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CAPACITY

Create Laser Focus, Boundless Energy, and an Unstoppable Drive in Any Organization









Chris Johnson

Matt Johnson
















Wiley Logo











To the future.

And to Eze, who inspires us to build capacity!

Introduction: Into the Future

Pause for a moment and reflect on your station in life. How did you end up where you are now? Each of us follows a different path to the present, and we are never quite sure what the future holds. Our journeys through life are paved with hard work, luck, and a handful of critical moments. But if you really think about it, what influenced your work ethic and opportunities the most? As much as we like to think that we alone determine our outcomes in life, it’s simply not the case.

Despite everything we do to forge our own identities, we are all destined to become a little, or a lot, like our parents. Author Neil Postman once wrote that children are “the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”1 That realization may still be unsettling for a lot of us, but instead of fighting the inevitable, let’s embrace it.

Just look at your family tree. Go back three generations. It’s safe to say that your great-grandfather toiled away in a factory or field for a tiny fraction of your current salary. Some may not consider his life much of a success. But like every parent before and after him, his definition of a fulfilled life wasn’t measured by material wealth, social status, or even his own welfare. He was driven by an innate desire we all share—to help create a better world for his children and the next generation.

Survival does not fuel ambition. Game-changing ideas don’t revolutionize the world without a fundamental belief that we can build a better future. That unwavering faith in the promise of tomorrow is the ultimate cure for the human condition.

We all want the same thing—whether you are a millennial or baby boomer. We want to leave a lasting legacy to honor those we love most and to inspire those to come. We are all daughters and sons trying to live up to our parents’ examples. So, let me tell you a story about my father and why he inspires me.

My father, Chris Johnson (coauthor of this book), took an unorthodox route to success. While attending Western Michigan University from 1976 to 1980, he spent each summer working either at the assembly line at Oldsmobile or in construction. After graduating with a degree in business and economics, and filling out hundreds of applications for job openings, he still had not landed the dream job to which he aspired. The economy in Michigan was extremely soft, so he went back to Oldsmobile, installing bumpers for an entire year. With car sales dipping well below profitable projections, he and dozens of his colleagues were laid off. Despite the sudden upheaval, he didn’t waste any time pounding the pavement for his next gig. After a couple of months, he was hired by Butternut Bread as a route salesperson, delivering white bread and Dolly Madison cakes and cupcakes. His workday was certainly not a piece of cake! It was a grueling, sleep-deprived, 80-plus-hour-a-week job that started around 2:30 a.m. and ended around 5:00 p.m. After a year of grinding it out with Butternut Bread, Dad went to work for Frito-Lay—delivering Doritos, Ruffles, Cheetos, Munchos, and Funyons as a route salesperson. Frito-Lay was a much better job, with normal hours and the opportunity for advancement. After a year with Frito-Lay, he knew this type of work wasn’t his calling and would never challenge him to be the best version of himself. He decided to go back to graduate school at Michigan State University in the exercise physiology program. During his first semester, his wife Paula (my mom) announced she was pregnant, and a few months later they found out they were going to have twins. He spent the next four years working full time for Frito-Lay, raising his new twins, and finishing his graduate degree from Michigan State University. He always had a passion for health and fitness and soon found his gift to share with the world: being the prevention guy!

Dad went to work for a hospital-based wellness center after receiving his master’s degree. Early on he was recruited by Dr. Barry Saltman, a family practice physician, to help design and implement a training facility for high-risk patients. This group was littered with all types of chronic illness—diabetes, morbid obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer, and heart disease, just to name a few. If patients had an extreme health problem or were on the verge of irreversible damage, they were sent to the Well Aware Health and Fitness Center to work with my dad. These life-altering experiences forged a wealth of knowledge in the health and fitness space that built the foundation for his successful future.

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Chris with his family: wife Paula, twins Matt and Kristen.

In 1990, Dad was chosen to pioneer a personal training program for the Michigan Athletic Club, one of the largest hospital-based health clubs in the world. This program went on to become one of the world’s first million-dollar personal training programs. During his 16 years at the Michigan Athletic Club, he authored four books and created his signature Food Target program. He has coached over 20,000 hours of individual training and has given keynote addresses to over 500,000 people. In 2006, he launched On Target Living, a health and performance company that works with organizations around the globe. He is the epitome of walking the walk when it comes to self-improvement and has truly changed thousands of lives for the better.

