Thinking for Success

With all the focus on surviving the current economic environment, few are thinking about thriving. In talking with business owners and key decision makers from the various organizations I work with, I’m often reminded by the more forward thinking individuals that what is happening now will not last forever. Their thoughts are focused on what their business will be like on the other side of the downturn and what they need to do now to be stronger later – they are taking steps to thrive. There are some common themes, thoughts and ways successful professionals approach their business and I’ve put together a list to share with you.

Welcome challenges - problems are opportunities for solutions. There are going to be challenges and from these challenges we can create solutions that not only deal with the issue but could lead us into new directions for growth

Follow your passions - you don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you. If you aren’t excited about what you’re doing, it is hard to live it, breath it and love it. Life is too short and work is too hard not to really LOVE what you do

Keep things interesting - lack of enthusiasm can lead to missed opportunities for you and your team. We have got to be engaged in our business and to be engaged, our business needs to be engaging! I often talk with professionals who after being in their business for five or ten years, feel they have met every challenge, faced every obstacle and are in a rut. I say that they have only scratched the surface! If we aren’t pulling new challenges our way to keep our work interesting, we’re not growing

Patience is a virtue – things take time, nothing happens overnight. I’ve heard this all through my life and the need for instant gratification has only grown. Be patient and while you’re waiting, measure and assess the action you are taking – you might be surprised how fast the results show up once we begin to measure what we are doing

Do what’s manageable – free yourself from the paralysis of trying to do it all by doing what you can manage to do. There is no use in striving for something that will always be out of reach

Always try to do better – constantly push to improve things. Focus on what’s wrong, what’s right is already money in the bank

Recognize key players – keeping your key players happy is a priority, acknowledge their support and the role they play in your success

Pick and choose the right advice – get counsel from your mentors and people you respect. Not all advice is going to be for you, ultimately you have the final say

Make the hard decisions – now is not the time to procrastinate. Making the tough decisions now will make you stronger later

Simplify – things don’t have to be complicated. The more straight forward and simple we make things, the more de-cluttered our lives will be

Think about these points and how you can adapt them into your day to day activities. Right now, we are all laser focused on dealing with the business of today due to the economy. Stepping back and applying the points above will help us and our business to be stronger when we emerge from this recession. Good luck.

Center the Needle

The first quarter of 2009 is complete and we’re halfway through the first month of Q2! It is a perfect time to stop, take a look at the goals and objectives we set for ourselves back in January, reflect on the steps we’ve taken so far to achieve these goals, evaluate our progress and take this opportunity to make some adjustments.

In January, I blogged about planning goals and not making resolutions in my post, http://traintobethebest.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-new-year-is-it-too-late-to-keep.html, and I talked about the steps and activities we need to take to achieve these goals. The economy has had a huge impact on us so far and will continue to do so for some time. We need to center the needle on our original plans and move forward from there. By taking a quick evaluation and making adjustments, we can get back on course and drastically increase our chances of success.

Process
Every good planning process is really a series of four steps that flow in a continual, circular pattern. The initial step is to set and agree to the plan which should then be followed by the next step which is to execute the plan. In our case, this would be the activities or actions we’ve taken to achieve our goals in the first quarter. What we’re focusing on now is evaluating where we are on the path to reaching those goals and thinking through any tweaks or adjustments we need to make at this point in time.

Where are your goals?
If you can’t find your goal sheet that is the first challenge you’ve got to overcome! Our goals need to be visible and ideally we should be thinking about them every day. Post them on your wall in your office, on your car visor, on your bathroom mirror – someplace you where you’ll see them and they will be top of mind. Too often, personally and in business, we’ll put all this time and effort into planning and then proceed to ignore and forget about the document until we need to plan for the upcoming year. If you’ve done this, no worries, blow the dust off your goal sheet and get started now!

Evaluate & Adjust
This is an important step. We may discover that there are goals we totally lost focus on and that’s fine. We may also discover that we’ve made some real progress on certain goals and even tackled objectives that we didn’t list or possibly didn’t even exist when we made our plan. We can take this opportunity to review and adjust our timing, scrap goals that aren’t a priority and add new ones that are more relevant now. In today’s business environment it could be argued that we should be making adjustments daily! One point to remember, adjustments can be a two way street – feel free to adjust up – take the opportunity to make big..BIGGER. If you’ve achieved some early success, raise your goals and keep going. By increasing your goal the size of the prize will increase as well.

Celebrate all successes to date and re-engage with yourself on meeting and exceeding your plans for the year. Good luck.

Feedback

Candid feedback is a great asset to owners, managers and decisions makers in any size organization from the beauty salons I work with directly right on up to the large corporations that I support. Gaining this essential information can prove difficult unless you create an open environment that your team will feel safe in and provide the structure for the feedback to be heard and if warranted, put into action.

Encourage open dialogue
As managers or coaches, if we aren’t actively and regularly seeking input and feedback from our team, we’re not going to get it. List feedback as an agenda item in your next staff or team meeting – focus the discussion on a specific topic with a set time limit to keep it productive. Take out a team member for a quick lunch or cup of coffee and ask their opinion to gain one on one feedback. It pays to get out on the street! Remove yourself from the corporate ivory tower and find out what they are saying in the field – this is where the real information lives.

Don’t shoot the messenger
In order to have access to this information, we need to create a safe environment for our team to deliver it. Show that you value different opinions by thanking individuals who speak up. One of the best ways to acknowledge how much you value the team’s input is to show them how you’re acting on it. If someone suggests a change and you put it in place, call it out, let people know.

Cash is king
A successful technique one of my clients uses to encourage their team to speak up is to offer them cold hard cash! They hold an annual contest for the best tip on how to improve the company and employees enter by not only pointing out inefficiencies but by suggesting fresh ideas and solutions to the problem as well. This can be modified to an organization of any size, set the contest to run quarterly for faster resutls and adjust the size of the prize as necessary. What I like about the process is you don’t just end up with a lot of complaints; you end up with real solutions to improve your business.