CRITICAL MASS

Zero in on key issues for your biz with these five tips.

By Dave Anderson

A Wall Street Journal reporter recently asked me what I thought the difference was between a good and a great company. I responded that it was the fine line between interest and commitment. Good companies are interested in reaching their potential. Great firms are committed to doing so. Interested means doing the right things on good days, when you feel like it. To be committed means you exercise the right disciplines day in and day out.

The trouble with many good businesses that want to become great is that they’re looking for lighting bolts: quick fixes and shortcuts that put them on top fast. They trek from seminar to seminar and fad to fad looking for the potion that catapults their enterprise to the next level. In the process they lose their focus, exhaust resources and demoralize their people. Here are five thoughts on how to develop the discipline and commitment necessary to get consistent results:

The longest distance between two points is a shortcut. Life and business are supposed to be difficult. The sooner one accepts this, the easier it is to become disciplined to excel at both. One reason people hop from one fad to the next is that they are looking for the quick kill. When they don’t hit the lottery overnight they wring their hands and move on to the next “new” thing. After all, this is America. That means you can get rich quick, right? Wrong. While I believe you have to be a total moron not to be able to get rich slowly in this country, nothing worthwhile in business—or life—was intended to be fast or easy.

The problem is that we make the work more difficult than it has to be, by failing to focus. Hard work is the result of the accumulation of basic things you didn’t do, when you should have. No one trains hard for three weeks and makes the Olympic team. There are no overnight operatic sensations. Great performances in any field are built the same way: little by little; bit by bit. This doesn’t mean it is complicated; it is just hard, smart work. Once you accept that life isn’t designed or inclined to accommodate all your needs and make you happy, your setbacks and frustrations are easier to accept as you persevere on your journey to greatness.

It takes decisions and discipline to move to the next level. Decisions get you started; discipline gets you to the finish line. Think of this as goal setting and goal getting. Decisions are the easier of the two. It’s simpler to decide what you’re going to do than to actually roll up your sleeves and do it.

The best recipe in the world doesn’t make you a chef. Books, tapes and seminars are filled with the necessary ingredients to elevate you personally and professionally. But consistent, tenacious execution is where the rubber meets the road. The biggest gap in the world is between knowing and doing. It’s like losing weight. There are no secrets for how to be successful. Everyone knows the formula. Which diet works? The one you stick with. The same goes for the disciplines necessary to move you forward in business. One of the downfalls I see in leaders today—especially the young ones—is a failure to focus. The reason? Not enough discipline.

Success depends less on the brilliance of your plan than the consistency of your actions. Here’s the good news: once you’ve created a plan to hike toward higher heights, you won’t have to do anything extraordinary. All you need to do is to execute the ordinary things extraordinarily well: give feedback to your people, hold them accountable, continue to grow personally and engage yourself in the trenches of your business rather than retreating and roosting in the ivory tower. It is the consistency of these diligent, daily disciplines that separate contenders from pretenders; the great from the good.

No one becomes great overnight, but you can become great over time. To do this, you must stop looking for lightning bolts and devote yourself to the disciplines necessary to steadily accelerate your growth. Identify the critical issues you know are required to move your business upward. Then manage those issues daily, every day without fail!

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