Is Your Business Running on Autopilot?
The autopilot can be an aviator’s BEST friend. It’s precise, alleviates workload, and provides good peace of mind. All positive factors, but if the pilot isn’t careful, it could lead to big trouble!
The autopilot can be an aviator’s BEST friend. It’s precise, alleviates workload, and provides good peace of mind. All positive factors, but if the pilot isn’t careful, it could lead to big trouble!
When one of my clients is working to strengthen the Process Component in their business, the ultimate goal is getting a handful of Core Processes documented, simplified and “FBA” – which stands for “followed by all.” Often, when recording a Rock or Goal on the whiteboard that includes “FBA,” I turn around to find one or more leaders looking at me skeptically.
“What’s FBA?” they’ll say, or “How is that a SMART Rock?”
Fair questions.
Once upon a time in aviation, flight crews faced a culture of hierarchical command where it was considered disrespectful, if not insubordination, to question the captain’s authority. Doing so risked possible retribution.
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins asks, “Are you a hedgehog or a fox?”
The Hedgehog Concept originated from a line of the Greek poet Archilochus, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows ONE BIG THING.”
As the story goes, the cunning fox spends hours strategizing the perfect attack on how to eat the hedgehog. He continually tries and fails, as the hedgehog simply rolls into a shiny, spiny ball with each attack.
After days of the fox’s attacks, the hedgehog’s laser focus on one simple method of defense keeps it alive.
When I was a kid we’d started counting the moment we saw lightning strike. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one- BOOM, the thunder would roll through our neighborhood, shaking everything to its foundation.
When I read Gino Wickman and Mark Winter’s most recent book, Rocket Fuel, I thought, “What an apt metaphor for the roles of Visionary and Integrator.”
Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Having spent more than 1,000 days in the trenches with entrepreneurs and their leadership teams, I can safely say that quotation applies just as well to business as it does to sports. Because when it comes to making decisions, calling things “done”, and launching important work—leaders and teams fall into three camps.