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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Optimize your talent by removing the obstacles in their path Capacity is a proven system for bringing the best out of your team-and yourself. Matt and Chris Johnson set the mark on how to succeed in the future with their energizing message, humorous stories and their generational differences. As the world speeds-up faster and faster, organizations and their people try to keep up. This pressure to do more with less has reached epidemic levels of concern and organizations are panicking on how to recruit, retain and attract the best talent for the future. Burnout, low engagement, and overwhelming stress are jeopardizing organizations' ability to scale and win. As outdated performance models of the past crumble under pressure, Matt and Chris show you how to build and protect your most valuable asset--YOUR PEOPLE. What if you could beat the clock and expand your capacity by 6 hours per week? Or 11? Think about the organizational impact if your workforce were given fresh capacity to perform, lead, and grow. This book offers a clear, workable solution for organizations functioning in the real world: by paring it down to three performance pillars they must have to succeed--focus, energy, and drive. Ever organization sets initiatives, but many remain unfinished because their capacity to do so fails before it starts. This framework is different: these changes bring the type of benefits that cause transformation. Giving your people what they need makes buy-in irrelevant, and allows them to perform at their highest potential. Not only can it work, but it is the only thing that will work over the long term. By making your organization a great place to work, you retain your best talent and attract more like it. With dedicated resources, focus, sustainable effort, and comprehensive strategy, your top performers will be equipped to drive your organization to the top. Among Capacity's Key Points: * Learn what top performers need to produce their very best work * Discover the biggest factor influencing your team's FOCUS, ENERGY and DRIVE * Prevent burnout and stimulate innovation by allowing your people to have a bigger container * Adopt a strategy of expanding capacity to exceed your high-performance goals Deeply personal, but organizational focused. Capacity is an engaging and even life changing book Capacity is the next big paradigm shift for the future of training and development--as we shift to the world of the knowledge worker, it is not information or talent that wins, it's is whoever has the largest capacity that will win. Capacity is your secret weapon to winning the performance war.
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CAPACITY
Create Laser Focus, Boundless Energy, and an Unstoppable Drive in Any Organization
Chris Johnson
Matt Johnson
Cover image: © billyfoto / Getty Images
Cover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2018 by Chris Johnson and Matt Johnson. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Johnson, Chris, 1957- author. | Johnson, Matt, 1986- author.
Title: Capacity : create laser focus, boundless energy, and an unstoppable
drive in any organization / by Chris Johnson, Matt Johnson.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2018] | Includes
index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017044991 (print) | LCCN 2017051278 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119387381 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119387282 (epub) | ISBN 9781119386971
(cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Organizational effectiveness. | Performance. | Organizational
change. | Organizational behavior.
Classification: LCC HD58.9 (ebook) | LCC HD58.9 .J637 2018 (print) | DDC
658.3/14–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044991
To the future.
And to Eze, who inspires us to build capacity!
Contents
Introduction: Into the Future
Searching for Success
Note
1 The Secret That Is Overlooked
What Is Capacity?
2 People with a Purpose
Not a Priority
MINDSET SHIFT
What Do All Organizations
Want
?
Improve the
People
, Improve the Organization
3 Drinking from a Firehose Wastes a Lot of Water
1. Demands Are Increasing, Capacity Is Shrinking
2. Stress Is Melting Us Down
3. We Over-Rely on Skills and Talent
4. Engagemnet is Lousy
5. Our Health Is Embarrassing
4 Human Capital Is the Future!
Growing Your Greatest Resource
Foundational Pillars
Performance Outcomes
Capacity Foundation
Positive Influence
5 Laser
Focus
Directs Performance
The $50 Million Opportunity
Mind over Matter
Attention Spectrum
How to Focus
Focus on What Actually Matters
Focus Directs Performance
6 Boundless
Energy
Fuels Performance
Manufactured Energy
Three Tips for Protecting Energy inside Your Organization
Five Keys to Building Your Energy
Bonus: Recharge, Recover, and Reward
Keep the Juice Flowing
7 Unstoppable
Drive
Propels Performance
Finding the Pot of Gold?
Motivation: Intrinsic versus Extrinsic
Enjoy the Process
Resiliency
Move
Your Body
8
REST
Stress
Hormonal Balance
REST
Methodology
Note
9
EAT
Chris’s Story
Nutrition 101
EAT
Methodology
10
MOVE
Exercise Is Good for
You
What Is Holding
You
Back?
