This Doesn’t Apply To You
Our choice is to respond or react. The one perhaps is the way to success and the other to the lack of it.
Is there another choice?
The antecedents of our management models have been the factories. The fundamental design of that management model was to control the actions of the individual causing the individual through training and practice to perform the same set of actions repetitiously. The fundamental driving principle of the model was that command and control resulted in efficiency.
Loss of purpose, loss of motivation for the individual was an acceptable loss as long as price per unit was effectively managed. It is no surprise that sustainability has eluded every such enterprise.
I came across this definition of a Corporate Executive recently: “Someone who wants to wake up knowing exactly what needs to be accomplished and how to do it with a solid path for growth and advancement”
Another non-corporate executive type of person was defined as “Typically an idea generator who is passionate and is a risk taker that has the ability to execute against ideas”
Imagine that!
When I don’t know what needs to be accomplished and I don’t know how to do it, is it any surprise that I’m reactive and not responsive?
How do you see clearly whether you’re reactive or responsive? Surely hardly any of us go to bed thinking that we’re reactive people.
I’m going to state a kind of a law here and I want you to apply it in your own lives. In my career of ‘Man Watching’ I think I’ve witnessed a near 100% accuracy of this law.
The values that we sacrifice for money is directly proportional to our reactiveness.
That means the corporate executive definition above could as easily be written as: “Someone who lies to avoid taxes”
Both these are essentially the same person. The reactive person sacrifices his/her integrity. The responsive person jealously guards it.
It is not strange then, that the old stories of yesteryear always showed that the person who gave up everything else for money eventually found himself a lonely failure.
It’s not about living upto somebody else’s expectations or following somebody else’s rules.
Success is directly proportional to integrity.
That’s like the law of gravity.