Clarity of the end in mind is essential to planning the right moves.
Tactics are the small individual decisions you make along the way, however, without clarity of the strategic plan, these actions are often based on emotion, pragmatism or desperation. The WHY can get lost in the day to the day decision-making process and we simply end up losing our way or settling for the lowest common denominator, over time we can end up losing sight of the end goal altogether.
Keeping the WHY clear in our minds is not just important, it is vital to building strategy and making the right decisions. Making time in your weekly routine to remind yourself of the WHY should become a priority. Ask yourself these questions; What got me into this business in the first place? Why did it inspire me to commit my time? What was the end goal for this business? How close am I now to that goal? What aspects of this business still inspire me and which ones are less so? Applying a mirror to our hearts and mind weekly will help bring the clarity that is needed.
A dynamic WHY
Nothing in this life is static! Especially when it comes to our WHY for doing something. A phrase I use often is; “What was the trigger isn’t necessarily the target”, what this means… The reason that leads you to make the decision to start the endeavour may not be the end goal OR another way is, that what got you into the car may not determine the destination of the journey.
The fact is that our WHY for something is likely to change over time. You can actually end up believing something completely different to what you did that got you started on the journey in the first place. The worst thing to do is to keep ploughing on regardless, ignoring the dissidence building in your mind. Regular internal reflection and honest questioning of our motive, beliefs and perspective on our endeavours is a vital part of a healthy routine.
“The quality of life is determined by the quality of the questions we ask ourselves and the honesty in which we answer”
So what do you do if your WHY has changed?
It doesn’t mean you should just stop, or blow up what you have been doing. It doesn’t mean the work you have done is no longer valuable. However, it does mean that you need to seriously look for someone who does resonate with the original WHY and start a staged handover. Pushing through or trying to lead something you no longer believe in is just a slow death and a whole lot of pain. If you are one of those people like me that are great starters but not necessarily the ones who finish it, then this is going to be a scenario you will need to navigate well and often. It is crazy to think that we each have all the skills to take something from concept to fully matured on our own. We are at best going to be involved in part of that process, but at some point, it will involve handing over the reigns to another. We however may no longer have the authority but we never lose our influence.