What is your Catalytic Mechanism?

I have been working on the Entrepreneur’s BattleBook for two years. Or, rather, I’d better say I have been thinking about it for two years. yes, I had done a lot of work on it - pretty much wrote 80% of it, did my research, etc, etc, did what I preached... For the most of it. I did not do the most important thing - I did not ship it. I sat on it for nearly 18 months since I was ready to kick off the alpha program …

Until I pressed ENTER, posted it on a couple of powerful communities and committed to running it. Publicly.

I see this behaviour all the time. I am not the first to write about it. It bugs me to see so many brilliant ideas dying buried in our inaction. Imagine how many people you could have helped had you launched your imperfect idea.

So how do we do that? How do we press ENTER? How do we COMMIT ourselves to taking action on our goals?

By taking the control out of us. By installing a catalytic mechanism - a brilliant concept that Jim Collins described in his Harvard Business Review article - HBR: Turning Goals into Results

So what is a catalytic mechanism?

“Nature” defines catalytic mechanism as “the sequence of elementary reactions by which a catalytic reaction proceeds.” Khan Academy defines catalyst as "a substance that can be added to a reaction to increase the reaction rate without getting consumed in the process"

In the context of accelerating the achievement of goals, catalytic mechanism is an action that creates the conditions, makes it imperative for us to take the actions necessary to achieve our goals and costly if we do not do it.

Pressing Enter on the post, made it very difficult and costly to me to not launch the Entrepreneur’s BattleBook.

Here is another example from Jim Collins. The ambition of Granite Rock, a company selling crushed rock, sand and asphalt, was to provide superior customer service. Here is there catalytic mechanism - if the customers were not happy, they simply did not pay.

"The bottom of every Granite Rock invoice reads, “If you are not satisfied for any reason, don’t pay us for it. Simply scratch out the line item, write a brief note about the problem, and return a copy of this invoice along with your check for the balance.”

So, what is YOUR catalytic mechanism?