Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on the paradigm he used when making the decision to leave a stable, successful career to launch a start-up company:

Being an avid reader, a similar framework that I have begun to use when deciding whether to go here or there and do this or that is whether or not it has the potential to make a good story.

All else being equal, a man sitting at home watching three hours of television does not make a good story. Unless, of course, his television magically transforms into a portal into the past where he travels back in time…I digress.

Yet, something as simple as a man taking his family out for a random drive around an unknown part of town has the potential for a great story. Who will they meet on this journey? What new places will they come across? The greater the unknown the more possibility.

Ben Casnocha calls this exposing oneself to bulk, positive randomness.

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Fear of failure is something many of us struggle with individually, but within an organization it can be magnified in a way that leaves everyone paralyzed as they attempt to go about their day-to-day work.  Not only a terribly inefficient way to do business, this state of fear stifles creativity and innovation, creating a very unhealthy setting for growth.  Being conservative is one thing, but when a fear of falling short leads to the refusal of members to push the envelope, organizations are destined for stagnation and eventual failure.

This conversation came up in my squadron at a recent training day.  The issue involved pilots and loadmasters trying to accomplish the mission with the constant fear of a Q3 (Air Force speak for a documented failure or breech of standards doled out by squadron leadership) hanging over each of their heads if they messed up.  A Q3 isn’t necessarily a career-ender, but it stays in your permanent record and can have negative consequences for future assignments or promotions.

Many pilots and loadmasters voiced a similar complaint that went something like this, “Q3′s are handed out like candy in our organization even for small mistakes, no other community gives out Q3′s as much as ours.  Basically, we know that if we mess up in anyway, we’re going to get hammered, no matter what.”

The squadron leadership countered that they held us to a higher standard than other organizations and accepted less margin of error.  Additionally, they were concerned that by easing up or taking Q3′s off the table that we would take advantage and become lazy or disregard procedures.

The debate went on for over an hour and centered around one question:

How does an organization cultivate healthy risk-taking without losing control?

Obviously organizations can’t take the Q3 (fill in your own organization’s hammer equivalent) away completely, as there are times when people do something very stupid or dangerous and must be held accountable.  There must be a negative incentive for recklessness and negligence or it will slowly become acceptable to take unreasonable levels of risk.

On the other hand, when Q3′s are the go-to punishment for even the most minor mistakes it causes every pilot and loadmaster to second-guess every move they make, call home for every decision and seek cover from leadership before ever even thinking about stepping out on the limb.  It’s like swatting a fly with a hammer. Hammers aren’t very precise and should only be used as a last resort, not the go-to instrument of punishment when things go wrong.

Innovation requires risk and inherent in risk is the occasional mistake. In an environment where every mistake is severely punished, the career field stagnates, no new techniques or methods are developed and leaders turn into cowards rather than heroes.

This isn’t the first time an organization has wrestled with this type of dilemma.  Every day leaders must make decisions on how to react to missteps and poor decisions made by their employees.  Come off too weak and the fear is that people will walk all over you.  Be too harsh and people will either begrudgingly toe the line or simply walk away – neither helpful to the organization.

The military presents two additional dilemmas:

- You don’t have the option of quitting (unless you’ve fulfilled your obligation) so the default mode when faced with an environment of heavy-handed punishments is to be ultra-conservative and never go beyond the minimum required for fear of failure.  The attitude becomes one of survival rather than professionalism.

- Unlike some organizations where the cost of failure can be measured in dollars, ours has the potential to be measured in lives.  Every time we turn on the jet we hold people’s lives in our hands, not to mention a $200 million piece of equipment.  Risk must be taken, but at some point it becomes criminal.

Needless to say, these characteristics present a very fine line for military leadership.  How does one encourage troops to push the boundaries of their career field, develop new techniques, improve processes and take risk, but at the same time keep people from getting killed?

