Discipline

I have read a lot of management books talking about discipline, but I don’t think I really understood the concept until now. I’ve always thought that discipline is like.. having good habits, but now I realize that’s just totally wrong.

Simply put, discipline is about saying no.

Let’s take a look at an example. Here’s an undisciplined schedule:

[8:00-9:30] Cold calling
[9:30-10:00] Internal meeting
[10:00-10:30] Another internal meeting
[10:30-11:00] Yet, another internal meeting
[11:00-12:00] Doing some reports, analysis, and emails
…

The day ended with 9 sales calls.

Let’s take a look at another example:

[8:00-11:00] Cold calling
…

The day ended with 41 sales calls. In addition, I was able to do all those internal meetings, analysis, emails, and reports using the same number of hours. WOW!

As a CEO, my primary job is to sell, sell, sell. Anything that is not sales related during the core hours (the time when prospects are reachable via phone) should be deferred. This is discipline.

You may say that this is just better time management. But I have to tell you that it’s extremely tempting when one of your colleagues asks to meet with you for some important issues that cannot wait — you don’t want to disappoint that person and you want to show support, so you will just give in to that temptation and take the meeting. This has nothing to do with better time management. This is about saying no for the right reason!

At the end of the day, what matters is the overall success of the company. And I have learned that being extremely discipline is the key to that path.

[special thanks to Vik and Pankaj for helping me understand this].

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