Strategic Discipline Blog

Life can be ironic.  Positioning System's fundamental coaching principles surround the ideals of discipline.  The reason Positioning Systems focuses on Strategic Discipline for meetings, metrics, and priorities is due to my personal beliefs in the foundational teachings from Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Jim Collins in Good to Great.  They remain to me the most important element in achieving business growth and success. 

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline”

-Jim Collins, author of Good to Great

With a 16 trillion dollar national debt, and many people facing obesity at this same level of health catastrophe, is there ever a time when discipline is more a necessity in building success in our personal lives and our businesses?

Last Wednesday my journey through Leukemia (AML), having attained the remission stage,  resulted in receiving a bone marrow transplant.  To reach the point where I’m eventually cancer-free will require even more discipline.

What’s that statement, “Be Careful What You Wish For?”

The irony is that to reach this point required a great deal of personal self-discipline.  In deciding to help my client achieve discipline in their businesses I’ve been provided with perhaps the ultimate challenge to achieve discipline in my personal life and with my business. 

Up until this visit to the hospital, I can honestly say I’ve not felt sick to my stomach or unable to have visitors due to how I’m feeling.  Last Monday that changed.  My stomach is today and probably will remain queasy for a bit.  The chemotherapy this time destroyed good bacteria that align our stomachs and intestines and I’m afraid I’ve been plagued with a good case of diarrhea.  In addition, the steroids being used to help aid in keeping me from rejecting my host’s donor bone marrow also provide difficulty with sleeping.  There are a host of other smaller issues including a constant metallic taste in my mouth that makes it difficult to eat at times, but you get a bit of the picture.

Wednesday was a very special day for me. It begins another march of the Stockdale Paradox again. Low blood counts, anti-rejection drugs and challenges, and high risk of infection all lie in store for me in the months and possibly years ahead.

The Bone Marrow Transplant isn’t complicated.  It’s an infusion that is given similar to blood.  I’m blessed that someone is willing to give up their bone marrow, sacrifice their time, and have a passion so special for someone they don’t even know.  My client Fred Schiff, All County Music, called it the ultimate sacrifice and I agree.

An overnight nurse on Friday mentioned that several transplant recipients have been able to get out of the hospital in 15-16 days after their transplant.  I’m not sure I’m qualified to be in that same category, however, she noted that one or two of the patients she’d observed could be out of the hospital on the road to recovery. Yet they’ve confined themselves to bed rather than eating and exercising and doing the necessary activities to achieve success.

I can assure you I will not be one of those cases.  I’ve already been forcing myself to eat, and do as much exercise as possible.

“A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness.”

-Jim Collins, author of Good to Great

One of the reasons I feel I’ve reached this point of being able to accept the transplant is my determination to continue working.  It’s the process of discipline that I’ve embraced.  My clients have also helped me to focus on their needs and helped me to remove worry about my challenges.  Is it easier to worry about someone else than yourself?  At least in my case, I believe it’s worked that way. 

I love coaching business owners, and an opportunity to help them resolve an issue is something that demands full concentration and absorbs me.  Research, reading, and experience are required, and thankfully in most cases, I feel that my background and tools from Gazelles and E-Myth provide the necessary skills and talent to help my clients achieve success.

Will this challenge with Leukemia help me?   I believe it has and will in the future.  The ability to not give in, to conquer what is unconquerable, to be resolved to master fate, is that not important to you and your business?  

Is your business and your personal life filled with a culture of discipline?  If not, now, or perhaps eventually in the future I hope you will look forward to receiving help with building a culture of discipline in your business. 

My recovery is just starting.  It may take a month, 6 months or a year to be fully recovered.  When you resolve to address the issue of strategic discipline in your business rest assured that this experience will have dramatically increased my resolve, ability, dedication, determination, and commitment to my clients to achieve Strategic Discipline through the ultimate principle of greatness - DISCIPLINE.   

Ahead on the blog is a lesson on networking and connection, Southwest Airlines Purpose. And was Henry Ford a Topgrader?