Success has requirements.

All models of success that can be replicated and are not just one-off events, or luck, have tacit, as well as explicit success requirements.

There requirements can be drawings, patents, lists of actions, processes, the way to make a great hamburger and shake, a la the MacDonald Brothers, or the recipe for grandma’s favorite pie –> although she may not have written it down.

It dawned on me a number of years ago that any model of success had very specific steps and requirements, for quantity and quality, as well as a customer who wanted to purchase whatever it was at a price that generated enough money to keep the system going, and often created a profit with which to reward the proprietor.

Not all success models are businesses.

Almost anything that is part of a necessary process has requirements.

Reconciling your checkbook, brushing your teeth, and even… Washing your hands.

The key is NOT to confuse a set of success requirements with a happiness model. In almost all cases, happiness and success requirements differ, in all but the few, those 1-5%, who have happiness and success are natural attributes, or the way they are is the way they need to be.

Once you realize that Happiness Is Natural, and success requirements exist, and there will be a design gap or space between them producing tension, you can begin to scaffold that space and those differences, and make life, work, and relationships fun, and full of F-L-O-W.

Helpful Hint: Getting some help with the success requirements is almost always a good idea. Most of us are unsuccessful because, really, we don’t know what the success requirements are, and we often don’t ask for help.  So, we just manage along with great ambiguity, and variation in the behaviors just eat our quality alive. In order to maintain high levels of quality, and usually with that, high customer satisfaction, the requirements of success need to be explicit and accepted by both internal and external customers.

Action Step: Once you determine that a process, system, or model exists, even if it’s not explicitly, then you can begin the process, or at least get someone who can and will, map the success requirements. Once you have those requirements explicit, you can identify which ones make sense for you to do, and which make sense for you to outsource. Once you know what to outsource, reaching out becomes a simple process that will create resilience.