Busy Doing Nothing

The Walt Disney pavilion at Advent health hospital
The Walt Disney Pavilion at Advent Health hospital, downtown Orlando.

Busy Doing Nothing

Being good at doing things well is often seen as success.

Really?

Think about it.

Yes, we are good at things.

But are we good at the right things?

Who’s coaching us about business excellence priorities?

Who’s holding us accountable?

And what if our boss is the same boat as us?

What if our boss has business excellence priorities that we are good at delivering on, but what if all of us are focused on lower level priorities?

What if we are the boss? What if we’re passing this on down to our direct reports?

The business excellence mission critical stuff, often the soft stuff, is left alone because it’s too hard to see and measure improvement.

It’s analogous to trying to lose weight instead of trying to lower our resting heart rate, our cholesterol, BMI, and triglycerides.

There are a lot of fake business excellence problems in our world. Fake problems are issues we spend time managing that have disproportionate value to more important priorities.

Fake problems are convenient for medicating our lack of a clear, concise, and compelling vision.

Organizational health (and personal health) is priority one.

Never get bored with the basics.

Spend time doing nothing.

Quiet time, void of distractions, void of deadlines, meetings, initiatives.

Spend time there and you’ll be astonished, if you really open your heart, at what you can accomplish when you’re busy doing nothing.