Quiet Dream Killer

I firmly believe you want to see your dream for your organization come to fruition. And the very fact that you have read this far tells me you do your utmost to make it happen. There is, however, an insidious threat that may be silently undermining your efforts. Its name is “Not Enough Time”.

“Not Enough Time” is what you say as you tackle the urgent, day-to-day matters in your business and leave other important work like cultivating personal and team greatness for another day.

“Look out!”

We generally give more attention and priority to urgent things. Since there is no shortage of things to do, fires to fight, and urgent requests from all directions, overfocusing on these items means never getting to the other imporant stuff and may leave your company and your dream vulnerable.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein

“Vulnerable?!”  Yep.  Here’s why.

Laying the trap

As your organization grows, you and it face and overcome challenge after challenge. New challenges arrive seemingly daily. And equally as quickly, you succeed solving them. Success! Hooray!

This process continues and the series of small and large successes you’ve built take you to where you are today. Along the way, you’ve gathered a veritable tool shed of strategies, methods, and ways looking at things that you draw upon for the challenges which will arrive today or tomorrow. That tool shed represents the wisdom and know-how that is a large portion of your organization’s value. So far so good, right?

Nothing fails like success.

Not quite.  While wisdom and know-how are good, they have a dark, silent side.  You’ve probably heard the adage, “Nothing fails like success.”  Well, what does that mean?

“The risk we now face is applying old solutions to new problems.” –Betsy Morris, Fortune Magazine

In addition to success, your amassed wisdom and know-how bring confidence in your ability to handle challenges.  And confidence brings comfort when facing new challenges.  And as your comfort grows, you become less likely to look for new solutions to new problems.  Next thing you know, the very talents made you successful prevent you from succeeding in the future.  And there’s the trap: success breeds failure.

If, in the last month, you have put off doing somthing that you know is important for your business so that you can handle current workloads, then your organization may be vulnerable to this success trap.

What to do?

The first thing you can do is to recognize that you’re not alone in this trap.  It’s part of being in business.  Your ultimate success won’t come from not falling into this trap; it’ll come because you’ll have found a way out of it.

The next thing you can do is to start getting out of the trap. Make a commitment to yourself to prioritize something important but not urgent.  It can be anything of any size or scope that you’ve put off.

And, if you haven’t yet, download my free workbook to learn an easy, practical step you can take to start pointing your organization toward the big mission and big goals you know it can achieve.