As I was watching the Steelers game yesterday, I was impressed with their last drive, scoring the winning touchdown with 1:33 left in the game. The two minute drill can be very impressive. We saw the Auburn Tigers do it on Monday. For those who don't watch football, the two minute drill is a set of offensive plays that will get the team in a position to score while taking up little time. Needless to say it's practiced often and requires a cool quarterback and precision routes by the receivers. All of the Hall of Fame quarterbacks excelled in this situation. Currently, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are masters at this drill. Any surprise their teams made the playoffs?
Most entrepreneurs will tell you they don't have use for policies and procedures. It limits their creativity. They can be right, but no business will grow without them. The trick is finding the right policies for your business that will give it structure and processes that can be internalized to grow the business.
I was at the office and an emergency developed. In a daycare area, a young girl fell back in a chair and bumped her head. She blacked out for a short period of time. Was there panic? No, everyone involved followed a practiced procedure that ultimately lead to paramedics arriving. Happily, she was fine. Consider an organization without policies and procedures in the same emergency. There would have been chaos and a lot more people involved than there should be. The same is true in any organization and discipline.
To thrive, don't shy away from creating policies, procedures and processes. On the other hand, don't go crazy and create them without a solid business reason. As the entrepreneur knows, you need to allow for creativity but define the parameters to maximize performance. As always, keep everything in balance and focus on the important goals for your organization.
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Hi Tim, Someone moved us to go to your blog. As leaders in the Worldwide Marriage Encounter organization, we are always looking for ways to maximize performance in all phases of our marriage in order to help other couples do the same. What you wrote here relates so well to any organization, even a family organization. As CEOs of a family, married couples are challenged, as you wrote, to "keep everything in balance and focus on the important goals for your organization." Thanks for the reminder.
ReplyDeleteEd and Pat Lavender