A very similar predicament can be found in the medical profession.  As a surgeon, how does one develop their skills or new techniques when the consequences for making a mistake often mean a dead body on the table?  Cadavers are great, but can only tell you so much.  Sooner or later a life has to be put on the line to advance the medical profession.  How does a Chief of Surgery manage his people in a way that encourages this advancement, but avoids taking on an unacceptable amount of risk?

After discussing these things and doing some thinking of my own, here are a few solutions I have come up with.  The following are a few ways that organizations involved in life and death missions can encourage innovation and risk-taking without being negligent:

1)  Accept the Little Mistakes – If you are going to create a system of risk-taking and innovation, you have to accept that mistakes will be made.  In his book “Product Innovation Strategy Pure and Simple,” Michel Robert explains that not all mistakes are equal, nor should they be treated as such.

When I worked at Johnson & Johnson in the early 1960′s, a motto permeated the organization: ‘If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not making decisions.’…that is how J&J encourages risk taking.  3M does it in a similar fashion.  ‘Make a lot of little mistakes, but try to avoid big ones,’ is 3M’s way of doing the same thing…Innovative thinking requires risk taking.  Prudent and calculated risk taking, but nevertheless, risk taking.

2)  Practice Harder, Much Harder Than You Play – In our profession we have multi-million dollar simulators whose sole purpose is to replicate our actual flight experience as close as possible.  On top of this we have local training missions in the actual jet, but minus passengers or valuable cargo.  These are the best places to push the envelope, make mistakes and try new techniques.  Unfortunately they are often treated like another box to fill, rather than an opportunity to push the limits.

While organizations may not have actual simulators most have some sort of training mechanism available to hone the skills of its members.  Any leader seeking to create an innovative environment must establish the precedent that training time means pushing oneself beyond one’s limits.

Training is the time for experimentation, mistakes and failure…not just another routine mission.

3)  Celebrate the Risk-Takers - One of the quickest ways to decipher the values of a company is to observe the people they celebrate.  If the qualifications of people receiving quarterly and yearly awards are measured only by the absence of mess-ups, it sends a strong message that sticking one’s neck out on the line and trying something new is not valued or encouraged.  Better to toe the line and hope you’ll be recognized someday for showing up to work on time in the right uniform.

Instead, an organization trying to encourage risk taking should be quick to recognize and celebrate those who are doing just that, taking risks!  Who cares if they’ve failed a few times along the way.  Mistakes made in the attempt of pushing boundaries and testing new ideas (very different than mistakes made by incompetence or negligence) are prime indicators that innovation is occurring, or as J&J was quoted above, “…decisions are being made.”

Hold these people up as an example to the rest of the organization and people will soon realize that risk is something to embrace rather than shun.

4) Trust Your Employees – It is imperative that organizational leadership trust their personnel.  If you don’t trust the people working for you, replace them with people you do.  This does not mean that it is blind.  Like anything in life, trust is something that is earned over time, but some leaders never make it to that point, always choosing to assume the worst, rather than the best.  This is a problem.

Part of this trust involves a belief that everyone is working for the betterment of the organization as a whole.  As a leader it’s your job to give those working for you the benefit of the doubt when mistakes are made.  If the same mistakes happen repeatedly, then address them as such, but the standard posture must always be trust.

At the end of the day every organization must understand that the behavior of each of their members is a direct result of the system they have in place (hat tip to USAFA’s Mgt 303).  Leaders can chant risk-taking mantras all day to their employees, but if they punish the first member that falls short in his or her endeavors members will read their call for change for what it really is, lip-service.

In order to cultivate an innovative environment, leaders may have to initially bite their tongue at mistakes they may have punished in the past, whether they like it or not.  Until members feel confident that the default mode in their organization is for leaders to back up their employees rather than punish them nothing will change and risk-takers will be replaced by 9-5 sheep.

