A goal has a map from where you are, to where you want to be.

Anything less is a dream.

Dreams are entertaining. Goals are rewarding.

Manage the outcome.

Diligently define it. Give it an owner. One owner who has the capacity and resources to make it happen. Set a delivery date. Obsessively follow up.

Don’t manage the details.

If you won’t act. Block others from taking action. And criticize what they are attempting or have done. What value are you contributing other than ensuring personal or organizational performance suicide?

Success leads to more success. Right?

Not necessarily.

Success invites the pile on. Either we do it to ourselves, or those around us do it to us. After all if we are winning, think how much more we could be winning just by adding to the list.

Problem is that what was successful will fail after the “pile on” and inevitably we fry ourselves or lose what made us successful by overreacting to the new found mess.

Continuous success = success + 1 more thing. Test the outcome. It worked. Try another. It didn’t. Remove the one more thing.  Repeat.

And if you do pile on, back track fast and don’t “throw that baby out with the bath water”. Keep and nurture what worked before you got stupid.

I wonder if being successful in everything you do is really that difficult. Seems to me that if you:

1. Do what you say.
2. Show up on time.
3. Say please.
4. Say thank you. And be thankful.
5. Say and be sorry when you screw up.
6. Learn from your mistakes and don’t give up.
7. And never let your success go to your head.

Success won’t be far off.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote in The Black Swan “our highest currency is respect”.

Which made me think.

Earn it honestly and carefully, don’t squander it, be generous, but yet spend it wisely.

Highly recommend the book by the way.

People who put the needs of their coworkers ahead of their own, empathize and understand their customers, seek out win-win partnerships with their suppliers, and err on the side of the betterment of the group versus making their work easier, create exponential value.

Sure, people who focus on me, myself and I, can get things done, especially if they are highly skilled. But they can’t multiply that value.

Something to keep in mind when making compensation decisions.

We are efficient and have no further improvements to make.

- EQUALS -

We have no idea if we are efficient or not.

Only by continuously focussing on efficiency, constantly having improvements to make, making them, and then identifying the next improvement, could one say “we are efficient” with the added caveat “and this is what we are doing next to stay that way”.

Alarms should sound when you hear “we are efficient and have no further improvements to make”.

Iterative or rapid software development means you know exactly what you want, you have defined it extremely well, and are disciplined enough to pick from those specs what should be built in the first, small, iteration.

It doesn’t mean that you can get away with waiting to see if what you get is what you might like, or poorly describing what you want, or starting anywhere without a strategic plan for how you are going to move through the project.

Iterative or rapid software development isn’t an excuse for relaxed product ownership, on the contrary, the exact opposite is true. Things happen so fast you had better be on your game or you will quickly spiral out of control and write off your investment to date.

Every project should have a go / no go decision right at the start, that includes at the very least the following criteria:

Do it right, or don’t do it at all.

If you don’t know what you want, then don’t expect anyone else to either.

Which leads back to the first point.