Movement and Weight Loss
New Movement Mindset
Rolling Back the Hands of Time
MOVE
Methodology
11
You
Have the Power
Matt’s
Power
Shift
Just Because It Hasn’t Happened Doesn’t Mean It Won’t Happen
Change Is Hard
Take Action
12 Why
Not
?
Oxygen Mask
Note
Summary: Key Points
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Acknowledgments
From Chris
From Matt
Index
EULA
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chris with his family: wife Paula, twins Matt and Kristen.
1
FIGURE 1.1
Expanding your container. We must all expand our containers.
FIGURE 1.2
Captain Sully’s experience
2
FIGURE 2.1
If you want a different outcome, you must change the process.
3
FIGURE 3.1
Our cups are overflowing
FIGURE 3.2
Human capacity is lagging behind technology.
FIGURE 3.3
Aging well.
4
FIGURE 4.1
Military ship.
FIGURE 4.2
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
FIGURE 4.3
Performance outcomes.
FIGURE 4.4
Pillars for optimal performance.
5
FIGURE 5.1
The three levels of the mind.
FIGURE 5.2
Focus spectrum.
6
FIGURE 6.1
Energy potential
7
FIGURE 7.1
Intrinsic motivation model
FIGURE 7.2
The three performance outcomes of building capacity
8
FIGURE 8.1
Is the bear real or not?
FIGURE 8.2
Stress response.
FIGURE 8.3
Cortisol Steal.
FIGURE 8.4
REST methodology.
FIGURE 8.5
Stages of sleep.
FIGURE 8.6
REM sleep graph.
9
FIGURE 9.1
Human cell.
FIGURE 9.2
pH balance.
FIGURE 9.3
The source.
FIGURE 9.4
EAT
methodology.
FIGURE 9.5
The Food Target
FIGURE 9.6
Sample Days.
10
FIGURE 10.1A
Chris Before (January 2002, age 45)
FIGURE 10.1b
Chris After (April 2002, age 45)
FIGURE 10.2
MOVE Methodology
FIGURE 10.3
Ideal Posture
FIGURE 10.4
Dynamic Warm-Up Exercises
FIGURE 10.5
Foundation Exercises
FIGURE 10.6
Sample exercise routine
12
FIGURE 12.1
The Capacity Process.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Introduction
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Introduction: Into the Future
Pause for a moment and reflect on your station in life. How did you end up where you are now? Each of us follows a different path to the present, and we are never quite sure what the future holds. Our journeys through life are paved with hard work, luck, and a handful of critical moments. But if you really think about it, what influenced your work ethic and opportunities the most? As much as we like to think that we alone determine our outcomes in life, it’s simply not the case.
Despite everything we do to forge our own identities, we are all destined to become a little, or a lot, like our parents. Author Neil Postman once wrote that children are “the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”1 That realization may still be unsettling for a lot of us, but instead of fighting the inevitable, let’s embrace it.
Just look at your family tree. Go back three generations. It’s safe to say that your great-grandfather toiled away in a factory or field for a tiny fraction of your current salary. Some may not consider his life much of a success. But like every parent before and after him, his definition of a fulfilled life wasn’t measured by material wealth, social status, or even his own welfare. He was driven by an innate desire we all share—to help create a better world for his children and the next generation.
Survival does not fuel ambition. Game-changing ideas don’t revolutionize the world without a fundamental belief that we can build a better future. That unwavering faith in the promise of tomorrow is the ultimate cure for the human condition.
We all want the same thing—whether you are a millennial or baby boomer. We want to leave a lasting legacy to honor those we love most and to inspire those to come. We are all daughters and sons trying to live up to our parents’ examples. So, let me tell you a story about my father and why he inspires me.
