Stop Looking for Lightning Bolts!
by Dave Anderson
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal the reporter asked what I thought the difference between good and truly great companies were. I responded that it was the difference between interest and commitment and elaborated that good companies are interested in reaching their potential while the great firms are committed to doing so. When you are merely interested in something you do the right things on the good days, when you feel like it and when it is convenient. But when you're committed you exercise the right disciplines day in and day out without excuse.
The trouble with many good companies endeavoring to become great is that they're looking for lightning bolts: quick fixes and shortcuts that put them on top fast. They trek from seminar to seminar and fad to fad looking for the potion that moves their enterprise to the next level. In the process they exhaust resources, demoralize their people and lose their focus. Here are five thoughts on developing the discipline and commitment necessary to consistently move your organization forward. They do not embody glitz or glamour: just plain old common sense that delivers results:
1. The longest distance between two points is a shortcut. Neither life nor business is easy and the sooner you accept that they are both hard the easier it will be for you to develop the discipline necessary to build a foundation that enables you to excel.
One reason people hop from one fad to the next is that they're looking for the quick kill and when they don't hit the lottery overnight they wring their hands and move on to the next “new” thing. Nothing about business or life was intended to be easy. This doesn't mean they're complicated; just plenty of hard work. Accept this and setbacks and frustrations are easier to accept as you work through them on your journey to greatness.
2. It takes decisions and discipline to move to the next level. Decisions get you started and discipline gets you finished. Think of this as goal setting and goal getting. Frankly, decisions are the easier of the two. It's simpler to decide what you're going to do than to actually roll up your sleeves and do it. Need convincing? Recall your last five failed New Year's Resolutions.
3. The best recipe in the world doesn't make you a chef. You still need to execute. Books, tapes and seminars are filled with the necessary ingredients to elevate you personally and as an organization. But consistent, tenacious execution is where the rubber meets the road. The biggest gap in the world is between knowing and doing. It's like losing weight. There are no secrets for how to do it. Everyone knows what they must do to become successful. It's like losing weight. There are no secrets for how to do it. It's the “doing” that causes so many to fail. Which diet works? The one you stick with and the same goes for the disciplines necessary to move you forward in business.
4. Success depends less on the brilliance of your plan than the consistency of your actions. When you put your plan together to hike to higher heights, here's some good news: you won't have to do anything extraordinary. You'll just need to do the ordinary things extraordinarily well. The best strategy is simple because if you can't articulate it you sure can't execute it. But you will have to become brilliant in the basics of the “ordinary” aspects of daily execution: ordinary tasks like giving feedback to your people, holding them accountable, continuing to grow personally and engage yourself in the trenches of your business rather than retreating and roosting in the ivory tower.
5. Most people don't connect their lack of success to their poor decision making. It is your inside decisions more than outside conditions that determine your forward motion. Wherever you are at in your organization today is the result of choices you've made in the past: personnel, strategic and the like. And the catalyst to improving your position is to improve your choices. As Einstein said, “The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
Leaders that move their organization from good to great are disciplined, focused, and determined. They keep slugging away at a handful of daily and weekly non-negotiable disciplines they know will take them where they want to go. They realize that their journey is a marathon and not a sprint.
You don't become great overnight but you can become great over time. But you must stop looking for lightning bolts and devote yourself to the disciplines necessary to steadily accelerate your growth. Identify the critical issues you know are required to move your organization. Settle these critical issues right now and begin to manage them daily. Because while there are no lightning bolts, when you stick with your program and do the right things long enough and the day will come when you do find yourself on an elevator- going upwards quickly!
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