Purpose is an orientation not a destination. Regardless of your goals at any given time, your purpose can guide your actions, inform your decisions and provide meaning to your experiences.

Choose progress over perfection.

Most organizations aspire to pretty similar things. The real challenge is that aspiration statements are typically high level, sometimes cliched, and frequently open to wildly different interpretations.

Every day, in organizations all around the world, good people with noble intentions are wasting enormous amounts of time, energy and money, pursuing aspirations they have little chance of achieving.

Most executives aspire to pretty similar things, so agreeing to shared aspirations is not too difficult. The real challenge is that aspiration statements are typically high level, sometimes cliched, and frequently open to wildly different interpretations.

When it comes to shared team aspirations, usually we’re all super committed; we’re just not sure exactly what we’re committed to, how we’re going to get there, or what my personal contribution is!

All leaders have noble intentions. I’ve never met a leader who aspires to destroy shareholder value, irritate customers and alienate staff.

However uncomfortable it might be to address, a consistently underperforming team member communicates to the rest of your team that you don’t value performance. Even worse, a poorly behaving team member communicates to the rest of your team that your values don’t matter.

The most precious asset you have is discretionary time. If others are wasting your time, you’ve made it ok for them to do so. Your calendar must be a sacred territory.

No matter how good your feedback technique, you will fail if you’re singularly focused on your outcomes and your needs.

Integrity is built one commitment at a time. When you keep your promises, on small things and big things, you separate yourself from most, and acquire a level of influence to match.

Become aware of how often you use absolute adverbs, such as ‘always’, ‘never’ and ‘every time'. When you catch yourself using one, reflect on whether that belief is helping you or hindering you; whether it’s opening up possibilities or painting you into a corner.

When your goals and systems are in conflict, your systems will win. If you want collaboration but only reward individual achievement, you will get competition not collaboration. Make sure your systems are aligned to your goals.

Almost every leader tackles their organization or team’s structure at some point, yet the overwhelming majority of structural changes fail to deliver the desired outcomes. Often times, this is because leaders are applying a structural solution to a behavioral problem.

If you want to see people lose the plot, just mess with their reporting lines. Even the most rational organizational structures land in a sea of human irrationality.

Often times, structural changes fail because leaders are applying a structural solution to a behavioral problem. In doing so, they just move the problems that they were trying to solve for, somewhere else.

Structure is a legitimate lever for leaders to pull, but typically, it is pulled too early and too extensively. Think about it this way, what would happen tomorrow, if the only way work could get done in your organization was through the formal hierarchy? Nothing would happen!

Rather than another restructure, a better place to start – at least initially – are the standards of behavior exhibited by team members. With the right standards, almost any structure can work.

Your structure may be a perfectly rational extension of your aspirations, but remember that human beings are not very rational.

If you lead a team, here’s a simple rule of thumb; if one of them can do something that you’re doing right now, you should delegate that task or responsibility to them. This simple idea, applied well, means that you and your team can grow and develop indefinitely.