My father, Chris Johnson (coauthor of this book), took an unorthodox route to success. While attending Western Michigan University from 1976 to 1980, he spent each summer working either at the assembly line at Oldsmobile or in construction. After graduating with a degree in business and economics, and filling out hundreds of applications for job openings, he still had not landed the dream job to which he aspired. The economy in Michigan was extremely soft, so he went back to Oldsmobile, installing bumpers for an entire year. With car sales dipping well below profitable projections, he and dozens of his colleagues were laid off. Despite the sudden upheaval, he didn’t waste any time pounding the pavement for his next gig. After a couple of months, he was hired by Butternut Bread as a route salesperson, delivering white bread and Dolly Madison cakes and cupcakes. His workday was certainly not a piece of cake! It was a grueling, sleep-deprived, 80-plus-hour-a-week job that started around 2:30 a.m. and ended around 5:00 p.m. After a year of grinding it out with Butternut Bread, Dad went to work for Frito-Lay—delivering Doritos, Ruffles, Cheetos, Munchos, and Funyons as a route salesperson. Frito-Lay was a much better job, with normal hours and the opportunity for advancement. After a year with Frito-Lay, he knew this type of work wasn’t his calling and would never challenge him to be the best version of himself. He decided to go back to graduate school at Michigan State University in the exercise physiology program. During his first semester, his wife Paula (my mom) announced she was pregnant, and a few months later they found out they were going to have twins. He spent the next four years working full time for Frito-Lay, raising his new twins, and finishing his graduate degree from Michigan State University. He always had a passion for health and fitness and soon found his gift to share with the world: being the prevention guy!
Dad went to work for a hospital-based wellness center after receiving his master’s degree. Early on he was recruited by Dr. Barry Saltman, a family practice physician, to help design and implement a training facility for high-risk patients. This group was littered with all types of chronic illness—diabetes, morbid obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer, and heart disease, just to name a few. If patients had an extreme health problem or were on the verge of irreversible damage, they were sent to the Well Aware Health and Fitness Center to work with my dad. These life-altering experiences forged a wealth of knowledge in the health and fitness space that built the foundation for his successful future.
Chris with his family: wife Paula, twins Matt and Kristen.
In 1990, Dad was chosen to pioneer a personal training program for the Michigan Athletic Club, one of the largest hospital-based health clubs in the world. This program went on to become one of the world’s first million-dollar personal training programs. During his 16 years at the Michigan Athletic Club, he authored four books and created his signature Food Target program. He has coached over 20,000 hours of individual training and has given keynote addresses to over 500,000 people. In 2006, he launched On Target Living, a health and performance company that works with organizations around the globe. He is the epitome of walking the walk when it comes to self-improvement and has truly changed thousands of lives for the better.
I have learned a lot from my dad, but hands down the most valuable lesson from my dad is how to be curious: “Ask better questions and you’ll get better answers.” That mantra has guided him through seemingly insurmountable adversity. We want you to be curious while you read this book. Ask the tough questions and strive to see if there is a better way. Dad wasn’t the smartest or most talented, but boundless curiosity and hard work paved his road to success. I have met a lot of different people with exemplary talents and abilities, and one thing is for certain—I’ve never seen or met someone with more capacity than my father! Thirty years ago, he didn’t intentionally say, “I must expand my capacity”; he just did it.
Searching for Success
Before explaining what capacity is and why it’s needed, let’s talk about something everyone is chasing and probably thinking about right now: success. We all want success.
However, we all define success differently. Some of us just want a high-paying job or to introduce a profitable product. Many of us want to forge meaningful relationships and raise well-rounded children. However you define success, you want to look back on your legacy and smile.
If success is what we crave, then failure is what we avoid. Failure hurts. Failure is scary, yet it’s the best way to create meaningful change. Failure shapes us into the people we want to be. J. K. Rowling was unemployed and depressed when she finally finished Harry Potter. Michael Jordan was cut from his varsity basketball team, and Abraham Lincoln failed at countless ventures before becoming president. The foundation of this book was built on the lessons learned from overcoming failure.
Every article or video on success seems to unlock a magical secret to attaining it. It is very interesting to watch people search for this one easy trick. They seem to play whack-a-mole with various schemes, without any clear process or plan for applying new strategies to their own lives. Is it possible that we are overlooking part of the equation? Are we overthinking a simple process? Is there even a process at all?
Like in martial arts, in life there is a fundamental truth we can’t avoid: Most of us start as white belts. Maybe some start as green belts, but nobody starts as a black belt. Every dojo is built on the foundational belief that there’s no one true way to achieve the highest level of mastery. You must ultimately build your capacity—emotionally, physically, and psychologically. We will show you exactly how to do this. We know you want to be successful. We know you want to have a successful organization. Capacity is the secret to success; the organizations and people with the largest capacity always perform better in the long run.
Note
1
Postman, Neil. (1982)
The Disappearance of Childhood
. Delacorte Press, NY.
1The Secret That Is Overlooked
Capacity is the ability to use every skill and resource at your disposal.
