Here are some of my "aha" moments captured in the nineth week.
Quote: “The
ability to execute is more valuable than education or talent, because it is far
rarer.” (A
Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote:“Make no mistake about it. You have a choice. You can blame your parents, teachers, coaches or bosses. Or you can choose to start developing the attitudes, habits and instincts so your name will be called when success hangs in the balance.” (A Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote:“People in their late teens and early twenties often have a misconception about life. They believe that their greatest challenges will come from unforeseen events and external circumstances. This turns out to be untrue. The greatest challenges always come from within.” (A Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote: “This suggests that the problem is more deeply rooted in human nature. People want to make a difference. Be as cynical as you like, but deep inside every seemingly lazy and distracted person is an individual with rare gifts who longs to be called to an important mission. It’s just that somewhere in life, through overbearing or overindulgent parents or disinterested teachers, tyrannical coaches or uncaring bosses, the passion for a job well done has been extinguished.” (A Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote:“Principle #1: Lead by Example
Quote:“A disciple recognizes that faith in the Savior is a spiritual gift and appropriately seeks for that gift in his or her life. Faith is not a trait to be developed or a reward to be earned. Rather, it is a gift we receive from God. Scriptural synonyms for faith include trust, confidence, and reliance. Thus, the spiritual gift of faith enables us to trust in Christ and to have confidence in His power to cleanse, to renew, to redeem, and to strengthen us. Faith means we are beginning to rely upon His merits, mercy, and grace (2 Nephi 2:8; 31:19; Moroni 6:4). Indeed, you and I have a responsibility to properly seek after this gift; and we must do all that we can do to qualify for the gift of faith. Ultimately, however, the gift is bestowed upon us by a loving and caring God.” (A Disciple Preparation Center- David Bednar)
Quote: “ When in doubt, don’t hire – just keep looking. Good-to-great companies are willing to grow only at the rate at which they are successful in attracting the right people. They know that any time their rate of revenue growth outstrips their ability to attract the right people, the company is moving towards mediocrity rather than greatness.
Quote:“Yes, leadership is about vision. But leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and brutal facts confronted. There’s a huge difference between the opportunity to ‘have your say’ and the opportunity to be heard. The good-to-great leaders understood this distinction, creating a culture wherein people had a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard.” (Good To Great- Jim Collins)
Quote:“The sequence of events is that you trust people and they will trust you. The owness is upon you to trust first.” (Aspects of Building Trust- Guy Kawaski)
Quote:“...sometimes the most important capability you can have is the capability to ask a question and hear the answer.” (Leadership and Capability- Carly Fiorina)
Quote: “…keep learning, learn something every day.” (Leadership and Capability- Carly Fiorina)
Thoughts: I have spent time this week thinking about the value of execution. I volunteer in my daughters kindergarten class. This week I was given three tasks and immediately began asking clarifying questions to the teacher before she left me to my tasks. After she left I realized I had failed to accept and start like I had just read about in "A Message to Garcia". I found that section of reading made a lot of sense. I had my Entrepreneur Interview last night and one thing he covered was the importance of taking action. I think I tend to be someone that spends a lot of time pondering on how to do things. I think acquiring more of an execution attitude now will help me as a business owner in my decision making process.
Ability to Execute
Quote:
“The secret to developing the right attitudes, habits and instincts for crisp execution is cultivating a bias toward action. Practice the following steps until they become deeply imbedded habits:
1. Accept the mission and get started. If offered an assignment where the objective is clear, accept it without asking for further instructions. Then take the first step.
2. Be curious. Most times you won’t have all the answers. Don’t see this as a sign of weakness. Instead, unleash your natural curiosity. Focus on asking the right questions first. Then seek answers.
3. Immediately sketch out a plan. Quickly draft a provisional plan with goals, milestones and deadlines. If you don’t know enough to craft such a plan, decide how to gather the information you need. But in all cases, begin to move forward immediately.
If the objective seems overwhelming or you are unsure of where to start, break it down using the Vision, Strategies, Projects, Tactics (VSPT) framework:
Vision: This is your objective – delivering the letter to Garcia.
Strategies: What are the ways you could achieve this objective? Sometimes there will be many strategies to choose from, other times only one. For Rowan, there was only one strategy: hand-deliver it. Today, other options might be to deliver the message by phone or by e-mail.
Projects: What big things need to get done to accomplish the objective? Create a series of major milestones. For example: Sail to Cuba, trek through the forest, find Garcia, plot a course back home.
