SETTING YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS
I’m staring down a line over 100 yards long, with seven tables full of guns and ammo. There are 150 people there to watch what’s about to go down. All of a sudden, I hear someone yell “GO!” and I take off running. At the first table, I start loading a Kentucky Flintlock pistol and remind myself that trigger control is immensely important with this weapon. As I blow up two jugs, I move on to the 1860 Henry Repeating Rifle, where I focus on good cheek weld to make sure I get consistent hits. (Cheek weld is the idea of solidly placing your cheek in the optimal place on the comb.)
After taking down six metal rings, I run to a third table with a double-action Webley revolver. My job here is to shoot at a moving jar rack with nine targets. This whole time I am not alone. I have a fierce competitor trying to beat me, an Air Force veteran and federal police officer who is highly trained. He is right on my tail as we move through each station.
I run to the next station, where the Colt Peacemaker single-action revolver is waiting for me. I have to shoot two rows of steel plates down without missing. I had fallen short on this exact challenge a few weeks earlier, and I knew I had to stay focused with a positive, winning attitude.
I had a perfect run, but so did my competition, and we headed into a fifth station with a crossbow. With three moving targets to hit, I took aim through the optical scope and got a shotgun-type lead to make sure I got solid hits. My competition got two beats ahead of me as we moved into the sixth station, a fully automatic machine gun, the M1919. Here again I knew that trigger control was going to be important so that I could control my sight picture through the iron sights. As we exploded our targets 100 and 125 yards down range, I was still a beat or two behind at the final station, a Milkor M32A1 grenade launcher.
The author’s view of the final stage on Top Shot Season 4, using the Milkor M32A1 grenade launcher. Photo courtesy of HISTORY.
I had never fired a grenade launcher in my life, and here I am competing against the 2003 World Grenadier Champion. Not only that, I am behind. The writing may have been on the wall, but I have never been one to give up without a fight.
I believed that I could win. I had visualized myself getting to this point and pulling it off. My competitor blew up his first platform and was already working on his second and final platform before I even got my first shot off. I brought up the grenade launcher and looked through the scope, acquired a solid sight picture of both targets, and started ripping off rounds.
The next thing I knew, my platforms had exploded and that was it.
I had just claimed the title of Top Shot champion, a $100,000 grand prize, and a professional marksmanship contract with Bass Pro Shops.
Just six weeks prior to this, I was working my day job at Google behind a computer eight to ten hours a day, and now all of a sudden my entire life had just changed. Throughout this book I introduce firearms and sports psychology concepts I focused on to build my marksmanship skills, and maintain a fierce, competitive edge. I imagine you may be unfamiliar with many of these concepts, but by the end of this book we will have gone into detail about all of them.
I’m excited to share my experience going from self-taught amateur to professional marksman. What were the techniques and mechanics I focused on? How did I train? What kind of mental exercises did I go through to help me beat seventeen other experienced competitors? A lot of what I hope to share is how I drew on my other life experiences. I’ve inserted anecdotes throughout the book to draw connections between baseball, work, music, and firearms. I’ve always taken a holistic view of my skills and capabilities when tackling a problem at hand, and I hope it’s a concept you will find insightful and useful in your own life.
Before diving into any of the technical and training pieces around shooting, I’d like to share how I approach most things in my life, including shooting. It’s a key part of how I approach marksmanship and the training, communication, and discipline that comes with it. A framework that drastically affected my perspective was teaching Googlers how to create a Personal Development Plan (PDP). Google, along with many other companies worldwide, use the PDP framework. After delivering many PDP training sessions over the course of my last year at Google, I became a huge fan of this skills-perspective framework.
A PDP boils down to answering the following questions:
The way someone organizes their PDP is up to the individual. Some people put it in a document, others in a PowerPoint presentation—I put mine in a Google Spreadsheet, which I have made available at (http://goo.gl/avQhqV). Note that this was last updated in 2011, right before I left to compete on Top Shot, so my career goals were very different at the time.
I wanted to go to business school and creating my own tech start-up. While the business school ship has sailed, I do still harbor this dream.
