1 Thought:

I realize some of us wanted to be the seen as the fierce and dominant lion while others want to believe that their spirit animal should be the king of the skies, the majestic eagle, but sadly we all share the same spirit animal, the ostrich.

I’ll explain this common thread that ties each of us to the ostrich.

The ostrich is known for several traits but the one that connects to all of us is burying its head in the sand.

Examples of the Ostrich Effect:

Delaying or avoiding inevitable bad news.

Procrastination. We simply put off the hard and difficult things to the end and always work our list starting with the fast and easy first.

Not see the holes in our own game as it is far easier to call out and list the things that prevented success.

Create and find excuses rather than take ownership. Don’t place blame, take blame, especially as a leader.

These few examples I feel should hi-lite the point I hope to make. We bury our heads in the sand either to ignore the reality of a situation, make ourselves blind to the reality around us, or even more absurd to imagine that when we emerge the situation will have simply disappeared.

Self analyzation is not easy. You’ll of course find some things that you are really pleased with; our inner narcissist is quick to jump in. That said, we will also find a few tough pills to swallow, some areas that require real work.

Action Items:

Make a list daily of all the things that really need to get done at the beginning of your day. Proactive, not reactive actions. Pat that back of yours all you want but major actions should grow to be no more than 3-4 things; we shouldn’t be proud of a long list of to-do’s that ultimately don’t get to-done or at least not given our very best. Yes. Things come at all of us each day and this is where we determine the difference between important versus urgent.

Step two is work the list from what you dislike most to the action you are most excited about or is the easiest. Do what you dislike first. This prevents the ostrich effect of procrastination having a chance to derail our to-do list.

“I have some good news and some bad news for you; what would you like to hear first?” It’s of course not always delivered to us so deliberately so I hope you can overlay this statement on to the reality of your day to day. The answer should always be “bad news first please”. Human nature has us engineered to avoid pain at all costs which is of course smart. The not so smart part is that the pain/ the situation will only get worse should we elect to ignore it and let the situation develop and grow. Handle the bad things early before they grow.

If you are in a situation at work or home and have any part in where it has gotten to then take ownership. I recall not too long at my office I was sitting with a team on a specific day working through a challenging situation.

I asked the group, as I stood at a marker board, to tell me all the reasons that today was going to “be bad and then how this situation existed”. Pretty sure I filled up a 6’X8′ board in about 60 seconds. The “excuses” were coming at me faster than I could write, rolling off the tongue.

Asked the same group, only having maybe a square foot of the board still not covered in expo marker, what makes this exact day a positive for us based on the exact same market conditions. You could hear crickets chirping. I literally had to extract and nearly force the “half glass full” lenses to be put on.

The point is that it’s always easy to see the obstacles and the negatives and it’s imperative as leaders that we are able to see the opportunity and discover “the way”. Do this long enough with yourself and/or your team and they/ you start seeing it naturally.

BONUS QUOTE: “External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them.” – Marcus Aurelius

1 Quote:

“Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.”

– Lin Yutang

1 Question:

Do you tend to procrastinate? Do you tend to knock out the easy things on your daily list first? Have you been placing the blame for a situation on everything and everyone other than you? (so do most people by the way)

What few actions can you implement NOW to start taking ownership of your situations, get what needs to get done completed without putting them off, what can you do NOW to get your head out of the sand and get your eyes back on the prize?

Don’t put it off!

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