I have learned a lot from my dad, but hands down the most valuable lesson from my dad is how to be curious: “Ask better questions and you’ll get better answers.” That mantra has guided him through seemingly insurmountable adversity. We want you to be curious while you read this book. Ask the tough questions and strive to see if there is a better way. Dad wasn’t the smartest or most talented, but boundless curiosity and hard work paved his road to success. I have met a lot of different people with exemplary talents and abilities, and one thing is for certain—I’ve never seen or met someone with more capacity than my father! Thirty years ago, he didn’t intentionally say, “I must expand my capacity”; he just did it.

Searching for Success

Before explaining what capacity is and why it’s needed, let’s talk about something everyone is chasing and probably thinking about right now: success. We all want success.

However, we all define success differently. Some of us just want a high-paying job or to introduce a profitable product. Many of us want to forge meaningful relationships and raise well-rounded children. However you define success, you want to look back on your legacy and smile.

If success is what we crave, then failure is what we avoid. Failure hurts. Failure is scary, yet it’s the best way to create meaningful change. Failure shapes us into the people we want to be. J. K. Rowling was unemployed and depressed when she finally finished Harry Potter. Michael Jordan was cut from his varsity basketball team, and Abraham Lincoln failed at countless ventures before becoming president. The foundation of this book was built on the lessons learned from overcoming failure.

Every article or video on success seems to unlock a magical secret to attaining it. It is very interesting to watch people search for this one easy trick. They seem to play whack-a-mole with various schemes, without any clear process or plan for applying new strategies to their own lives. Is it possible that we are overlooking part of the equation? Are we overthinking a simple process? Is there even a process at all?

Like in martial arts, in life there is a fundamental truth we can’t avoid: Most of us start as white belts. Maybe some start as green belts, but nobody starts as a black belt. Every dojo is built on the foundational belief that there’s no one true way to achieve the highest level of mastery. You must ultimately build your capacity—emotionally, physically, and psychologically. We will show you exactly how to do this. We know you want to be successful. We know you want to have a successful organization. Capacity is the secret to success; the organizations and people with the largest capacity always perform better in the long run.

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The Secret That Is Overlooked

Capacity is the ability to use every skill and resource at your disposal.

—Dr. Phil Nuernberger, author Strong and Fearless

We believe this book can be the catalyst for our two most insatiable desires: success and happiness.

Every leader and organization recognizes the power of professional development and skills training. Without evolving people, processes, and products, organizations will not survive changing demands and fierce competition. Without growth, market share begins to erode until there’s no bottom line left to protect. And yet, despite heavy investment in ongoing development, most organizations fail to see the kind of cultural transformation they desperately want. The road to transformation is littered with the carcasses of once-great giants who spent millions upon millions on professional development. Employee engagement is at an all-time low. Productivity is decreasing rapidly with endless e-mails, meetings, and electronic distractions diminishing focus, stifling creativity, and slaughtering innovation.

Look around your office—is this the best it can be? What can your organization do to thrive and prosper? What if it were possible to improve the organization one person, one team, and one leader at a time—not by simply teaching more or turning up the volume, but by plugging into a deeper source?

Our capacity for change is limitless. Our ancestors have shown us what’s possible if we all unite under the universal theme of human progress—creating a better future built on an expanded capacity for change. We are a resilient species that plows the fields of failure in order to plant the seeds of change. We will show you how to capture the hearts and minds of your people and provide a clear, compelling, and actionable path toward transformation and prolonged prosperity. It’s time to look inward and unleash your full potential.

What Is Capacity?

We have all used the word capacity in our daily lives to describe maximal storage or effort. What’s the towing capacity of my pickup truck? What’s my lung capacity? Let’s look at the formal definition of capacity:

ca·pac·i·ty

  1. The maximum amount that something can contain
  2. The ability or power to do, experience, or understand something

Here is how we want you to think about capacity:

There is no question that some people are simply born with more talent or skills than others. One of the hallmarks of a fully realized life is optimizing your innate abilities and applying them with maximum efficiency. We have all witnessed the often-tragic trajectories of child protégés. They were destined for stardom and had every conceivable advantage to pave a surefire road to glory. Then out of nowhere, a lesser talent makes a bigger impact than the protégé ever dreamed! This book isn’t about the merits of talent over training or taking shortcuts to success. Capacity is about asking the tough questions that lead to better choices and expanding your body’s ability to contain more input without sacrificing the quality of your body’s output (Figure 1.1).

