Action is the antidote

We know that the only limits to our full potential, business and personal, are our imagination and our commitment.  As we struggle through this recession good business leaders ( and readers of this blog!) will have been engaging their own and their employee’s imagination and creativity in order to brainstorm new products or services; or simply to do the same thing differently.

During the brainstorming phase the options would have been loosely defined as the aim was to generate as many courses of action as possible and imagination was more important than knowledge.

However, brainstorming is only as effective as the decisions and actions that arise from it. Thus after the options stage comes the decision.  What WILL   be done; not could, might, should etc. The decision phase is a call to arms but what separates it from other decisions is the will or commitment that is integral to that decision. Without commitment a decision is merely the selection of a  choice and has no more meaning than choosing one particular chocolate from a box.

The decision phase, then, does not stop once the choice is made. Indeed the decision is often just the beginning. Implementing the decision is often the hardest part as it is here the identified course of action is de-railed, stonewalled or sabotaged by those with other interests and agendas. It is at this stage that a person’s or organisation’s commitment to that course of action is vital to its successful implementation and achievement. By definition, the term commitment means being bound by a course of action to bring about desired results.  In other words, commitment is more about the actual actions rather than the intended actions and it is the actions we take that move us towards our goals. And in a recession, action is the antidote to dispair.