The Real Game-changer is Tenacity

Corporate life is tough - there, I said it.

"Did Mike really just get the memo?" I hear you ask. Of course not. I am too 'old in the tooth' and battle hardened to not realise it by now! But a recent article sent to me by a close friend, made me reflect - a lot.

I reflected upon where I was in my career. I reflected upon where I was in my personal life. I reflected upon the legacy (good and bad) and the changes I had delivered to organisations. I compared myself to friends and peers. I compared the companies that I had served to others. I compared all of my experiences and tried to distill what had made the real difference. It was tenacity.

That tenacity was built in to me by my parents. They taught me that anything was possible with hard work, grit, determination and always picking myself up and dusting myself down after a fail. (P.S. I've had many fails, and not afraid to admit it). My Dad used to say to me that the hardest person to beat, is the person that never gives up. I think he stole that line from Babe Ruth, but to me it was all my Dad.

So back to my opening line, Corporate life is tough. It really is. Large organisations are complex. They have governance and controls for all the right reasons, and over time (thanks in part to a sprinkling of Internal Audit observations), become even more complex, over burdensome and bureaucratic. And most of the time, no one has the energy nor appetite to change things. That's where tenacity comes in.

Having a clear mission. Never giving up. Having humble hustle to get around things without breaking (too many) eggs is the only way to deliver transformational change. People will resist change (it's human nature don't you know) as they fear it, fear you, fear the consequences of the new normal. But despite/in spite of all this, tenacity will carry you through. What if failure is just your beginning? Pause, and think about that for a second.

If you disagree with anything I've said thus far, or don't believe that failure is just the beginning. Stop reading now. For the enlightened amongst us, I'd like to introduce you to the article that I mentioned. It's by Steve A Klein of Dallas (hence the American English that follows), and I hope he doesn't mind me reproducing it below for you all to read. It's worth another few minutes of your time. I call it tenacity. Steve calls it becoming relentless. We agree that it's the same thing. The game-changer.

The Five Mindsets of Becoming Relentless

When we dissect the greatest achievements in history, there’s always one common element and that’s being Relentless; it’s what makes the impossible, possible.

In today’s competitive environment, technical skills are the entry to play. What separates winners from losers is being Relentless. Most people shoot for success. I want you to shoot for something higher and that’s Relentless success.

Being Relentless drives performance, creates persistence, drives consistency, creates mental toughness...all of which unlock results! Being Relentless means that we’re different. We’re walking a different path, and sometimes there isn’t even a path to follow. We’re making our own path and everybody else is following us. Being Relentless is not doing what other people can’t do, it’s what other people won’t do.

#1 Lock your sights

Get crystal clear on our desired outcome; in other words, what we want. Visualize it with vivid clarity. Make the goal so real we can taste it. Once we’ve Locked Our Sights on our Relentless desire, we’ll know what you have to do, the actions we have to take and the behaviors we have to learn in order to make it happen. Lock Our Sights on the passion that we’d like to achieve or attain. Once it’s locked into place and etched into our mind, our potential becomes tapped and our subconscious mind gives us the ideas to make it happen.

Belief, change and commitment form the person that’s Relentless. Whatever we vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon... we will achieve by being Relentless.

#2 Stop thinking

We need to build a plan of daily activity including specific actions which become muscle memory. Include “reconnection rituals” that will reinforce our desired outcome to help pull us through the muck. Once we develop our plan, Stop Thinking and work it, then we’ll begin to do it automatically.

These automatic ideas that come into our head will propel us toward the steps needed to achieve our objective. Why? Because these ideas are already there; we just need to find a way to get to them and to get them out. Let’s get off dead-center and do one thing different today. If we can take that new behavior and do it every single day, that will be our competitive advantage. Shift from just wanting, to developing a consistent step-by-step plan of things we can do every day. Nothing and nobody will stop us from achieving Relentless success. Stop Thinking; start doing!

#3 Own it. Then own it.

We hate to lose what’s already ours. Train our mind to already own our desired outcome, and then we’ll fight like hell not to lose it. We don’t like having something taken away from us. Once we have it, it’s ours.

Owning It is all in our mind! Our Relentless belief level will create the ideas necessary to win...and once it’s locked into our mind, the question is not if, but when? Nothing and no one can take it away from us. We’ll have it!

We may not have achieved it yet, but it’s still ours. By mentally believing, we’ll take the actions necessary to make it happen. So after we mentally Own It, we’ll do what you have to do and physically own it.

#4 Eat nails for breakfast

Outside of our plan, Eat Nails For Breakfast and develop mental toughness with daily rituals to expand your grit, resilience, and pain tolerance to make the actual work seem easy. If we do something uncomfortable every day, we’ll develop a mental toughness that will allow us to persevere through tough times and stick with it when things don’t go our way.

We learn through repetition. Sixty-two percent of everything we know has been presented to us al least six times. Through this repetition, we can learn or achieve anything new.

It’s the sticking-to-it and not giving up. Life gives in to the one who never gives up. Consistency is our most powerful superpower! Be Relentless with our consistency.

#5 Bounce back

Setbacks are a part of the journey. Be prepared to Bounce Back in order to quickly recover and get back on track. Setbacks don’t stop us. Setbacks make us stronger. Will we stumble and fall? Absolutely...it happens to all of us! Will we take two or three steps backwards to go one step forward? Probably! Being

Relentless means we look for problems in order to make ourselves stronger. What Relentless idea do we have that could change the world? Could we fail? Sure! But we’ll never know until we take action on our seed of success! How many failures does it take to become successful? Who knows, but by being Relentless and Bouncing Back means getting up one more time than we’re knocked down.

The nature of being Relentless is fighting through the negatives. We’ll be successful when we know exactly where we want to be, stay with it, fight through it and make it happen. Many people hear from others that it’s not going to work, that they’ll never make it happen. But we’re not like everyone else. Being Relentless helps us Bounce Back from those situations. Being Relentless moves us toward your goal.