Healthy bodies gain their strength and stamina through a balanced intake of nutrients, exercise, and sleep. Nutritionists have raised our awareness of physical health by focusing our attention on what we ingest and do each day, often in the context of Minimum Daily Requirements. MDR’s make the achievement of healthy living easier by allowing us to manage this one day at a time.

The corporate body also requires a balanced intake of nutrients in order to sustain and grow a viable company. These include a pipeline of prospects and customers, a responsive customer service function, leadership direction, ongoing innovation, and problem avoidance and resolution, just to name a few. The problem is that tackling all of this is like attempting to eat an entire buffet in one sitting. There’s too much to do, not enough time to do it, and too many distractions and competing priorities as a result ofCorporate ADD (Attention Divided Dilemma).

Leaders and staff make healthier contributions when they have their own versions of MDR’s. These distill down the overwhelming amount of responsibility into meal-sized portions of work that are more easily digestible in one sitting. For example, a common corporate recipe for an MDR includes:

• Achieving two or three priority results
  For example, a leader moving two or three projects forward one step towards completion or a salesperson gaining two commitments for sales meetings with viable prospects.
• Completing key inputs to the system
  Common inputs include data entry of a minimum number of records, managers updating important reporting systems, or recruiters conducting at least a minimal number of quality interviews each day.
• Personal development
  Such as 15 minutes of practice handling objections with a colleague, 30 minutes of online study, or reading one chapter in a business-related book.

Health happens when we make it happen, and that’s where MDR’s come in at home and at work. Rather than just hoping good things happen, we can make sure they do by doing our parts one day at a time.

This Week’s Radical Accountability Activating Action: Work with your team to establish MDR’s for each role. Adjust these after an initial three-month trial period.