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Are You A Defensive Driver?

Written by: Adam Sonnhalter

Article Overview: My partner Jack said something the other day that got me thinking. For those of you who don't know, Jack is affectionately referred to as Mr. Magoo when he drives. It basically means that he does whatever he wants and assumes everyone else will react to him. I think this quote from Jack explains it all. "Everyone is trained to be a defensive driver, so I count on them being defensive while I'm busy being Mr. Magoo."

Are You A Defensive Driver?

My partner Jack said something the other day that got me thinking. For those of you who don't know, Jack is affectionately referred to as Mr. Magoo when he drives. It basically means that he does whatever he wants and assumes everyone else will react to him.

I think this quote from Jack explains it all. "Everyone is trained to be a defensive driver, so I count on them being defensive while I'm busy being Mr. Magoo."

That got me to thinking about business. Most of us are trained to be "defensive drivers" when running our businesses. We're counseled by attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, and even friends on what can go wrong and advised to proceed with caution.

Well, if we can agree that most people in business follow this "defensive driver" motto, then there should be plenty of room for the Mr. Magoo's and the more "offensive drivers" who want to capitalize on opportunities and focus on the upsides vs. the downsides.

I know there are ways we can each be more offensive on the business front and rely on those defensive folks to get out of the way. We see this quite a bit with many of our clients who are experiencing hyper-growth. They spend most of their time on the offensive and trying to make things happen.

Think of them as a powerboat creating a massive wake as they go along having a great time. Meanwhile, the defensive drivers spend most of their time adjusting to somebody else's wake.

Here are a handful of ways for you to be more "offensive" vs. "defensive" in your business:

1. Zig When Others Zag: maybe you've heard this referred to as "going against the grain." The key here is that just because everyone else is doing it, doesn't make it right. This could relate to marketing your business or growing it or shrinking it. It doesn't matter. Gordon Gecko said it best in the movie Wall Street, "Cause they're sheep, and sheep get slaughtered." In this case Gordon was referring to fund managers and their inability to beat the S&P 500, but it applies to business owners as well. If you're just a sheep following everyone else, eventually you'll get slaughtered.
2. Decide Quickly: maybe I'm in a quoting mood today, but this reminds me of a great quote by Theodore Roosevelt who said, "In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." The best way to be offensive is to keep on moving and making decisions quickly helps. While someone else may be mulling things over for the next several days/weeks/months, you will have made tremendous progress vs. continuing to rehash the same decision.
3. Know Where You Want To Go: in driving and business, it sure helps to know where you want to go if you have any hopes of getting there. Keeping your eye on that end goal enables you to see past, over, and through potential obstacles to get to your destination.
4. Stay Open: this simply means remembering that you don't know everything. If there's one thing I've learned in my time in business, it's that you can never tell where a good idea will come from. Your job as the leader is to create an environment where new ideas are encouraged and sought out from everyone within the organization and also from places outside the organization. People in your company are involved in a lot of other activities. Everything from coaching their kids' baseball team to volunteering with a local organization. They may find an interesting idea that applies to your business during these non-business activities. You'll want to be open to all of these ideas if they can help your organization.
5. Have Fun: it's easier to be open to new things and possibilities if you're having a good time. If you're bored with what you're doing or even hate it, chances are you'll be busy worrying about what you might lose. It's tough to be offensive and move forward when you're worried about the past or where you currently are. Your view then becomes very short-term, which is the death knell for your business.

I'm reminded of a college buddy named Marc who was a big New York Jets fan. Inevitably in any game the Jet were winning, late in the game they'd go into the "prevent" defense. For those of you who are not football fans, this is when the defense becomes less aggressive and just tries to stop big plays from happening. My buddy Marc summed it up this way, "the only thing the prevent defense does is prevent the Jets from winning!" Unfortunately for Marc, he was right more often than he was wrong about his Jets.

Make sure your company isn't going into the prevent defense to protect what you have. Remember, your goal is to win, not to try not to lose. This a subtle but important difference.

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Article Tags: mr magoo, offensive, Wall Street



