Darren: Give us value number three, which I believe has something to do with a crockpot. Explain.
Paul: Value three is Process. Process has to do with preparation, taking care of the details; the little things that will add up to big things in the end, and focusing on the journey, not the end result.
One of my favorite quotes about process is by Muhammed Ali. He says, “The fight was won long before I entered the ring.” The reason he was so successful…the reason he won so many fights…the reason he achieved excellence in his sport was not because of what he did inside the ring, but what he did outside the ring. It was his process – his training process, his competitive process, his conditioning process, that was better than his opponents.
“Crockpotting,” as you eluded to Darren, is a term I heard John Maxwell use many years ago to describe his process of developing leadership skills; basically he was saying becoming a leader takes time, like cooking a meal in a crockpot. I believe excellence also takes time. We live in a world of instant gratification, what I call a “microwave society.” We are impatient. We think excellence can be texted, tweeted, or found on Facebook. We have a tendency to microwave the process. And when you microwave something, it doesn’t taste very good. Working toward excellence is a process. It takes time and patience, and it must be crockpotted.
