(Hint — It’s about your agility).
I guess one could define agility as the ability to change direction quickly, but it’s so much more than that.
To be agile requires the ability to see not only the direction you are going, but the change you need to make to get there.
It reminds me of that experiment that gauged our powers of observation.
Did you see it? No?
Well, watch it again and concentrate only on the gorilla.
That’s agility. It was right there the entire time. But you weren’t focused on it until it was pointed out to you.
Many entrepreneurs have lost the ability or freedom just to see the gorilla.
Too much is at stake.
Too many fires and not enough water.
Too much time spent on things they are not good at.
Breaking up the log jam requires a profound shift in perception and it rarely occurs at team building seminars or by reading yet another “Guaranteed Business Success” airport paperback.
It comes from disruption; the seeds of revolution.
Before you get all freaked out about my word choice, I’m not channeling Marx and Engels. I am not a Political Scientist.
I’m an entrepreneur who has had his fair share of failures; loads of times where I was following the directions, head-down on some project I loathed, but knew had to be accomplished.
I was missing the gorilla.
The paradox is that you become more agile and therefore more innovative, when you impose restrictions upon yourself. If you are doing everything, you are accomplishing nothing.
So how do you break this cycle?
Try this little exercise on agility.
Make a list of the things at which you are excellent, then another one for situations where you adequate and competent, but not particularly engaged. Finally make a list of the things you are not enthusiastic about at all, but do anyway.
Guess which one of those lists is your gorilla in the room? The key to becoming more agile? The essence of the disruption that needs to occur to propel your forward?
Right.
Today is the day you stop doing things you are not good at.
Let it go.
Give it away.
Someone really can do it better and faster than you.
You are wasting your talent.
It’s time to embrace disruption or be crushed by your overwhelm.
Your choice.
