Getting off your butt and taking charge.

Leadership: Getting off your butt and taking charge.

Saturday you probably saw the story unfolding down in Italy where the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground.  Early accounts talked about the ship's Captain, Francesco Schettino abandoning ship with passengers still aboard.  This morning. official transcripts from the port authority show a terrified ship commander that had no interest in re-boarding the stricken ship.  When the time for taking charge came along, he bailed out.

A friend of mine told me a story about attending a local rodeo. They parked the car in a cramped dirt lot across the street from the Convention Center and when they went to the get the car, it was parked in the corner with five cars stacked around it. The two Middle Eastern men who ran the lot were trying to park cars, remove cars, fix a flat which meant that him and the family were standing around for quite a while waiting for their car.  Finally, stressed out, both men just stood around, paralyzed while they stood out in the hot sun.  My friend yelled at them out of frustration, telling them that the cars won't move by just staring at them.  That seemed to shake them up and they got busy.  Finally they managed to get their car.  Nobody took charge and without that, nobody got anything done.

Leadership is a combination of knowing what you need to do, but the most important part is the actual doing!  Having knowledge and experience does nothing without taking charge and implementing it.

I'm starting to realize that the amount of people taking charge anymore is pretty small. Maybe people are searching in vain for that "leader."  I wonder if maybe this is your chance to step up?

Look for opportunities to take charge when there seems to be apathy or lethargy.  When the outcome is uncertain and people are paralyzed by it, it's your chance to jump in and take control.  Maybe there is a hidden leader inside that you'll finally get to awaken.

This is two incidents. Who knows how many you come across.  There is power in taking charge. Why not tap into that power?

Beware of "The Creep"

We're just a few days into the new year and for many folks, their well-intended resolutions (we've decided to call them goals) are already on the path to failure.

The scary part is that they have no idea.  For now everything seems right on track.  The diet's going well.  They've made it to the gym four of the past five days.  What ever your resolution. You're taking proactive steps.  What they haven't been tracking is the "creep." "Creep" is a word used in the consulting field when the original scope of the project is slowly and subtly increased.  It happens benignly enough but before it's too late to change course, the new changes are locked in.

The danger of the "creep" is that it starts so innocently and changes our thinking from "no way" to "it's OK, just this once."  From "scope creep" in a project to "brass creep" at the Pentagon, no one and no thing is immune to it.

This week, take another look at your goal and look for potential opportunities to "creep."  Make yourself aware so you can avoid those situations. Don't let your progress for this year get sidetracked from the beginning!