While re-creating in Florida and sitting at a table at Sharkeys overlooking the ocean I begin to write. Inspired by a question or challenge during the week and by Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Living my pen begin to squander on the pad of paper I always carry with me. I had just paid $20 for a bad appetizer and realized the $20 wasn’t for the food, but for the view. The experience of sitting by the ocean, capturing important thoughts that could move me and the organizations I serve, and honing out what I believe was worth more than the $20 I offered, I had found the perfect spot for that day’s activities. The view spoke volumes to competing on experience vs. commodity. You can serve bad appetizers when you have a million dollar view to compliment them.
It was at that point that I pondered this question or statement; “Coach Burt, you may have to delve into your arsenal of leadership tools to figure this one out. After all, you’re the one that says that you manage things, and lead people.” That statement had caught in my head and I had carried it with me the whole drive from Tennessee to my “mini-retirement,” the beaches of Florida.
As I began to write I began to delve deep into the seven important decisions I first introduced in my breakthrough book This Ain’t No Practice Life. I had given my talk on these important decisions hundreds of times but today I began to see them in a different light, a light that would lead to patterns and predictability, a light that could serve us well as we try to create something “remarkable.” The more I wrote the more I began to see the underlying “pivot points” for each of those decisions and the model I could use to diagnose exactly where a company and team was and what to do to move them through the next rite of passage.
We’ll be exploring those seven decisions in this blog over the coming weeks.
