If not now then when
This is the question I find myself asking clients a lot, having a Strategic plan with agreed tactics and defined actions with a diary of when things should happen is a critical element in achieving the results you want, but it is pointless if the actions don’t happen and trust me if you don’t have a way to keep your self accountable the actions will often not happen.
In fact, even when I call or meet clients and ask “have you done it yet” in the beginning of our relationship the answer is often “not yet” or a version of it coated in excuses for why it hasn’t happened yet, so I thought I would share with you what I tell them that eventually helps them get more productive more often.
You see positive results happen when you take responsibility for making them happen and negative results happen when you abdicate that responsibility. Another way of looking at that is opportunity lies where responsibility has been abdicated.
This is a well know psychological issue, that of a victim mentality or view of your reality or of a responsible view of your reality and although there is a lot of in built resistance to changing this in people it is very simply a choice you make every hour of every day, to either take responsibility about how you have acted and for the results this created or to not take responsibility for how you have acted.
This approach has been explained by many people in many different ways over the years with the most common approach being above and below the line also know as OAR and BED.
BED stands for Blame Excuses and Denial and OAR for Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility, as with most things I think the is an over complication of this issue.
Let me explain, the word Responsibility literally means your Ability to choose your Response to anything that happens to you, you can not control if someone cuts you up while you are driving but screaming and shouting at them and driving dangerous to show them a thing or two was your choice, conscious or not it was within your ability to respond calmly and thoughtfully.
The opposite is to deny that you could have responded differently to live in a deluded state that you have no control over how you respond to what happens to you, for you or around you. That is crazy, we all know that people who are delusional are at best self-destructive and at worst dangerous and yet this seems to be the way the vast majority of people live there lives, and this is were the rest of BED comes in if you are in denial then you will make excuses and blame others for your own actions, so wake up and decide from now on you will take responsibility for how you think, what you say and what you do.
Every moment of every day you are faced with this choice, and it is true that if you are a responsible adult you are where you are in life because of your past choices and actions, so what you achieve tomorrow is due to what you choose and how you act today. Taking Responsibility leads you to the other two elements of OAR you will become accountable to yourself and take ownership of your life, so one of the keys to a executing a strategy is to take total responsibility for your part in delivering it and expect everyone else in your organisation from top to bottom to do the same.
This is a hard thing to do on your own and its why my clients welcome me holding them to account for doing the things they said they would do as it makes them take responsibility for results.
Ask yourself continuously and I acting responsibly or am in in denial.
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