The Courage to be Intentional in a World of Amplification and Distraction
The books on culture, leadership, and success I read last year provided consistent advice for teams, leaders, and companies that want to be great. Get exceptionally good at knowing what the most important things are, talk about them constantly, execute against them flawlessly and measure success. The advice is basically: Be more intentional.
But the fact that books are written about is a clue that being intentional is hard. And I predict it will only get more difficult. Many of the factors increasing difficulty are outside of your control, like a pandemic or the general polarization towards extremes of the people in the world. So although empathetic for how those have impacted your life, I see more benefit in sharing how to be courageous in a few areas that I think you have more control over.
Start to be more intentional by clarifying your strategy and what it takes to execute it.
Having a firm understanding of where you are going, why getting their matters, and what it will take to get there is the start. Clear strategy (purpose) will always be the foundation for living an intentional life, having intentional relationships, and running your business/team in an intentional way. Jim Collins calls this the hedgehog principle. Matthew McConaughey called it answering the questions what is my hill before you take a hill?
Writing a strategy is easy; defining the right things to include is difficult but staying focused on it is the most challenging part.
It is difficult because focus can be counter-culture, which is why Peter Drucker’s idea of a Don’t Do List elicits chuckles and is rarely practiced. It takes courage to remain focused on the right things, funnel resources to them and say no to almost everything else.
This is true in part because of human nature. Humans desire to feel secure in the group. Saying no to someone makes us worry about getting kicked out of the group. This is why it doesn’t feel good.
To help you feel more confident, I suggest you write your strategy down, learn to articulate why successfully executing it matters, and openly share it. Then when people come to you with opportunities that seem outside your strategy, respectfully decline and justify it by repeating your strategy and why successful execution of it matters for you and them.
I promise these conversations will happen more than ever this year because
Technology is getting more prevalent at amplifying opportunities and exposing them to us
We are amid many revolutions, for example, talent, how we work, and culture. But tech may be at the heart of them all (or at least the vocal cords). Technology continues to allow people to go places they couldn’t before, expose themselves to endless experiences/information, connect with other talented individuals and do things they never thought possible and tech enhancements promise to allow all of this to happen faster, cheaper, and more seamlessly.
Many of these are rapidly changing how we work (gig economy), what we work on (moving from industrial work to creative work), and they challenge us to reconsider what we value (mostly extrinsic to increasingly intrinsic) or how we define success (what we have accumulated to who we have impacted).
Today, multiple times, you will be exposed to something that claims to deliver amazing results and dramatically change the way you do something for the better. Opportunity is literally everywhere, and we are exposed to more of it than ever before.
This will make it way harder to stay focused. You must build strong “no” or “not today” muscles. You must become excellent at courageously believing in and articulating your story to offset the volume, intensity, and excitement around all the possibilities available to you.
This matters because the penalties for saying yes to the wrong things or too many things are burnout, wasted resources, tarnished reputations (because tech allows everyone to talk about your failure), and ultimately the need for more change.
But I am not suggesting that you never change …
Just encouraging you to avoid the temptation to change because someone influenced you to do so with clever arguments, unevaluated data, or warnings about FOMO.
The dark side of a well-written strategy is that it can become a justification to refuse to change, to dig in and double down on strategies that have worked well and likely are working well. The book Future of Management identified factors leading to strategic inertia, including the “tendency for management teams to deny the need for a reboot.” It’s like the old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But we aren’t talking about unbroken things; we are talking about the dangers of not moving intentionally into the future.
In the world today evolution is required. Don’t be fooled; the consequence of not evolving isn’t stagnation; it's death.
In our world of amplification, opportunity, and exposure, you will need the courage to begin to do a few new things well. You will need the courage to evolve.
It can be hard mentally/physically to make the wisest and most impactful evolutions if you
Don’t know where you are going, why getting there matters, and how you plan to get there.
Don’t have a clear definition of what success looks like and how you measure it.
Don’t have clarity on how you get stuff done (habits personally /process in the business world) and which of those are working well, which could be working better, and which technologies will actually improve them.
This will be hard relationally/emotionally because:
People hate and resist change; it messes with their sense of security, confidence, and belonging.
You don’t control people or how they react to change. Everyone impacted by the change will react differently to the change and to you as the change agent.
People will adapt to the changes that they believe will help them meet their need for security and shun those they think won’t.
More reasons why you must be good at articulating the value of your strategy and how changes will lead to a better future.
In conclusion, you will need courage because…
Despite all the rapid change and advancements, the foundation of what it takes to be successful in life, however you define success, hasn’t changed.
To succeed in life, you must live on purpose by
Knowing your purpose and what success looks like
Managing your resources well so you can achieve positive impact
Identify people who you can help and who can help you achieve success, as well as distancing yourself from people who are toxic or unhelpful
Establishing the habits that enable you to achieve success in a sustainable way
Executing a strategy and living with intention requires courage. There will always be doubters, distractions, and noise. Success is not always measured by forward movement or pace. Success is evolving in the right way and at the right time. This hasn’t changed just because we live during a time where we are aware of so many opportunities. To succeed in life, you must have the courage to stay focused and be intentional. The world needs more people who live intentionally; I challenge you to have the courage to be one.