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A recent post over at Art of Manliness entitled, “The 35 Greatest Speeches in History,” caused me to think the other day of some of my personal favorites.  One that immediately stood out was the words of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi on what it takes to be No. 1.

Several years ago, in high school sometime, a parent of one of the players on our football team printed this out for each of us before a game.  I stuck it on my bathroom mirror and it has traveled with me since then, always finding it’s way to a prominent place in the house.  This morning I share these great words with you.  While they are spoken about football, I think you’ll see that they are applicable to everyday living as well:

“What it Takes to be No. 1″ by Vince Lombardi

Winning is not a sometime thing; it´s an all the time thing. You don´t win once in a while; you don´t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that´s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don´t ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.

Every time a football player goes to play his trade he´s got to play from the ground up-from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That´s O.K. You´ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you´ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you´re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he´s never going to come off the field second.

Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization-an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win-to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don´t think it is.

It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That´s why they are there-to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules-but to win.

And in truth, I´ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn´t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.

I don´t say these things because I believe in the “brute” nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man´s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.

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“Quit? You know, once I was thinking of quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer all at the same time. But with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and won the Tour de France five times in a row. But I’m sure you have a good reason to quit. So what are you dying of that’s keeping you from the finals?” – Lance Armstrong in “Dodgeball“

By now most of us know the incredible story of Lance Armstrong, the Texas native that came back from cancer to win 7 consecutive Tour de France titles from 1999-2005. He has inspired many and is now busy trying to conquer his next challenge, the sport of running. He ran his first marathon in 2006 finishing in 2:59:36 (if you’re not sure, this is really good). He recently completed this year’s Boston Marathon in 2:50:58. Elite runners, watch your backs.

The story is amazing because it seems so supernatural and unreal. When staring at the list of Armstrong’s achievements the natural question is how? How does a man go from his deathbed to winning one the toughest sporting events in the world 1,2,3….7 times in a row! How does one maintain that much consistency? Lance has told us, “It’s Not About the Bike,” and I would agree — I think the majority of the answer to “how” lies in Lance Armstrong’s mental toughness.

Mental toughness is talked about a lot, but understood by very few. It is the ability to will oneself through less than ideal situations and conditions whether that be battling cancer or simply waking up early to go workout. Mental toughness can come from many sources such as:

• overcoming a difficult childhood
• a deep faith in God
• battling an addiction or disease
• undergoing military training
• consistent physical exertion

I know several people that I would consider mentally tough from WWII veterans to outdoor adventurers to Christian missionaries, but my friend Beau Suder is the first that comes to mind.

Beau has been an incredibly close friend for some time now so I’ve gotten to see his “inner workings,” a bit more than most folks. In high school Beau was an amazing athlete. Was it because he was 6’2” 220lbs with a 50-inch vertical? No, it was because he worked harder and pushed himself more than anyone else on the field. I have several stories I could tell, but I’ll keep this short.

Beau ended up playing football for the Air Force Academy, but struggled with a nagging shoulder injury. One night, while playing UNLV, he made a big hit on a guy and came trotting to the sideline holding his arm which was completely limp – he had dislocated his shoulder. I was on the sidelines and cringed thinking he would be out for the game if not longer. The next thing I saw was him talking to the trainer and the trainer popping his shoulder back in right there on the sidelines. One play later, Beau was trotting back onto the field to play the rest of the game! This is mental toughness, ignoring pain and performing under less than ideal circumstances.

As I began thinking about how one builds mental toughness I realized that while there are many ways it comes about, for the majority of people, consistent and intense physical exertion is the most accessible and common way to build mental toughness. You can’t help if you grew up in a posh suburban environment with loving parents or have never battled cancer, and the majority of people will never undergo the type of training that comes standard in the military, but everyone can go on a long run or work out until their bodies are screaming to stop. With that in mind, here are some keys to building mental toughness that anyone can follow:

1. Show Up – “Everybody wants to know what I’m on. What am I on? I’m on my bike busting my ass six hours a day. What are you on? ” – Lance Armstrong

What separates a guy like Lance from 99% of the world is the fact that he showed up everyday, when it was raining, when it was hot, when he was sore, when he was tired….he showed up everyday. JUST SHOW UP! What happens after you show up is where the real fun begins, but most people can’t even make it to that point. If it’s working out, tell a friend you’ll meet them at a certain time so you will be less likely to back out. If it’s battling an addiction, make yourself go to a recovery group every time it meets.