A Note on Failure
You aren’t pushing your boundaries unless you sometimes fail. I tried to get into a Top 10 business school for two years and could only manage to get waitlisted, but not accepted, twice. While perseverance is a fantastic trait, sometimes you need to know when to change course. Part of what I think has made me successful is knowing when to pivot and take advantage of a better opportunity that either comes along, or that I create. For me, the opportunity that was better than business school was pursuing my professional marksmanship contract with Bass Pro Shops. I wanted to explore a completely new industry and see how much fun I could have.
To really put things into perspective, had I gotten into business school, I may not have been able to take six weeks off to compete in Top Shot. My whole life trajectory changed for the better, as a result of a failure.
I look at failure as an opportunity to learn and prevent that failure from happening again. Sometimes failure opens up other doors, and you just have to be patient. Whatever the reason, I have never let any of my failures slow me down in life. I hope you don’t either.
You can note skills you have from your personal life in your PDP, so it’s not all business. Perhaps you play poker like I do, where a few of the related skills are concentration, risk-taking, and statistical analysis. Or perhaps you have children and are a good multitasker and time organizer, with all the tasks and responsibilities that come with raising kids. With marksmanship, some related skills are an ability to stay focused and follow instructions, and to be mind/body aware. Thinking about all of your skills and your current competency—whether you want to improve, or whether you can ditch a skill set—are important so you know where to focus your time and energy. Including personal skills will enable you to see a fuller picture of your capabilities, and, who knows, perhaps enable you to make a career out of your hobby.
While there’s a bit more to a PDP, the essence of the structure and approach is to think about the aforementioned questions and to put your answers down on paper. Having the words down on paper can help make things more tangible, and also makes it easier to share your hopes and dreams with your colleagues, friends, and family who are interested in helping.
I think a big key to unlocking one’s success is to first know thyself, so well that you can explain who you are to someone else—be it a recruiter, your friends, your family, etc. This includes your weaknesses and blind spots. Being honest about our shortcomings can be very challenging for a lot of people, myself included. Here’s an exact copy of what I used to discuss with newly hired Googlers who I used to manage:
The Chris Cheng Owner’s Manual
This guide will provide instructions on how to work best with Chris. If there’s anything faulty with Chris, please do not mail him in for repair. Just tell him directly.
Chris’s Management Philosophy and Style
| Maximizing Happiness | My primary goal is to maximize your happiness. As your manager, I want to help make your job a key contributor to your personal/professional happiness. |
| You’re the maestro | I spent my former days playing double bass in orchestra and jazz band, and the idea here is that as your manager, I’m not the maestro, you are. You’re in charge of telling me what you want to do, what you want to achieve, and how you think you can best go about doing it. I’m your biggest fan who will help identify and open up the opportunities on the team that will help you get to where you want to go. |
| Empowering you! | If you come to me with a question/problem, my goal is to help empower you with the answer. What this means is that I may ask your question right back to you (so what do you think is the best solution for X?), and ask additional probing questions to help you find the answer. I truly believe that empowerment happens when the individual discovers things for themselves (with/without the help of others), as opposed to something being dictated/directed from above. |
| Focus on big picture career stuff | Why are you here? What is your higher purpose? What are your hopes and dreams for your career? What do you want to achieve, and how do you need my help? I think it’s really easy to get lost in the day-to-day work, and I like helping you keep an eye on the prize through meaningful career discussions. |
| Diplomacy | I have Political Science and International Relations degrees, which leads to my desire to be diplomatic. I like to think that I can deliver hard feedback in a nice way, but if you end up thinking I’m being too soft, you may need to call me out on this. I sometimes fear that being too blunt will hurt feelings, but I can definitely adapt to the person or situation, so just let me know. |
| Personality type | MBTI and True Colors are languages I enjoy. I’m an ENTP and Orange/Blue. I think it’s helpful to have conversations around what this means for us. |
| Concision | I really appreciate short and concise communication, whether it’s an email, face-to-face conversation, or other medium. If you ramble on for too long, I am still listening to you and I’ll be burning a lot of energy to focus, which can wear me out. Focus on the main points, think bullet points, and we’ll be fine :) |
| RELAX (Be Type B) | I consider myself to be outgoing, friendly, and funny. I guess I have what they call a “big personality.” I’m aware that this can be intimidating. However, if you are in any way intimidated, that’s not my intent, and just tell me how you want me to interact differently with you. |
| Be on time (Be Type A) | OK, conflicts with the above, but I hate tardiness, it’s part of my Type A personality. My father was a salesman and a military officer in the U.S. Navy, where punctuality is expected. Growing up, we had family dinner at 6PM on the dot, every single weekday. “On time is late, 5 minutes early is on time” runs constantly throughout my head. You may see this Type A & B interplay at various times :) |
| Skillz, skillz, skillz | One of my previous managers opened my eyes to viewing career development through skill development. I like to focus on your personal/professional growth, and identify opportunities to develop your skills. Let’s hone in on the core set of skills you need to accomplish your career goals, then find those opportunities where you can flex your skills! |
Things to note here are how I discuss my goals, my intentions, and management and communication style with the hope of improving communication with my direct reports. I also insert a lot of personal hobbies as context, which were oftentimes fun points of discussion. Whenever my interest in marksmanship would come up, even here in liberal Silicon Valley, I often received interested responses from colleagues who would say that they’ve been meaning to go try shooting but either didn’t know anyone or didn’t know how to get started. In a management context, I always thought it helped to know my colleagues on a personal level and engage them in social activities outside of work.
