IS SUCCESS AN ACCIDENT?

How many people do you know who accidently became a success?  

When this happens, a friend of mine quipped, “It is like Miracle-Gro spread on the seeds of faults.” 

When accidental money, power and fame come our way, we have to be careful not to be the old saying:  

“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.”

Accidents happen to you. Success happens because of you.   

Buckminster Fuller said “Integrity is the essence of everything successful.”

Let’s start to understand this statement by examining the meaning of essence.  

Aristotle defined essence as “the what it was to be.”  

In other words, essence is a unifying constant in unfolding.

Your success or failure is “the what it was to be.”

Helpful –not really!  As my phantom friend mused, “Aristotle is a master of the obvious.”        

Integrity, by my definition, is wholeness and completeness, unfolding and becoming, purity and objectivity.

In simple language – do the right thing, do the next right thing and do things the right way.

Since it is whole, integrity includes both the individual and the collective.

Since it is unfolding, integrity includes individual and team actions and behaviors.

Since it is objective, integrity includes systems and structures as well as leadership and governance.

It then makes sense, I think, to hold that “doing the right thing, doing the next right and doing things the right way” is the critical attribute for success.

If we never try to do the right thing, individually and collectively we can never see our goals.

If we never try to do the next right thing, we never embody the requisite actions and behaviors of success.   

If we never try to do things the right way, we never know align and integrate our systems,  our structures, our leadership and/or  our governance.  

If we are successful then, integrity is the essence of our character individually and collectively.  

Without it, there are no starting points, no journey, and no success.

There are only accidents. 

 Want to learn more?  Contact me at 706-267-0609.  I want to speak to you about integrity and how it can help you and all of us.

Douglas Ross is an advocate for the promotion of integrity as a strategy for performance.  

© 2010 All Rights Reserved, Douglas Ross, Principle Dynamics Consulting Inc.