—Dr. Phil Nuernberger, author Strong and Fearless
We believe this book can be the catalyst for our two most insatiable desires: success and happiness.
Every leader and organization recognizes the power of professional development and skills training. Without evolving people, processes, and products, organizations will not survive changing demands and fierce competition. Without growth, market share begins to erode until there’s no bottom line left to protect. And yet, despite heavy investment in ongoing development, most organizations fail to see the kind of cultural transformation they desperately want. The road to transformation is littered with the carcasses of once-great giants who spent millions upon millions on professional development. Employee engagement is at an all-time low. Productivity is decreasing rapidly with endless e-mails, meetings, and electronic distractions diminishing focus, stifling creativity, and slaughtering innovation.
Look around your office—is this the best it can be? What can your organization do to thrive and prosper? What if it were possible to improve the organization one person, one team, and one leader at a time—not by simply teaching more or turning up the volume, but by plugging into a deeper source?
Our capacity for change is limitless. Our ancestors have shown us what’s possible if we all unite under the universal theme of human progress—creating a better future built on an expanded capacity for change. We are a resilient species that plows the fields of failure in order to plant the seeds of change. We will show you how to capture the hearts and minds of your people and provide a clear, compelling, and actionable path toward transformation and prolonged prosperity. It’s time to look inward and unleash your full potential.
What Is Capacity?
We have all used the word capacity in our daily lives to describe maximal storage or effort. What’s the towing capacity of my pickup truck? What’s my lung capacity? Let’s look at the formal definition of capacity:
ca·pac·i·ty
The maximum amount that something can contain
The ability or power to do, experience, or understand something
Here is how we want you to think about capacity:
Capacity is the ability to do more, the ability to have more, and the ability to give more.
As you increase your capacity, you increase your ability to do more with seemingly less.
Everyone has unused potential energy waiting to be converted to purposeful action.
There is no question that some people are simply born with more talent or skills than others. One of the hallmarks of a fully realized life is optimizing your innate abilities and applying them with maximum efficiency. We have all witnessed the often-tragic trajectories of child protégés. They were destined for stardom and had every conceivable advantage to pave a surefire road to glory. Then out of nowhere, a lesser talent makes a bigger impact than the protégé ever dreamed! This book isn’t about the merits of talent over training or taking shortcuts to success. Capacity is about asking the tough questions that lead to better choices and expanding your body’s ability to contain more input without sacrificing the quality of your body’s output (Figure 1.1).
FIGURE 1.1 Expanding your container. We must all expand our containers.
What follows is a list of a few names you might recognize. There is no question that all of these people have talent—in many cases a ton of talent—but we think you would all agree there are graveyards full of talented people with unrealized aspirations and dreams.
Sara Blakely, founder and owner of SPANX
“It all started with a pair of pantyhose, some scissors, and a bright idea.” Sara cut the feet out of her pantyhose to make her butt look better in white pants. To start this dream, she saved $5,000 by selling fax machines. From there she spent all of the money submitting a patent she wrote herself while practically begging hundreds of manufacturers to produce the first prototype. Don’t underestimate a woman with fanatic focus on changing other women’s lives! Sara had to push her capacity to create success.
Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of
The Huffington Post
Recently, Arianna wrote a book titled
The Sleep Revolution
about her journey to renewing her relationship with sleep. She had a paradigm shift after she fainted from exhaustion and hit her head on her desk, breaking her chin bone and requiring five stitches on her eye. At this point in her career, people thought of Arianna as a super-talented, highly successful media mogul, but she wasn’t at her best. She discovered that sleep allowed her to be more productive, more inspired, and more joyful in life. She expanded her capacity through sleep.
LeBron James, five-time NBA MVP
“The King” was born with generational talent for the game of basketball. He skyrocketed from the streets of Akron, Ohio, to the front cover of
Sports Illustrated
by his seventeenth birthday. Unlike many stars before him, LeBron knew he couldn’t rely on talent alone to be considered one of the best players to ever lace it up. He adheres to a strict routine of clean eating, mindfulness training, yoga, rest, and recovery to ensure he has more than enough gas in the tank for a grueling NBA season.
