FranklinCovey Consultant Blogs | Durelle Price | Agency Missions

The “Perfect” Whirlwind

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

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Every day the perfect leaperfectwhirlwindder spends the last few minutes of the day planning the next. Each hour broken down into perfectly detailed steps toward a series of well-defined goals. In a perfect world, you wake up with the energy and resources to ascend those steps and embrace your goal. However, much to your disappointment the world is not perfect and neither are you.

If you wear various hats as I (and most of us) do, you often find yourself defined by the roles associated with those hats and validated by the execution of your goals. I have strived to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect friend, the perfect consultant, the perfect student, the perfect… Until I have found myself in the “perfect” whirlwind. At times, I couldn’t see for all the projects and commitments whirling around me. It appeared I’d forgotten how to say “no.” For some reason in my life, I equated saying “no” with failure, or at a minimum inadequacy.

Perhaps the same is true for you in business. You strive for perfection, say “yes” to every goal, and find yourself caught in a roaring whirlwind-unable to progress-feeling as if you are failing. To fight the whirlwind, you must be proactive rather than perfect, and you need discipline. In fact, what you need is four disciplines-The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

In my role as a community mobilizer, the goals are substantial and impact many people and organizations. Facilitating the 4 Disciplines process, the first thing we do is identify 2 or 3 Wildly Important Goals (WIG’s). These WIG’s drive everything we do. To reach those sometimes lofty goals such as lowering gun violence, or minimizing family violence, the laser focus and dedicated cooperation of many people and organizations is vital.

Identifying commonalities in agency missions and aligning representatives from those agencies on one collective goal is quite a task. However, when the 4 Disciplines are applied, it is accomplished and the results can be astounding. Take the city of Aurora, IL for example. They partnered with FranklinCovey and identified their number one WIG as lowering gun violence by 20%. Every member of each city department focused all their energies on that WIG and voila! Eight months later, not only did they lower gun violence by 21%, but gun-related homicides were reduced by 75%! They indeed conquered the whirlwind.

Another community partnered with FranklinCovey to strengthen families and improve the welfare and future of their children. We customized curriculum for The Jacksonville Network for Strengthening Families which became The 7 Habits of Successful Families in Jacksonville, and the network deployed it throughout Jacksonville, FL. Having successfully served their goal of over 3000 families now, their methodology and results has become the model for similar initiatives across the country.

Avoiding the whirlwinds takes effort, but is easier when you employ this system of disciplines. I was privileged to be there at the beginning of both of these city initiatives and can attest to the courage and determination that Aurora’s Mayor Tom Weisner, and Jacksonville’s Pete Jackson and Robyn Cenizal demonstrate daily as they lead these legacy-building projects.

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