Up Your Business!: 7 Steps to Fix, Build, or Stretch Your Organization, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded

Chapter 7. Build Long-Term Vitality: Steps for Execution and Follow-Through

This is one of the most important chapters in the book. Because if you don’t follow through and execute the disciplines provided, your traverse through the previous pages will have been no more than an intellectual exercise. Too often, attendees at my workshops say that they will take the strategies learned and gradually phase them into their businesses. They’re afraid of moving too fast, trying too much at once, and becoming overwhelmed. However, the greater danger is in not doing enough. If you don’t move quickly and substantially, your efforts will fizzle and resolve will wane. Why? If too much time passes before you take meaningful action you’ll get used to the status quo and learn to live with it. It’s like discovering a dead body in your living room. When you first see it you’re alarmed and offended. But as you get busy with your routine it seems to fit. Soon, you cover it up, walk around it, and step over it and lose the urgency to remove it. You learn to live with it.

Get Off Your Dead Horse

Dakota tribal wisdom declares that when the horse you’re riding on dies, dismount. Oftentimes the dead horse is an impotent strategy, an ineffective leader, or a poor process. For some of you, it’s time to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies you can choose, and many leaders will choose these routes first because they seem less painful. You can change riders. Go ahead and put a new rider on a dead horse ...