23Improving Outcomes

A BIG PART OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITY as a manager is to find ways to do things better—faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. And you need to be successful much more often than you are not. This means you have to always be mindful of opportunities for improvement. It also means you need to be able to execute well.

To use a shooting metaphor, you will not be successful if you shoot before you aim nor if you aim forever and never pull the trigger. You need to aim well, then shoot. Now think about how many more times you would hit the target if you could improve your aim even after you’ve pulled the trigger—the entire time the bullet is traveling from the gun to the target. This is the purpose of intelligent risk taking.

Intelligent ...

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