Chesley Sullenberger, American Airlines captain
During an emergency, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed Flight 1549 on the Hudson River—saving all 155 people aboard! Captain Sully flew fighters in the military before he started flying commercial airliners. He also flew gliders during his downtime, which have zero propulsion. There was no mandate from the airline to cross-train with different types of aircraft. His passion for pure flight created the capacity to gently land a 70-ton behemoth with complete engine failure (
Figure 1.2
). He may have been the only person capable of that landing. As he has said:
FIGURE 1.2 Captain Sully’s experience
The way I describe this whole experience—is that everything I had done in my career had in some way been a preparation for that moment. There were probably some things that were more important than others or that applied more directly. But I felt like everything I’d done in some way contributed to the outcome—of course along with [the actions of] my first officer and the flight attendant crew, the cooperative behavior of the passengers during the evacuation, and the prompt and efficient response of the first responders in New York.
1
Tom Brady, five-time Super Bowl–winning quarterback
He was drafted in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft. Brady was the 199th overall selection in the draft that year, and as crazy as it sounds, was the sixth quarterback to be selected that year—the
sixth
! How could seasoned scouts, coaches, and general managers of these highly sophisticated professional football franchises all miss such a talented athlete? Did Tom Brady not have the talent these football experts were looking for? Tom Brady had talent—maybe he did not possess the unrefined talent that other quarterbacks selected ahead of him had in abundance—but there is no mistaking that Brady had talent! What separates Brady from many other talented athletes is his desire to get better through a systematic process to build his capacity. His off-the-field conditioning and nutritional regimen is unrivaled. His aptitude and mastery of the system devised by his coach, arguably the greatest football coach of all time, enables him to thrive under unrelenting pressure and punishment from elite NFL defenses. Brady built his capacity for greater performance.
◼ ◼ ◼
Think of all the talented people who fell short in life. Many just relied on their talent and skill, without growing their capacity to do more with it. Now think of the seemingly talentless person who changed the world by consistently growing their capacity and refusing to settle for less.
What Tom Brady, LeBron James, Captain Sully, Arianna Huffington, and Sara Blakely possess—what separates talented athletes, people, and organizations—is the desire for continuous improvement. These folks build a rock-solid foundation and carefully construct a process of incremental improvements on top of it.
Resilience is a common attribute used to describe countless people who have shaped our world for the better. Here is something to think about—the definition of resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from adversity or strife. Toughness is the great equalizer. Some people are born with natural abilities, talents, and skills, but capacity must be earned and managed.
Most Successful People and Organizations Have Two Things in Common
First, you must develop a growth mindset—small incremental steps for continuous improvement without succumbing to the arrogance and complacency of immediate success.
Second, nobody starts out being great—they all slowly build their ability to be great. Everyone has similar raw materials, but the game changer for almost everyone is the ability to build capacity. We are at our best when we are growing and learning so we can accomplish the seemingly impossible! Growth is the most rewarding part of a fully realized life!
There are many books on the secrets and shortcuts to success. These can be very entertaining and a great way to provoke new thoughts and shatter preconceived notions, but no amount of new ideas will come to fruition without working hard. Building capacity is not easy. You never took shortcuts to achieve all you have up to this point and neither should a system that sustains it.
Here are just a few shortcuts we hear and see every day:
Get rich quick
Take an energy drink to increase energy
Lose weight without exercise
Improve IQ without learning
Take a magic pill and heal
Enhance sex drive without building relationships
Hire talent to be the best organization
Many organizations and their people may lose hope over time and give up. This can happen for multiple reasons, but if you boil it down, in most cases it comes down to losing capacity!
Capacity to focus
Capacity to lead
Capacity to innovate
Capacity to create
Capacity to learn
Capacity to grow
Capacity to think
Capacity to breathe
Capacity to move
Capacity to love
Do you feel like your organization and your people are expanding their capacity? Changing behavior can be extremely difficult, and it begins with self-awareness.
Ask yourself, “How much am I willing to devote to improving my skills and increasing my capacity for greatness?” “How much time is my organization spending on increasing capacity?” If you resolve to put in the hard work and follow a process through despite all obstacles, you will prevail over any challenge.
Here are a few questions to ask before embarking on this journey:
Organizational Capacity
Does your team feel or perform like they are overwhelmed?
Is stress a noticeable problem throughout your culture?
Have you had cutting-edge innovation in the last 3, 6, or 12 months?
Is there sustainable and profitable revenue growth?
Are you giving back to charities or the community?
Is your organization the number-one source of positive influence in your employees’ lives?
Individual Capacity
Are you currently learning something new?
Do you have clear focus on your purpose?
On a scale of 1–10, is your energy level 8.5 or higher most days, hours, and minutes?
