How was your summer? Almost everyone I have spoken to enjoyed the weather we were gifted, and the great news is that our concerns for ongoing water shortages must surely have abated in the last few weeks!
My summer was a mix of sailing, hill walking and, let’s be honest, a fair amount of working. Sadly, I picked up an injury while training, after a long layoff, because I upped my intensity too quickly – a rooky error. That setback made me reflect that to achieve success we almost always need consistency, generally over many years, whether in sport, personal relationships, music or business.
“Progress takes time. It’s built through consistency, patience, and paying attention to the details. For me, every training session has a purpose, not just to hit a number, but to stay connected to the mountains, to understand how my body’s responding, adapting and to keep learning.”
A great reminder that we need to be purposeful, with specific aims and intermediate goals. Staying focused allows us to understand our talents and available resources, and to adapt within the framework of our capabilities of what we seek to achieve.
Bruno Fernandes, one of the world’s finest No. 10 footballers (when playing in the right system), was recently asked: “What’s the hardest thing to do on a football pitch?” His abridged reply:
“Being consistent. During 90 minutes, you have to be so consistent in everything you do [Otherwise] it slips away from you. Consistent in doing whatever you think is the best for the team, because that has to come first of everything and you can’t do anything without thinking of the team first, there’s nothing more important than the team.
And then it comes to yourself to put yourself in the best position to help the team. And when I’m on the pitch, that’s the thing that I have most in my head – to do my things will help the team to become better. I have to be the most consistent and accurate player I can be in any moment of the game, not with the ball, but also without the ball.”
Bruno reminds us that we must stay alert even when the action is elsewhere, so we can be ready and always available to help each other achieve our common goals (pun intended).
We inherently trust those who are positively consistent, the opposite of what might be described as flaky. As a flaky school team sports player (I lacked any level of talent) I rarely received a pass, I was all too likely to fumble the ball in some way.
The same applies to our businesses and investment decisions: we need consistency. We need to trust the system will provide rewards for risk taking, or saving into our pensions or buying our properties. We need to trust that future taxation and regulation will not derail our plans and result in wasted effort. The more we do not trust government on these issues, the more glue and grit is poured into the system. Some will check out in person, but most dangerously, millions more will check out mentally – and simply stop playing for the team, instead expecting the team to do everything for them.
The times I have experienced real success are when I and those around me have put in the hard yards, built mutual trust and pulled in the same direction – our eyes focused, with a clear shared vision of what we are trying to achieve. Oh, to have a national shared vision!
