Do Things Right Or Do The Rights Things?

Doing things right means dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s, making sure every procedure and function is carefully followed and everything is well organized. As one of my uncles used to say, “if a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing right.” Another expression often used is “a place for everything and everything in its proper place.” Make sure you organize, make sure you don’t forget any application, and make sure you follow through diligently.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you can do things right and totally miss the mark. How so? It’s like the example given by Stephen Covey in his popular book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey relates a story about a company that was hired to clear a path through a jungle. They prepared well in advance, making sure all the tools were in good repair and even making provision for specialists to accompany the team to keep the blades on the tools sharpened on a regular basis. There were cooks and dieticians to ensure the crew was provided nourishing meals so their strength would not give out. Mathematicians were hired to calculate how much work cold be done each day in order to provide an accurate estimate of the completion date. They were doing things right.

Then someone climbed a tree and looked around and said, WRONG JUNGLE. The lesson? You can have all your ducks in a row and operate a business with absolute precision. You’re doing things right. Problem is you’re doing the wrong things. And if you keep doing the wrong things, accurate and precise as they are, you won’t achieve the desired results.

It’s the same way with every aspect of life, including operating an on-line work-from-home business. Too many people spend all their time organizing their office, creating all kinds of email folders, and following every suggestion they read in precise detail, fully believing that this kind of precision will bring success to their endeavor. They have no time left to analyze their business plan to see if they are doing the right things, selling the right products based on their own skills and interests, or promoting the right services based on what they are passionate about. So they settle for something they’re not really interested in thinking that organizational factors will compensate for their lack of passion and they will still be successful. Not so. You can’t sell any product or any service unless you are fully convinced of its value. You might think you can, but your lack of enthusiasm will be evident in ways you do not even realize.

It’s not that we shouldn’t do our best to do things right, keeping our tools sharpened, but doing the right things is a whole lot more important for realizing effectiveness. It takes a different mind set to understand this. I call it the BIG PICTURE. In an on-line business what is more important - managing, maintaining, sustaining, and carefully organizing your auto-response emails to your potential affiliates and your down line, or making sure your understand the components of your on-line business plan so you can communicate it with the confidence that you really understand it for yourself? You always want to make sure you are in the right jungle. If you are not you may make all kinds of progress in staying organized, but not much when it comes to building an effective down line. Think about it. Which is more important to you, and where do you spend most of your time, doing things right or doing the right things?

I had a son who played basketball in college. His sophomore year he was extremely successful making 3-point field goals. In fact his name is still in the School’s record book as having the highest 3-point field goal percentage in a season. He started every game and shot 49.8 percent for the year. Most people can’t shoot that well from behind the arc when they are warming up and not being guarded. Ryan was successful that year because he was doing the right things, staying within the team system and shooting only when he was open or when coming off a solid screen.

The next season he was so confident he decided it wasn’t necessary for him to work within the system of patiently waiting for the open shot or running the play through to completion until he had a solid screen. Consequently many times he was off balance when he shot or a defender was in his face causing him to alter the trajectory of the shot. He thought he was doing things right because he had a knack for making the long-range shot. Needless to say his 3-point field goal percentage dropped dramatically. I remember watching one game when he was so out of sync and at such a loss of confidence that he didn’t score a single point the entire game. His mistake was that he spent all of his practice time concentrating on perfecting his shot delivery technique (doing things right) while neglecting the BIG PICTURE, which is the fundamentals of disciplined teamwork, playing within the system, and consequently doing the right thing.

So what’s more important to the success of your on-line business, perfecting your techniques or focusing on the components of your business plan so you can always be sure you IN THE RIGHT JUNGLE.