These daily excerpts from Randy Kay's book Daily Keys to Success will show you how to grow your potential while expanding your personal success to lead a life of significance. You will benefit from 365 topics with ideas, tools, and tactics for living life fully.
An effective CEO of a successful healthcare company found himself in a tough predicament. A drug that could potentially save thousands of lives from certain death had not performed in six patients who were part of a final stage clinical trial. The CEO had banked the future of his company on the success of this one potential blockbuster. Most of the pharmaceuticals manufactured by his company were sold to raise funds for further research and development in order to expand the potential use of the new drug. Now, the clinical trial appeared in jeopardy because a few patients experienced negligible results from the drug. To save the company, the CEO mastered all of his resources to focus the entire effort on finding a solution to the existing problem. He needed to decide whether to terminate the clinical study, or to continue and find a solution to the apparent failure of the drug. Weeks of late night strategy sessions took place. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent retesting the drug formulation, analyzing data, benchmarking with other studies, and shifting resources to save the company’s future.
Meanwhile, the CFO of the company was frantically trying to account for all of the changes. He decided to use some off-balance accounting to pay for some of the company’s transactions. He also shifted some funds into places that were suspect, but nobody paid attention. The CEO was preoccupied with finding a solution to problems with the clinical trials. One day, the CEO opened his newspaper and was shocked to see a front page article about his company. The reporter detailed a series of what he termed “illegal or at best manipulative” financial practices. Soon thereafter, the federal regulatory agency investigated the company and found some serious discrepancies in the accounting. Three years later the company filed for bankruptcy.
The CEO learned a painful lesson throughout the process. He learned that when we hyper-focus on a problem in exclusion to more important issues, by not covering all the bases, the outcome can be devastating. As it turned-out, the drug was sold and developed successfully. The company, however, failed. And by most accounts, so did the CEO. It’s important to major in majors.
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” ~ Stephen Covey