In the last 30 years of professional working, there havebeen, as with many of us, highs and lows both personally andprofessionally.  With recent surveyssuggesting a change in career desires from simply remuneration and promotion towork life balance and giving back to society perhaps its time to consider whatsuccess looks like in this professional age.

Recently Covenant have been working alongside church andprofessional charity leaders with the aim of cementing strategic and culturalchange in the habit (no pun intended) of progress.  I was struck though, in all honesty at thepredication to measure what had gone before in order to plan for thefuture.  It is as though no one islooking at now.

Over that period we became aware of the need to look againat what professional achievement or success looks like.  In doing this, with all integrity I am alsospeaking to myself.  

Reinforcement

It may be easy for some to empower themselves and speak outloud who they think they are and what they stand for.  My issue and challenge though with theleaders we were engaged with was to recognise and reinforce the ‘narrative ofnow’.  What do I mean by this?  Let me give you a brief example.

In supporting a housing charity with works to maintain theirbuildings we discussed the need to “get this done” to “not let this wear out”and “if only it was all done I could……….”. I suggested that in order to look ahead we should see what was currentlyhappening.

I stopped for a moment and reminded the extremely talentedleader of the following.

1. You ARE managing buildings.  Over a 15 mile radius with different needsand challenges.

2. You ARE helping and empowering tenants.  All with individual needs and support considerations

3. You ARE managing staff.  Sickness absence, annual leave, professionaldevelopment and performance.

4. You ARE managing an office.  The rent, insurance, logistics (yes the damnprinter).

5. You ARE empowering churches.  They have signed a committal agreement andare engaging with tenants.

6. You ARE maintaining the buildings.  Tenants are safe, warm and able to dwell to agood standard.

7. You ARE building vital relationships.  Meeting local agencies and authorities,churches and fellow Christian networks

8. You ARE making difficult decisions.  Deciding to offer a home to someone or tomove them on where their needs require more dedicated and specialisedinterventions.  That is really tough tosee by the way.

9. You ARE putting yourself between people andhomelessness.  Look at numbers 1 to 8 ifin doubt.

10  You AREburdened to make tenant lives better. Your passion, care and devotion is still firmly in place.

Ultimately that professional leader is doing all of thatright now. NOW

Less Noise

If your pursued by targets or battered by what you didn’t doright in the past in your career.  Whereyou wished you had done better and are striving to put right many of theaspects of perceived failure, take a moment to reflect on the above.  Write down what you ARE doing now.  It won’t be complete, it wont be everythingyou should be doing, it will be stressful. You are a human being, not a human doing.

In the above example I also need to mention the quietsuccess.  I was told once by the CEO ofan NHS hospital that what he needed was less noise.  He put it like this.  

“if I don’t hear about the plant and machinery failing, orthe IT systems ‘going down’ then I can focus on the things where the noiseis.  The lack of noise in the things thathave little tangible benefit to us until they aren’t there, are the pillars of mystrategy.  Mostly, I have to manage thenoise.  I am grateful and reassured wherethere is no noise.  I can work with that”

So hear again we see that what is or what arethe things in place, is as much a measure of success as all things past and thedesire for future success.

In my experience leadership and management are about makingdecisions and prioritising.  Notnecessarily doing everything.  Lets notbe busy fools.

As I was once told, when I was feeling particularly doubtfulabout my abilities; failure is an event, not a person.  I had to have a proper chat with myself.  

On that note its worth mentioning the idea of failure andits purpose.  I was once at the pinnacleof my career, or so I thought.  I was alittle arrogant and chasing the ultimate CEO prize.  I took my eye off the basics.  One day the very clever multi million poundWorlds first technology I had put in place slowed down.  It slowed so much the client couldn’t useit.  All heck broke loose.  Within a matter of weeks I was toast.  I had forgotten, in my zealous desire forsuccess to remember the basics of what was in place NOW.  Taking care of that.  I was striving and looking ahead toomuch.  

I hope this article helps those driven to chase more successto look at what they are doing now.  Yoursuccess is probably right where you ARE.

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