“The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.”
– George Eliot
In his new book Smart Leadership: Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact, Mark Miller explains that the “best guess” from psychologists is that we make over 35,000 choices per day. We make many of them with little to no awareness on our part, but others have the power to shape lives.
He calls these “the smart choices.” Often the smart choices require more time, energy, and focus, but they yield a disproportionate positive return.
Smart Choices do four key things:
1. Confront Reality
2. Grow Capacity
3. Fuel Curiosity
4. Create Change
Are you trying to put out the same fires over and over like a child who has been given a trick birthday candle?
Or are you making smart choices?
We often hold team meetings to get everyone “all fired up” about whatever the new thing is, and the excitement wanes in the following weeks. Then a few months go by, and someone mentions, “Hey, remember when we talked about ‘Patient of the Week’? What happened there?” And it is no longer on anyone’s radar. A meeting without creating goals and commitments to yourself and other team members wastes everyone’s time.
Smart choices require ACTION
Mark said in a recent interview with Jon Acuff’s podcast: “Don’t undervalue your own agency.” We have the ability to impact countless outcomes if just we pay a little more attention to some of those 35,000 choices.
The next time your team meeting generates a choice ask yourselves:
When are we going to start?
Who on our team will take the lead?
How will we measure its success?
Looking to make smarter choices?