Discontinue or destroy something—a process, a rule, a system, a routine, a habit, a practice, or a relationship that entrenches the status quo or enshrines certainty. Creative destruction is the process of burning the old so the new can grow. Creatively destroy something monthly—making sure that something better emerges from the ashes.
Take five minutes right now to challenge one of your long-held assumptions or biases. Begin developing a new belief or opinion to put in its place. Implement your new perspective within the next week.
Obtain more information on Intel’s “take responsibility” culture and share it with others in your organization. Never underestimate the power of successful examples—use them to move your organization forward.
Find a barrier today and destroy it. Decimate it. Find another one next week and do the same. Encourage your people to find at least one barrier a week that they can eliminate. Sadly, there seems to be an endless supply of barriers in most organizations, and when one barrier is removed, another seems to arise. Get used to eliminating them.
Don’t wait for someone else to make your work more meaningful. You make it more meaningful. Alter the projects that you’re working on to make them more meaningful to you and the organization. As bestselling author and management guru Tom Peters says, “Nobody gives you power. You just take it.” Do something today to make your work more meaningful.
Become an ethical role model for other employees by being ethical in your private life as well as your public life. According to ethics expert John Hawkins, “The motivation of the leader must be the message of his or her entire life rather than the method by which that person hides his or her secrets.” Decide how ethical you’re going to be and then practice your ethical behavior 24/7.
Remember, certainty is finite; vision is infinite—vision creates a pathway to becoming better and better and better.
Next time you get sick of listening to someone, ask for more information. Instead of ignoring them, escaping them, or asking them to shut up, ask for more clarification, more detail, and more explanation so that you can better understand them and their situation. You’ll be surprised by how much new understanding you gain.
Accept the reality that profits are a by-product of consistently solving customer problems. If you don’t believe this, call FedEx and ask for a consultation with one of their managers. Or, go the FedEx Web site and read the stories for yourself. If you’re still not convinced, read Theodore Levitt’s Marketing Imagination, a seminal work from one of Harvard Business School’s most distinguished professors.
Find a new customer problem today, this week, this month. As soon as you find one, find another one. Make it a constant search. Finding, anticipating, and inventing problems is imperative. If you can’t find any existing problems, start anticipating problems that your customers will encounter next year or the year after or in five years. If you can’t anticipate any more future problems, invent a problem that you want your customers to have. The idea is to be forever searching for customer problems to solve.
Change something about yourself today—your point of view, your understanding, your behavior, your desires and goals, your commitment, your routine, your habits—and then do it weekly for the rest of your life. Do something you’ve never done before, something positive, constructive, and beneficial, and do it today.
