Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
Showing up early once might earn you brownie points, but what changes culture is if you do it often.
Submitting your project early might allow for more time to discover minor bugs, but to prevent the same thing from happening, we have to submit early and often.
Early AND often.
Stay Positive & Once Is Not Enough
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Saying you haven’t had the time is a cop out. There’s no way that you literally couldn’t have done the thing you’re saying you haven’t had time for.
What is true, however, is that you haven’t made the time.
Which is hard to admit.
Because it sends a signal of what to prioritize and clearly communicates it to others (particularly the person or group for whom you haven’t done the action for).
But being clear and accountable for your priorities is a symbol of strength, not of weakness.
So go ahead. Admit to others you haven’t made the time. Admit to yourself that you haven’t made the time. Own it.
You are, after all, the decider of what gets prioritized or not.
Saying we haven’t had the time is letting ourselves off the hook.
Stay Positive & Make Time Save Time, While Time Lasts, All Time Is No Time If Time Is Past
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If you have a business idea, practice pitching it to your dog before a potential business partner.
If you’re trying to get a loan for an idea of yours, pitch it to a bank you don’t care if they give you a loan for it or not before the bank you hope to work with.
If you have an idea for how to change the culture at your organization, share it with someone who has no authority to implement the idea first and then share it with the executive team.
After you’ve shared your thoughts with folks (or animals) who don’t quite have a significant say in the matter, you’ll find that your pitch is buttoned up and strong for those who can give the green light to make what you want happen.
Stay Positive & Practice Makes It Easier To Convince Those Who Do Matter
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You can tell people to do something. If the status structure is right, they’ll do it; it’ll get done.
But you can also inspire those same people to do the same action and it’ll get done, too.
While face value it might appear the results are the same, there’s no arguing that one action will likely have been done better, it will have been enjoyed more by the one doing it, it will be more likely to be done again in the future and probably even without any prompting.
Worth evaluating if you’re ordering people around or inspiring them.
Stay Positive & Results May Actually Vary
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The only way to find out if an idea is a good one is to implement it.
The only way to find out if someone understands the request is to ask.
The only way to find out if people will show up is to turn on the open sign.
The only way to find out if your book resonates is to share it.
There’s a great deal of assuming one can do prior to shipping, but to truly know, you have to ship.
Stay Positive & What’ll You Ship Today?
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Role play with me here.
Let’s imagine that every action we take is an exchange. This for that.
Maybe it’s exchanging time and we get a friend who feels better having shared about their bad day.
Maybe it’s exchanging guts and risking our status to suggest something meaningful in the meeting.
Maybe it’s exchanging our knowledge so that someone else can excel at something we’re already proficient at.
Maybe we’re not role playing after all.
Stay Positive & What’ll You Exchange Today?
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Hard choices are often disguised as no choices.
But no choice isn’t ever actually true.
There is a choice around actions. A choice around feelings. A choice around what gets done and shared (or what doesn’t).
And if it feels like there is no choice, it might just mean that you may not care enough to work through the toughness of the choice that’s really there.
Stay Positive & Choo-Choose
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