If you are not familiar with the 80’s comedy and cult classic of Blues Brothers, then you’ve missed a solid piece of my upbringing. The movie lives firmly in the paradox of me not being able to show it to my kids (5,9,11,and14), but absolutely wanting them to be able to quote certain lines with context as they get older.
One of the best quotes from the movie is found when Jake and Elwood Blues are sitting in an old cop car. They are on their way to Chicago to take the next step on their “mission from God.”
Elwood (driver): "It's 106 miles to Chicago we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark and we're wearing sunglasses."
Jake (passenger): “Hit it!”
What happens after this scene in the movie probably caused someone to first use the word EPIC correctly for the first time. What happens next in the movie really has no bearing on my attempt to leverage the aforementioned quote for a unlikely leadership principal. But, I still encourage you to watch the movie. Just not now. And with the understanding that some of you will loose total respect for me after making that recommendation. I digress.
What I love about the quote is that, perhaps to the best of their ability, they attempt to make an assessment of their current reality and then after that, they make the decision to move forward anyway, despite being woefully underprepared for what lie ahead.
But my point lies in the foundational idea that until we make an assessment of where we are, we are in no position to move forward with the work we have been given. Even if your mission is to reunite your R&B band and organize a performance to earn $5,000 needed to pay the property tax on the orphanage, where you were raised.
I really do want the same thing for you and me. Not so much the saving of the orphanage, while I’m all for saving orphanages. More specifically, I want you to make an assessment of “where you are” and let that help shape how you move froward to accomplish whatever mission lay before you.
I can fully understand if you don’t want to take my word for it, but can you really buck up against what Stephen Covey suggests? I think not, less you find yourself in the same wreckage as the 103 police cars smashed in this 150 minute film.
Stephen urges us to identify our values and our personal mission, then set goals to achieve.
But how often do we naively laugh of Mr. Covey’s advice? Try hourly! If you are anything like me, then I am accustomed to simply setting goals and then working hard to achieve them. And while that doesn’t really sound too foreign to most of us, we are really missing the first piece of his advice.
I think the goods are found in going through a process to actually identify our values. But how do you start? What do you do? After you name them, then what?
This is the space I love to occupy as a Leadership Coach. I help really smart individuals and teams understand how
their unique personality, values, and motivations influence how they process leadership at work and in life.
If you’d like to join Jake and Elwood Blues, Stephen Covey, and a growing number of others on the journey of assessing where you are right now and letting that drive you forward, then I’d love to talk with you. This is both who I am and what I do.