This weekend I attended a Book Retreat to kick start my second book. This is a two day seminar which looks to help you fast track your ideas, get you focused and then help you produce a book with 90 days.
Even though I am someone with experience of leading large projects against very tight deadlines, and have just completed my first Marathon in just over 6 months, I didn’t really believe that it was possible to complete a book in 90 day.
I mean thats crazy quick! I’m all for big bold goals, but this just seemed like wishful thinking.
But as the two days unfolded, and we went through the process, our focus became much sharper, we understood what we wanted to write about, why and for whom. This clarity really helps magnify the focus.
We were then given a simple plan, easy to follow, but not necessarily easy to do, it still requires hard work and commitment. But the process was broken down into easy to understand steps, which when you look at it logically, you have to admit will work.
I mean if you write x hundred words a day, after 10 days you have x thousand words written, thats a mathematical fact – so good progress is possible.
So although I might not believe that I can write a book in 90 days, because of all my own self doubts, etc, what I do believe is that this process could work for someone.
It’s a recipe for success, the fact that I don’t think I am a good cook, shouldn’t stop me from following the recipe, should it.
The ingredients are clear, the preparation and mixing instructions are easy, they just need to be followed, and if we follow them, then who knows we may just bake our own book.
As leaders this is what we need to be able to do with the projects and challenges that we face. We need to be able to define whats important, what they key success factors are so that our teams can focus on those.
Then we need to come up with a simple easy to understand plan, which will get us from where we are to where we need to be. One that we can simply explain to our teams.
A plan where what we can achieve on one day or week, seems very reasonable, but when you look to repeat that over a number of days /weeks, pretty quickly adds up to something very impressive, something that we might not have thought before was impossible.
Then all we need to do is execute and let the process lead us to success.
Too often we over complicate things, which then detract us from making the daily/weekly progress that we are capable of, which then impacts our overall performance and productivity.
If we can achieve Simplicity and Focus, then we will be able to increase our output by 3 or 4 fold, possibly even more, and when we can get our teams into this mode, you will be amazed at the things that can be achieved in a very short time frame.
We are capable of so much more, we just need to find a way to unleash our potential and that of out teams.
Gordon Tredgold
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