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Saturday, May 28, 2016

SweatEquity

Many leaders I know operate with a mindset of "if you're not sweating, you're not working."  It's the tempting misconception that if we are busy (at something), then we must be progressing toward our goals.

Observation, reflection, and thoughtful planning often take a back seat to "gettin' stuff done."  Those don't generally produce much sweat, but they are immensely important components in achieving meaningful goals.

To be sure, infrastructure has to be built, products have to be shipped, schedules have to be coordinated, customers must be taken care of, inventory must be procured.  However, none of that stuff means a thing if we haven't thoughtfully, deliberately, and intentionally processed the following:

  1. WHY - Why are we doing what we are doing - our purpose?
  2.  WHAT - What are we doing (or not doing) that substantively contributes (or not) to achieving our desired long-term goals?
  3. HOW - How might we accomplish our goals with more efficiency and/or more effectiveness?
That intellectual side of our "work," the brain work, often gets put off, or worse, completely neglected, in the interest of "gettin' stuff done."  

Done stuff has very little real meaning if it's not precluded by some well-conceived, well-deployed, and oft-revisited cognitive processing.  Think of it as a different kind of sweat equity.

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