Professional growth, like personal growth, is a process of refinement. As they say at recovery meetings, it's about the process—not perfection. Honoring the process is more important than achieving perfection. Even if you achieve perfection, others in your organization (starting with your boss) will get their hands on your work, screw it up, and you'll wind up aggravated, agitated, and alienated all over again. Letting go of the notion you can somehow achieve perfection will be one of the most liberating experiences of your life. The first thing a key to serenity does is unlock the leg irons called "pursuit of perfection." The second thing it does is crank up your creative engine. Once your old notions of how to achieve perfection in yourself and others are discarded, you must replace them with something else. If not, you'll simply fall back on your next worst idea. If you don't reinvent yourself, at least retread your tires. One way of replacing the stupidity of expecting perfection with something better is to observe ways other people do things. By observing the behavior of others, you can plagiarize behaviors that appear to work well for them, avoiding those making them look like morons. I recommend adopting thought processes of successful people, although thoughts are much harder to observe than actions.

Being Right Is Stupid

My obsession with fairness and perfection launched me on a selfdefeating mission to prove I was right about everything. In my stupidity, I never stopped to consider if losing what I was ostensively working for was worth someone telling me I was right. I battled tooth and nail to be right. Doing the right thing was a secondary concern and doing things right mattered little in my quest to be right. All people want to think they're right, which means not everyone who thinks he or she is right can actually be right. Step back and reflect on your long-term plan.

What is your ideal big picture? Which is more important, achieving your long-term goals or being right? Once you stop insisting on being right and granting the honor to someone else, barriers start falling, you'll feel energized, and wind will fill your sails. As long as you are engaged in a tug-of-war with someone else over who is right, your focus and energy can't be applied to goal achievement unless your only goal is to be right. Try it the next time you lock horns with someone over something that won't alter the course of the universe. Simply agree with the blockhead and say, "You're right, the layoffs won't affect morale." Of course they will. But if they're inevitable and beyond your control, what good is arguing about it? A much better use of your time and energy is to make plans for how to deal with the demoralization rightsizing will create. Save yourself and others who are spared the axe. You will all be working twice as hard. Maintaining a productive and, hopefully, rewarding work environment will be a bigger challenge than before.

Don't waste time arguing about the obvious, especially to people too stupid to see the obvious. You have more important fish to fry. If it's your boss or someone higher on the corporate food chain, what do you think you're going to gain by convincing her she's wrong? If intentionally aggravating someone with influence over your working conditions, job security, and future prospects is your formula for success, I don't want to read the article you plan to write in the leisure hours after you're canned. Making others feel good is so easy it's ridiculous not to. Just say, "You're right, hurricanes rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere." Who cares? Allowing someone else to be right doesn't make you wrong. Abdicating the throne of "right" to someone immature enough to think it will matter 10 minutes, 10 years, or 10 centuries from now is the big thing to do. It's an especially grand gesture when you have immutable proof the other person is wrong. Since I've stopped battling over being right, I've come to enjoy letting people who are wrong about something think they're right. I quietly hold a private smug fest. Best of all, I'm no longer tripping myself on the way to the finish line. I also sit back, watch the winner bask in the glory of rightness, and think to myself: Did I look that imbecilic when I insisted on being right?

How the Smart (and Lucky) Succeed

The greatest successes in my life have not come as the result of a well-structured strategy. Despite best-laid plans, success seems to rely mostly on the proper alignment of planets in the universe otherwise known as luck. You and I don't have the power to align planets much less predict when it will happen. All we can do is have our ducks in a row when the universe decides it's our turn. We can't create luck, but we can be prepared to take advantage of it when it pays a visit. The last thing you want to be caught doing when the planets align is to be acting stupid. One of the greatest tragedies in life is to not be ready when your number is chosen. You can't win the lottery if you don't have a ticket. Self-help motivation books are good for helping prepare for that moment. Books written by or purporting to reveal the thinking of successful people contain nuggets of truth. But the truths apply to the authors' unique circumstances, which usually include a run of luck. I think articles promising fail-proof paths to wealth are mostly selfaggrandizing accounts of how rich people want the world to believe they succeeded. And they want the world to believe they did it all on their own. For instance, take my golf game. I'm a lousy golfer in spite of all the articles I've read on the subject. On that rare occasion when I hit a towering drive off the tee or sink a long serpentine putt, I maintain my composure, calmly lean against my putter, and wait for the others to finish. It's embarrassing to jump up and down in a juvenile celebration over a putt or drive only to have someone top my feat. If no one does any better, I can act cool and confident as if luck had noting to do with it. If others buy your myth that major achievements come purely from natural talent or inspired intelligence, your legacy is assured. Maintaining the myth works best with people who don't know you or, in my case, how badly I play golf. Fortunately, chances at success come more often than winning lottery numbers. Even if you stupidly blow an opportunity, chances are good that another will come along. But how many? Don't ever accuse me of recommending you banish yourself to the sidelines just because you missed an opportunity or two. Mega successes happen for a number of reasons. Making a large fortune is easier when you start with a small one, as in the case of Donald Trump or Howard Hughes.

