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Quitting Time
By Jeremy | April 23, 2007
Question: Other than hindsight, how does someone know when it’s time to quit? Answer: It’s time to quit when you secretly realize you’ve been settling for mediocrity all along. It’s time to quit when the things you’re measuring aren’t improving, and you can’t find anything better to measure. Smart quitters understand the idea of opportunity cost. The work you’re doing on project X right now is keeping you from pushing through the Dip on project Y. If you fire your worst clients, if you quit your deadest tactics, if you stop working with the people who return the least, then you free up an astounding number of resources. Direct those resources at a Dip worth conquering and your odds of success go way up. What’s the worst time to quit? When the pain is the greatest. Decisions made during great pain are rarely good decisions.And this one about organizational honesty.
Busy people are always looking for shortcuts to speed things along. But truth lies at the foundation of a successful organization, and you can’t lay a solid foundation when you cut corners; otherwise, the whole structure is in danger of collapse. But if your culture now includes a tolerance for lying, you must be explicit about changing your culture and what the “whole truth†must include. And then you must patiently and persistently inch your way toward it, in practice.
Topics: guy kawasaki, integrity, john liotti, leadership, quitting, resiliency, seth godin | No Comments »
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