You gotta put in the work

I’m a devout follower of Seth Godin (@SethsBlog). I encourage you to follow him. A recent post focused on how the best strategy in the Universe is useless without a focus on executing the details of that strategy. That really hit home for me as process person.

There has been a lot of recent attention focused on how to sustain change. Dealing with the human side of process and organizational change is a huge barrier for a lot of organizations. After all, processes don’t change. Peoples’ activities change, and the culmination of those changes align to produce a new, hopefully more productive process. That takes focus, alignment, and grinding out the work.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the sexy part of change. Most of your process ‘rain makers’ focus on the up-front planning, the theory, the estimated return-on-investment to the organization, or technology. I often hear about the folks out there that are actually taking the reins of real change and getting the work done, so I went on a quest to find an example to draw an analogy.

Linny Boyette

Meet Linny Boyette. Here is a picture from his Facebook page.

If you watch the Today show on NBC, you’ve seen the folks behind the window, outside on the street dressed as aliens or sporting a sign about their hometown in an attempt to standout and get on the air. Not Linny. He’s shows up and just stands there. For nearly 18 years! That has led to the Today doing a segment on him, there are Web pages in his honor, and he has tons of Web fans. He did it through grinding it out.

So, my question for you is, “who are the Linny Boyette’s of process and change?” You need to find them and put them to work. They’ll get things done without the flash and glitz. They’ll show up every day and grind it out.

Seth Godin’s Feet on the street

Feet on the street