Big question: If the plan goes wrong, how confident are you that your team will adapt and still succeed? A customer cancels their order, your key supplier delays shipment … when these and other challenges occur, can your team still prevail?
My friend, Mike Bloomfield, made several flights into space, including captaining the 2002 Atlantis mission. Imagine the intensity: You’re strapped into 4.5-million-pound space craft. Upon take off, for the first eight minutes of flight, you burn a ton of fuel every second. (Think about that.) The rockets lift you from zero miles per hour to 17,500 mph. The last two minute of your flight you’re increasing speed by 1,000 mph every 15 seconds.
I asked Mike, “Did you ever experience fear? What if something went wrong?” His answer is the same answer your team must have to achieve the big thing in front of it. “Faith in the process,” Mike answered. “When you have a process of success that covers all scenarios, you’re not afraid of one ‘gotcha,’ or something unplanned happening. You’re prepared to achieve.”
This is why I’m thrilled to tell you about our new book, Do Big Things. With over 25-years of empirical data, it shows the seven steps successful teams take to shape the thinking and actions necessary to achieve extraordinary outcomes—no matter what challenges your team is up against. Here they are:
- Commit to the human imperative. (The thinking and behaviors necessary to do big things)
- Embody success (and leverage failure)
- Choose to contribute, activate and connect across the business
- Exercise your barrier-breaking authority
- Focus on what matters most
- Energize around a shared reality
- Mobilize hearts and minds forward
Your team is expected to fly high. What’s your process for success? As Mike the astronaut says, “When you have one you can be relatively certain you’ll get where you need to go.”
