The Power of Consistency

The power of consistency is about discipline. Discipline is our gateway for consistency in work and life. Discipline is the key to a life well lived, goals and hopes realized. In terms of relationships, it pertains to being surrounded by people you can count on. For example, somebody that's reliable, someone you can rely on, your ride or die buddy, that is there for you and you're there for them, reciprocity for sure. That's the power of consistency.

This power I speak of is desirable indeed. The opposite is true as well, it's undesirable if you don't have it. Those without it, you might call them lazy bums. You might call those people without vision, mission or purpose, floating with the wind, not disciplined or other unkind pejoratives.

Not to be preachy, instead of being too harsh with our words and ideology let’s be a beacon of light and comfort for those that require inspiration and a push to live on purpose, intentionality and acquire that thing called discipline. I think every human being on the planet from time to time, may need a dose of inspiration to achieve those elements for success. You know there's no guarantee for absolute success with consistency or not. We just increase our odds of winning the big game of life by harnessing our discipline and power of consistency.

How about consistency in the workplace? A little bit about myself, I’ve been on both ends of the employment spectrum, an entry level employee, mid-level manager and senior level manager. I have even operated businesses as an owner. I have experienced many opportunities and severe challenges in both private and public sectors.

I managed employees, hourly and salaried, independent contractors, skilled and unskilled workers. In hiring them I looked for consistency in their application, experience, background checks and references. During my tenure, this consistency would entail job longevity, attendance records, work ethic, teamwork, good character and a whole host of desirable qualities. My point in expressing my experience, the common denominator in achieving a successful outcome, regardless of business or organization or role I played was simply consistencies in hiring, policies, procedures, personnel management, training, investment ideology, service delivery, quality of products, application of law, accounting, health and safety issues and so forth.

In terms of consistent quality and productivity, it was highly important how we trained employees to do the job we hired them to do. How we delivered the training was important as well. That said, the trainers had to be trained in a consistent manner in order to produce the same high-quality results without any deviation. Even a slight deviation could cause ripple effects in the product outcome and relationship with customers. Quality and reputation would be sacrificed if you had several employees assigned the same work that resulted in various unwanted degrees of end-product quality. If something wasn’t right or met the pre-designated product outcome, we had to redo the work all over again or work-around the issues.

 Let's look at the classic example of McDonald's and its powerful marriage with consistency. The Quarter Pounder in Los Angeles is the same Quarter Pounder in Texas. The same argument is essentially the same on a global perspective i.e.., Germany, Italy etc. The same could be said about the training of their employees and managers. They train their folks, their employees, their franchisees, to cook, clean and serve in a consistent manner, in a pre-made format. It's high quality, consistency around the world. Something can be said for sure of the power of consistency.