Zeitgeist

Do Great Work July 2, 2010

Innovate or Stagnate. Leave everything you touch better than you found it. Mediocrity happens when people refuse to change and improve all that they do. Look what happened to some of the big car companies because the slowed down their devotion to innovation. The competition ate them for breakfast. And put some out of business. The best leaders and the best enterprises have a hunger to improve. It’s such a deep part of their culture they know of no other way to be. And that’s the edge that makes them great.

Become a Value Creator versus a Clock Watcher. Success comes from the value you add rather than from the busyness you show. What’s the point of being really busy around the wrong things? Leadership is a game of focus. Focusing on fewer but smarter activities, the ones that create real value for your teammates, customers and the world at large.

Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing “great work” – the kind of innovative work that pushes business forward, stretches creativity, and offers true satisfaction. Mostly employees are treading water with “good work”- the work that keeps the business going but will never move it ahead, Some are mired in “bad work”, the endless meetings, the energy-draining bureaucratic processes. We have to learn to move away from bad work, learn how to use the drama triangle of transactional analysis and stop being a “rescuer” who takes on other people’s problems, and how not to say “no,” but how to say “yes” more slowly, making sure you’re doing what’s most important.