Taking Things For Granted
Audio Transcript:
If you've been following along with us for a while, you'll know that trying new things is part of what we're trying to do here. We want to make sure this is of value to you in your walk for flourish, and, you know, of high value. And so today is no different.
Well, it's no different in terms of a trend. It's a little bit different in terms of what the podcast will be.
So today, you know, you’ll still have—when I’m done here rambling—you’ll still have just a regular podcast of me talking about some things I’m struggling with, or challenged with, or things I’ve seen, whatever it may be, on my flourish journey.
But then, I’ll come back on and kind of recap it with what I plan to do about it this week.
And I’m asking you, if you want to join me—dig in.
Maybe you want to be challenged with those same things.
Or maybe you’ve got other ideas or things you want to take on and to try to solve this, this flourishing challenge that I’m up against this week.
So hopefully this—this is cool.
If it’s valuable to you, I’d love to hear—one way or the other, good, bad, or ugly—let us know what is valuable to you in this new model.
We’ll try this a bit.
And if it’s great, we’ll keep going and we’ll iterate from there. And if not, we’ll go on to something else.
So anyway, thank you all. And, you know, I hope you enjoy today’s episode.
Misunderstood Sayings and Taking Things for Granted
Do you ever hear anyone say—or maybe you yourself say—these things where there’s an idiom or a saying that gets kind of misconstrued or miscommunicated, and all of a sudden people are saying it the wrong way?
For instance, like, for all intensive purposes.
It’s for all intents and purposes, right? It’s not about being heavy or deep.
Or nip it in the butt.
One of my favorites, right? It’s nip it in the bud, like a gardening term. You’re nipping it in the bud.
Or mute point.
It’s moot point.
And then, one of my favorites is when people say, Oh, I want to flesh out the details of this.
I’m like, Why would we do that? We need to keep them! We’re not going to flush them out, we need to flesh them out.
Now, I’m not being pretentious about it. I get it—we all do it, we all say things wrong.
But one of the sayings that reminds me of what I want to talk about today is: taking things for granted.
Not the stone—granite.
Taking things for granted, as if it’s offered to you, as if it’s a guarantee, and you always have it.
Taking Basic Necessities for Granted
I think it’s human nature. The novelty is interesting to us—it’s part of our survival mechanism, I guess.
So when things are kind of ongoing, the same, we begin to take them for granted—as if they’re always going to be there.
And one of the things it’s so easy to do that with is our basic utilities.
This past week, here in my little small town, we had a water outage. The water was out for several days. And honestly, they’re still working on it.
There are still ups and downs.
I think it might even be out right now.
And you want to—you want to quickly find yourself in the middle of what feels like being a long way from civilization?
Turn the water off for a few days.
And—just now—I hear the water kick on.
How crazy is that?
But anyway, this is one of those things where it’s so easy to take it for granted.
And by the way—my hat’s off to all of the organizations and the systems that run all the time. And most importantly, of course, the people who make sure these things come to us on a daily basis.
And when they don’t, they’re out there scrambling.
They’re losing sleep.
They’re having a rough time, and they’re under pressure.
And they know what it’s like, and they want to get it done.
With all the noise at the national level, or politics, or whatever else we have, there are a lot of people across this nation—across this world—who really work hard and take pride in their work to bring us the sustenance we need, whether it’s in a utility or some other offering, whatever it is.
So, thank you.
My heart goes out, and my thanks go out to all of you.
Taking Feedback for Granted
But we take those things for granted until they’re gone.
Then, immediately, we realize it.
I took another thing for granted this week. And it occurred to me—Oh, this might be a good thing to talk to you guys about.
I don’t have exactly the answer for how I’m going to address it. This has been a constant struggle for me.
So, I thought, Okay, here we go.
And in the honor of authenticity and all that is part of what we’re trying to do here—let me just share with you what’s happening.
I’m asked many times—my role begs me—to basically give feedback.
That’s part of my role.
People look for that.
As the CEO, there is a feedback loop that—your job demands that of you.
And so, I’ve tried to create a company where our culture is such that people will want that feedback and seek that feedback.
And also, we’ve got lots of things built in—whether it’s an After Action Review, which I pulled from the military in my days there, or other systems.
There are all kinds of ways where we’re constantly kind of refining and being in that learning, organization, and iteration.
Oh, we didn’t do that well.
What can we do better?
All of that, right?
So, there are lots of threads throughout our culture of making sure we have this constant feedback cycle.
In addition to that, I think I’m pretty straightforward with folks.
I’m honest with them.
I’ve created relationships with them where I have a warmth, and they know I love them.
And so, when I share feedback with them—most people don’t love it right off the bat.
I get it.
Who loves to hear, Hey, your baby’s ugly, right?
But most people—and certainly the people in our culture here—will soon appreciate it.
Some of them appreciate it right off the bat.
Some take a little longer, and that’s okay.
But I think generally we’ve done all that here.
And so, I feel like we’re in good spaces for that.
Now, at home, it’s very different. I’ll get to that in a minute.
But at work, I’ve been able to build this culture.
We have built this culture in a way that feedback is a key part.
It’s a critical part of our championship and helps us to be successful.
So, to my surprise, I find that I don’t think I’m giving great feedback.
