A Bias Towards Action

In 1982, McKinsey consultants Tom Peters and Robert Waterman were given unlimited budget, no clear direction, and one assignment: figure out what makes companies great.

The result was the book In Search of Excellence.
(Confession: unless you’re out of melatonin and need a sleep aid, or really into stats and facts, I wouldn’t recommend reading it cover to cover… just grab the cliff notes 😂).

Buried in it is a gem of a quote that I love;
Successful businesses have a bias toward action.

All the planning in the world nets nothing if you don’t move. Even tiny steps, done consistently, start to compound.

Keith Cunningham puts it a little more color behind it in The Road Less Stupid:
“Ordinary things, consistently done, produce extraordinary results.”

The ordinary things part is something that people forget. Extraordinary is almost always built on the ordinary, just relentlessly executed.

Excellence isn’t a grand gesture. It’s showing up, delivering reliably, stacking small wins until they add up to something bigger.

It’s just doing the work.

And if you’re feeling down on yourself, James Clear gives us a great reminder..

“If you want to make a masterpiece, you have to be willing to create a little garbage along the way.”

It’s all just part of the process.

Start. Ship. Repeat.

🔗 Let’s connect: linkedin.com/in/scottschoeneberger.