The best we can hope for is to start where we are and improve on our blessings. Making a huge fortune can also be a matter of doing something smart while standing in the right place at the right time, as in the case of Bill Gates. He was not the first person IBM approached to develop a disc operating system. He was the first person to deliver what they asked for. What would Bill be doing now if the first person IBM approached had come through? Although Bill Gates responded to IBM with sufficient ingenuity and effort to satisfy their needs, he had no control over what the first person asked would do. Gates didn't line up the planets. But he rolled up his sleeves and opened up the door when opportunity knocked. The best we can do is keep ourselves in a state of readiness for anticipated and unanticipated opportunities. Then give ourselves a break. You and I can't create miracles. Just because your I-Boss stumbled into his lucky break doesn't mean the same opportunity will fall into your lap. Nevertheless, positive thinking can help. Thinking positively won't align the planets. It helps align you with the planets. Benjamin Franklin said, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a [person] healthy, wealthy, and wise," or words to that effect. I say, luck will get you the last three without bothering with the first two. But you can't count on luck. So, lay down with the sun and rise with the chickens. That's all you have control over. I still recommend studying the lives of successful people even if their claims of self-actualized success are sometimes overstated. Paying special attention to the things they did leading up to their big breaks will expose the most valuable information. There is more to learn from how they intentionally or inadvertently positioned themselves for planetary alignment than from what finally transpired.

Mr. Cellophane, or the invisible executive

In some cases, the best way to succeed in spite of your Idiot Boss is to hide. How can lie drive you to distraction if he doesn't know you're there? If you think I'm kidding, you would be surprised at how many presidents and CEOs ended up in their top jobs simply because they were the last people standing. "Our CEO just went to prison," an anxious board member exclaims. "Who can we get to replace him?" "How about Wilson?" another board member suggests, "Under indictment," the in-house counsel vetoes. "There's always Harold." The other board members turn to see the face that belongs to the calm voice. "He's been with the company 30 years," the HR Director continues. "Criminal record?" the Chairman inquires. "Clean as a whistle," the in-house counsel confirms. "Then let's get on this," the Chairman commands with renewed confidence. "Get the PR people started on a press release, get the tailor from Barney's in here to measure him for some new suits." What was the secret of Harold's incredible ascent to the executive suite? He stayed out of sight for three decades. In organizations where competence is ignored or even punished, the fastest way to get yourself fired is to be good at something. Following that through to its illogical conclusion, one way to increase your corporate longevity is to draw as little attention as possible. Doing important and worthwhile things usually draws attention to you and can threaten others. Small fish that threaten big fish are soon gobbled up, or at least bit in half. Schools of little fish resistant to change can gobble up bigger fish that threaten time-honored cultural paradigms. Making waves doesn't promote corporate longevity.

If long-term job security is your goal, swimming under the waves is one way to do it. Doing bad things or making highly visible demonstrations of your incompetence won't help your cause any more than doing good things— although dumb things don't tend to threaten people. But doing highly publicized dumb things will get your name on the "next-to-be-sacrificed" list, in which case you have until the other shoe drops to clean out your desk. The real Harold I knew a real-life Harold who worked for a firm in New York City. Although he never made CEO, he was a master at invisibility to all but the payroll department for more than 30 years. He caught a 5:15 Metro North train to his home in Connecticut every night, no matter what. A major meeting could be raging with huge deadlines looming and, at 5 p.m. sharp, Harold's seat was empty. Most people wouldn't have the guts to get up and walk out like that, but nobody knew why he was in the meeting to begin with. So, nobody missed him when he left. Carrying on a conversation with Harold was difficult. After a minute or two, I'd find myself distracted by the paint color on the walls or the condition of the office plants. The only way I knew he retired was by visiting that office one day and finding a copy room where Harold's cubicle had been.