Stephen Covey and the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has helped 20 million readers learn to be effective. His recent passing was remembered around the world and in 2005, he brought the 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness to the world. To become a great individual or company means that each individual needs to be working to do their own job effectively PLUS inspire others.
This week, Tiffiny has some great ideas on Leadership and Jeff is talking about how to make sure your individual work is customer centric. Both topics relate directly to being an effective individual working to help a company be great.
Moving to greatness sometimes means shaking off some of our standard mindsets. Jessica Hagy, an author, artist and contributor at Forbes had a recent blog post about the Six Enemies of Greatness. She uses Venn Diagrams and simple graphics to highlight her views and believe me, often a picture is worth a thousand words. The two of the six enemies that I see as the most insidious and hidden are Momentum and Passivity.
- Momentum: We’ve always done it this way; the wheels will always follow the rut in the road; the path of least resistance. Think of momentum as “We Tried that, True it works and it is a Tired method and it has become a habit“. As a manager or owner, getting staff to change is hard work and establishing a new habit will be essential to transfer the energy and new momentum.
- Passivity: When you hear your staff say “Sure“, “Fine“, “Whatever” you may be working with passive non-engaged employees. Engaged employees will want to help your business thrive and new ideas will be discussed, critiqued and assessed for viability. You want your staff to question “will this work” and not just say “sure, fine, whatever.” To quote Jessica Hagy from her article “There’s a difference between being agreeable and agreeing to everything.”
Building a sustainable business means always moving forward – as the world around us changes we, too, will want to refine, review and refocus regularly!
