“Over The Hill Broke” - The Second Rule of Consulting.
In this dog-eat-dog world, be over the hill broke!
A mentor of mine recently engrained the saying “over the hill broke” in my mind. The first time he said and explained it, I thought it was interesting…but nothing more. Like most sayings or analogies we hear, they remain impersonal and void of meaning until we experience them first hand. Experience, as painful as it may sometimes be, is often the best and only teacher.
We like to think of ourselves as sophisticated: being able to read, study, and conceptualize a theory or topic. We act as if we have “grasped it,” only to find out very soon that we are stomping all over the theory we just claimed to “comprehend.” Experience, on the other hand, has a way of “searing” lessons into our brain and behaviors like a cattle iron.
“Over the hill broke,” as my mentor explained, refers to a hunting dog that is “fully broken in.” A dog that has been fully and thoroughly trained. This dog, through repeated experiences and training, follows the lessons it has learned and behaves accordingly. When you throw a bumper, the dog will return it to you. When you shoot down a bird and give the command, the dog will retrieve the bird and lay it at your feet. Each of these behaviors has been trained and require the dog to do a certain sequence of actions to complete them properly. If the dog runs toward the downed bird and then gets distracted by another bird and veers off course – it is not well enough “broke in.”
“Over the hill broke” is a dog that is so well trained that it will complete a certain sequence of actions properly even when the owner does not see it. So if the owner shoots a bird that falls on the other side of the crest of the hill, the owner can trust that the dog will go over the hill, remain focused and retrieve the bird properly…just as it would if it were retrieving the bird on this side of the crest. That is “over the hill broke!”
We all need to be “over the hill broke!” We must do the right thing, for the right reasons, regardless of who is or isn’t looking. It is not about being seen doing the right thing or about being able to “get by” with whatever we can because we won’t be caught. Your true character can be measured by the way you act when no one else is around. If you do the right thing even when no one is watching, that is called INTEGRITY.
Every employer and every teammate is seeking out someone with integrity. Someone they can trust to get the job done and to do it well. They want to be able to ask an employee to do a task or project, and then walk away – trusting the employee will figure out how to complete it and will ask their supervisor if they have any questions. No employer wants to micromanage and no employee wants to be micromanaged! But independence takes trust. And trust requires integrity. BE OVER THE HILL BROKE!