| Understand my career goals, and what motivates me | I make decisions based on how well something aligns with the big picture. I am driven by things that make a difference in the world, and being a change-maker is another thing that drives me. |
| Clear the deck | Shield me from extraneous noise and other distractions. Help me focus on the high priority items, and clear the path for success. |
| Challenge me | I like a manager who will challenge me to go above and beyond. While I’m very self-motivated, I tend to focus on my strong areas such as people and project management, and at times I could use a little prodding to focus on my weaker areas, such as data analysis. |
| Laissez-Faire | I prefer my manager take a hands-off approach, and provide me with the right level of guidance and support to help me succeed in my tasks. I am very proactive in communicating what I’m doing, whether it be through email updates, IMs, in person chats, etc, so I will be pushing a fair amount of info your way. |
| Inspire me | Get me excited about the work. It will go a long way. |
| Be Direct and Transparent | If there’s a problem with something I’m doing, I want to know about it and expect my manager will be direct and timely with this feedback. I hate B.S.—just tell me whatever needs to be said. I am not a delicate flower. |
You’ll also note a section on how I like to be managed, which I would discuss with my manager to make sure we were on the same page. Since we’re all dynamic people who can change over time, I’d like to emphasize that I viewed this document as a dynamic resource, like my PDP, that could change over time. In fact, it should change as I continue to learn new ways of doing things and take on bigger responsibilities.
A sidebar here is how I came about the idea of an “owner’s manual.” Google is the type of company that encourages openness and the sharing of information within the company. If I wanted to know what was going on in a different team, even if I had no business need to know, the culture was such that most Googlers would share as much information as they could. The Google intranet is built on Google Sites and Google Docs, which is easily searchable. I came upon the owner’s manual of Urs Hölzle, a Google Senior Vice President, through his internally shared Google Doc. Since imitation is the greatest form of flattery, I decided to flatter Urs and make my own version.
On the topic of openness, I have seen a very strong parallel between Google culture and firearm culture, where the exchange of information happens at a furious pace. If I’m at the range and need some help, I can ask anyone I need for a tool, advice, or really anything. On the web, gun geeks exchange all sorts of information, including tips and tricks, and it was this huge source of information that helped me train for Top Shot. I still use the web (read: Google) to find useful firearm information every day.
Back to the PDP, for certain skills I just started small, such as accepting that I am not naturally gifted at basketball. But it goes a bit deeper than that. At times, I don’t like doing things I’m not good at, sometimes for fear that I’m going to look stupid, other times because I don’t want to look incompetent. So, knowing this about my personality, sometimes I have to push myself to try a new activity, and push on even if I’m not very good at it.
Beyond knowing our strengths and weaknesses, we bring our full selves to the task at hand when we can use our entire skill set at any given moment.
Under the Gun
On Top Shot Season 4, I ended up going into an elimination challenge against William, an FBI Special Agent who spent eleven years on the US Marine Corps Shooting Team as both a shooter and coach. We were shooting the 1860 Henry Repeating Rifle at five sets of three concentric metal rings; first man to knock down all his targets wins. There’s nothing quite like the excitement, and stress, of a head-to-head challenge. While neither one of us had ever competed with the Henry rifle before, William had more than a decade of rifle experience, compared with my occasional visit to the range with my AR-15. I knew going against William was going to be challenging, to say the least.
