This week’s focus: A fellow and very capable Under 8 football coach called me this week to complain that some of his parents wanted to take their children away from his club because they didn’t think the team were winning enough matches. Never mind that our matches aren’t even competitive, the desire to succeed – whatever the cost – has now, it seems, reached mini-soccer.
The desire for success today needs to be balanced with the development of new skills and capabilities, so that you are also able to succeed tomorrow, at both an individual and organisational level. At one of my clients, for instance, the CEO aims to spend 80% of his time on driving the current year’s performance, 15% on developing new growth ideas for implementation over the next 2-3 years and 5% on building capabilities beyond the next three years.
I don’t know if that’s the perfect split of effort, but I do know that if you’re solely focused on delivering your current targets, attaining next year’s goals will be a lot tougher. What’s your current split of effort between delivering this year’s results, next year’s and the years beyond, and what should it be?
Off the record: Running To Stand Still by U2
She is raging, she is raging
And the storm blows up in her eyes
She will suffer the need chill
She’s running to stand…
Still
© Stuart Cross 2013. All rights reserved.