The antidote to drifting into failure lies in doing three things consistently, namely to be deliberate, to be thorough and to be efficient. I am going to address each of these three in turn. Part two is about thoroughness. Please keep your eyes peeled for the other installments.
To counter the sneaky drift into failure, the second strategy is to be consistently thorough. If deliberateness is about “if it is to be then it is up to me,” then thorough is about “making it happen with firmness.”
The best analogy is a chameleon. Even though it has the muscles to move much more rapidly than it does, it is the tentative, feel-feel way it puts down its feet that create the impression of slowness. The contrast is like the Nike advertisement invites us to do: do it! Lessons from peak performers that one can add to the Nike one-liner is “do it well,” “do it right”.
Another analogy would be watching and listening to a tap dancer: every tap, no matter and what incredible speed they do it, is distinct and clear! Each tap is its own, good, well-designed tap no matter the speed. Now, that is thorough! When the tap dancer slides their feet to produce a rasping sound, then they do it exactly right to get the rasp and stops it cleanly when they go to the tap. Like martial artist do: they glide when they need to; they slide when they need to; and the fly when they need to. Each move is the right move for the right time.
Both in sport and business the difference between the peak performer and the rest is not always in “having” a talent, but with the application of the talent, the “finesse” with which the peak performer does their thing. Lots of academic research indicates that the wrong culture in an organization can suppress the thorough application of talent resulting in mediocre performance. But then, my research over time has convinced me that much more than 50% of peak performers in organizations are peak performers in spite of the company they work in. People, managers, organizations do not give us permission to be peak performers. Remember: “if it is to be…….”
An unspoken component of thoroughness is holding oneself accountable. I know a number of exquisite peak performers in the South African and international arena of business, and with a very few exceptions, they all have a network of people, an inner circle, to whom they talk and tell about how they do things. Frequently the chats are about exchanging information, also about asking ideas or solutions. But the unspoken message is that they give the listener the permissions to criticize, brutally if it helps to “confront reality” (see the two excellent books by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan: “Execution” and “Confronting Reality”)
Thoroughness is doing the job the way it is to be done to make success inevitable.