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Profile: Julia Cameron: journalist, screenwriter, poet, nove - Julia Cameron will be one of our featured speakers at the Ladies Who Launch NYC Speaker Series taking place on April 28. Click for more info. Julia Cameron is an accomplished journalist, screenwriter, poet, novelist, and playwright. But mention her name in conversation and inevitably it will be linked with The Artist's Way, a workbook for those looking to discover or re-discover their creative selves, which was initially published in 1992 and has sold over 3 million copies. Cameron grew up in Chicago and began her career writing for the Washington Post and Rolling Stone (where she met director Martin Scorsese, whom she married in 1975 and later divorced). While married to Scorsese, she worked on the screenplays for two of his major films: Taxi Driver and New York, New York. Cameron's first musical, Avalon, was staged in 1998. At 60, Cameron continues to follow the advice she espouses in The Artist's Way: jotting down her thoughts daily in her "morning pages" and channeling her artistic vision into a variety of projects. Below, read how Cameron fends off writer's block (yes, even she suffers from it sometimes), calls on friends for guidance, and dispels the myth that writers need to be miserable to be good. what we learned from julia: "If you're good at doing one thing, you should keep doing it. In England, writers are novelists, playwrights—the word 'writer' covers a wider spectrum of activity." She also said to take a bet on yourself; she did, and it's paid off. her true calling "I was born to write. All my brothers and sisters—there are seven of us altogether—are in the arts. My father was in advertising and mom had a master's degree in English and wrote poetry. By the time I was in sixth grade with Mrs. Klopsch, I was already writing short stories and poems." investigating journalism "My goal was to write short stories. When I was offered a job at the Washington Post, it seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone. I enjoy writing in any form. I was proud of my Rolling Stone pieces. I wrote one about E. Howard Hunt's children. I remember getting in trouble with William F. Buckley. He called my house in Chicago because he thought it was a terrible thing I'd interviewed the children—he was their godfather. My first taste of celebrity was getting a good scolding. During my 20s I was a blind beginner. In my 30s I was a lot more conscious about what I wrote." screenwriting savvy "My early screenwriting was for my husband at the time, Martin Scorsese. I worked on Taxi Driver and on New York, New York. When Marty and I got divorced, I had a screenwriting career to pursue. I sold movies to Paramount. They bought the movie but didn't make it. I was frustrated, so I took the money I earned writing for Miami Vice and made a feature film in Chicago." sobering experience "1978 is the year that I got sober. My wild ways came screeching to a halt. I needed to find a way to write sober. I had always associated writing with drinking. We have a mythology around creativity that's destructive. We think you have to be broke, alone, neurotic, addicted. None of these things is true. When I got sober, I had to find a way to work soberly. I was 29, and I had a daughter who was a year old." do it for love, not money "I've never had to be paid to write. I published two novels. I have a musical opening in Chicago in the fall. Last year I had a play in L.A. The trick is to not need a guarantee and to be willing to write no matter what. Right now I'm writing a sequel to [my novel] Mozart's Ghost, which came out on Valentine's Day. I did the novel without a contract. I bet on myself." the power of friendship "It helps if you have friends who believe in you. My friends read my first drafts. A lot of times they will believe in a project when I'm getting rejected. We underestimate the importance of having one strong friend. The telephone is a wonderful ally to combat the isolation of being a writer, as is e-mail. If you know what your friends are doing, it's harder to feel lonely. I also think writing is its own companion. You're not lonely when you're actually writing." a typical day, the artist's way "I get up late. If I can, it's noon. I write my morning pages first thing. I ask for guidance and sit quietly and see if there's anything I need to be doing. I usually work on the music [for my upcoming musical]. I have a collaborator, Emma Lively, and we've written three musicals together. We work for a few hours. Then I put in a couple hours of prose writing. I sometimes don't get out of the house until 5:30. I try to get a walk in every day." overcoming writer's block "I use the same unblocking tools that I teach my students. They make you much more alert to the signals. I grapple with writer's block right away. Morning pages [three pages of writing about anything that comes to your head] are one such tool. I've been writing them for 25 years. In The Artist's Way, I also write about "blasting through blocks." By listing any angers, fears, and resentments related to a project, that often clears the decks right away. Emma and I have been hired to write music for a one-woman show. I feel blocked around it. I take a look at my ego—I'm not used to working FOR people anymore. I need to be a beginner again. Hopefully once I surrender my need to be the boss, it'll work out." favorite books "Tim Farrington is my favorite writer. He's written two books—The Monk Downstairs and The Monk Upstairs. He's so funny and deft, and he was the inspiration for me to write Mozart's Ghost. I dedicated the book to him." daily must-reads "I read a little teeny book called Twenty-Four Hours a Day that was put out by Hazelden. It's a meditation book. I also read Creative Ideas by theologian Ernest Holmes, which was originally published in 1934. They just re-released it, and I wrote the intro. Right now I'm reading My First Five Husbands by Rue McClanahan and Drinking: A Love Story, a memoir by Caroline Knapp." most rewarding career moment "I think I'm sort of singular in that I like book tours. I meet people who say I used your tools and they changed my life and this is what I did with them." scariest career moment "Watching my first musical go up in 1998. It's scary. I just heard the music so beautifully in my head that it was hard to deal with some of the compromises of getting it on the stage. I was sitting in the back of the theater saying, 'It's brilliant. It's awful." on networking "I think it's most important that we do the work and then have something to network about. Sometimes people want networking to be a shortcut or a guarantee. Networking gives you a sense of the possible. I have a number of women friends in their 70s and 80s and they are a tremendous source of inspiration. One runs a horse ranch. One got a master's in poetry at 75. One is in her 80s and is still an active actress. I believe that other women are inspirational." parting thoughts... -"I am happiest when ... I'm writing." -"Success to me means ... creativity." -"The public figure I wish most would read The Artist's Way is ... Warren Beatty. I don't know if he has." -"I will always think of myself as ... a good horseback rider." -"My business would not have happened if ... I waited for guarantees." -"The most important thing I do every day is ... stay sober. I have 30 years without a drink." This Featured Lady was profiled by Michele Shapiro, a writer living in New York City.


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