Donald Schon of MIT framed the idea that organizations function on two very different types of physical terrain.  There is Mountain Top terrain, the high ground, where senior leadership resides, where the footing is firm and you can look out over it all, where you can survey and gain perspective on the best opportunities and project outcomes, where you can carefully and calmly strategize and plan. 

But of course those plans only have value when they are well executed—when your employees are Performing them to their best purpose—and when we prepare for execution it is useful to consider the terrain where execution occurs can seem to the people there much more like the Swamps, a constantly shifting ground of darkening shadows and unexpected snags that are hiding muck and mud: it’s the land of the immediate demand, to respond to mini-crisis, of shortened views, where unexpected customers’ concerns and demands and distributors’ disappointments and peer pressures challenge the best plans and strategies. 

Successful company leadership understands that an organization’s success will be strongly influenced and perhaps even determined by how well everyone in the organization manages the day in and the day out life in the Swamps, by how they complete the regular and the repeated Performances that will define who you are for your customers.  How employees respond to customers’ complaints or a dealer’s request for a variance to policy or a fellow employee explaining why he can’t provide the needed support can have an even greater impact on your marketing success than an advertising schedule or a sales promotion. 

You know it is important to help your employees navigate these Swamps, for you know Success is created in Each Inch and Every Minute of these decisions.  The question is what is the best navigational tool to offer?  Should you provide a Map, or a Compass?  A Map is only useful when there are visible and well established and predictable landmarks to orient your position, not likely to be found in the Swamp.  A Compass, however, always points North, so it can orient all employees to the proper direction, all of the time.  

When Your Very Best Story is understood by all your employees it serves them as a Compass, and points them North, and turns Each Inch and Every Minute of their progress North into a success, creating hundreds of successes occurring everywhere, all of the time.