There are no shortcuts

My daughter has wanted to go to a production by The Australian Ballet for quite some time (despite the fact she doesn't dance herself) and recently I took her and her friend to the opening night of Swan Lake in Melbourne. Wow! What a performance! What performers!

This magic doesn't just happen out of the blue, professional ballet dancers are not made overnight. There are years and countless hours of dedicated hard work involved in developing the athleticism, technical skill and focus required to deliver what appears to be an effortless display on stage. Training to become a professional ballet dancer takes between 8 to 10 years and preparing for a particular performance takes between 6 to 8 weeks.

The need to prepare, to do the work is an essential principle for success in a leadership role. It may appear to us that success has come easily to others, but we can be certain that to arrive where they have today, they have done the hard yards. The late Kobe Bryant (Amercian professional basketballer) had a legendary work ethic and one of his favourite parables was The Stonecutter's Credo:

"Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before." - Jacob Riis

Imagine...

• Climbing Mount Everest when you've only ever scaled the climbing frame in the kid's playground (and you fell off, but jumped up really quickly hoping the other parents didn't see).

• Running a marathon when the last endurance event you tackled was the school cross country, and you walked with your friends.

• Playing the flute in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra when the last time you played a musical instrument was the recorder at school assembly.....probably "God Save the Queen".

• Sitting a physics exam, and opening the exam paper without ever having studied physics (Thermodynamics? Is that a brand of thermal underwear?)

• Performing triple heart bypass surgery with no medical training, except maybe one semester of biology at university to round out your first year units.

• Becoming the CEO of a large organisation when your only relevant experience has been coaching the kids soccer team, and they're still on the bottom of the ladder.

• Your turn, what's your example?

There are lots of people that we know, have heard of or read about that we admire for their achievements. At least one thing they all have in common is that there was a point in time when they took their first step, they committed. They chose to join a climbing group, started taking music lessons or enrolled in a course. Then they did the work. And they kept doing the work. Then the rewards came. Simple...

"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary." - Vince Lombardi