Make a List

...think through the intersection between what was important and what was actionable.  

Making a list is baby-steps management.  Pick up any book on self help, on organizing yourself, or on the nuts and bolts of running an office or organization, and it will proffer this advice: "make a list."  Carnegie's benefit was not from the list itself.  It came from actually constructing the list.  The idea that people have goals and automatically chase after them like some kind of homing missile is plain wrong.  The human mind s finite, its cognitive resources limited.  Attention, like a flashlight beam, illuminates one subject only to darken another.  Given Fredrick Taylor's assignment, some people might have listed the bills they had to pay or the people they needed to see.  One can only guess at Carnegie's list.

Taken seriously, Taylor's injunction was not simply to make a list of important issues.  It was not simply to make a list of things to do.  And it wasn't to make a list of what might be important.  Taylor's assignment was to think through the intersection between what was important and what was actionable.  Carnegie paid because Taylor's list-making exercise forced him to reflect upon his more fundamental purposes and, in turn, to devise ways of advancing them.

ACTION POINT: Reflect upon the important and actionable issues that will advance your business.