Patience, part 2

Wow. A recent post by Jerry Colonna really connected with me. The conclusion:

The hard part isn’t coming up with the plan. The hard part is bearing the stage of “No action” necessary so that the right amount of data can unfold. And then, when you know where you want to go, where you need to be, exactly how you’d like the change to manifest, the steps to getting there lay themselves out the way the Yellow Brick road revealed itself to Dorothy.

“No action” is a stage that I’m really uncomfortable with. I’m confident in my ability to get from point A to point B as long as I know what point B is. But sitting, waiting…that’s hard stuff.

The Argyle management team has been considering a very big question for the past several months. We all had gut reactions to the answer when the question was first posed, and we were relatively aligned. But I have to give a lot of credit to Eric for forcing us to sit in a “no action” period for quite some time. During this time, we had a chance, as a group, to look at the question from a variety of angles and deeply understand what we were doing before we charged right in.

As high-performing, type A personalities, we all wanted to make a decision and run with it. But sometimes big decisions require thought, reflection, and gathering more data. As important as it is for your team to be fast to market, it’s more important to make smart choices.

Be comfortable pausing.

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[Eric]

The waiting is the hardest part.

~Tom Petty