WWGD?

As the vox populi said, in no uncertain terms, last November; it’s time for change. And change we got. The finance and investment industry teetered on the brink of collapse for months. The bloated, antiquated mindset of the American auto industry became affordable no more. Wall street, left unchecked for almost a decade, was returned to (albeit mild) supervision. Those are dramatic changes, for sure. Still there is so much more to do.

American business still stumbles and fumbles, making the same excuses (no time, too much on our plate, system conversion, etc.) for being afraid to make decisions. Still succeeding in spite of itself.

But there’s hope, because for those of us willing to go out on the proverbial limb and distinguish ourselves, the potential is more unlimited than ever (he said with purposeful irony). But the approach required is more heroic than most can stomach. We gotta’ go Commando; no, not that kind of Commando; GI Joe style Commando.

So when the wheels stop turning, and things are drifting away, we need to remember this acronym:

WWGD?

What would GI Joe do?

Now it’s impossible to know exactly what Joe would do when he goes three e-mails and two phone calls without a response, but I’ll bet we all know what he wouldn’t do. He wouldn’t keep sending the same wishy –washy e-mails and making the same calls to the same person. Now would he? No! First of all; it’s unlikely Joe would let two contacts pass without changing the energy and demanding a response. So why are we any different? Why do we keep taking the same wishy-washy actions, expecting different results?

It’s not because we’re bad people. It’s not because we don’t want to do the right thing. But one possibility is that we’ve become worktrons, sleepwalking through our daily tasks simply throwing the prescribed action at the designated task.

So we have to wake up. We have to stop before we e-mail again, and ask ourselves; what would GI Joe do?

So while we may not go storming through plate glass windows (although that’s a dream of mine) or open fire on a computer or two, the metaphor works. Because Joe can’t afford to wait for results, and neither can we.

So all we have to do when we hit a roadblock, is remember these 4 letters. WWGD? Um, no. We have to do something too.