Tactics: What do I need to do today to make progress on a project? Make a checklist: Hire a boat crew, find a guide for the trek, arrange for provisions, buy mosquito netting. Quickly start on these tasks, and before you know it, you will be executing.
4. If you need resources, don’t be afraid to ask. A critical job for any leader is to allocate resources—money, people, his own time even—among competing projects. If you ask clearly for what you need and explain concisely why it is necessary to achieve the objective, a leader will give you the additional resources you need.
5. Enlist help when needed. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from peers, but remember that the responsibility for accomplishing the task is yours alone. (And remember that the best way to get others to help you is to have helped them first.)
6. Report back and show your work. Frequently report your progress with objective measures. Whenever possible, provide samples of your work. Instead of asking how to accomplish a task, show what you have done so far. If you are off course, you’ll get immediate feedback to put you back on the right path.
7. Underpromise and overdeliver. Make it a point to set reasonable goals and always exceed them. If you want leaders to trust you with critical tasks, develop a reputation for getting the job done better, sooner and at a lower cost than you promised.
8. Expect to make (small) mistakes. Accept mistakes as the price you pay to learn. Include an honest assessment of missteps in your progress reports. Embrace them as minor setbacks and correct them quickly. Jot down the lessons for reflection later, after the task has been accomplished.
9. Put results before schmoozing. You want to spend time with those higher up in the organization so they’ll get to know you and appreciate your work. First focus on contributing something of value, and you’ll be surprised by how much attention you receive.
10. Replace the voices in your head with positive action. Turn away from the temptation to dwell on negative thoughts. Dwelling on fears only gives them more power. The best way to rid yourself of a fear is to take positive action. Courage isn’t the absence of fear but rather the ability to act in the face of it.”
(A Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote:“Make no mistake about it. You have a choice. You can blame your parents, teachers, coaches or bosses. Or you can choose to start developing the attitudes, habits and instincts so your name will be called when success hangs in the balance.” (A Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote:“People in their late teens and early twenties often have a misconception about life. They believe that their greatest challenges will come from unforeseen events and external circumstances. This turns out to be untrue. The greatest challenges always come from within.” (A Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote: “This suggests that the problem is more deeply rooted in human nature. People want to make a difference. Be as cynical as you like, but deep inside every seemingly lazy and distracted person is an individual with rare gifts who longs to be called to an important mission. It’s just that somewhere in life, through overbearing or overindulgent parents or disinterested teachers, tyrannical coaches or uncaring bosses, the passion for a job well done has been extinguished.” (A Message To Garcia- Acton Foundation)
Quote:“Principle #1: Lead by Example
The Savior established
this principle when He said, “what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say
unto you, even as I am.”2 One of the most
important things that leaders do is what they do. In your family, your
most powerful influence on your children will be the example of your life.
That example includes the actions that you take and the principles and
values that guide you. Your children will watch you very, very
closely. They will learn from you and follow your
example—(eventually!).
This is wonderful news!
It means that you can lead your children in the paths of
righteousness. I know you all want your children to be obedient and faithful,
to love the Lord, to have the Spirit in their lives, to receive their temple
blessings, to build an eternal family, and to bless you with grandchildren!
The best way to lead them in that path is to be in that path yourselves.
You teach your children
to obey the commandments of God by keeping the commandments of God. It is
important to talk with them and tell them what you are doing and why. But
it is in the doing that there is real power to shape their lives. If you
want to teach them to love the temple and to see its power and importance, put
pictures of the temples on your walls, have lessons about the temple in family
home evening, and go to the temple often. In this, and every other gospel
principle, your life can be a living model of what you want your children to
be.
Principle #2: Lead with
Vision
The Savior used this
principle all throughout His ministry on earth, and He uses it now. On many,
many occasions he prefaced a parable with the words, “The kingdom of heaven is
like . . .”3 and then He would
connect a principle from familiar day-to-day life with salvation in His
kingdom. He always held before His disciples, and holds before us, the
ultimate purpose of our work and our lives. He gives us the vision of
what we should do in our daily lives and what we might accomplish eternally if
we will follow Him. One of the most important things that leaders do is
to help the people they lead understand the larger meaning and purpose of their
daily work.
In your family this means
teaching your children how cleaning their rooms, doing their homework, keeping
the commandments, and learning to love each other is connected to exaltation in
the celestial kingdom as an eternal family. It means filling your home
with the Spirit. It means putting pictures of the Savior on the wall
along with pictures of your family and teaching your children the connection
between them and the Savior.