2. Hurt Vs. Injured – “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong.

My high school football coach, John Deti, used to always ask players that limped to the sidelines during a game, are you hurt or injured? This may seem trite to some, but he was keying in on a fundamental issue. Soreness, stiffness, bruises…these are just parts of any game or any physically demanding activity, but they should not keep one from continuing. Injuries on the other hand, like muscle tears, broken bones, etc. are a different thing entirely and should be taken care of. One of the best ways to develop mental toughness is extreme physical exertion…if there is no discomfort , you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough. This is different from causing injury which hinders you rather than helping.

3. Unfamiliar and Unexpected Are Your Friends – Part of building mental toughness involves being comfortable performing in stressful situations. One of the best ways to develop this trait is by consistently doing things you have never done or trying things a different way. Fear of the unknown keeps many from ever developing mental toughness, but by consistently placing yourself in unfamiliar situations you can learn to deal with stress and fear. Some good ones that I’ve tried include rock climbing, attending the Air Force Academy, swimming (what is recreation for most used to stress me out since I was a terrible swimmer until recently) and mountain biking. You don’t have to do something crazy, just something that you don’t normally do and something that puts a little fear in your heart.

4. What’s Your Motivation – Whenever you find yourself in a tough position you will need something you can focus on to provide motivation. I don’t know exactly what Lance focused on during the hill climbs of the Tour de France, but I’m sure it included a mixture of other cancer patients he had met along the way, yellow jackets and a finish line. Lately, for me it has been my daughter and my desire to have her look at her father’s life someday and say, “Wow, he really pushed himself and accomplished some great things.” I want her to be as proud of me as I am of her. Whatever it is, everyone has to find something to focus on for motivation. If you allow your mind to focus on your pain or your laziness you will have a hard time pushing through any adversity.

5. Constantly Challenge Yourself – What most people fail to understand is that mental toughness is something that has to be practiced and developed over time. The key to this is placing yourself in challenging situations…constantly doing things that are hard. This is a fundamental principle of military training. Sure, push-ups and sit-ups help develop you physically, but after a couple hundred of them it becomes much more of a mental game than a physical one. The military uses physical training and yelling because it creates a stressful environment that breeds mental toughness and forces one to deal with intense discomfort and anxiety, the fact that it gets you in shape is a side benefit.

6. Surround Yourself with Lance’s and Beau’s – As with most things in life, you will become who you spend time with. So, if you want to get more mentally tough, spend time with people that already are. It’s contagious. I always love working out with Beau because just when I’ve had it and am ready to leave the gym he is just starting…he pushes me by his example. Lately I’ve been pouring myself into training for a marathon. Being as I’ve never run one I have tried to meet and talk to others that have in hopes of gleaning some insight and motivation from them. Whether you are training for a marathon or not, surrounding yourself with other mentally tough people is a sure way to become mentally tough yourself.

Mental toughness isn’t about being macho or cocky, it’s about coping with stress, anxiety and pain. It’s about running another lap when your throat is burning, doing 20 more push-ups after your arms start to shake and doing the things others aren’t willing to do.

This trait is beneficial not just for the Navy SEAL, but for the 9-5 average Joe as well. When one looks at people like Lance, the Ironman triathalete, or the Vietnam POW it is easy to say, “I could never make it through something like that or be as strong as them.” The fact is, they too had to develop their mental toughness just like everyone else, day after day after day. Simple, but not easy.

