Check the compass!

“Direction is more important than speed. We are so busy looking at our speedometers that we forget the milestone.”

Unknown

Where are you going?

Where do you want to be one year from today? What if instead of one year, it took two years? Would that devalue the direction you are headed? Would an inability to achieve some goal within your desired timeframe diminish the goal or make it null?

If the goal is right, then not achieving it as fast as possible, in some personally assigned timeframe, shouldn’t impact the direction itself.

There’s no question that we live in the age of agility and speed. Everything is happening faster and faster and we need to be able to act and react with temerity.

But if we focus on speed over direction we are surrendering ourselves to live a life that is reactive instead of one that is filled with purpose and clear direction.

One should spend as much time looking at your life’s compass as you do the speedometer. In general it isn’t nearly as much fun to look at a compass as a speedometer, because if you are headed in the right direction the indicators on a compass don’t change whereas the speedometer symbolizes so much action and energy.

But what good does it do if you get to the wrong place as fast as possible?

Speed + Simplicity + Self-confidence = Success

“The 3S’s of winning in business are speed, simplicity and self-confidence.”

Jack Welch

I love this!  When you think about it these are mutually dependent variables.  You just can’t have one without a good dose of the other.  

In today’s world speed is more critical than ever and you just can’t be fast if you allow complication to creep in to your processes or thinking.  Do some problems require complicated solutions?  Of course.  But the essence of creating speed is simplicity, and you simply can’t be fast to market, fast to grow, fast to learn, if complexity rules the day.  If you want to be fast, you have to find ways to keep things simple.  Period.  Simplicity is the great enabler of speed.  

Self-confidence (never to be mistaken for arrogance or high ego) enables speed and simplicity through decisive action and the ability to learn and adjust.  All too often we measure our own self-worth not on the results, but on the complexity of whatever solution we have created for a given problem.  Self-confidence is knowing that simple is good and that just because we are keeping things simple it is NOT an indication of low-value or low worth.

The road to mediocrity and irrelevance is paved with slow and complicated projects/programs/products.  I can’t imagine that much self-confidence was created through these failures…  

 

 

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dusty

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