Do you have time for family, friends, or volunteering?
Does the thought of doing more upset or frustrate you?
Do you feel you are fulfilling your purpose?
Now that we’ve done a little soul-searching, it’s time to get started. There are thousands of self-help books, consultants, and programs on how to accelerate growth, innovate, and increase profit margins. Many organizations and their people are doing tremendous work. The real key to thriving in today’s economy is making better choices about building an inexhaustible supply of energy to tackle any problem in the most efficient way.
We can’t simply upload the extra capacity and push play. Humans aren’t built like machines. Human capacity must be learned, practiced, and developed. It all starts with changing the mindset of organizations from the top down to create and sustain unstoppable growth fueled by healthier and happier people. Albert Einstein once stated, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” Intelligence and performance are really two sides to the same coin. Imagine the possibilities if we all had greater capacity to accomplish more without having to learn a new skill or language. We only need to focus our attention inward before we can radiate greatness outward.
Capacity is your secret weapon to winning the performance war.
Key Point
Capacity is your ability to do more, have more, and give more. This is your container; imagine if you had more room!
Note
1
https://www.airspacemag.com/as-interview/aamps-interview-sullys-tale-53584029/
2People with a Purpose
Recently I (Matt) was invited to speak at the annual retreat for a large CPA firm. As I was sitting in the back and waiting to present to the partners, I listened as the president addressed the group. He spent 30 minutes going over the objectives for the three-day retreat. This was a typical retreat designed to help organizations to align, strengthen, and communicate the direction the organization is taking to move forward into the future.
Before I speak to any group, I make sure to interview the organizers, meeting planners, and executive team to tap into what outcomes they want from my presentation and consulting. The tough part is transparency. We usually get the superficial answer that sounds great, but we often fail to hear the exact pain points and initiatives of the entire organization. At the CPA firm retreat it was different, and it was as clear what obstacles were in the way.
The president discussed all the challenges and obstacles. Retention and talent were the unanimous front runners. Staff engagement wasn’t far behind, and the common dialogue of how to work with millennials and the next generation was something on their minds. Retention and talent were so important that I remember one slide that included the word retention five times. The consistent theme was that many of the struggles and opportunities centered on people. I didn’t hear much discussion of technology, systems, computers, or software.
As I was getting closer to my time, I was wondering, “Do they know that these are the outcomes we help drive? Do they know these challenges are what every organization has? Are they going to do what every organization is doing or are they going to think differently?”
This was the perfect setup; they were already talking about the problems they were having and were desperate to find a strategic solution. Little did they know these are the problems I mention to start off my presentation, and I was going to give them the solutions.
It was now my turn.
I started with “Isn’t every organization trying to be better just like you?” They all laughed and agreed—yes, this is an obvious statement. From there I asked, “What is the definition of an organization?
Now they looked at me with the look of someone who has already heard this message, but it wasn’t going to be the same message; it wasn’t going to be the same solution. I was going to go at the source of the problem and to do that, you must ask better questions!
“So, if we are trying to become better as an organization, let’s first look at the definition of an organization:”
or·gan·i·za·tion
noun
an organized body of
people
with a particular
purpose
, especially a business, society, association, etc.
It’s simple. All organizations are people with a purpose.
My next statement was “So, if I asked you what is the most valuable asset of your organization, what would you say?”
The entire room said people. I have never had an organization or leader tell me that people are not their number-one asset. If this is the universal answer, the next question we need to ask is, “What is the most valuable asset of your people?”
The entire room went quiet when I asked this question. Nobody wanted to shout out an answer; you could tell they didn’t get this far yet.
I said, “It is their health; your people’s most valuable asset is their health. To build the best organization you must build the most valuable asset of your most valuable asset.”
You could see the bomb go off in their heads; it is so simple, so obvious, but so far from the direction most organizations are going. To expand capacity of your people or organization it is essential to build foundational health.
What is the most valuable asset of your organization? What would you say?
Our people
What is the most valuable asset of your people? What would you say?
Their health
To build the best organization you must build the most valuable asset of your most valuable asset.
You may be thinking, “Another wellness book, another book on a soft skill, another book on something else we need to do.” After you read this book you will realize this isn’t just another thing to do; this isn’t a soft skill that has unmeasurable ROI, and this is not a wellness book. This book was designed after 30 years of work helping people perform at their best; this book was created to shift the thinking to help organizations unlock their true capacity, their true potential.
