Chapter 8 Overcoming Obstacles

Getting out of our own way

While commonly attributed to Mike Tyson, it was heavyweight boxing champ Joe Lewis who first said, “everyone’s got a plan until they get hit.” Indeed, if you’ve made progress taking the first seven steps along the path described within this book, you do have a plan and many of the abilities to execute it. But are you ready to get hit?

Quite different from boxing, many of the hits that organizations take originate internally. The external hits—be they recession, pandemic, labor shortage, natural disaster, or competitor actions—get all the attention, but recognizing and eliminating the self-induced blows is most important. By doing that external obstacles become simply bumps in the road. ...

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