Leaders Must Have Discernment
I’ve started a new book this week entitled, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. In his book, McKeown teaches readers to discern what is absolutely essential, and challenges us to then eliminate everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter. Not everything is important. Hard work has value; but when you are primarily a hard worker, there is a ceiling to the value you produce. At some point, it doesn’t pay off to just keep working hard on all the things, to keep saying ‘yes’ to all the things. At some point, if you care to grow, you will understand that by doing less, you will be able to produce more.
You all know that I am a big fan of thinking; I think all leaders should carve out and protect regular time to think. And I particularly love McKeown’s use of the word discernment – I pray for that every morning. We have to be able to discern good from evil in our lives, and be courageous enough to say ‘yes’ to good every single time and ‘no’ to evil every time. If we carry that same level of discernment into our professional lives, we will experience how less (but more thinking) is one of the most important things we could do as a leader.
There are so many examples of when less is more in business. I love the Pareto Principle, that 20% of our efforts usually produce 80% of our results; which make the other 80% of our efforts much less important. In reading this book, I have also learned about Joseph Moses Juran, one of the fathers of the quality movement. He expanded upon Pareto’s Principle and called it “the Law of the Vital Few.” He asserted that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems. If you’re a fan of Formula 1 Racing, you’ve seen this Law in action. Warren Buffet famously said, “Our investment philosophy borders on lethargy.” Meaning, he makes very few investments in a year and just holds them for a long time. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Buffet is a great example of how sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.
McKeown shares that “the overwhelming reality is: we live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable.” John Maxwell has said, “you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.” These individuals are all huge producers of value and provide such powerful examples that we are forced to acknowledge: less but better puts you on the path to exponential productivity. Or, said another way: do less so you can spend more time thinking so you can properly discern between what is important and what is not actually important.
What are the vital few things you could do to produce value versus the many things you do that just keep you busy?
This mindset of being an essentialist is the core argument of this book. An essentialist thinks almost everything is unimportant. Your job as a leader then becomes distinguishing between what is actually important and what’s not, so you can keep your organization working on the vital few things that actually move the needle, while staying away from the busy work that just keeps people with their heads down and not actually producing a lot of value.
How much time do you spend considering and weighing the vital few important versus the unimportant many?
Do you know what actually moves the needle in your organization, in your industry? Or are you just busy, saying ‘yes’ to everything?
The impact of our actions can truly be exponential when we are focused on the right things.
I challenge you to think through how you can reduce all of the commitments you make so you can put 100% of your effort into the things that will propel your business growth exponentially. And all the while, I will continue to pray for my family, for my team, and for all of you to have discernment between good and evil every day.
Written by Schuyler Williamson
REALTOR. Leader. Veteran. Business Owner. Investor.
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God Bless!
~ Schuyler Williamson