Maybe the Ninja Isn’t Dead…
I received an unsolicited email this morning from a book marketer that blew me away. True, it may have been written by an AI bot, but it was something I’d pushed out of my mind nearly ten years ago when I wrote “Confessions of a Performance Ninja.” I’d been downsized for the last time and had had my fill of the corporate hamster wheel.
The book’s premise was a solid field guide for an aspiring Performance Consultant with a charter in the Corporate Training Department, where I spent 35+ years. It mapped my wins and losses in a confession format. It drew on Ninja tactics because I traveled a different road, against tradition, and refused to drink the Kool-Aid of the Myth: Training Drives Performance, when it could only ever reliably Deliver Potential. If I recall, Potential doesn’t pay the rent.
My approach didn’t sell in-house, but I used it successfully in sales and consulting interventions across several corporate roles. It was borderline blasphemy to current training conventions. Corporate Training wasn’t buying it; Corporate Training Conferences weren’t buying it despite consistent five-star session reviews. The Operational side of the business had adopted the Myth, so they weren’t buying it either, so I went Ninja. That was a risky move, but strategic and very cool… black pajamas… cheap sunglasses, and all.
I liked working under the radar of corporate training gurus because I knew what really drove performance results from successful application-selling and consulting roles. I also knew what operational stakeholders really wanted – tangible, measurable performance results. Unfortunately, most defaulted to the promise of the myth the Training Department had fomented. I managed to get beyond the shock of black pajamas and cheap sunglasses by lying, “Yes, I’m here to design your training solution… IF, in fact, a training solution will fix your performance gaps in a measurable and sustainable way. Let me ask a few questions upfront to ensure the training solution I recommend is properly designed.” If there were no training solutions, we wouldn’t have wasted time building them, so… what’s a little white lie in the scheme of things?
With no money to market the book, no sponsor to advocate the Point-of-Work concept, and no audience, I let the book languish on the blog. After receiving the solicitation out of the blue this morning, I heard my Relentless Wench Muse, who manages to remain just out of reach, whisper in my head, like She does when I’m writing a fictional story. “There’s more story here, Mate.”
Rarely is She ever wrong. Since redeploying into early-onset private citizenry, I’ve learned to listen when She whispers, because Her visions have a good track record. But there’s more… First, I got the unsolicited email, and then a minute or so later, I had another flashback to a LinkedIn post I made a week ago. Every morning in devotional time, I read and share relevant scriptures that resonate with me, and I read devotionals by Oswald Chambers and several others. Oswald is rarely wrong, and he pulls no punches in what he wrote a century ago. Here’s the flashback he served up:
“Thank God for the sight of all you have never yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not there yet by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the blows which must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to have the vision “batter’d to shape and use” by God? The batterings always come in commonplace ways and through commonplace people.”
– Oswald Chambers
I guess I’m slowing down and weary of the “batter’d to shape and use” part. When I wrote the book, I wanted to give something back and share what worked and what didn’t, as a Performance Ninja, for someone, for some crazy reason, thought they wanted to walk a different path to sustainable performance results instead of leading with a Training solution.
Oswald also wrote months ago, and it stuck with me. The Holy Spirit will create circumstances to pursue something, then keep bringing me back over and over until I do. Maybe it’s time to “batter” up.
Peace! G.
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Confessions of a Performance Ninja – https://amzn.to/3RH25C8