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This week I was in Pensacola, Florida where I went through the Air Force’s Water Survival course. From the Air Force fact sheet, “The course centers it’s training on aircrews, which utilize parachuting as the primary means of escape. Instruction includes initial academic training, parachute equipment procedures, parachute drag training, post egress and recovery training which includes a deep water landing, and a one to two hour raft familiarization exercise.” Basically, I learned what to do if I ever have to jump out of a plane and parachute into the ocean.

One of the most memorable parts of the course dealt with the story of a Chinese sailor in WWII, named Poon Lim, who survived alone in a life raft for 133 days in the Atlantic after his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The fact that he survived for so long is incredible enough, but what struck me the most was the fact that at the time of his rescue, after more than four months on a 8 ft. square raft, he was quite healthy, having lost only 20lbs and walking away under his own strength. Not only did he live, he lived well!

Aside from the inevitable, “What would I have done?” question, there are a few lessons in skilled living I took away from this incredible survival story:

Things Will Go Wrong, Accept It – I’m sure Lim didn’t wake up that day expecting to get hit by a torpedo, but the unexpected happened and he found himself in a mess. Lim could have easily given up, bitter and hopeless, but he accepted that the world around him had fallen apart and dealt with it.

No matter how well we plan for the future bad things are going to happen, things we are unable to predict. Some people handle these life disasters well, coming out stronger at the other end. Others are completely knocked out, unable to recover. Learn what separates these two types of people and change your life accordingly.

Learn to Adapt – After two hours floating in the sea Lim found a small life raft and climbed aboard onto what would become his new home. On the raft were some biscuits, water, flares and an electric torch. Lim was now alone in the middle of the Atlantic with very few supplies, a situation that could leave many hopeless, but Lim chose to adapt to his new environment.

Poon stayed in shape by swimming laps around his raft, keeping his eyes above water at all times scanning for sharks. He gave himself small rations of biscuits and water each day, but as the supplies ran low he had to change his survival plan.

He used the canvas covering his life jacket to collect rainwater and bent a piece of wire in his electric torch to form a hook to catch fish, using his last pieces of biscuit as bate and a hemp rope as the line. He pried a nail from a plank in the raft to catch larger fish and cut up his empty biscuit tin to make a knife. Lim had very few resources, but he adapted and this enabled him to survive.

Focus On What You Can Control – It would have been easy for Lim to lie on his raft all day thinking about when a rescue boat would pick him up, what he could do if he had more supplies or why this had all happened to him in the first place, but these things were outside his control. Instead Lim focused on the things he could control like catching fish, staying as healthy as possible, keeping his raft clean, etc. In doing so he kept himself occupied and strengthened his will to live.

Know Your Weaknesses and Deal With Them – Lim was a poor swimmer so he would often tie a rope around his wrist connecting him to the raft. Rather than accepting this weakness and moving on, Lim instead swam daily, gradually turning his weakness into a strength.

Being able to identify your weaknesses is much harder than it seems. First, we rarely want to accept that we have weaknesses in the first place and second, its often hard for us to see them even if we want to. Having close friends and mentors in your life to point out your blind spots is a key part of skilled living. Only when your weaknesses are identified do you then have a chance to deal with them.

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I watched the incredible movie “300″ tonight and was reminded of the age-old truth that the few must always secure freedom for the many. The line that separates a coward from a hero is thin, yet of the utmost significance. The free man who decides to fight under his own volition for the ideals he holds dear and for the continued freedom of himself, his family and friends will always fight longer, harder and more successfully than the slave man, who has never tasted freedom and fights for someone else’s cause or ambitions. Some people say that we should never go to war, that peace should be had no matter the cost…these people are cowards. It’s a failure of virtue, and I would even say morality, to abandon freedom for the sake of peace. John Stuart Mill, the English economist and philosopher, said it best, a quote I hold very dear:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

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