Stop looking for lightning bolts

by Dave Anderson

A Wall Street Journal reporter recently asked me what I thought the difference was between a good and a great company. I responded that it was the fine line between interest and commitment.

Good companies are interested in reaching their potential. Great firms are committed to doing so. Interested means doing the right things on good days, when you feel like it. To be committed means you exercise the right disciplines day in and day out, no excuses.

The trouble with many good businesses that want to become great is that they’re looking for lighting bolts: quick fixes and shortcuts that put them on top fast.

They trek from seminar to seminar and fad to fad looking for the potion that catapults their enterprise to the next level. In the process they lose their focus, exhaust resources and demoralize their people. Here are five thoughts on how to develop the discipline and commitment necessary to get consistent results. 

The longest distance between two points is a shortcut
Life and business are supposed to be difficult. The sooner one accepts this, the easier it becomes to excel at both. People hop from one fad to the next because they are looking for the quick kill. When they don’t hit the lottery overnight, they wring their hands and move to the next new thing.

This is America. That means you can get rich quick, right? Wrong. While I believe you have to be a total moron not to get rich slowly in this country, nothing worthwhile in business or life was intended to be fast or easy.

We make the work more difficult than it has to be by failing to focus. Hard work is the sum of basic things you didn’t do when you should have. No one trains hard for three weeks and makes the Olympic team. There are no overnight operatic sensations. Great performances in any field are built the same way: little by little. It's not complicated; it's hard, smart work.

Once you accept that life isn’t designed, or inclined to accommodate all your needs and make you happy, you will more easily accept your setbacks and frustrations on the journey to greatness.

Decisions and discipline move you to the next level
Decisions get you started; discipline gets you to the finish line. Think of this as goal setting and goal getting. Decisions are the easier of the two.

It’s simpler to decide what you’re going to do than to actually roll up your sleeves and do it. Recall your last five failed New Year’s resolutions. Without discipline and courage you spend life accumulating a collection of good ideas and regrets.

The best recipe in the world doesn’t make you a chef
Books, tapes and seminars are filled with the necessary ingredients to elevate you personally and professionally. But consistent, tenacious execution is where the rubber meets the road.

The biggest gap in the world is between knowing and doing. It’s like losing weight. There are no secrets for how to be successful. Everyone knows the formula. Which diet works? The one you stick with. The same goes for the disciplines necessary to move you forward in business. One of the downfalls I see in leaders today, especially the young ones, is a failure to focus. The reason? Not enough discipline.

Success depends less on the brilliance 
of your plan, than the consistency of your actions
Once you create a plan to hike to higher heights, you won’t need to do anything extraordinary. All you need to do is execute the ordinary things extraordinarily well: give feedback to your people, hold them accountable, continue to grow personally and engage yourself in the trenches of your business, rather than retreating and roosting in the ivory tower.

It is the consistency of these diligent, daily disciplines that separate contenders from pretenders; the great from good.

Most people don’t connect their 
lack of success to poor decision making
Inside decisions, more than outside conditions, determine your forward motion. Wherever you are in your organization today is the result of past choices you’ve made regarding personnel, strategy, resource allocation and so forth.

Improve your choices and you will improve your future. As Einstein said, “The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”   

Leaders that move their organization from good to great are disciplined, focused and determined. They hire disciplined people, work under disciplined thought and demand disciplined action. They keep slugging away at a handful of daily and weekly non-negotiable tasks they know will take them where they want to go. They know their journey is a marathon, not a sprint.

No one becomes great overnight, but you can become great over time. To do this, you must stop looking for lightning bolts and devote yourself to the disciplines necessary to steadily accelerate your growth. Identify the critical issues required to move your business upward. Manage those issues daily without fail.

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