Grand Navigation
It first hit me on a cold rainy day in 1983. I was a gung-ho, athletic officer candidate at Ft. Benning, Georgia, standing in the rain, 5 miles from the nearest paved road, listening to an Army Ranger prep our company for our “pass-or-get-cut” land navigation test.
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
Five hours and approximately 10 miles of back country hiking and navigating later, about 100 of us passed this test. Seventeen exhausted, aspiring officer candidates did not. Hours later their bunks were stripped and they were sent packing.
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
Where are you going? What does the amazing, incredible future of your organization look like? What is your dream, your vision, of what could be?
Susan Scott, in her brilliant book, Fierce Conversations, states: “the quality of our lives is largely determined by the quality of the questions we ask – and the quality of our answers.” So what are the big, bold questions that can define our ideal future? Susan Scott offers these:
- Where are we going?
- Why are we going there?
- Who is going with us?
- How are we going to get there?
Imagine what could be possible if you could gain clarity about your desired outcome for yourself, your team, your company. Let’s add some bold action to this bold thinking. Once you have this clarity, what could you do with it?
Leaders inspire a shared vision. Great leaders do this frequently according to Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge. Keyword = shared. That means it gets translated from brilliant leader brains into conversations that enlist others in the vision… conversations that engage others in co-creating the amazing, incredible future. It’s more than words. Vision gets translated into action. Around here we call it BOLD action.
A strong vision will have an effect on actions you take every day. Frequently shared, a strong vision will help your team members make better choices every day. Result = waste is eliminated. Frustration and burn out are diminished. Innovation explodes. Talent is applied. The team scores together, more frequently. Everyone wins.
I dare you. Answer the 4 questions. Dream. Share. Live it. Create something no one has ever created before. Go get it.
So, where ARE you going? Share.
Revolution resolution
Its officially 2008. Did you walk away from the cigarette, the Whopper and fries, the happy hours instead of the gym? Are you committed to transforming your “business as usual” to bold new behavior and outcomes? Really?
How about this prompt from a new IBM advertisement (and they have several killer ones lately): “Talking explores history. Doing rewrites it. Stop talking, start DOING.” Yeah! I can hear the roar of the revolution forming, approaching, no… charging! Stand and fight or run? Run to or run from? What to do?
Are you up for this?
rev·o·lu·tion ˌ[rev-uh-loo-shuh n]: a sudden, complete or marked change in something.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is on board. He pokes us with: “imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” Jimbo is committed to rewriting history. Are you?
Banish that incremental improvement stuff. This is no time to inch along. Safe harbors are for the empty-souled. What if you lived BOLD? What if you lived Goethe’s “boldness has genius, power and magic in it” every day? What could be?
No mention of bold is complete without a dash of one of my favorite influences, Tom Peters. For inspiration I opened up to this page in his uniquely brilliant book Reimagine:
“Anything is possible. Anything is likely. Are you ready? Change is coming, and coming fast. One question that confronts every institution and every individual: Fight the change… or grab hold and enjoy the ride? I say: Enjoy yourself! It’s later than you think!”
All aboard the Bold-_ss Express!
So I am dying to know, what part of history will you rewrite in 2008?
