Endgame: Part 1

As yet another fiscal year comes to a close it’s time to look at the mirror and figure out what business leadership is all about. Hopefully by this time you’ve figured out that it’s all about you and what you do to move your business forward.

This is one of the most critical parts of running a business, the ability to eat the humble pie and admit what you were wrong about, face the disappointments and hope to learn from the mistakes. Most people don’t have the balls guts to do this because if you dig hard enough you’ll find plenty of regrets, even if you’ve had an amazing year. However, if you live to compete then this is about as critical as it gets.

As I asked in the previous post, who manages the leader? Here is the exercise I put myself through each year because… well… it’s as simple as it’s my money on the line, it’s my name on the papers and I’m generally the one doing the apologizing.

Either way, look at 2008 this way: good or bad, you’ve got 7 days to figure out what you didn’t do perfectly so you can avoid the same issues in 2009.

Part 1: The Admission

Part 2: The Promise

Part 3: The Killing Spree

Part 4: The Humble Pie

Part 5: The Community

Part 6: The Wishful thinking

This stuff relies on the premise that you actually care.. Lot’s of people don’t and I suppose that’s just fine. If you think that everything you have is here by the grace of gods will then by all means go pray your problems away.

On the other hand, the first step in overcoming problems is admitting that you actually have problems caused by mistakes you should be able to control.

Nobody is perfect, as you’ll see over the next few days.