LOOKING FOR THE ELECTRIC STARTER – MILE 5

HOW DO YOU HOPE?

I hope I hit the lottery, I hope I feel better tomorrow, I hope I have time to take a bike ride today and I hope I can make it up that hill…

Aristotle said, “Hope is the dream of a waking man.” I like “hope” and I usually like to dream, at least the ones I can remember, but I have to think of “hope” as something that must be connected to “doing”.  If I dream about “hope” or something that makes me feel hopeful and do nothing after waking, all I have is the dream. “Hope” is not something I like to wish for or want to wait for; it’s something I need to go after. Maybe that’s what Aristotle meant by “hope” being “…the dream of a waking man.”

Our “hope” is cures for mitochondrial diseases and in order to make “hope” more than a dream we need to increase our “doers” and focus their “doing” on the right path(s).

Success in reaching our goals comes from preventing our “doing” from getting diluted while still addressing the many needs of our patient, allied health, medical and scientific communities.  I think my “hope” is also to have focused “doers.”

HOPE WITH FOCUS

“If you chase two rabbits, both will escape.” 

So once we have doers we can focus. But what is our focus?  Mission is the strategic goal, the “why” that defines the reason we exist, but mission fails to define the “how.”  We need to define the “how” by adding focus and we can do that by developing very specific ambition statements that will lay the roadmap to mission fulfillment.

HOPE WITH ACTION

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”

Japanese Proverb

Strategic planning interjects action into our vision; it’s the electric charge that transforms ADP to ATP that fuels our cells.  When we lose sight of the strategic goals, if they get short-circuited and diluted, we lose power and momentum, and when we lose power and momentum we lose sight of the “why.”