Jim Collins...

is a very clever man, on all sorts of levels. Not only has he authored some very good books , he's also just produced this timely bit of PR, which has got some great stuff in it.

Most interestingly, Collins asserts that; "What we're experiencing now, get used to it! It's life, and it's the normal life. " Which suggests to us that a lot of what we've been blogging about is going to become consistently important, rather than people thinking this stuff might be relevant for them because of the current circumstances.

Another point that is of relevance to us all relates to thinking long term and keeping a much longer end-game in mind and not simply becoming great at reacting (or overreacting) to the here and now.

The final points to highlight are the following:
"The right people don't need to be managed. The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake.
The right people don't think they have a job: They have responsibilities. If I'm a climber, my job is not [just] to belay. My responsibility is that if we get in trouble, I don't let my partner down.
The right people do what they say they will do, which means being really careful about what they say they will do. It's key in difficult times. In difficult environments our results are our responsibility. People who take credit in good times and blame external forces in bad times do not deserve to lead. End of story. "

We've been talking for a long time about ultimate confidence actually being "knowing that you WILL do what you say you are going to do." Nice to have the thoughts backed up from elsewhere. But to us, more than anything, these examples just show an exemplary focus on performance - if the focus is performance, then a lot of this stuff makes even more sense. Have you got the people around you who understand performance and how to perform in order to get the desired results? It's easy to become an expert and identifying results, talking about them and then explaining failure to deliver those results - it's a lot harder to become a performance expert.

Oh, and thanks to one of our performance focused friends within D&B for highlighting the article to us.