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
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
At the risk of being considered a prude, I would like to challenge those who defend the right to cuss to consider why they should ever allow themselves to be that emotional in a critical moment. The words we choose say a lot about our values, but perhaps they say more about our self-discipline. It seems like
Great decision-making isn’t always about finding a new way of doing things. There are fundamental things that we should stay extremely inflexible and stubborn about. Immoral compromises should never be allowed to be considered in vogue. This means we should also be stubborn about what is actually immoral as that seems to shift with the times a
Every team is excited about their game-plan on the day they think it up. Some teams are excited when the game-plan works and they get to hold up a trophy or the equivalent to it. Other teams never really get to see their game-plan pan out. There are lots of reasons why a game-plan fails but there
When a chef cooks something amazing, that dish isn’t amazing halfway through the recipe. Great cooking requires patience and discipline. The difference between good and great can be found in precise measurement and a strict adherence to the directions. Teams can learn from this. When they judge a project as “bad” because it’s not delivering the expected
Mediocrity is like a piece of cheese in a mouse trap. It seems good because it’s comfortably out in the open. It’s just right there. I don’t have to look for the safer option. What is safer than the win with the least amount of effort? If it looks and feels easy or, to put it another