Strategic Discipline Blog

Michael Cobb is a 16 year old playing basketball with his three buddies on a hot summer day.  Upon finishing their games, the group decides to pool their money and buy some wine at a liquor store.  Settling down in the shade they enjoy the breeze and cool down.  Soon one of Michael’s friend’s is angry.  Grady (Michael’s best friend) only had ten cents to provide for the wine.  The other friend, who’s now agitated, provided 50 cents. He feels Grady is taking more than his fair share.  A fight ensues.  Michael and his other friend break it up.  The friend who started the fight is still upset, and leaves.  The three others continue to drink.  They’re not alarmed by their friend’s departure.  Maybe he just needs some time to cool down they think. But this friend is still upset.  He returns, after locating his father’s gun at home.  He points the gun at Grady and fires twice.  Grady dies in Michael’s arms before an ambulance arrives.

Michael’s friend made a bad choice.  He’s paid for it the rest of his life.  Michael wishes he’d made a better choice and not suggested they get wine after playing basketball.  He believes his friend Grady would still be alive if he’d made a better choice that day.  He’s lived with that decision the rest of his life.

Michael Cobb is a speaker now for Sports World. He played six years of professional football in the NFL and USFL.  Sports World is an organization I’m proud to support.  Michael helps students understand the power of their choices. How impactful your choices can be to your life.

Supporting causes like this are becoming more important for business like mine and yours to do.  They put us in Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era, a book I’m currently reading that shares a belief that workplaces, too often the sources of people’s problems, can instead become solutions to those problems. It’s a shared perspective of how being a good employer, being good to customers, and being a good steward are fundamentally connected.

This blog is about decision making. 

At Positioning Systems and Gazelles/Rockefeller Habits we focus on Four Decisions that growth companies need to get right in order to achieve greatness.

Why Four Decisions?  Because it is decision-making that makes the difference between good and mediocre, a great and good business.

Just as a personal decision can dramatically impact your life, so will the decisions you make on who you hire, what you plan for strategy, how you execute/operate and finally the decisions you make on how you manage your cash flow.

Executing correctly is one piece of the puzzle for running a good business.  Without proper execution you seldom have time to invest in decision-making.  You are always running after the whirlwind that is your businesses operating procedures.

Positioning Systems focus your business on the Four Decisions.  We begin the investment in coaching working on strategic discipline.  By developing positive strategic habits it ensures you execute properly so you have time to consider and make good decisions.

The People in your organization rely on you and your leadership team to make good decisions.  They’ve invested their lives in helping you grow your business.  Do you and your leadership team invest enough time in the Four Decisions, People, Strategy, Execution and Cash?  Are you running around consumed by getting things done to operate right?  Are you faced with constant emergencies that require your attention? 

Wouldn’t it be great to get out in front of these emergencies, forecast their arrival and prevent them from occurring?  Is there any price that would make alleviating this frustration too expensive?

In order to make positive choices in your life or for your business you need time to think, time to plan.  Too often we are consumed in the world that Michael Gerber called, “doing it, doing it, doing it.”  See the blog on what The Four Disciplines of Execution calls the “Whirlwind.”

To build a successful life and business you need to MAKE time to plan, to consider your choices and then choose that which inspires your passion and your purpose.  If your business is running you, if you don’t make time to plan and choose your priorities, if you fail to create a purpose for your business, you will fail to achieve what is the potential it could achieve.  That is true for your personal goals as well.

The intention of this blog is to instruct and inspire you to develop the proper disciplines to operate your business successfullly.  We hope to build awareness of how you can conduct your business better to achieve success and in turn enhance the quality of your community, your customers, and most of all your people. 

If you need help determining how to do this, let us help you develop the required disciplines that will get your business in the habit of achieving success. 

The NFL draft is this Thursday.  It’s a major expose on how an extremely competitive group of teams determine who can help them compete at a higher level.  The failure rate for even first round draft choices is high.   The failure rate for hiring employees and managers in most companies is often even higher.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Learn what you should learn from the NFL draft about recruiting and hiring A players. That's next blog.