I love former Navy Seal, Jocko Willink's personal mantra: "Discipline equals freedom." The development of and rigorous attention to discipline in every area of our lives is the difference-maker when it comes to succeeding or failing. Through out the resolutions and instead, start by developing discipline around one small activity. It's contagious.
Instead of falling victim to the psychology of the herd and withdrawing or hunkering down in your business, seize upon the positives and make some of your own good news. Here are 6 tips to help your firm prosper in a period of doom and gloom:
I’m not certain we needed a research study to prove that we naturally appreciate fresh-starts, nonetheless, now we have one...
Our goals and big dreams often are rudely shoved out of the way in favor of the urgent issues of life as well as those activities we deem more easily achievable. Some are abandoned due to the mirage of size and complexity. “It’s too big for me to accomplish.” Or, “I’m not sure how I would even get started.” We make excuses for ourselves, mostly, because we don’t know how to fight what author Steven Pressfield calls resistance.
Whether it’s a life-stage issue or a sign of the times, I seem to regularly run into individuals who are active in pursuit of vocations that focus on helping others. They are pivoting to purpose.
I confess to having cultivated a strong affinity for Big Thinkers in my advancing years as an executive. The flip-side of this growing affinity is my creeping impatience and dismissal of small thinkers. Given the scale and scope of the challenges in our world and in our industries and firms, small thinkers are a drag on the drive to change. And yes, life and our careers are too short to think small.
From radically changing business models to rampant creative destruction driven by digitization and globalization to a world where ideas are the primary form of capital and the purveyors of ideas move freely through this friction-free environment (think: gig economy), this emerging world of work and career has little resemblance to the one of even a mere decade-ago.
In a recent program with experienced managers, the inevitable and mind numbing and stupid topic of how difficult it is to manage the younger workers surfaced and people jumped on this out-of-tune bandwagon like they were giving away free money. Perhaps it's not the youth of the group that need to change. Consider...
I’ve worked in cultures like those ascribed to Amazon.com in the recent and controversial New York Times article, "Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace." These battle-zone firms exists and they can be very successful. And for the adrenaline junkie career climber, these cultures are perfect. For the rest of us, not so much.
One of the core takeaways my MBA students express after investing 10 weeks immersed in the art and science of this discipline is new found appreciation for the role project managers play in our organizations.
