Integrity: The Courage to Face the Demands of Reali by Cloud Henry

Author:Cloud, Henry [Cloud, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

Ready, Aim, Fire

Every undertaking has a process with various components. You can break the process down in many ways and stages, but one that I find simple and that really reveals character is the components of ready, aim, fire. Results more often come when all of these stages have been added to the process, and none skipped.

Being ready means that someone is prepared, and able. You can have a great opportunity come along, and if you jump in unprepared, or unable to complete it for whatever reason, you will fail. One simple way of illustrating this is just in terms of money. If someone is not ready for a venture by being properly capitalized, she is going to run short halfway through and go broke. If she is underresourced with people or talent, then the same thing will happen. She jumped before she was ready.

If an individual’s character is impulsive, then getting ready or prepared or up to the undertaking is not usually in the cards. These people’s credo is more like “Fire, Ready, Aim.” They jump in before they or other things are ready, get in over their heads, then crash and burn. Their impulsive natures lead them into either half-brained ventures or good ventures for which they are unprepared.

Typically, people like this do not have the discipline to do the things that preparedness calls for: due diligence for a deal, or for hiring someone, for example. They are so eager, and the waiting calls for such a delay of gratification, that they impulsively jump in. And they pay dearly.

Due diligence in any area of life takes a lot of delay of gratification, and patience. For some, that seems boring. They need the “fix” of the deal. They need the manic excitement of jumping in.

But when you look at the truly successful people over the long term, they do not make impulsive, rash decisions. They can wait, plan, look at all the angles. I wish I had kept count over the years of how many people I have heard say, “I wish I had taken my time with this deal (or hiring this person, or marrying this person). I found out a lot of things later that if I had taken the time to learn, I would not have had to deal with. I would have fixed them first or not gotten into it at all.” It is a lesson that experience teaches those whose character does not dictate it from the beginning.

In describing the different components of what he terms “emotional intelligence” that lead to success, Daniel Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence(Bantam, 1995), cites the research of psychologist Walter Mischel at Stanford University. He tested the impulse control of children at age four and studied the kind of predictive ability that character trait had for long-term success. It turned out to be a better predictor of their later achievements as students in high school than IQ. That is exactly what we were saying in the early chapters regarding the inability of brains and talents alone to make someone successful.

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