For more than two years Scott Fay has been my coach, mentor, and most importantly, my friend. When I was trying to separate who I was from what I did, and come up with a plan for the rest of my life, Scott believed in me and pushed me in the right direction.
Although the official release of Scott’s first book, Discover Your Sweet Spot – The 7 Steps to Create a Life of Success and Significance, is not scheduled until the first of the year, I have had the opportunity to be included in a group to receive an early release of the book.
Yes, this is another book that focuses a lot on leadership, but Scott provides 7 steps that will guide you along a path to success and significance in whatever lane you are travelling.
Scott is the Vice President of the John Maxwell Team and one of the team mentors. A very successful businessman in the Landscaping business, Scott parallels the ideas of DESIGN, BUILD and MAINTAIN into whatever environment we find ourselves.
This will be the second of three posts taking us through the 7 steps that will teach us how to Design, Build and Maintain a life of success and significance.
PHASE 2: BUILD YOUR LEADERSHIP ENVIRONMENT
STEP 3 – Tear Out, Then Build Up
Pulling from his landscape background again, Scott creates a picture of pulling weeds when entering the building phase. He presents a very thought provoking question – “Do your excuses serve your dream?” In other words, the excuses that you use in life are the weeds preventing you from building your dream.
He provides a great three step process to eradicate these weeds, or “excuses,” that are in the way of construction. This is crucial. If the weeds are not removed during the build phase to allow the new “roots” to take hold, you will will be focusing on pulling weeds the rest of your life.
- Identify your weeds. Review your construction site, “your life,” and remove the weeds that will prevent you from building the life you desire.
- Own your weeds. You know what they are and no one is going to remove them but you. You have to own those weeds and take responsibility in making sure that they are gone as you get ready to build.
- Eradicate the weeds. You have identified them. You have owned them. Now eradicate them. Don’t settle for some or most of them. You are building your foundation and the rest of the product will only be as good as the foundation you build upon.
STEP 4 – Build Midcourse Corrections
Things happen along the way that may require course corrections. You may run into some unforseen conditions – something you could not have predicted. Or maybe you simply want to change the design because you are beginning to see the finish product and can make it better. Scott gives us four things to consider regarding course corrections:
- Intersect the issue. When the issue is identified, take aggressive moves to address it. Don’t assume that it won’t be an important piece of the final product. Remember the design devils, the small details matter.
- Correct the problem. Fix it! Evaluate your options and choose the most logical correction moving forward.
- Protect the goal. Don’t lose sight of the desired outcome. All the details are important, but if you get stuck on one thing, the schedule will suffer. Course corrections are changes in direction but still provide forward motion.
- Reflect the outcome. Certainly you desire that masterpiece when complete. The end product will be a reflection of the process. The quality of effort you put in through the process, will determine the quality of the end product.
I have reviewed numerous books and many have had a specific topic or targeted audience. Discover Your Sweet Spot is for everyone. We all have a Sweet Spot, but very few are living in it. If you want to get there, do yourself a favor and pre-order this book.
Creating an environment that is conducive to success means confronting your current one. If you want to change the design, you must first be willing to change yourself. It starts from within.
Today’s question: “What are the weeds in your life that need to be pulled?” If you are serious about building a better life, your weeds need to be pulled!
Click here to read Part 1 – The Design Phase
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Barry Smith 9/18/13 photo courtesy of Scott M Fay © Building What Matters 2013