I think it’s not the topic of the feedback or the style of the feedback—maybe style is part of it—but I find I’ll have a conversation with someone and give them what I think is clear feedback.
And we have a phrase here—and I think I’ve talked about it on this podcast—a phrase called compassionate candor.
And it’s kind of a rip-off of the book written several years ago...
Well, I might pull it in...
But anyway, it’s Radical Candor! That’s the one—Radical Candor.
So, there’s a book written several years ago called Radical Candor.
And look, no—no shame to the author. I think it’s a great read. Lots of people read it.
But what I think the unintended consequence of that book was, is that oftentimes it gave people an excuse to be cruel.
And I didn’t really like that.
I mean, we all need good feedback.
And sometimes we need somebody to be harsh with us—I get that, I’m fine with that.
But it just—it felt like it was too much of a license to just be nasty to each other, and I didn’t like that.
So, I like that compassionate piece of it.
Because truly, to be compassionate, I think, is to be candid with one another.
If we’re living a lie, that’s not—that’s not really compassion.
Good friends tell each other things that they need to hear.
And so, I think there is a compassionate component there.
So we use that phrase, compassionate candor.
And again, all the systems I talk about—we’ve built that into our culture.
Where I’ve Been Falling Short
But I’ve realized recently—I’ll have a conversation with somebody who I think I’m giving great feedback to.
I think I’m being very clear.
And I am!
I look back over it and think, Objectively, I was clear.
But if somebody were to talk to that person right afterwards and say, What do you think?
They would say:
"Oh, Alex thinks I’m doing a great job! And he’s great!"
And I’m like—Wait, what?!
Because I love their spirit. I might love their work ethic. I might love them as a person.
I might love all these things about them.
But in trying to shroud all of that with love, I missed the piece that says, Hey, but you need to improve here.
And I’m not saying everybody—I mean, many, many, many of our folks get it.
But it’s my responsibility to make sure I’m communicating super clearly.
And I guess I was taking for granted that folks were hearing everything I was saying.
And so, I really haven’t been as effective as I want to be.
So, I want to improve that, for sure.
The Consequences of Not Giving Feedback
But there’s another piece here that I think is super interesting.
Let’s say you don’t give that initial feedback.
Somebody does something, and you don’t share it.
What happens?
Well, maybe they never repeat that mistake again.
No big deal. It was just a one-off.
Maybe that person is self-aware enough that they saw their own shortcoming and they fixed it on their own.
But what happens more often than not is that the person doesn’t see it—and it repeats itself.
Then, you see it again.
Now, you’re faced with:
"Okay, do I give some feedback? It’s happened a couple of times now..."
But if you don’t, what happens?
It happens again.
And again.
And again—until it becomes a thing.
And now, in an organization, if someone keeps making the same mistake, that mistake is now affecting:
Other employees.
Customers.
Partners.
The business itself.
Now, this one person has been left out there, with a thing attached to them.
It’s almost like having a scarlet letter.
Everybody else knows it.
They’re looking at them.
And it’s just—it’s a rough spot.
And I feel like I have a responsibility—I think we all do.
And I feel it even more in my role.
Just being part of any organization, I feel responsible to make sure I’m communicating things sooner, so it doesn’t get to that point.
Feedback at Home
Now, take that home.
Those of you who are parents—you might have felt this.
If you let things linger without some kind of correction, children can begin to believe that their shortcomings are permanent.
That it’s a lifelong sentence.
For example:
They’ll always be clumsy.
They’ll always be bad at something.
They’ll always be a certain way.
And that’s just not true.
They’re growing. Things are changing.
But they can be more careful. They can be more thoughtful.
My Challenge This Week
So, I guess my challenge this coming week—and, you know, I can share in more detail as I come through this and think about it—is:
I want to be someone who can deliver compassionate candor to the people I love.
Whether that’s at work or at home.
This is not easy.
My wife never wants to hear any feedback from me—ever.
My kids are in that weird age where sometimes they appreciate it, and sometimes they don’t want to hear it.
At work, I don’t want to crush people. But I also don’t want them to leave a conversation thinking everything is fine if there’s something they need to improve.
So that’s my challenge ahead.
I’m still thinking about how exactly I’m going to solve it.
What I’ll Do This Week
Here’s what I’ve decided:
At the beginning of each day, I will ask myself:
Who needs to hear feedback from me today?
At the end of the day, I will ask myself three questions:
Who did I give feedback to?
Who should I have given feedback to?
How can I improve tomorrow?
That’s it.
Super simple.
No overanalyzing, no overcomplicating.
Final Thoughts
Follow along with me.
I’d love to hear how it’s working for you.
Or other strategies you’re using to be a better contributor to the feedback loop for the people in your world who love you and work with you.
All we can do here is give it a try and see where it goes.
With that said—
I hope, wherever you may be, you’re flourishing.
Alex Reneman is the founder of Mountain Leverage and Unleash Tygart and host of Flourishing w/ Alex Reneman. For 20+ years he has worked as CEO of Mountain Leverage, honing the concept of flourishing and experimenting with it in the business. In July of 2024, he decided to begin to share this idea with others, which led to his podcast, social content, and the plans for other initiatives in the future.
