Professional Development Best Practice 1 – Maintaining Annual, Three, and Five Year Development Plans

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The StrategyDriven Professional acts deliberately and with focus on achieving his or her short-term and long-term goals. Like any business seeking to optimize effectiveness and efficiency, these professionals develop for themselves annual, three-year, and five-year plans complete with near-term actions building on longer-term milestones and monitored by a comprehensive set of quantifiable performance measures. It is through using this plan that the StrategyDriven professional optimizes his or her efforts to achieving their ultimate personal objectives; minimizing the amount of effort wasted on superfluous activities.

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Don’t just drink the water, eat it!

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Ask anyone in New York City why their bagels are the BEST in the world and they’ll say, “It’s the water!”

Ask anyone in Philadelphia why their cheesesteaks are the BEST in the world, and they will say, “It’s the bread.” Further questioning one will ask, “Why is the bread so different?” and they will say, “It’s the water!”

Water? Really?
Yes, water!

The unique water that’s ADDED to the standard ingredients makes the food BEST.

So I’m going to ask you two questions:
What’s in your water?
What makes your water different, better, than anyone else’s water?

There are 7.5 elements of your water that I will challenge you make you no different than anybody else’s water on the planet, and further challenge you that if you decide to improve those elements (your water), you can become the best in the world. Or at least the best in your marketplace.

1. Your attitude water. If you know and understand the classic definition of a positive attitude is, “The way you dedicate yourself to the way you think,” then it’s obvious that you can change and improve your attitude water by changing your morning routine. Wake up and start reading instead of watching TV. Reading a positive attitude book for ten minutes, highlighting, and taking notes about your thoughts, can begin a whole new attitude mindset that will separate and differentiate you from all of your peers, prospects, and customers.
2. Your belief water. While I have talked about belief for years, I’ve never said what it would take to build and strengthen your existing belief process. Invest thirty minutes of your time and make a list of the five parts of belief. You must believe you are the BEST person for the job, have the BEST business and products, that you can differentiate FROM your competitors, and that the customer is better off having purchased from you. If you don’t believe that your water is the best, how will you be able to transfer that message to anyone else?
3. Your compelling message and enthusiasm’s water. Present a compelling message and you will immediately differentiate yourself from 99.9% of all the salespeople on the planet. These are people who communicate poorly, or simply talk in terms of themselves. By becoming a prepared and enthusiastic presenter, you will be perceived as sparkling water. The opposite of sparkling water is flat water. In France it’s, “with gas” or “without gas.” Starting to get the message?
4. Your innovative ideas water. When you bring an idea to a customer it shows that you have prepared in terms of them. Your idea is about them and how they win, or how they profit. Once you get in the groove of innovation in creating ideas it will spill over to everything that you do. That’s hot water.
5. Your follow-through water. This water is the fulcrum point in the sale. Even if you have already made the sale, your customers expect both delivery and service in order to complete the sale in their mind. You will solve nothing until the customer receives your product or service, loves your product or service, and is completely impressed by the way you stay in touch and follow through.
6. Your relationship building water. Solid value-based relationships lead to repeat business and referrals. Do I need to say anything else about the importance and the value of this water?
7. Your trustworthiness water. This is slowly aged water. Trustworthiness comes from positive, favorable, consistent, truthful actions taken over time. Trust is not built in a day, it’s built day-by-day.
7.5 Your reputation water. Reputation water is the most valuable of them all. It means the rest of your water has all been given and received positively. It means that you have consistently performed to the delight of your customer. And it means that anyone can find you on the Internet and see your positive postings and results. It means that you have proven yourself to your customers and in your marketplace. You can never have too much reputation water. It’s my hope that your cup of reputation water runneth over.

BEST PART: When someone asks you why your sales are better that anyone else’s, your response can now be, “It’s the water!” – Keep ‘em guessing, baby. Keep ‘em guessing.

My water? I’m a Volvic water guy myself – switched from Fiji to France.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Two Awesome Hours

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Whether we love or hate our jobs, the amount of work most of us have to do each day has reached unsustainable levels. We start a typical workday anxious about how we will get it all done, who we might let down, and which important tasks we will sacrifice-again- so we can keep our heads above water.

As we grab our first cups of coffee, we check our e-mail inboxes on our handheld devices, scanning to see who has added a new task to our to-do list. The stress builds as we read e-mail after e-mail, each containing a request that we know can’t be dealt with quickly. We mark these e-mails as unread and save them for . . . ‘later.’ We mentally add them to the piles of work left undone the night before (when we left our offices much too late). More e-mails to answer, more phone calls to return, more paperwork to fill out. And everything needs our immediate attention.

In fact, too many things need our attention before we can even get to the tasks that really matter-and too many things matter. We frequently work all day long-at the office and then at home, taking care of our families, cleaning up, paying bills-sometimes only stopping to sleep. There simply isn’t enough time, but so much always needs to be done.

