As a good friend of mine would say… what’s the deal?
P90X, The Insanity Workout, The Atkins Diet, Jane Fonda’s Buns of Steel, Jared the Subway dieting guy (pictured) and the list goes on. For decades, Americans have been obsessed with diets and exercise videos to get us in shape. You’d think by now we’d be the most healthy and fit generation in history. But it seems we’re in worse shape than we’ve ever been if you believe the many statistics available. One recent study stated that 83% of men and 72% of women would be overweight or obese by the year 2020. What’s the deal?
Peter Drucker, known at the father of modern management, wrote the book The Effective Executive in the 60’s. We had the One Minute Manager in the 80’s. Various leadership and management books are published every year. Thousands of blogs are written every day on how to lead and how to manage. You’d think by now we’d be the most effective and productive society in history. You’d think every organization would be overloaded with great leaders and managers. Sadly this isn’t even close to being the case.
What’s the deal? Kind of like the old phrase in politics, “It’s the economy, stupid”. The deal is… “It’s Implementation, stupid!”. Don’t take the stupid comment personally. If you’re reading our blog you can’t possibly be stupid. However, as the great fictional philosopher, Forrest Gump, once said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Now back to the point at hand. You can go to all the seminars and workshops you want. You can read all the blogs and articles you want. But nothing will change or improve until you implement. In order to effectively implement you must have a clear vision of where you want to be. By the way, your vision can’t keep changing with every new book or article you read. You must also have a clear and disciplined process in place. You must track results.
The reality is that most people who read a great book or go to a workshop or seminar get excited about what they hear or read and have good intentions of moving forward with these new ideas but within two weeks they’re back to the same routine they’ve always been in. Same thing is true with dieting and exercising. It seems like we let life and events get in the way. Or at least that’s our excuse. The real reason is our own desire to improve, our own discipline, the lack of a clear implementation process or maybe we’re just miscast in our current position at any company USA.
So here’s the deal… We’ll keep writing these blog posts, we’ll keep coaching and working with various organizations but we understand at the end of the day, only about 20% will get it. With the right organizational culture in place we’ve been able to push that number up to 50%. But that’s about it. The good news is that if 50% of your organization get’s it, you’ll be in the top 5% of your industry.
If you get it, you’ll have a clear vision, a disciplined process to get you there and a score that is within your control that can be tracked to show your progress and success. You’ll also be coachable with an understanding that you can and must get better every day. Got it?
