Pass the Hot Potato

If you are like me, you are being inundated with information on many different fronts.

Email is our work. So are social media, text, calls, etc.

It’s not something to escape from, it’s what you are responsible for. Information flows through you as part of the information economy.

You are in a game of hot potato. And you don’t want to hold on. You want to pass it quickly, just like that old childhood game taught us.

Here’s the one skill that makes you valuable and efficient: Convert everything to an action.

This one skill is harder than it sounds.

Passing the hot potato means you are able to process what is coming at you, clarify it and define what the action is.

Whether you are selling or managing projects, you are in that hot potato game. And your success and value is going to come from how fast you are at converting information quickly and clearly to well defined action.

At its core, this is leadership. And with a flatter structure to our working world in the information age, nothing stops you from leadership. You have to be good, for sure, at finessing and clarifying the ambiguous into something concrete. Then lead yourself and others towards what you define.

As you are working and getting bombarded, think about how fast you get to clarity. Do you let things linger? Are you holding onto the hot potato?

You can get along or, like any serious pro, you attack the problem and change it.

So what are you going to do about this concept for yourself?