The enemy of good: In Community #31

🤦🏽 We’re not moving fast enough.

🤦🏽 We’re not driving innovation.

🤦🏽 We’re too consensus-driven.

I’ve lost count of how often I hear this from senior executives. When I wrote about executive dysfunction last week, it struck a nerve with many of you – both in terms of my original intent and with its other meaning.

Does this sound like your company or your team at work? Let’s talk about that other meaning.

What is it that keeps you or them from moving forward quickly, with both speed and agility? Speed is about focusing on a single direction and driving fast toward it. Agility is about being able to shift directions while maintaining your pace.

We often look to pro athletes to inspire us – we admire their speed and their agility. Intuitively, we can understand that the way they’re operating isn’t like most of us. 

But does it have to be that way? What’s stopping you from approaching things the same way?

No pro athlete has ever gotten to a win without having a level of fear – fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of how they’ll be perceived. No pro athlete has ever had zero doubt – it’s natural to feel doubt. The common thread is they focus on the goal and they move toward it with speed, and when challenges hit, they adjust. And when it happens again, they adjust again.

Perfection is the enemy of good.

Too many of us aim for perfection and it can be paralyzing. We wait for the right moment to make our move, to get that project out in the world for people to see, to make the changes we believe we really need to see. The key to moving forward is being able to adjust.

What if you operated more like a pro athlete? What if you shifted your mindset and set your goals to keep moving toward them without distractions? Without trying to be perfect or even close to it? 

👉🏽 Think about it. What would that do for you?

With that in mind, this week’s Need to Know kicks off with a pro athlete becoming a pro at something entirely different, followed by more leaders breaking stigmas and breaking barriers across our communities.

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Need To Know

💥 Dwyane Wade launches Translatable. He gets vocal about trans rights. 

💥 Sahaj Kaur Kohli talks about Brown Girl Therapy. Culturally competent care is still more rare than it should be.

💥 Taraji P. Henson’s breaking down mental health stigmas. Her foundation is helping to access resources for free.

💥 Veronica Garza’s Siete Family Foods aims to inspire the next generation of food businesses. It all started with her healthier-for-you tortillas. 

💥 Priyanka Ganjoo is centering South Asian beauty with her brand. She’s embraced the unknown and come into her own.