Shockproof: How to Hardwire Your Business for Lasting Success

Chapter 8. Pass the Salt

	The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start.
	--Charles Schwab

It's been a week since you downloaded and read your first article about Shockproof businesses.

This interest in high-performing companies was no idle Sunday afternoon surf of the Web. Your exploration was the response to the enthusiastic fallout of your CEO's inspirational and insistent charge to you and your teammates at a company townhall last week. She was thorough and crystal clear about last year's business performance, and announced that job number one for the executive team was to work together to achieve an aggressive set of revenue growth and profitability goals. From the outset, those goals seemed insurmountable and exhausting, and she acknowledged they would be tough to reach:

Reaching these objectives will be difficult, especially in light of the increasingly challenging macroeconomic, social, environmental, and regulatory challenges facing our industry. However, you are a talented group of leaders; each of you demonstrates your commitment every day to overcoming significant obstacles and hurdles.

She added that she was confident you would, together, figure out how to crack the code on your company's flat performance, and reminded you that the complexity in your operating environment was likely to increase. You found it refreshing to hear her straight-talking reflections on the business, the road ahead, and what it would take to achieve ...