Course Correction

You return again and again take the proper course-guided by what?  By the picture in mind of the place you are headed for ...   -John McDonald

So here one week has past since my last update.  New Years intentions blew by the wayside this past week as a multitude of things (influences) were pushed my way.  In years past, I would have thrown up my hands and said, "There goes a perfect year of achieving my goals down the tube.  Well, better luck next year."  But this year I have a different mindset.  "Baby steps Todd!  Baby steps!"  As mentioned in my last post, "Rome was not built in a day;" well neither will the new Todd.   Despite a challenging week with the kids going back to school, late night homework sessions with the kids, unscheduled meetings and best of all a failed hard drive, I moved forward today.  It happened to be the best day in a week!  I got up, worked out (although too tired to push it much), but most importantly I got the muscles and the heart pumped and as a result invigorated the mind.  As always, I felt better half way through my workout that I usually do when I started.  Frog #1 eaten!!  Work was extremely successful as well.  There were a few things that were lingering from last week that were checked off as well!  Frog #2 eaten!  The kids all completed their homework quicker than normal allowing for some great family time together.  Ahhh.  Things are good.

So how could I not update my blog.  Things are great and will continue to be even better tomorrow, even though I'll be limping along without my primary computer and other distractions.

So back to my title.  Whether following Covey's "Sharpen the Saw", Six Sigma/Kaizen's "Continuous Improvement" or Jeff Olsen's "Course Correction" we must always refocus our attention and redirect our compass to true North.  Small stumbling blocks will come.  I guess the idea is to trod them down and make stones of them.  Then when I come around for another lap around the track, they are smaller and slow me down less.  After repeated contact, they eventually become pebbles and actually cushion the step.

A caption to the original image above found here, said the following:

This is the first manned launch of the Saturn V spacecraft, Bill is on top of that rocket with crewmates Frank Borman and Jim Lovell.  The biggest surprise to Bill was the violence of the lateral shaking as those F-1 engines gimballed back and forth to keep the giant rocket pointed in the right direction.  (*Emphasis added.)

Was the lift off smooth?  Was it comfortable?  Of coarse not!  There was continuous course correction even at lift off.  Those huge boosters jockeyed back and forth to keep the rocket pointed in the right direction.  Imagine if they didn't make corrections.  It would have completely missed its mark and even possibly one booster could have overpowered the other eventually steering it back down to the surface of the earth.

Jeff Olsen reminds his readers that the Apollo rocket (an engineering marvel) spends 97% of it's time "off course" between Earth and the Moon and still gets to its destination as planned.  Or to put it another way, for every half-hour the ship is in flight, it is on course for less than sixty seconds.  That would be the same as being on course one day in one month.  So if I have already had my best day today, any other improvements over the month put me over the curve.  Pretty exciting to see that I have already beat the odds and am not working in the green.

Remember the rocket got there.  Followed by many others.  And so can you!  Why?  Because of continuous improvement.