Strategic Discipline Blog

My journey through Acute Myeloid Leukemia continues with Chapter III from CANCER CURED - Why did I get Cancer?

(For previous segments from CANCER CURED – What do You Feed?, CANCER CURED - Fear Not - TURNING POINT, CANCER CURED - CHAPTER II - LIFE INSURANCE, CANCER CURED - Texting – A New Environment, Refractory Period - Monosomy 7 – Doug Loves a Challenge )

CHAPTER III - Why did I get Cancer? (I’ve edited personal information including details on jobs from this chapter for this blog, to shorten, and keep the focus on the title)

How did I get Here?

Possibly it’s the way I’m constructed or my boundless curiosity. When Dr. Zenk shared my diagnosis with me, my immediate reflection was, “WHY?”

This didn’t require a furious or deep dive for answers. Catholic guilt could be a major contributor to my search for answers, or an eagerness to attribute blame and recrimination. Yes, I do have a curious mind. When you grew up in Catholic grade school with nuns and priests delivering a steady theme of cause-and-effect relationships to your behavior and a mother who fiercely believed in and had been indoctrinated into these values, it is a natural step to advance into a desperate attempt to discover why God hath reigned down such a terrible sentence upon me.

This offers the excuse or reason for my response; however, it fails to yield the value of discovering why, nor the value in taking responsibility for my cancer.

The search for meaning and the willingness to accept my responsibility for getting cancer is, I feel an important step in healing.

I hope by sharing this evolution you’ll understand why I feel I got cancer, and equally as important, the reason I feel it is relevant to how I miraculously survived my cancer.

Isolated in a private room (due to my low blood counts, and the risk of infection with my immune system reduced, all leukemia patients on the 4^th floor were in private rooms.), there was a lot of alone time after the first week. It offered plenty of time for contemplation. Many thoughts and ideas passed through my head. I had one recurring question.

It may seem silly to ask this question: “Why?”

“Why did this happen to me?”

I’ve always had a sense of being responsible. Others might call this over-responsibility.

When I was a general manager in radio I recall sharing with my sales manager, Cindy Winter-Bauman, my sense of responsibility. I disclosed to her if I car hit me while I was walking on the sidewalk, I would accept responsibility for it. She said that’s crazy. “That would totally not be your responsibility!” to which I responded, “I am responsible for walking on that sidewalk, exactly when the driver decided to hit me. I’m responsible for being there, and all the decisions I made up to being there.”

Author and inspirational speaker on business leadership, Simon Sinek, has written and shared Ted Talks on “Start with Why.” He believes and evidence supports this, that companies that start with why achieve more success than companies that do not have a “why!” One of his best examples is Apple.

While you may offer this has nothing to do with my search for why I got cancer, it suggests companies that know why they exist perform better. Knowing why I got cancer I felt would help me understand how I got here, why I got here, and possibly by knowing why I could also discover how to correct and eliminate it.

How Did I Get Here?

My search for my personal “WHY” led me through a maze of forests, and dark nights, attempting to discover why I was here, and where I should be going. I didn’t discover my why until I was over 40 when I attended Michael Gerber’s E-Myth coaching orientation in California in May 1998.

My sense of purpose, or as Michael called it, Your Primary Aim, helped me to navigate some challenging storms in life.

Through the many different jobs I’ve had, I vividly recall one day sitting at a stoplight in Wausau, Wisconsin, asking myself, why do I feel unfulfilled? Why do I have this gnawing sense of incompleteness? It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. It dawned on me then, having written my purpose, my primary aim, I wasn’t living it.

Who is Responsible?

Having a purpose gives you a North Star. Direction.

Aligning my purpose with business coaching felt energizing and inspiring. I felt more comfortable. My confidence, conviction, expectations, optimism, and commitment, increased dramatically in my new role. Even though my knowledge and experience needed practice and honing, my enthusiasm soared. I was in the vein of pure gold, which Earl Nightingale spoke about in his audio series, the Strangest Secret.

I was in the first stage, “unconscious incompetence” of the four stages of competence. It didn’t matter since I loved what I was doing, and what my service could help my customers achieve. My enthusiasm for helping business owners discover what I had, to help them get more life they needed to develop systems, was at its peak. I felt confident had I known this when I was part owner of the radio station, I would have successfully achieved my goal of owning 7 radio stations. What I recognized from the success I’d achieved is, that all the repeatable success in my business had come through a system. One of the first successes I had was developing a system for calls. At WFON, in Fond du Lac, I’d learned to present ideas to customers. We’d constantly have packages/ideas that combined the purchase of radio ads with a concept or theme to get the advertiser to purchase. This eliminates customers rejecting you, instead they are turning down an idea.

One of my next successful systems was the hiring system I created to find good salespeople. The interview process, testing, advertising, and scoring each candidate, were all condensed into a system to help me consistently get the outcome I wanted each time we had an opportunity or a salesperson would leave. It had been a big challenge to hire people. Having the system, eliminated the fear, and tireless effort each loss would require.

Understanding this made it simple to share the concept Michael Gerber’s E-Myth offered. An owner can’t replicate themselves. They can build systems to replicate their intentions!

We feel better when we’re in control. Systems helped me, and the owners I coached feel more in control.

The more responsible I am, the better I feel.

This sense of responsibility became clearer after reading Carol Quinn’s Don’t Hire Anyone Without Me. Her book outlined a key principle in hiring: Locus of Control. Quinn notes in her book that the perception of control over attainability is like a doorway with achievement on the other side. The person with the positive “I can” attitude sees an open door. Those who think, “I can’t” or “it can’t be done” see a closed door or no opportunity.

Locus of Control distinguishes each type of thinking. Those who strongly believe their actions can produce results are internally motivated Those who believe the opposite, that their effort cannot influence results are externally motivated.

In hiring, you want people who are internally motivated. Externally motivated people's slogan is “I wish I were luckier!” Internals’ Slogan: “The more I sweat, the luckier I get!”

This principle further reinforced my sense of responsibility.

Businesses that succeed have more responsible, internally motivated people. I made sure my customers included the questions Quinn recommended in their hiring systems to identify candidates who had an internal locus of control.

My sense of responsibility and knowing my purpose, I believe, allowed me to never view cancer as my enemy. Instead, I took responsibility for bringing cancer into my life and believed this was an opportunity to improve myself and overcome my previous mistakes.

It’s a stoic belief that all things lead to good if only you look for them. It’s one of the reasons the Stockdale Paradox resonated so strongly with me.

The universe seemed to confirm my decision. After losing my position at the radio station in Cedar Rapids, it took me less than 3 months in business coaching to exceed the compensation I’d received in my radio broadcast career.

Your Call to Action

Challenge your team, your business, yourself. I’m Doug Wick, I will inspire and ignite purpose and passion in your business!   To create an environment where everyone is inspired to give their best, contact Positioning Systems to schedule a free exploratory meeting.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

When you finish reading Cancer Cured, you will probably believe my clinical trial or my meditation cured my cancer. I’m fully in the latter camp, which is why I included this segment on Spontaneous Remission. Dr. Joe Dispensa researched thousands of patients who had spontaneous remissions, discovering four commonalities they all share. In the next blog, I’ll share these four commonalities.

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, and a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum, over a long period, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – CANCER CURED – CHAPTER III - Spontaneous Remission