Strategic Discipline Blog

You’re packing books, fulfilling orders to customers.  Making sure the right number of books are included and sent properly.  It’s not your real job.  No, you’re real job is founder, president, chief executive officer (CEO), and chairman of the board of one of the largest corporations in the world.  This is something you do each year to detach.  Remove your mind from what you do every day and get it occupied in the trenches, so your mind can do what it does best, be creative.

Where are you when you get your best ideas?   Jeff Bezos, president, CEO and founder of Amazon is busy packaging books at the warehouse when the idea for Kindle comes to him.  It’s expensive to ship books. It’s inconvenient to carry the books you want to read every where you want to go.  Heck, one of the reasons my wife bought me a Kindle for Christmas several years ago was so the books I’d bring along to read on the plane and while on vacation didn’t put our baggage over the weight limit.

This is how the idea for Kindle, a technology that rapidly changed the entire complexion of the book industry emerged for Jeff Bezos. 

Detachment.   It’s sounds wonderful, yet many business owners refuse to take time to do it.  In fact many entrepreneurs, CEO’s and Presidents feel they can’t make time to do it.  Todd Klein “Built to Change” author offered this story about Jeff Bezos as proof of the value of detachment.

Bezos isn’t alone in realizing the value of detachment.  Bill Gates’ “Think Week” described briefly in Transforming Discipline: Detachment and the power it provided Microsoft is another.

Would you like to be as successful as some of the transforming companies Klein describes in Built to Change?  Then you must begin to take action on the activities described in Ten Transforming Questions. Have you scheduled your next offsite to plan for 2012 and your next quarter?  You still have time do so.  (Hint)

Are you among the many CEO’s and owners that believe your people should be happy to have a job in the current economic environment, or are you a believer in making your work place fun, a place where your people can thrive, grow and improve themselves?  Let’s explore how to measure the fun level in your workplace in my next blog.