Great teams don’t allow sentiment to creep in when their vision is challenged by the current reality. They understand that there is always a reason to abandon the commitment to changing that reality. That’s why that reality currently exists. It’s not that no one had the idea to change the future. Those game-changing ideas are rarely original.
When teams set out to be excellent, they make statements that are intended to communicate a commitment to protecting a certain value or practice to make sure that value or practice is something the team not only aspires to but actually becomes. Unfortunately, when that commitment meets inconvenience, mediocre teams find reasons to de-commit to what they
Mediocrity is an interesting study. I think we can all agree that no one ever sets out to actually be mediocre. I think that even the average person would say that mediocrity is a bad state to be in. Yet I find so many people to be very quick to defend mediocre practices and attitudes. It’s as
The church world has a fun way of working against itself. I realize that not everyone who reads this is a church-goer but I believe we can learn from some of the sentiments that can hold back an organization. I believe all organizations and teams deal with this dysfunction in some way but call it something different.
Progress is important and it’s good to take baby steps when it comes to improving discipline. This is not always true when the stakes are high. Sometimes we just need a quantum leap in commitment to get better because if we don’t, we could suffer terrible consequences. This is often true after we get a bad report
The opposite of “always” is often thought to be “never”. This is true but we often forget that there may be more than one opposite for the words we like to use. Sometimes is just as much an opposite of always as never is, but it may be a much more dangerous opposite. This is because when
Discipline requires more flexibility than most people think. We all know what we should do in most situations. Ignorance is rarely the cause of an undisciplined choice. The problem I have is that we become rigid in our thinking of when it is appropriate to give our best. When I am undisciplined, I have usually created a
Some days are definitely harder than others. I have written before about what my dad used to call “heavy gravity” days at the gym. It’s when things just feel harder. It seems like we are working twice as hard for half of the result. It takes a large portion of our willpower to just get going. These
It’s tough to understand when to change and when to double down on a proven method. There is clearly a time for both. The problem occurs when our preference becomes our default. If we like potential change, we will find reasons to advocate for it. If we like the way things are, we will find reasons to
Some things stand the test of time. A good example of this is the I formation in football. In the 100 years the game has existed, there have been thousands of different formations but the balanced effect that the I formation has provided offenses has caused it to stubbornly exist in playbooks long after some of the