Measuring Success

by Heather Kinzie

“In it to win it!”

“Do or die!”

have been hearing these idioms for my entire career; these mantras shaped who I was and influenced what type of entrepreneur I would become. For quite some time, these concepts defined success.

While these phrases can motivate some people, they had an unfortunate side effect for me. For years, I wasn’t, and my business endeavors weren’t, successful in the traditional sense. Too often, I felt I needed to pack up and go home, concede the loss, admit I wasn’t good enough, and otherwise deem the experience, and myself, a failure.

Searching for Success

In the summer of 2014, Alaska’s economy, which had shown some concerning plateaus, began a sharp downward trend. As a sole proprietor offering strategic planning, organizational design and professional development, I felt defeated every time a client called to abandon a project, batten down its hatches, or cancel one, if not all, training sessions. I perfected the feeling of failure each time. Thankfully, I had the courage to share my concerns with a dear friend. Through thoughtful discussion and reflection, he helped me identify other measurements of success. In due course, these discussions strengthened my resolve, boosted my confidence and, ultimately, inspired new ideas.

In 2020, COVID-19 made its way to Alaska and subsequently, the sustainability of The STRIVE Group was threatened. As I did in 2014, I felt overwhelmed, disoriented, and fearful. I easily slipped into old habits and measured The STRIVE Group’s success against traditional standards, which only served to welcome the familiar feeling of failure. Again, I summoned the courage to share my concerns with dear friends; this time around, they were my valued business partners, Rick and Denise. Through supportive, engaging discussion and introspection, we unveiled other measurements of success. Moreover, these discussions led to an emergence of new, pragmatic but valuable ideas that would ultimately sustain our firm.

These two moments are significant for a variety of reasons. They both confirm we are often harder on ourselves than others and that negativity isn’t productive. They both validate the importance of trusted friends and colleagues. They both confirm that vulnerability, and enough courage to reveal it, are critical for a leader’s success. They both validate that determination, coupled with a hint of hope, can lead to the creation of new ideas. And finally, they both confirm that traditional measures of success aren’t the only valid measures of positive achievement.

Innovation is not always new or futuristic.

Innovation is not reserved for geniuses.

Innovation is not always tied to technology.

Innovation is simply a process of identifying new and valuable ideas, new and valuable methods or new and valuable products and bringing them to fruition. In other words, innovation is the enablement of ideation paired with the fortitude to implement or attempt to implement new ideas and solutions. Innovation can be felt or appreciated by any stakeholder in the organization’s value chain, such as customers, employees, vendors, etc. That said, innovation itself can be a measurement of success.

I had been focusing so much on the result, the outcome, and the “I have arrived and am successful” moment that I lost site of the expedition. By failing to appreciate the process of innovation, I failed to give myself and our team credit for the discoveries along the way.

Interestingly, our own tag line would have reminded me: Aggregating Innovative Positivity:

• Aggregating
  The STRIVE Group doesn’t believe we can do it all on our own. We have committed to collaborating with other professionals to help businesses and their leaders improve. We strive to bring together a diverse group of experts so our clients benefit from multiple perspectives. Aggregating assumes teamwork, benefits from collaboration, and requires support and encouragement.
• Innovative
  New problems demand new ideas and solutions. While it’s possible to churn out traditional business practices or regurgitate “best in class” ideas, we strive to respond to unique challenges with unique solutions. Working in partnership with visionaries, experts, and the people closest to the work, we illuminate the path forward with pragmatic and meaningful suggestions and ideas.
• Positivity
  We founded The STRIVE Group during tough economic times, but we combatted the discomfort with optimism and hope. To that end, we sought out others with similar buoyant outlooks. This optimism assumes a healthy growth mindset, one accepting of challenges and roadblocks in its path provided earning and growth are revealed in the wake.

Aggregating Innovative Positivity! These three words, while tongue twisting, highlight that the process is a good measurement of success.

Enabling Innovation

As reflected in our tag line, our company culture provides the right perspective and reflects the right attitude toward the innovative process. As I believe everyone is and/or can be incredibly creative provided they are empowered to be, I need to consistently encourage and enable creativity and innovation. I need to give our team (and myself) the time and permission to explore and even fail if necessary. Only when we can safely be creative without fear of condemnation will we intuitively begin to use our creative minds when challenges arise.

I need to encourage teamwork and collaborative communication and hold everyone accountable for such. There are no heroes in an innovative workforce; there are teams of innovative and supportive colleagues that, through engaged communication, identify new solutions and strategies to implement them. I need to recognize when our team members are demonstrating selfish or sabotaging behavior and shut it down before it threatens or poisons the positive, innovative culture I seek.

I need to distinguish between, and make sure our team understands the difference between, improvement, invention and innovation.

• Improvement is the act of redesigning or evolving something that already exists; it involves experimentation and failure, and a healthy dose of humility. Improvement is terrific, but it’s not innovation.
• Invention is the act of creating something new; it is best enabled through combinations of creativity, healthy competition and, if you’re lucky, fun. While imaginative and exciting, invention falls short of innovation. Even the most magnificent invention, if it offers no value to the organization or its stakeholders, and if it cannot be implemented while maintaining that value, will fall short of being innovative.
• Innovation, while it may be inspired by improvement or invention, is not defined by those two things. Innovation is simply the process of creating and implementing something valuable for an organization and/or its stakeholders.

Of course, I need to encourage improvement and inventive mindsets, but I also need to encourage and empower people to explore any and all executable ideas that could add value to our business model, our services, our stakeholders, etc.

I need only look at my business card as a gentle reminder for what I, personally, am striving for: aggregating innovative positivity. To that end, I urge you to consider what success looks like for you. In the meantime, maybe we should all recite some new idioms.

“Hang in there!”

“Let’s see if it floats.”

“The sky is the limit!”