Up and At Em!

Up and At Em!

Starting with your feet beneath you

As a young boy and into my teen years I was awakened each morning to the same ritual.  Dad would open my bedroom door, turn on the light and exclaim, “up and at em, put your feet on the floor”.  My brothers and I would groan and we fell out of bed.  Often my brothers would “cheat” the system and simply contort their bodies from the torso down.  They’d do this so they could remain laying on the bed while their feet literally touched the ground.  It was more difficult for me, as I had the top bunk of the bed and couldn’t accomplish the same level of obedience as my brothers.

The end result was the same for my brothers and I, there is simply no way that a person can remain asleep while their feet are on the cold linoleum floor.  Without knowing it, Dad was teaching us the fundamental practice of any successful person: “put your feet on the floor”.

There is a term in business we are all familiar with; “fly by the seat of my pants”.  This term describes many business people today.  These are the people who sit down at their desk at 8am and have no idea what the day has planned for them.  These are they who haven’t calendared time for intellectual advancement.  These are the people who are generally late for meetings and often unprepared to boot.  

Contrasting these two business practices that are equally prevalent (feet on the floor vs. seat of the pants) we learn the basic truth of success and control.  If we take time to plan our day with our feet underneath us, we find success in our day, we manage our schedule, we control our outlook and ultimately our success.  Alternatively we’ll let our day manage us, moving to and from whatever the day inflicts upon us, finding some success but unable to achieve consistent and repeatable success.

There is another term I’ve learned to describe this: Either you can Act or be acted-upon.  So, I’ve learned to start each day/project with my feet safely on the floor so I can have the foundation to make the appropriate decisions.

DuVall J Laws is Director of Information Technology at Partners In Leadership and a member of HIMSS.  He also earned his MBA in Technology Management