Audience Development Group 

Midweek Motivator

A Pint of Sweat Saves a Gallon of Blood       September 22, 2010
Tim Moore
Tim Moore 
Managing Partner
Audience Development Group
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Patton believed in reincarnation and felt it was his fate to lead men in desperate battles for the destiny of a cause. Melodramatic? Perhaps, yet who's to say he was wrong? For the rest of us, the perspective of time has lengthened, everything stands in a different setting and the flickering lamp gropes along the trail of the past trying to reconstruct its decisions, to revive its echoes and revive the passion of our former days. In fact, we don't have the luxury of Patton's "many masters, many lives." We only have a measurable today.

Nothing is ever going to be perfect. From our current malaise and organizational chaos through the years ahead, someone will profit while someone else perishes. In war, Patton knew a good solution applied today could save lives, materiel and time tomorrow. You can spend all your time rethinking and revising your plans postponing the fight indefinitely, or you can accept there comes a time when deliberating must stop so that action can begin. Today, we see far too many leaders waiting for the perfect plan, the right moment to assert aggressive competitive measures. Their "troops" are paying a price through declining morale and sense-of-purpose. You can appoint someone "manager" but you can't appoint a "leader."  That's a day-to-day earned process.

None of us can be 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. The best we can do is to assess our resources weighed against our competition's assets, planning around not what a competitor will do but instead, on what that competitor is capable of doing. And even on the occasion of temporary failure (which we're destined to endure), it's a learning experience that prevents greater errors in your next critical situation. All together, too many managers and leaders have become conditioned to fear failure, and spend more and more time in the shadows of caution playing not to lose. The pressing question asks: why is one's fear of loss ten times more powerful than the anticipation of gain?

Only people who never try anything bold or uncommonly aggressive make no mistakes; and that's the greatest mistake of all. In the current climate we have plenty of reasons to be hesitant, even indecisive, but spending much time there is a lot like rocking in a rocking chair; it fills the hours, but you don't go anywhere.

Deadly diseases to avoid include the most crippling affliction of them all: the lack of boldness in the face of adversity. Too much emphasis on short term profit versus longer term capital strategy, narrow or obtuse evaluation of performance based on old benchmarks, and excessive inaction based on timidity, leads us to be forever haunted by the ghosts of "what-if?"


Sincerely,
 
Tim Moore     
Tim Moore
Managing Partner
Audience Development Group
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