“What you think upon grows. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your own life.” - Emmet Fox
I like the above quote. It reminds me so much of what I learned when I first came to Iowa a long time ago. For me, this learning was distilled down into the following phrase, “What you feed, grows.” I like Fox’s insight about what you think about will become magnified in your life. I believe this is true at home and at work.
As we continue to move through strategic planning season and the in-depth goal setting that comes with it, Fox’s insight reminds me of something Jon Madonna, retired Chairman and CEO of KPMG International, an international accounting and consulting firm, wrote many years ago. As he explained, “Nothing stops an organization faster than people who believe that the way they worked yesterday is the best way to work tomorrow. To succeed, not only do your people have to change the way they act, they’ve got to change the way they think about the past.”
This is a complex concept and an important concept. As leaders, we mostly focus on changing the way people work and explaining how the new way of working is better. We do not spend enough time showing how maintaining status quo over time will become dangerous to the health of the whole organization. The reason we avoid doing this is because we do not want to rethink past choices.
Still, the best leaders I have met over the course of my career are the ones who have the courage to point out that the choices we made in the past were the best choices given the needs of the customer, the parameters set within the market place, and the capacity of the company. And they also point out that all three have now changed. Rather than pursue a out dated definition of success, we now need to pursue a more market specific solution that generates capacity to evolve and the ability to adapt rather than simply preserve and protect.
This can be a challenging choice for people in management and leadership positions but, as Emmet Fox notes, “What ever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your own life.” Now is the time to rethink the past and to explore new ideas, perspectives, and solutions. The world is changing and we need to change with it.
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