I have this new favorite song that won’t leave my head. It’s “Budapest” by George Ezra. So I’m singing along, get to the chorus, and sing really loudly … “ah dee-bee doe” … thinking it was a scat phrase. Weeks pass and I’m listening to this song non-stop, singing “ah dee-bee doe” really loudly. I decided to Google it, so I could play it on my guitar. The words are actually, “I’d leave it all” ... which for the record is not even close to “ah dee-bee doe.”*
In Senior Leadership, we have been working hard on our strategic plan. I’ve talked about planning before—sometimes it’s great, and sometimes the plan on which we’ve spent a lot of time, effort, and money sits on the shelf. Well, it’s wasteful for it to sit on a shelf and so our goal is to stick with the plan. The problem is that plans are made of hard stuff and hard stuff isn’t always fun. “Like what?” Like making sure our leaders are as great as we know they could be, and they always present solutions and not problems. Always recognizing our high performers and transitioning our low performing staff up or out of the organization. Having hard discussions and being transparent… All of this is hard.
“How does singing a song wrong and strategic planning work together?” What we hear is usually what makes sense – even if it is silly scatting words. Like if someone says, “Steve, that is low performing behavior,” and I hear, “Steve, atta boy storming terrier” … it makes no sense, but I will probably nod and move on, because I didn’t hear what you were trying to tell me. If I ingest the correct information and take it to heart, I will do what I need to change. It is usually not easy, but if I want to succeed and be better, I should probably take the information presented to heart.
*Back in the 80’s, I almost got into a fist fight with the Hinkel family over a country western song named, “Wasn’t That a Party”, and they insisted it was “Wasn’t That-a Hard” … seriously.
-Steve Simonin, President & CEO
