The other day I was invited to give the opening keynote at the strategy offsite of a Fortune 500 company. The speaker after me talked about an internal innovation effort underway at said company – and showed a slide which said:
“It is not complicated. It is just hard.”
I love this – as it is my experience with nearly everything: What seems complicated is often not complicated at all – but rather just a bunch of hard, tedious work. Furthermore, I believe we sometimes use terms such as “complicated” as an excuse for not doing the work (I sure know I did this in the past).
Now, of course: Things are hard for a reason. Moreover, the good news is that if it is hard there typically are not that many people doing it – which gives you a huge competitive advantage.
The path to success is being the one who’s doing what’s hard.
P.S. I will head out for some long overdue vacation tomorrow. As we will be dog sledding in the backcountry of Greenland (long story!), you will not hear from me for the next two weeks. See you all soon – and wish me luck! ;)