GOT GRIT?

As an all-season Girl Scout camper, I always assumed "grit" was the kind of road gravel, sand and rocks that somehow got into my hiking boots as we traversed country roads and hiking paths.

It was only as a camp counselor that I became aware of grit's second definition--- pluck, determination matched with common sense and fortitude. I sensed the awareness came from experiences---facing unexpected rapids while guiding twenty young women on their first 10 day canoe trip, preventing bears from stealing our food, using the latrine shovel to cut a snake in half. Those things took grit, and helped me realize that grit was really a good measure of a leader's strength and ability to execute effectively.

Have you gotten fed up with the strategy vs. execution battle? Thinking about grit brings it to light in a whole different way. Jonah Lehrer, a contributing editor at Wired and author of How We Decide, had a piece in the Boston Globe on the issue of grit versus intelligence. After citing a lengthy stream of research, he concluded there are numerous proof points that grit (think: getting the idea into action via execution) accounts for success more than intelligence (think: creating the strategy) does.

Does it matter? The fight itself may seem academic (it often does to me). But in reality, there's not much point in thinking either/or. Great ideas, great strategies are key, but for any of our businesses to move forward, we must map out practical action steps and have the resilience that's required to take those steps. Otherwise a great strategy means nothing. You must think both/and.

Through one of my favorite authors, Rick Mauer, who wrote Beyond the Wall of Resistance, I learned about an assessment Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, created to predict who "had the stuff" to survive at West Point.

By logging on to grit assessment, you can use her quick tool to determine your own levels of grit and perseverance. Rick's belief, given what he calls the "commonsense nature" of Duckworth's assessment questions, is that this tool might help us predict or "at least hazard an educated guess" about which leaders are most likely to deal with growth and change successfully, from planning through results.

Not being an academic, I can only share my interpretations of her research. Three key points:

At least some part of grit comes from how we approach all of our life experiences, not just our work. It's really our level of purposeful, continuous commitment to certain types of activities.
Interestingly, grit was shown to be a better indicator of success than either college grades or IQ.
Finally, her research appeared to suggest that as leaders in our families, workplace, and communities, we should encourage others to anticipate failures and roadblocks when executing plans and recognizing that success requires persistence and discipline.

What could grit do for execution of your organization's growth strategy? Why not check her assessment out? Bet it could make for some great conversations.