The photo above should hang somewhere in every executive’s office all over the world.
Why you might ask?
Because that is what a solid strategy combined with consistent focus on the simple, repeatable actions that your organization can take to achieve success looks like.
In our current era of business, we have become obsessed with focusing on the shiny, new bauble and the latest website or app that is going to revolutionize everything we do. And, they all detract from the simple, repeatable, basic actions that we should be focusing on that will help define our success and lead us to the outcomes that we hope to achieve.
Sure, I get it…smart marketing tells you to adapt to your audiences’ whims and to go where the market is, but Steve Jobs also told us: “The market doesn’t really know what it needs.”
But that makes it difficult because if you are doing what everyone else is doing, you can’t be held accountable because everyone else is doing the same thing, right?
Just in the world of college football, look at all the “me too” spread offenses and chaotic 55-54 games that seem to happen with much regularity these days.
It is so much easier to run a scheme and concept predicated on breaking down, reduced adherence to fundamentals, and the lack of a need of consistency than it is to develop and deliver a system that will enable you to repeat your tasks, learn the fundamentals, and prepare in a way that you can always know your responsibilities.
Its better to just shrug your shoulders and say, “We did our best.”
But even more, look around at our businesses. With such a focus on the daily news cycle driven by the Stock Market and reported on by “journalists” like Jim Cramer and the Money Honey, if an organization has a bad week or a bad month, the wolves start coming out almost immediately, sharpening their knives in pursuit of a new strategy to appease the markets.
This puts CEOs and their teams in the position to “have to do something” to appease the likes of the investor class.
But look around at some of the more successful and stable businesses like Starbucks where Howard Schultz pays little to no attention to the howls of the market on a daily basis, focusing more on the ability of the coffee chain to deliver an experience and a connection with their customers.
This strategy has led the company’s shared to jump from around $16 at this point 5 years ago to over $58 dollars as I write this.
But is there reward for consistency in our current climate?
No…
You see Starbucks and you think, meh!
You see Alabama and Nick Saban and think, “he’s so joyless and I’m so tired of their superiority.”
Instead, your attention gets drawn to the new, the current, the shiny…