The key to achieving fantastic levels of effectiveness is to work with our biology. We may all be capable of impressive feats of comprehension, motivation, emotional control, problem solving, creativity, and decision making when our biological systems are functioning optimally. But we can be terrible at those very same things when our biological systems are suboptimal. The amount of exercise and sleep we get and the food we eat can greatly influence these mental functions in the short term—even within hours. The mental functions we engage in just prior to tackling a task can also have a powerful effect on whether we accomplish that task.

Research findings from the fields of psychology and neuroscience are revealing a great deal about when and how we can set up periods of highly effective mental functioning. In this book, I’ll share in detail five deceptively simple strategies that I have found are the most successful in helping busy people create the conditions for at least two hours of incredible productivity each day:

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About the Author

Josh Davis (Photo Credit © 2013 Ron Holtz Photography)Josh Davis, Ph.D., received his bachelor¹s from Brown University and his doctorate from Columbia University. He is the director of research for the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI), a global institute dedicated to synthesizing scientific research and guiding its use in the business and leadership fields. Davis is also a member of the faculty at Barnard College of Columbia University, a NeuroCoach, and a certified Master Practitioner in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). HE has blogged for HBR.org and Psychology Today, and his work has been reported online at CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, USA Today, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

The Advisor’s Corner – How do I deal with so much on my plate?

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How do I deal with so much on my plate?Question:

There is SO much on my plate – how do I sort out priorities, recognize the blocks, and keep an open mind for possibilities?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

You might find that you are so focused on the ‘tasks’ at hand that the most important work is getting the short end of the stick. Let’s identify some ‘buckets’ to help you navigate your way to success.

Perhaps you have just been given a challenge to solve by your leader. Your job is to identify the relevant factors, create priorities, and then execute on your own or with others on your team. My advice: start by identifying which items fall into each of four buckets: Fat Rabbits, Quick Wins, Rocks, and Who Cares.

You know what a Fat Rabbit looks like, and it probably makes you smile! These are those parts of the challenge that are foundational, have the highest/fattest impact, and must be in place to succeed at executing your assignment. These are the big fat chunks of your challenge that need to be addressed or nothing else will work matter.

Quick Wins are those parts of your challenge that require minimal effort with maximum payoff. They demonstrate tangible, visible progress. Getting them done and making them known to the appropriate stakeholders, significantly boosts momentum. Too many people think they have to get the Fat Rabbits well underway or completed before going for any Quick Wins. Ignoring Quick Wins often results in Slow Wins or No Wins.

Then there are the Rocks. These are tough blocks in the road to completion of a successful challenge. These Rocks need to be identified without denial or wishful thinking. Pretending they aren’t there won’t make them go away. Sometimes Rocks are pebble like, and sometimes they are more like Mt. Rushmore. Solutions may not be known immediately, and that’s ok. You won’t move forward without moving the Rocks out of the way one way or another, or finding a way around them. If the Rocks are too formidable, reconsider the challenge – is it the right challenge at the right time? Moving Rocks requires a lot of effort and energy, so you need it to pay off.

Finally, we have the Who Cares bucket. These might be interesting, but they are a distraction. Identify the Who Cares items so your valuable time and energy are not waste and that no one really cares about.

Let’s take one challenge, Succession Planning and dip into the four buckets for a look. This sample is by no means complete, but it will give you the idea to apply to your own work.

Fat Rabbits

  • Define the workforce realities with indisputable facts, and create the ‘burning platform’ of urgency
  • Identify current competencies and compare with necessary next generation competencies
  • Align all HR/OD functions: to meet forecasted job content and design

Quick Wins

  • Learn why people come to work at ABC Company, why they stay, and why they leave
  • Identify key positions and key people to target for succession planning
  • Analyze internal/external labor demographics/pipelines

Rocks

  • Decentralization reality vs. having one ABC Company strategy, are in conflict
  • IT Systems, as they are today, and aggregate data reporting are insufficient to collect enough accurate data

Who Cares

  • Offices need to be rennovated when people leave, thus impacting the budget (lots of things impact the budget – it’s off topic or very low priority)

When you focus on the things that really matter, you make progress. When you don’t, you don’t make progress. Make sure your Rocks are not show stoppers, then go for a few visible and happy Quick Wins as you work on your Fat Rabbits!

About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

The Best Jobs Go to the Best Educated People and Here is Why

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Quite a bit of debate exists about whether education is obtained in school or through life experience. Looking at homes and families, the latter may reign supreme. However, universities, and the job market, often argue that a college degree is necessary to succeed in life and obtain a high paying job. Assuming that people can be educated in more than one way, what are some of the reasons why the best jobs go to the best educated people?

Education Blended with Common Sense
To succeed in the work world, people need to have a strong background in their field, but they also must exercise skills in common sense. Knowing the discipline provides the appropriate background information and the technical skills that are needed to succeed. However, the application of that knowledge often comes in the form of common sense. Exercising a blend of these skills allows workers to be confident, determined and strong in their decisions.

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About the Author

From her 25 years in business, Elizabeth Hill aims to pass on knowledge and skills gained in that time through her writing. She loves walks in the countryside, spending time with family and friends, and is ever so ‘slightly’ addicted to coffee.