Where do you find calm in the financial storm?
Last week my friend Marcia Conner posted this to Twitter:
Marcia knows that it pays to think, and especially when events start whirling around you.
I keep coming back to this idea as I read the daily headlines of the latest financial blowups. (The weekend crop: Fortis tumbling, Wachovia bought out, the Fed gets busy, et cetera.) The best firms are making hay right now (see my encomium to JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway from Friday). The best managers are finding bargains, serving customers, and generally taking Tom Peters’s advice to “Work the damn phones!”
In short, they’re taking enough time — it might not need to be much — to think through what they’re doing, and then they’re executing the heck out of things.
Not running around on “fire drills.”
Not complaining to their inner circle of guaranteed agree-ers.
Not feeding a cycle of negative news and opinion.
Not flailing like a swimmer caught in the undertow.
This morning, I took Marcia’s advice to heart by getting up extra-early, because I know that’s when I do my best thinking. (If I shock people with my wakeup time, I’ve got it about right.) It was the equivalent of swimming in the tranquil pool that Marcia favors.
The other day I alluded to the old saw, “When the going gets tough, . . .” But now that I’ve had more time to reflect on it, I don’t want my version of that saying to end “. . . the tough get going.” No, I much prefer this:
When the going gets tough, the tough think hard — then act swiftly.
It may not have the cadence of the original, but it fits everything I know about excelling in the world of business.
~
(Photo by ltdan.)
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Right on. A markism (aka, my dad’s sayings)in my family has always been Vince Lombardi’s “going get tough” line. Heard it again yesterday in jest.
BUT, hard methodical thinking always seems to be the best practice.
I spent a few hours today mulling through phase II plans for a program that I’ve been forced to change because we’ve learnt that the ‘environment around us is changing.’
I think it’s truly the cycle of things:
Acknowledge that things are changing. Methodically figure out how to change with them.
Regain fluidity.
Repeat.
Well put, Liz. We get in trouble when we don’t react, but we get in worse trouble when we *only* react. The challenge is to adapt intelligently while sticking to our overall goals.
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