Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time

CHAPTER EIGHT

Discipline

Coordinating Energy, Focus, and Effort

To be prepared is half the victory.

—Miguel de Cervantes

IN CHAPTER 3, we defined discipline as “training or conditions imposed for the improvement of physical powers, self-control.”¹ We observed that discipline is one of the hardest challenges for people and that it takes energy, focus, and considerable effort. Without discipline, the desire to make lasting change in yourself diminishes over time, and old habits quickly return. The same phenomenon is true for organizations.

However, achieving discipline for organizations requires you to coordinate the energy, focus, and effort of many people over time. Without discipline, revolutionary change efforts fail to sustain the desire that ...