It’s crazy to take the cupcakes out of the oven after they have baked for under half of the baking time. It’s just as crazy to expect an idea to be delivered without some development. Ideas require time, trial, and experience to become practical. Every idea can look good on paper, but every good idea requires some
Since we only truly do what we care about, we must work hard to practice what we preach. If we only say what is expected of us, we will lose credibility with our teammates. This is because lip service to expected attitudes will eventually be betrayed by our emotionally driven actions. Our hearts and minds must agree
Information can be powerful. When we are objective, we can see the facts and adjust our beliefs, opinions, and convictions based on those facts. Unfortunately that rarely happens because beliefs, opinions, and convictions are subjective. Subjectivity causes us to see the world as we think it should be. Reality has little to do with this type of
When mediocrity is made normal, it becomes safe. Too often we want to be outstanding, but with the safety of being normal. Wait, what?! That’s a little bit like wanting to be skinny, but eating pancakes, cheese and bacon everyday and skipping the exercise. Outstanding isn’t safe. It’s exposed. It’s noticed. It’s alone. Maybe that’s why the
How much of our lives are spent in the search for normalcy? Being normal becomes important around fourth grade. That is “normally” when kids shift from carefree to fighting to fit in. Great teams and great teammates don’t fit in. They stand out. Another way to put it is that they are outstanding. Ordinary people will often
When we seek to get the highest amount of reward for the least amount of effort, we will likely settle for good enough. It takes a different mindset to resist the urge to work only for the minimum requirement. The team has to be committed to the goal to see it through. Shortcuts rarely pay off because
Excellence is achieved by doing our best every time we try. The key word is try. When he said, “Do or do not, there is no try,” Yoda wasn’t advocating for quitting while we are ahead. His famous quote was a lesson against quitting. He meant for us to go for it with the intention of succeeding.
Great teams see small victories as laying a path to a larger one. They don’t see them as compromises. Some teams use the fact that their victory is too far as an excuse not to try. They don’t want to do anything less than excellent so they think it wise to do nothing at all. Nothing is
Touchdowns are important because they help us know what the team is aiming for. The mistake many teams make in trying to score a touchdown is to do it in one big play. That can be done and there is a time for exciting big plays that can be a game changer for a team. The bigger
There has to be an end to our work. Great teams know when that end is. Defining our touchdown is important because we don’t want to come up short but we want to know when we won. Celebrating is an important moment. It acknowledges hard work. Celebrating clearly communicates to the team what the team values are.