morning, before the sun came up and most of my family were awake, I headed into the academy.
I committed to supporting some of my experienced blue belts today, helping them understand what they need to work on as they move towards purple.
All of them have been training for years. They know plenty of techniques and have spent a considerable amount of their free time trying to strangle their friends more efficiently.
This morning, I asked them to pay attention to some of the things they first learned as white belts.
How they position themselves. How fluently they move. How clearly they understand what needs to happen next.
The fundamentals.
As you progress in Jiu Jitsu, the people you train with become better at exposing the things you haven’t quite understood or worked hard enough to make automatic.
You might get away with a gap in your basics for a while. Perhaps you’re strong enough, quick enough or know something your opponent doesn’t.
But eventually you meet someone who makes that gap impossible to ignore.
By purple belt, I want those fundamentals in my students to be properly embedded. Otherwise, you can find yourself having to rebuild your Jiu Jitsu around things you thought you’d already learned.
Going back to work on something you thought you’d moved past can be harder than learning it the first time. By that point your pride, and scores of hungry white belts, have had a few years to get involved.
I spend most days pointing these gaps out to other people. This week has provided a few opportunities to inspect some of my own in business and as a dad.
My businesses are growing, and with that comes more demand on our teams and on the systems that support them.
Much of this week has been spent making sure people understand the priorities, the standards I expect and how we keep delivering them through better processes and systems as we scale.
It hasn’t been particularly glamorous.
There are unlikely to be requests for the film rights of my last two days sitting at this desk.
But great businesses need great systems and great standards.
People need to know how things work, the tools to do a great job and where their responsibility begins and ends.
For the first few years, I made most of it up as I went along. Whatever worked generally stayed in my head.
As we developed, the gaps in that approach to business, much like on the mat, became more obvious.
I know I have to be careful about asking more of people without becoming clearer about exactly what I’m asking them for.
Something being obvious to me doesn’t mean I’ve explained it well enough to someone else.
At home on Wednesday, I was rather more focused on what I presumed someone else ought to have understood.
I had a difficult evening with our eldest son.
Some poor planning meant he missed a bus. Sara ended up driving to another city to collect him, and he got home much later than expected.
At sixteen, I think it’s reasonable to expect you to know that leaving your mates and catching a bus on the other side of town cannot happen at exactly the same time.
There was worry involved, too, and a feeling that our time and the other members of our family hadn’t been considered.
We didn’t communicate particularly well with each other that evening.
That is putting it nicely.
The following day, we talked properly over burgers.
Feeding a growing teenager well before asking for proper engagement is, I have found through years of trial and error, black belt level parenting.
I was clearer about what we expected, and he explained how he’d felt. He also challenged me on some of what I’d said.
I was proud of him for that.
He hasn’t always had the confidence to disagree with me, and I sent him a voice note on my way home from the academy this morning to tell him I’d noticed.
He still needs to plan his journeys better. But I want him to be able to tell me when he thinks I’ve got something wrong.
That’s something my Grandad told me to make sure of with my own boys.
The most courageous of men always speak their truth.
Next week, I’m giving a talk I’ve titled ‘Human Intelligence: Uncovering the Person Behind the Pressure’.
Part of it is about understanding what the person in front of you needs, especially when the demands on them increase.
Preparing it has given me plenty to think about this week.
The awkward part is realising that the advice I’m giving to my students on a Friday morning in my academy applies just as readily to me at my desk and us at the dinner table at home.
It’s tempting to think we should be beyond the basics by now. We’ve been doing this stuff for years. We have experience, responsibility, perhaps a different coloured belt or an older child.
But none of that makes an unclear expectation easier to follow or a neglected fundamental more reliable under pressure.
On the mat, I’m asking my students to slow down enough to understand what needs correcting before they put more effort into it.
At my desk, that means giving my team clearer systems and expectations before asking them to cope with more.
At home, it meant sitting down over burgers and having the conversation I hadn’t managed well when I was frustrated.
All of those things raise the standard.
My students still need to improve, the business still needs to deliver and my son still needs to catch his bus on time.
But if I want to help people meet those expectations, I have to do more than point out where they’re falling short.
I have to accept that sometimes the gap I’m asking them to close starts with me.
I can hear my family opening the front gate. Ziggy has finally, at the third attempt, made it upright.
I’d better sign off and turn the oven on.
Cooking a hot dinner also depends on getting the basics right.
Time to speak my truth and apologise to everyone for eating late.
Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to debrief together:
Where does the same difficulty keep showing up at home, at work or in your head?
Which of your fundamentals have you stopped giving enough attention to?
Your mission this week (if you choose to accept it):
Be more clear with someone about the standards or expectations you have for them.
Check to be sure that person understands and has what they need to deliver.
Be humble enough to accept the issue or the blocker might simply be you.
That’s enough for now.
More next Sunday.
Mike
Hold the Line · Do the Hard Things
P.S.
If someone came to mind while you were reading this or any previous Sunday Briefing, forward this to them. They might enjoy spending Sunday mornings with us.