But it may also mean
leading your family through times of grief and pain caused by death or illness.
It may mean teaching them and showing them that staying the course,
moving forward despite the pain, is deeply connected to your family’s eternal
destiny.
Principle #3: Lead with
Love
The Savior’s life,
suffering, and death are testimony of His perfect love for us. Everything He
has done for us, He has done because of His great love for His Father and His
perfect love for us. There is a powerful principle of leadership in
John’s words about the Savior’s love: “We love him, because he first loved us.”4 Effective small “L” leaders learn to
energize the people around them through love in action.
To you mothers and
fathers and prospective mothers and fathers, the very most important thing you
can do for your children is to love each other and support each other and help
each other become everything Heavenly Father wants you to be. You stand
before God and your children as husband and wife, father and mother, equal
partners in the sacred responsibility of creating an eternal family.
As the leaders of your
family and faithful disciples of Christ, you will put love into action.
You will care for your children and nurture them. Every week in
family home evening you will teach them to love and serve one another and to
keep the commandments God. You will support them and encourage them and
love them enough to put structure and discipline in their lives. You will
pray with them and read the scriptures with them every day. You will lead
them with love.”
(Leadership With A Small ‘L’- Kim B. Clark)
Quote:“A disciple recognizes that faith in the Savior is a spiritual gift and appropriately seeks for that gift in his or her life. Faith is not a trait to be developed or a reward to be earned. Rather, it is a gift we receive from God. Scriptural synonyms for faith include trust, confidence, and reliance. Thus, the spiritual gift of faith enables us to trust in Christ and to have confidence in His power to cleanse, to renew, to redeem, and to strengthen us. Faith means we are beginning to rely upon His merits, mercy, and grace (2 Nephi 2:8; 31:19; Moroni 6:4). Indeed, you and I have a responsibility to properly seek after this gift; and we must do all that we can do to qualify for the gift of faith. Ultimately, however, the gift is bestowed upon us by a loving and caring God.” (A Disciple Preparation Center- David Bednar)
Quote:“I have come to better and more fully understand the protection available in the temple and through our covenants. I have come to better and more fully understand what it means to make an acceptable offering of temple worship. There is a difference between church-attending, tithe-paying members who occasionally rush into the temple to go through a session and those members who faithfully and consistently worship in the temple. (Elder J. Ballard Washburn)” (A Disciple Preparation Center- David Bednar)
Quote: “ When in doubt, don’t hire – just keep looking. Good-to-great companies are willing to grow only at the rate at which they are successful in attracting the right people. They know that any time their rate of revenue growth outstrips their ability to attract the right people, the company is moving towards mediocrity rather than greatness.
If it’s obvious a change in personnel is
needed, act quickly. The best people never need to be tightly managed. They
will know instinctively what needs to be done without lengthy sets of instructions.
Therefore, when good-to-great companies find someone is under-performing, they
first try and decide whether that person is better suited somewhere else in the
company, and if not, they fire them quickly and decisively. That sends the
clear signal the high performers will not be required to compensate for poor
hiring decisions.” (Good To Great- Jim Collins)
Quote:“Yes, leadership is about vision. But leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and brutal facts confronted. There’s a huge difference between the opportunity to ‘have your say’ and the opportunity to be heard. The good-to-great leaders understood this distinction, creating a culture wherein people had a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard.” (Good To Great- Jim Collins)
Quote:“The sequence of events is that you trust people and they will trust you. The owness is upon you to trust first.” (Aspects of Building Trust- Guy Kawaski)
Quote:“We try to hire people that are nice.” (Hiring Ethical People- Frank Levinson)
Quote:“...sometimes the most important capability you can have is the capability to ask a question and hear the answer.” (Leadership and Capability- Carly Fiorina)
Quote: “…keep learning, learn something every day.” (Leadership and Capability- Carly Fiorina)
Thoughts: I have spent time this week thinking about the value of execution. I volunteer in my daughters kindergarten class. This week I was given three tasks and immediately began asking clarifying questions to the teacher before she left me to my tasks. After she left I realized I had failed to accept and start like I had just read about in "A Message to Garcia". I found that section of reading made a lot of sense. I had my Entrepreneur Interview last night and one thing he covered was the importance of taking action. I think I tend to be someone that spends a lot of time pondering on how to do things. I think acquiring more of an execution attitude now will help me as a business owner in my decision making process.
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