Skip to main content

Earning Predictability

Your long-range plan is clear. You build projections, budgets and cash-flow plans. You narrow your focus to 10 major initiatives to complete this year. You create organization charts to establish chain of command. You have job descriptions nailed down. Your information-flow systems are up and running. You're screening job applicants better than ever. Employee training is thorough and weeds out the misfits. You have a system for damn near everything. Then why the heck are fires still erupting in your company? If you have all this stuff in place, why are things going off in the wrong direction? Where's the predictability?

Creating predictability in a business is an essential quest. You have to do it. You have to find it - or at least get as close as you can to it. The problem is that things can be predictably good or bad. Whenever you say, "I knew that wouldn't work," what you're really saying is the planning and preparation was flawed or inadequate, that the commitment, effort and execution were not equal to the task. In contrast, when things go predictably well, it means that planning, preparation, commitment, effort and execution were dialed in. FACT: Predictability, good or bad, is earned. Good predictability is hard work. Bad predictability usually means you hit the "easy button," crossed your fingers and clicked your heels threes times.

Here are some no-compromise thoughts to earn predictability every day:

  • Predictability is an outcome: From start to finish, the effort you put in determines the outcome. Predictability for the right outcomes has nothing to do with luck or quantum physics. Manifesting is about vision and being able to "see" the outcome in extreme detail. When the outcome is clear, the path to achieve it reveals itself. It may have some detours and unknowns, but perseverance and tenacity will help you connect the dots and find your way. Predictability is earned.

  • Predictability as an individual: Predictability is the result of your personal leadership thinking and behavior. If your thinking and behavior has a propensity for shortcuts, your outcomes will be predictably questionable. Self-discipline to do the work, immerse yourself in the details, and go the distance, is the stuff that allows a leader to lead others to achieve extraordinary outcomes. Predictability begins with the leader. Predictability is earned.

  • Predictability as a company: Geese naturally fly in formation, humans don't. Humans are an array of complex self-thinkers. What motivates one doesn't necessarily motivate another. Getting humans to fly in formation to achieve the desired outcome is the work of the no-compromise leader. And that work is all about the collective thinking and behavior of the company's culture, or as I like to call it, the "attitude" of the company. If the company culture is contaminated with indifference, distrust and change resistors, the outcomes will be predictably flawed. Get the culture right, and outcomes will be predictably good. Predictability is earned.

  • Predictability is a discipline: Get up early every day and go to the gym to work out, eat right, and guess what - you'll lose weight and feel better. As a leader, if you commit to and practice the right leadership disciplines, you will earn predictably good outcomes. When a company commits to and practices success-based thinking and behavior, it can and will achieve astonishing outcomes that will have its competition in awe. Predictability is earned.


Predictability to achieve the right outcomes is all about consistency. Consistency is all about no-compromise leadership. It begins with you. Stop talking about it; start earning it.

- - - - - - - - -

Please share your thoughts with me about today’s Monday Morning Wake-Up. Click below to comment.

Neil Ducoff, Founder & CEO of Strategies and author of No-Compromise Leadership

Pass this e-mail on to your business colleagues, managers and friends. They’ll appreciate it.

Comments

No comments found. Start the conversation!