Who is helping you execute your great ideas?

“Ideas are easy. Execution is everything. It takes a team to win.”

John Doerr

“Hey, wouldn’t it be great if…” 

How many great ideas have you had in life? How many initiatives are started but never finished or reached the goal line? Be brutally honest with yourself. Do you wish you could improve your focus and discipline and ensure that the most important things are executed fully?

The key to execution is building a habit of exceptional discipline. While you can do this independently, it is much easier if you have a team to help hold you accountable along the way. So who is on your team, and how are you guaranteeing relentless execution through robust dialogue, feedback, and accountability?  

Do you want to look back in ten years and measure yourself based on how many remarkable initiatives you started or how well you executed the most critical and impactful things?

The power of the pack…

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. ”
 
Rudyard Kipling

The fastest way to bad, or at the very least sub-optimum, decisions is to rely only on your own knowledge and perspective.  The very best leader that I know ask a ton of questions, even if they might already have an opinion, or know the answer outright.  Their assumption is that they don’t know everything and their answer will be strengthened by gaining perspective from others.  Then those leaders act…

The power of the wolf comes from the pack and the reason for the power is the relentless focus on a single thing, survival.  It isn’t a committee of wolves talking about what might be important to accomplish one day.  It is a pack focus on the hunt, on survival.  Nothing else distracts from this focus. 

In our lives we might belong to a pack (or several) but how many of those packs have a burning focus that channels all the energy and effort towards accomplishing one thing?  If that doesn’t happen, you aren’t a wolf in a pack, you are a sheep in a herd…

 

 

What are you afraid of?

“Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.”

Patrick Lencioni

Merriam-Webster defines “invulnerable” as “impossible to harm, damage or defeat.”  We are taught at a young age that we have to be tough, that we have to win, that showing any vulnerability is a sign of weakness and frailty.  So we carry that defensive nature into our lives and relationships, both at work and at home.  Instead of accepting that we are all vulnerable we seek to be invulnerable with those around us.  

Perhaps this is changing?  The usage of the word “vulnerable” has certainly become more prevalent over the past few decades. Not bad for a word that has it’s root origination in the Latin noun “vulnus” meaning “wound.”  (Finally all my college Latin courses are paying off!!)

 

vulnerable

Usage of “vulnerable”

 

But lets contrast “invulnerability” with “trust” which is defined as “allow someone to have, use, or look after (someone or something of importance or value) with confidence.” 

How do you know when you trust someone?  What does it feel like? For me it is the feeling of safety.  That it is okay if I’m not perfect and it is safe to expose my vulnerabilities for the purpose of achieving a greater good.  When I trust my teammates I am confident that they care, first and foremost, about achieving our shared goals and purpose.

Hmm, now that I think about it maybe “invulnerability” isn’t such a bad thing.  If a team has a high degree of trust with each other I think they just might be a team that is “impossible to harm, damage or defeat…”  

 

On being intentional…

On being intentional…

“You don’t climb mountains without a team, you don’t climb mountains without being fit, you don’t climb mountains without being prepared and you don’t climb mountains without balancing the risks and rewards. And you never climb a mountain on accident – it has to be intentional.”

Mark Udall

This quote really resonated with me today as I reflect on the power of a great team, and on the power of a great mountain to climb.  It isn’t the small hills that stir my soul, nor is just the sheer challenge of the mountain.  It is the impact of what the climb means.  How the lives of others can be bettered because someone chose to climb, to show the way, to build a better world.  It is the risk of the fall.  It is being bettered by something bigger than me.  Yes, I am speaking in metaphors but it works for me today.

When I look up at the mountain in front of me there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the only way to conquer it is to be intentional, to create a plan, build a team, know the risks, anticipate the rewards, and doing everything in my power to be ready for any challenge that mountain throws at me.  Happen to the world or the world will happen to you.  Be intentional.

 

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dusty

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