Creating High Performance Organisations Part 2 – What does winning look like?

It should be the simplest thing in the world shouldn’t it? You have a successful business, people like you, you are respected by those around you and your family loves you…but have you won? Many would say yes, but what about you? As an entrepreneur you put yourself on this treadmill to achieve something deeply personal, maybe to prove a concept, maybe a call to a mission, maybe to make a boatload of cash…but did you ever take the time to define what the goal was?

Without taking the time to define the endgame you can be in a constant state of high alert, always on edge, permanently in fight or flight mode.  While this has its own advantages there are some major disadvantages;

  1. Living in this way will kill you pretty quickly!
  2. You may have already achieved all you set out to and never knew it?
  3. You haven’t stopped to see if what you are doing is taking closer or ever further away from your original goal.

In time, these goals may be re-assessed and re-set, but only once the original goal has been well and truly achieved. And this is the hard bit….have you ever been honest enough with yourself to write down the real reasons you are doing what you are doing.  I’ve been in this profession for over 20 years and almost everyone starts from the same place. It’s almost like a set of stock answers that are downloaded from a business guru site, answers such as ‘to make money’, ‘to make a difference’, ‘to create a FTSE 100 company’.

All good and lofty ideals but the truth is often much more personal and in my experience characterised more readily in things like;

  1. I can’t work for other people so had to do it myself.
  2. People don’t believe I can do it so I’m out to prove them wrong.
  3. I want the respect of others and don’t know how else to get it.

Ensuring that you and your business are truly aligned will help you realise when you have won and what winning will look like for you.  Who knows…you may have won already?

If you would like to know more then please contact Jon Lister and book a business goals alignment session with him.