Knowing When to Shift

What you cannot allow to happen in the process is what happens to so many first-time drivers of stick shift cars—failure to make the shift. During a tough transition to a higher gear, the opportunity to make the proper adjustments to get into the higher gear lasts for a very brief period of time. The key, therefore, to avoiding the catastrophe is remaining coolheaded and thinking quickly. Consequently, you cannot let your emotions control the situation. Sadness, madness, frustration, and self-pity will all but ensure that you end up on the side of the road calling Triple A. Rather, you have to look at the setback simply as notice of an opportunity to improve and a challenge to your character to remain levelheaded enough to find the opportunity that will in fact present itself.

Being unemotional does not, therefore, mean being laid-back. In the examples above, both Steve and the attorney general moved very rapidly and with a sense of urgency. As Joe Ryan, executive vice president of Marriott, says, you must "deal with crisis quickly" or the situation will soon be out of your control. He recommends that you have a forty-eight-hour plan when a crisis hits your company or your career. You address the crisis with a solid plan of action within forty-eight hours—at the expense of everything else in your life for that brief period of time when you are switching gears. Invincible executives do not take sabbaticals to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. When you are in that state of limbo between gears, therefore, remember: (1) you will improve your situation; and (2) you are going to do it now.

Two-thirds of the invincible executives with whom I discussed the issue can point to a time in their careers when a setback led to a new and better path. Your job is to keep your emotions in check and find those opportunities. You will be amazed at how often better situations arise out of setbacks in a current position that has run its course. There is almost a sort of magic to the timing of it all, many invincible executives have said and proven.