I was working with a
manager who was unfamiliar with making personal commitments. He had a
gift for “management” and “leadership.”
He has a host of
imaginings about what can go wrong. He hasn’t been much on results.
Finally, I got him to list
each potential problem that concerned him on a failing project and
write his solution for every one. Meanwhile, his team was going
ahead, hacking out the underbrush and creating a solution to the
problem that had stopped him.
After six pages, he
realized his problems weren’t likely to occur. He isn’t going to
forget them, but he agreed to stop talking about them while other
people are doing work. Severely limited his management communication.
I asked him what he had
learned?
He said, “First and most
important, what can we get done with the time and resources we know
we have?” Then he said he had just realized that forward progress creates new options.
That’s a big win for me.
There are three stages to
integrity.
First, is the belief that by making no
promises, you can maintain perfect integrity.
Then, when no one wants to
play with you, you can make appropriate promises and sweat hard to
make them happen.
Finally, since life is a
rodeo, ostentatious mastery is making the promises that should be
made and harnessing the miracles necessary to deliver. That creates
your following.
Which church do you
attend?
Tips
4 The Big Chair – You’ll like it a lot!
