As you and your organization again turn the
proverbial page on your desk calendar to January, just how prepared are you and
your people to have unprecedented success in 2017?
This is a particularly valid question to pose,
especially when you consider that researchers state that only 8% of people
actually keep their New Year’s resolutions. It is a valid question simply
because it begets the real question, which is … With such a small fractional
number of individual people truly “living up to” their personal resolutions,
how then can organizational leaders who are unsuccessful when it comes to their
own New Year’s resolutions (goals) be
in a viable position to successfully achieve your organization’s goals
throughout the coming year?
Effectually stated, the analogies and actions
simply don’t align. If an individual is proven incapable in one arena, he or
she is clearly not going to be any more successful when required to perform at
a higher-level endeavor.
This principle holds true because it has been
proven time and again that “most people
will focus on what is destined to go wrong … Rather than on what might possibly
go right.”
During the course of facilitating our
leadership development programs, I am on occasion questioned about the validity
of this ascertain. My typical response is that given the understanding that any
endeavor in life first requires a balanced approach, and then applying a
football genre, will you be more successful if you have a “defense” mentality
or an “offense” mentality?
Whatever the game of life or business may be …
you ultimately have to put the numbers on
the board.
So, let’s take a few moments to move from
practical theory and analogy to a real-world example of that to which I speak.
Ever since the dawn of our country’s space program, every time a scheduled
mission takes place, our astronauts have undergone hundreds and hundreds of
simulated launches, landings and every scenario in between launch and
touchdown. Literally every aspect of the mission has been rigorously rehearsed
and drilled to perfection.
During an interview, Veteran Astronaut Ron
Garan openly shared that even with all of the time that was allocated to advance
planning, technology and meticulous training that far more time was devoted to “what could go wrong” and cause the
mission to fail.
There is perhaps no better story about being
concerned about what could go wrong, than the story pertaining to space pioneer
John Glenn. Following his recent death in December 2016, it was disclosed that
following his monumental space flight in 1962, that President John Kennedy was
so concerned about the well-being and preservation of the nation’s newest hero
that he vetoed the return of John Glenn back into space.
Virtually every entrepreneur, business
executive, organization or individual that has ever achieved a meaningful
degree of success will emphatically state that their success would have never
happened if they hadn’t been willing to take some “risks”.
Every arena of life is fraught with the
potential for something to go wrong. Most successful people will also tell you
that had they not also learned from their previous failures how to become
successful, they would never have made it. As basketball legend Michael Jordan
stated, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots
in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take
the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed.”
If your organization and its people are going
to experience unprecedented success in 2017, then it is imperative for you to
focus on what can go right while
having a balanced approach in planning the organization’s goals that like NASA,
includes the upfront identification of potential hurdles, obstacles and
setbacks that you and your people could encounter.
As legendary radio personality Casey Kasem
always said as he signed off at the end of each show, “Keep your feet on the ground … and keep reaching for the stars.”
Balancing clear goals with appropriate contingency
plans will keep your organization focused on what can go right in 2017!
Copyright © 2017 Developing Forward Leadership |
Thomas H. Swank, CBC | All Rights Reserved.
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