About two-thirds of the way in the challenge, I was behind—really behind. I had only six of the fifteen targets down, compared with William’s eleven. When the host, Colby Donaldson, noted that I was behind and that I had to “pick up the pace,” I felt that stress. But when that happened, I thought about previous times at work, when planning events, and other situations where I had felt similar stress. I know that, for my body, stress actually helps me focus and perform at a higher level. That burst of stress was the turning point in the challenge: I started building momentum, it came down to the wire, and I eventually won.
One of my skills is knowing how to handle pressure, and it’s a skill I can apply in competition, at work, and in other life situations. This is one example where I tapped my skill set from past experiences and applied it to an active situation. And, of course, the next time I’m stressed out, I can rely on this Top Shot example of how I struggled but also came from behind to win.
As I noted earlier, the last time I updated my PDP was 2011. Since winning Top Shot, I have spent that time exploring a new industry, getting an understanding of the lay of the land, trying to find my place, and where I want to go with this new career path. I didn’t know anyone in the firearms industry and so I started from square one. It’s probably about time that I revisit my PDP and update my skill set, and redefine what my short and medium-term goals are. My long-term goal is still the same, running for some sort of public office. We’ll see if the right opportunity presents itself over the next decade.
For me, there’s a balance between being a jack of all trades and a master of a specific skill. While some situations may call for you to be a master of a particular skill, at other times you may need to be simply competent enough in a variety of skills. For Top Shot, I think the fact that I didn’t have any formal training gave me a fairly big advantage. I was a jack of all trades who was very open to learning new techniques, so my viewpoint during Top Shot practice sessions was from a fairly clean slate. I didn’t have years of training getting in my way of learning something new. Many marksmen spend years learning a specific weapon and technique, and then they get locked into what they know.
On the other hand, there are times that require you to completely master a skill. The following is one example:
Point of Order
I helped restart my fraternity chapter at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998. Sigma Alpha Epsilon had been off campus for about five years, and it was time for us to return. I was an executive officer for my chapter, and part of my duties was being the parliamentarian. As a nineteen-year-old, I had no idea what Robert’s Rules of Order was and neither did most of my fraternity brothers.
Our weekly chapter meetings were so terribly run and disorganized that it drove me to find out how we could improve things. I studied Robert’s Rules of Order like nobody’s business. Within a week, I took the unofficial role of parliamentarian by announcing in a meeting that we were going to uphold our bylaws and use parliamentary procedure. I had to know the rules inside and out, and occasionally there was a challenge to the rules where I had to render the final verdict in a confident, authoritative way. There is little room for error in parliamentary procedure, and I did not want to make any mistakes for the sake of being fair to my brothers, and to honor the process.
Our meetings started to run more efficiently and more orderly, where we actually had great discussions and voted on pressing matters. Many brothers would occasionally moan and groan when I would inject parliamentary procedure into the discussion, but I think, or at least hope, that in the end everyone appreciated the structure. Any of my fraternity brothers reading this right now are either rolling their eyes, or chuckling to themselves.
To tie this all together, before I even get involved in an activity I ask myself, How does this fit into a goal I have for myself? Then I ask, How do I get there, who can help me, and who or what is going to get in my way? Once I’m actively involved in a situation at work or elsewhere, I tap into my entire skill set to help me accomplish the task.
At work, instead of being focused on skills, I used to be more focused on titles, where the goal was to get promoted and get a better title. But oftentimes, in the chase to get promoted, you end up developing skills that you may not enjoy or may not need, but that are required to move up the ladder. The secret sauce I think we’re all looking for is finding the job where we use and develop the skills we want to focus on and enjoy using. This will naturally lead to higher performance, and then the promotion naturally comes through that progression. Aren’t we more likely to do a great job if we really enjoy what we’re doing?
And this leads us to the final question in the list at the start of this chapter: why do you like using a particular skill? With marksmanship, I hope that you’ll get a better understanding of why you want to learn how to shoot, and of how to leverage all your skills to learn how to shoot to the best of your ability. We’ll explore the answer to that question in chapter 4, “Why Learn to Shoot?”
Chapter Summary