My thoughts led me recently to think about how I’ve grown up in organizations.  Here’s my sense  of that evolution:

1. I learned what to do.  In my first few years a lot of my energy was invested in learning the skills & techniques needed to do my job — and then trying to get better at it.  Later on,  It  took an MBA to teach me to understand problems, create strategies, and create a plan to reach a goal or solve a problem.  As I practiced what I learned, I also learned that no matter how much you crunch numbers,  a strategy is still an exercise in hope.
2. I learned how to do it.   It took experience, some hard knocks, and a lot of guidance from kinder and more mature individuals to teach me that it’s also about the people implementing the strategy.  So it’s not just about what you do but how you do it too.
3. I realized it was important to get in touch with why I do what I do.  It took listening to gentle (sometimes nagging) movements within & some major mistakes (repeated a couple of times) to get in touch with why I do what I do & have the courage to talk about it.  Some have called this motivation & recently, passion.  Aside from finding an internal motivation, the whys in our lives often color the choices of what we do and how we do it.   The whys are tied to the significant experiences of our lives that have made us who we are.  Often that is what we share with people through the course of our lives.
4. And just recently, I’m learning that it is important to say (even in the classic against all odds scenarios) “We can do this.”

There is power in belief.  It’s not that the world will bend to the brilliance of strategy, excellence of execution, and power of passion.   There is a sense of letting go of the hoped for results; and a sense of faith that there are somethings that are larger than us.  And because of that, no matter what happens, all shall be well.