The Missing Ingredient

photo: Chempedak Fruit Tree @ Botanical Garden, Singapore (2009)

A lot of people know the “what” of the work. They know the facts, the processes, what to do, and even how to do the work itself. They know as much, or more, about it than others. But, they do not produce impressive results. They are not the huge performers. You may even have wondered that about yourself, as well. You know what to do, and you work hard at it, but others for some strange reasons seem to do more or better than you. Sometime you do not understand why... Henry Cloud, Integrity (p. 141-2)

What is the missing ingredient? What could you be doing differently to make it work? Why do the ones who do better do better? Certainly there are various factors to bring good results, some outside our control. Markets change, economies fluctuate, and other things happen. Sometime it just seems indecipherable why success comes to one person, project, product, or enterprise and not another. (p. 142)

But over the long haul, luck and flukes aside, there is a method to the madness. There are “ways” that high producers, those who get results, operate. There are patterns to the ways that they behave, think, and relate that they tend to have in common. And just like everything else we have seen so far, these have more to do with the ways they are “glued together” as people than “what they know.”

It has to do with the character that meets the demands of reality. People who are constructed in certain way tend to get more results and work in different ways from those who just “work hard”... In over 20 years of consulting with leaders and organizations, I have observed that most people know what to do in their field. But, the ones who do well, do the what in a different way from those who don’t, and it has to do with who they are as people than what they know.

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All things being equal, character wins! (p. 142).

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