What is success and how do you get to it?
Answering that is like trying to find the algorithm for the perfect song and the perfect song writing process. Neither can be globally true.
A few thoughts here…
…Lucky is the man in pursuit of something he can’t quite explain.
…Success is the result of soul getting a voice in your algorithms.
…Think more and more about poetry and music and less and less about arithmetic.
There’s always a grand story connected to every dad that recounts his Saturday, Sunday, and sometimes into next weekend story of putting together the play-set/ swingset for his children in the backyard.
Numerous things go wrong, but it gets accomplished, nevertheless, and dad gets his I did it t-shirt and a bravery banner to waive with his fellow comrades at Home Depot.
But when it comes time to move the play-set a few years down the road the bravery banner and great story don’t mean much. The same goes for our businesses and projects we literally give our blood, sweat, and lives to. Not that they don’t meant something, but that as time changes so does reality and at some point they must be disassembled and moved to that reality.
The market changes, the industry changes, the culture changes, competition arrives and the reflex is to boast in your work and refuse to think that something so great would ever need to be changed, remodeled, or taken apart.
As much as I love that leadership is about building things I’m learning that it is at times equally about disassembly. I confess, this is hard for me – but I’m sensing there’s beauty to unfold here.
So you’ve built something? Now what?
The only way to get the play-set to the next backyard is piece by piece.
It’s the difference between knowing the ocean is blue and having swum the waters of Capri.
It appears that both the wholeness and holiness of our lives is found in the gap that is jumped from knowledge to experience.
What if our lives longed to live in that gap? What if our businesses bridged that gap? What if our churches embraced that gap? What if our parenting parented that gap?
They can. They all can in a moments notice.
That moment is here. That moment is today.
Provide the gateway to experience for someone and you will have done two things:
1) Blessed them with a memory. Which may be the only thing we can take with us.
2) Given them a chance to see the world in a new light. Now they can see where change is necessary.
He often gets a bad rap, but don’t forget that vanilla is still king.
If you’re an attorney, your vanilla is legal advice.
If you’re a Realtor, your vanilla is homes and helping people buy and sell them.
If you’re a doctor, your vanilla is the health of people.
Most people come to you for that scoop of vanilla.
If you’re going to offer bells and whistles your best bet is probably to offer them through a variety of toppings and not by changing the flavor of the dish they came for.
Is there anything worse than hearing, “I’m sorry – we’re out of vanilla.”?
Ashton.Gustafson 