140. What makes sense?

Some things just don’t go to plan, do they?

Especially when you’re tracking progress honestly and not shifting the goal posts.

Barriers and walls and delays come up – some external and outside your control, often inside the organization. Maybe some self-imposed.

This is normal for effective teams, no pain no gain. The problem is that need to break eggs to make an omelette but you’re not allowed to break eggs!

If you’re challenging yourself enough you will also be challenging others. People around you, rules, or norms that get in your way. Reasons why you can’t do this or that, or take time to do them.

But are those barriers always necessary?

Great workers Challenge the Process. They ingrain the habit of questioning what’s given. This doesn’t necessarily mean breaking people or rules or norms but it does mean satisfying yourself that they are doing what they do for a reason.

Not just accepting others know best, or rules are rules, or this is the way we do things around here.

Also accepting that others can also challenge- even challenge you.

If you’ve ever had a boss who gave you extra tasks that stretched you, you had a boss who knew when to challenge the process – that you shouldn’t be held back by your age or experience.

The habit of challenging starts in your daily work.

Thinking in a balanced way about barriers and rules and norms you bump up against. Do they make sense?

Is that person right? Does that rule work? Is it best we always work this way?

Being open to challenges to yourself – remember you might just be a barrier to others, for good or bad.

Does what I just enforced make sense?

Hopefully most will actually make sense, but working that out for yourself puts those things in a better place in your brain, not just the obeying place. You know it’s right.

“…the boss who gave you extra tasks that stretched you, …knew when to challenge the process …”

What slows you down or stops you from achieving your objective? Frustrates you?

Are there rules, or people who get in your way?

Do you just accept them?

If a rule doesn’t make sense do you ignore it? Not just when you’re alone but in full view?

Do you divide rules into “must follow” and “maybe”?

If someone is stopping you, do you reason with them? Do you obey or do you negotiate?

When did you last allow a rule to be bent because somebody negotiated with you?

Do you adjust your objectives because the rules stop you or adjust the rules to achieve the objective?

Are you a hardliner or you take a balanced view?

What makes sense?

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“I might be wrong, but at least I’ve thought about it…”