Achieving Your Organization's Best

In his groundbreaking work “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill stated that “what ever the mind can believe… it can achieve”.

There are many lessons to be gleaned from Napoleon Hill’s straight forward perspective. True reality is that from where ever you are at this very moment, you can travel to any place in the world. The only prerequisites that are required is having the “want” to and the “belief” that you can.

The same holds true for your organization and every other aspect of life. Simply stated, you can not achieve a single thing unless you first believe that is genuinely possible. Moreover, you must also hold the earnest belief that you, your organization and your people have the talent, skills and capability to achieve the objectives and goals that will take the organization where it wants to go.

This is the very essence of what “potential” really is. Your organization’s vision and mission represent the mental picture of what the organization has the potential to become. As individuals, your people have dreams and goals that they want to achieve in life which are in like fashion how they view their personal potential to grow and achieve.

Perhaps no single individual personifies their belief in what was possible and what they were capable of achieving than Thomas Edison who quipped that he had found over 2,000 ways how to not make a light bulb. Clearly, Edison’s belief was well founded and remained undeterred. While Thomas Edison predated Napoleon Hill, as the expression goes “great minds think alike”.

Thomas Edison also observed “If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves.” Yet, depending on which research report you read, human beings on average only utilize a maximum of 10 percent of the actual potential.

As I so often point out… your organization and your people have both the capacity and the very real need to accomplish more and become more than they presently are.

All too sadly, the human species has allowed its creature comforts, pleasures of modern life and its constant craving for entertainment to result in a stagnant state of complacency that now prevents the vast majority of people and organizations from stretching themselves to new heights of achievement. 

Cartoonist Charles Schultz was a master at assessing human behavior and then depicting it with a touch of humor in his Peanuts comic strip. In one of his more serious moments he observed that “Life is a 10 speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.”

If your organization is ever going kick it in gear and advance to the next level of its potential, then you are also going to have to believe for the “best” your organization and your people have to give on a daily basis.

Performing at your best requires that you live up to your true potential as an organization, as a team and as individuals. This means having a clear picture of what your organization and people can and want to become.

Copyright © 2014 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC | All Rights Reserved.