Dr. Henry Cloud is one of my frequent inspirations. He tweeted yesterday:

“Two things can really drive a vision: something awful that you want to rectify…. or something awesome that you want to realize.”

Last night I was speaking to a group about strategic planning. We talked about people who take the energy out of an organization. The comment came quickly: “Everybody in any organization can tell you what’s wrong with it.”

We often live with things that are “wrong”.  We allow them to gather. We let them build up. The clutter develops.

Before, our ignoring what’s wrong comes back to bite us. It causes a problem. We fix it. We go back to our regular duties until the buildup of wrong occurs again.

In our training last fall, we encouraged plant leaders to organize “five minute walks” designed to identify things we had been ignoring which should be addressed. The goal of the exercise was to nip small things before they became large things. It was also designed for teammates to raise each other’s awareness about problems and opportunities. What you see may be different from what I see.

You see things. You fix things. You develop awareness of things wrong. You fix them faster.