Is Your Goose Cooked?

Here’s your shot of weekly inspiration:

“To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.

– Stephen Covey, Author of ‘The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People’.

What?

You probably know the story of the goose that lays the golden egg. Stephen Covey gave it a modern day twist when he included it as a powerful analogy in his best-selling book on effectiveness.

In the story a farmer finds a goose among his livestock that produces golden eggs. Every day it lays another pure golden egg. This is the production.(P) The goose lays golden eggs for a good long time and the farmer becomes extremely wealthy.  After a while, the farmer gets greedy and impatient.

He kills the goose to open it up and get all of the eggs at once. But there are no eggs inside.  In his desperation and greed, he killed his source of gold – his Production Capability (PC) – and now he will have zero production to show for it.

The moral of the story is that without taking care of your production capability (PC), production (P) will suffer. In your business or job, you are the Golden Goose. If the goose is tired, stressed or just off, it’s ability to lay golden eggs will obviously be affected.

That’s why it’s critical to look after the ‘goose’ by:

– Making sure it has a healthy diet

– Ensuring it has plenty of exercise to stay fit

– Have time to switch off and relax

– Having some fun every now & then (more now, than then hopefully…)

You get the meaning.

There are many other ways of looking at this analogy and there are plenty of meanings to be taken from it.  But all that matters is what you take from it.

Food for thought,

Have a great week,

Shane

ps Thanks to everyone for the overwhelming response about the October challenge. If you’re one of the people who said ‘I’m in’, have you given up already? Remind yourself of what is that one thing you’re going to do every day and stay with it!