Illustration shows smaller box labeled as ‘Current’, placed within larger shaded box. Region outside shaded box labeled as ‘potential’.

FIGURE 1.1 Expanding your container. We must all expand our containers.

What follows is a list of a few names you might recognize. There is no question that all of these people have talent—in many cases a ton of talent—but we think you would all agree there are graveyards full of talented people with unrealized aspirations and dreams.

◼ ◼ ◼

Think of all the talented people who fell short in life. Many just relied on their talent and skill, without growing their capacity to do more with it. Now think of the seemingly talentless person who changed the world by consistently growing their capacity and refusing to settle for less.

What Tom Brady, LeBron James, Captain Sully, Arianna Huffington, and Sara Blakely possess—what separates talented athletes, people, and organizations—is the desire for continuous improvement. These folks build a rock-solid foundation and carefully construct a process of incremental improvements on top of it.

Resilience is a common attribute used to describe countless people who have shaped our world for the better. Here is something to think about—the definition of resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from adversity or strife. Toughness is the great equalizer. Some people are born with natural abilities, talents, and skills, but capacity must be earned and managed.

Most Successful People and Organizations Have Two Things in Common

First, you must develop a growth mindset—small incremental steps for continuous improvement without succumbing to the arrogance and complacency of immediate success.

Second, nobody starts out being great—they all slowly build their ability to be great. Everyone has similar raw materials, but the game changer for almost everyone is the ability to build capacity. We are at our best when we are growing and learning so we can accomplish the seemingly impossible! Growth is the most rewarding part of a fully realized life!

There are many books on the secrets and shortcuts to success. These can be very entertaining and a great way to provoke new thoughts and shatter preconceived notions, but no amount of new ideas will come to fruition without working hard. Building capacity is not easy. You never took shortcuts to achieve all you have up to this point and neither should a system that sustains it.

Here are just a few shortcuts we hear and see every day:

  • Get rich quick
  • Take an energy drink to increase energy
  • Lose weight without exercise
  • Improve IQ without learning
  • Take a magic pill and heal
  • Enhance sex drive without building relationships
  • Hire talent to be the best organization

Many organizations and their people may lose hope over time and give up. This can happen for multiple reasons, but if you boil it down, in most cases it comes down to losing capacity!

  • Capacity to focus
  • Capacity to lead
  • Capacity to innovate
  • Capacity to create
  • Capacity to learn
  • Capacity to grow
  • Capacity to think
  • Capacity to breathe
  • Capacity to move
  • Capacity to love

Do you feel like your organization and your people are expanding their capacity? Changing behavior can be extremely difficult, and it begins with self-awareness.

Ask yourself, “How much am I willing to devote to improving my skills and increasing my capacity for greatness?” “How much time is my organization spending on increasing capacity?” If you resolve to put in the hard work and follow a process through despite all obstacles, you will prevail over any challenge.

Here are a few questions to ask before embarking on this journey:

Organizational Capacity

  1. Does your team feel or perform like they are overwhelmed?
  2. Is stress a noticeable problem throughout your culture?
  3. Have you had cutting-edge innovation in the last 3, 6, or 12 months?
  4. Is there sustainable and profitable revenue growth?
  5. Are you giving back to charities or the community?
  6. Is your organization the number-one source of positive influence in your employees’ lives?

Individual Capacity

  1. Are you currently learning something new?
  2. Do you have clear focus on your purpose?
  3. On a scale of 1–10, is your energy level 8.5 or higher most days, hours, and minutes?
  4. Do you have time for family, friends, or volunteering?
  5. Does the thought of doing more upset or frustrate you?
  6. Do you feel you are fulfilling your purpose?

Now that we’ve done a little soul-searching, it’s time to get started. There are thousands of self-help books, consultants, and programs on how to accelerate growth, innovate, and increase profit margins. Many organizations and their people are doing tremendous work. The real key to thriving in today’s economy is making better choices about building an inexhaustible supply of energy to tackle any problem in the most efficient way.

We can’t simply upload the extra capacity and push play. Humans aren’t built like machines. Human capacity must be learned, practiced, and developed. It all starts with changing the mindset of organizations from the top down to create and sustain unstoppable growth fueled by healthier and happier people. Albert Einstein once stated, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” Intelligence and performance are really two sides to the same coin. Imagine the possibilities if we all had greater capacity to accomplish more without having to learn a new skill or language. We only need to focus our attention inward before we can radiate greatness outward.

Capacity is your secret weapon to winning the performance war.

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