Articles on Success, Significance and the Evolving Role of Work

 

Football has a season.

Futbol too.

Baseball, hockey, cricket, rugby, cross country — they all have seasons.

In sports, I like how there is a preseason — a ramp-up training period for athletes, coaches and support staff.

School has a season.

Politics has a season.

Even TV shows and films have a season.

History tells us that kingdoms had a season for war.

Ecclesiastes 3 says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

Seasons inject our lives with rhythm and variety — two key ingredients for inspiration.

What if our work life had a season?

Well, that’s not possible, you might say. Because we work every week of every year, with no break. There’s no off-season, except for holidays and vacations.

True, but what if you could structure your work life to feel like it had a season?

I’ve found that I love the rhythm of the school year. I naturally get excited and re-energized in August, as Autumn approaches. Then I gear down mentally during the winter holidays. Then I gear back up with the new year. And then gear down again when summer begins.

A friend of mine feels a surge of energy and creativity when summer begins. So he’s considering summer as the kick-off to his work season.

What about you?

What time of the year do you naturally gear up and feel that surge of purpose, creativity and drive?

Maybe that’s your season. And maybe you should align your work life to be in harmony with it.

If you don’t think you have a “natural” season, then align your work season with the season of your favorite pastime. If you’re a football fan, align your work with the football season. Treat summer as your preseason and Autumn as the time to make things happen.

Make sense?

So, I’m curious. What’s your season?

I met Doug Puzey at the beginning of this year.

Doug is area director of the Southeast for FranklinCovey. And it was during a chat we were having that he mentioned — a couple of times actually — “the four disciplines of execution.”

Execution — the ability to get the right things done right — is a key area of study (and practice) for me. The reason isn’t glamorous. I struggle with execution.

Part of the reason is that I am a strategist by nature and training. For much of my 21-year career, I’ve helped leaders and their teams see the bigger picture, but I’ve typically not been directly involved in the execution of their strategy.

Another reason I struggle with execution is that I chronically overcommit to people and projects. But more on that later in this post.

Why CEOs Fail

In a classic 1999 Fortune Magazine article, Ram Charan and Geoffrey Colvin explored why so many CEOs fail.

It’s not because of poor strategy. Or lack of vision or charisma. By far, the primary reason CEOs fail is bad execution. They don’t make decisions, get things done and deliver on commitments.

It’s that simple. And hard.

For leaders, especially business leaders, it’s execute or get executed.

The Four Disciplines of Execution

Doug sent me a copy of FranklinCovey’s book by Chris McChesney titled, The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals.

It’s a superb book. So superb, I’ve introduced it to my colleagues and we’re working through how to implement and practice it in our organization.

It’s built on a simple, but powerful narrative — we live and work in a whirlwind of people, projects and places. And this whirlwind controls most our time, attention and energy.

The reason we can’t see our goals through to completion is not that we’re incapable or incompetent. The whirlwind sabotages our best intentions. A child gets sick. An important client demands time with us today. The CEO needs a report ASAP.

Here are the four disciplines of execution:

• Discipline 1: Choose a “wildly important goal (WIG)” that’s worthy and winnable.
• Discipline 2: Select actionable, influenceable lead measures that achieve the WIG.
• Discipline 3: Use a simple scorecard that shows, at a glance, whether you’re winning or losing.
• Discipline 4: Ensure a cadence of accountability.

As McChesney said in a Forbes article about the book, Disciplines 1-3 set up a winnable game. Discipline 4 is where the actual game is played.

What I like about the 4DX model is that it forces you to focus. And therein lies the root of my execution problem.

Robert Frost Got it Right

Even if you don’t read or care much for poetry, you are most likely familiar with Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken.

It’s about “two roads” diverging in a “yellow wood”. At the end of the poem, the narrator claims to have taken the “road less traveled by” and says, with a sigh, it “has made all the difference”.

It’s this individualistic idea of choosing one’s own path—one not taken by the masses—that has led the masses to misquote and misunderstand this poem.

In the second half of the poem, the narrator claims both paths looked, “really about the same,” even though he changes his story years later as he looks back, haunted by the “what if” of the road not taken.

The poem is about the haunting of roads not taken in our lives.

What if I had married her?

What if I had not taken that job?

What if I had started writing 20 years ago?

What if I had started that business?

What if…

With every major choice in our life comes a loss. To choose one thing is to give up another.

M. Scott Peck Got it Wrong

M. Scott Peck rose to prominence with his book, The Road Less Traveled. I can’t help but wonder if the book’s success contributed to the misuse of Frost’s poem.

It’s a personal development book, in the American success myth tradition, that details the attributes that create a fulfilled life.

Yet Peck, admittedly, never practiced what he preached. And sacrificed his family, reputation and health to his hedonistic impulses.

I’ve Gotten It Wrong Too

Why have I struggled with execution? Why have I consistently overcommitted to people and projects, in spite of knowing the importance of focus?

The story I’ve been telling myself is that I want to be an A-player. I don’t want to limit myself. I want to rise to new challenges and opportunities as they present themselves.

But that’s not the complete story.

The simple, and not-so-simple, reason I overcommit is fear.

I don’t want to turn down work, because I never want to find that my services are no longer in demand.

But success demands execution.

Execution requires focus.

Focus means I must make tough decisions.

And making decisions means letting go of numerous opportunities I currently have.

Which means I will have to live the rest of my life haunted by the roads not taken in my life.

We live in a world that will pay you handsomely for answers — for recommendations of roads to take. But the roads not taken — the what ifs — will forever linger.

Are you working for something (or someone) worth the sacrifice?

I think I finally am.

Image at the beginning of this post by Michael Dales on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license “Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic.”