All organizations, including the best of the best, have room for improvement and those not improving inevitably find themselves falling behind competitors. Self-critical evaluations are therefore critical to achieving continuous performance improvement and remaining competitive. Evaluations identifying mostly strengths offer little opportunity for organizational growth.
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Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/IdentifyStrengths.jpg282425Nathan Iveshttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngNathan Ives2014-01-07 06:53:332018-12-16 18:47:37Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag 5 – Identifying Mostly Strengths
Holy frijoles, 2013 is over! How did you do? How did those resolutions and goals you made at the end of last year work out?
Think about the word resolution – the root word is resolve. What was your 2013 resolve? What got in the way of achievement?
Personally, I am against traditional resolutions and goals.
And if my thinking bugs you, don’t be too concerned, you’ll soon be receiving a barrage of offers from various ‘experts’ encouraging you to achieve goals this year and have your ‘best year ever’ – the very same goals you didn’t achieve last year.
Most resolutions and goals set for the New Year are never achieved. Reason? They’re set emotionally and they’re set without an understanding of the circumstances around the goal. Better stated: Your circumstances.
For your 2014 (and all years to come) I have created an easy-to-understand, ‘achievement opportunity’ formula. Once you read it, and a few of the details, you will at once see where your achievement opportunities are, how they may fit into your life, and how you can use this formula to make this coming year a raging success.
Here’s my formula: Situation + Opportunity + Objective + Why + Plan + Intentions + Responsibility = Favorable Outcome.
STOP BEFORE YOU START: Don’t make any resolutions for the future until you have defined your present situation.
IDENTIFY YOUR BIG PICTURE: What’s going on in your life and your career right now? What’s going on with your family, your money, your health, and your happiness? Will your present situation help you achieve and encourage you to achieve? Or will it be a barrier to achievement? What are you seeking to accomplish in 2014 and what is your real resolve to make it happen?
WHAT CAN BE? Identify, in writing, your opportunities. Think about the opportunities that might change or enhance your present situation. What triggers are you hoping to pull this year? What mountains are you hoping to climb? What hurdles are you looking to leap over (without knocking them down)?
Look for opportunities in places you may not be thinking about:
Key relationships
New social media strategies
Trends in your business
Technology shifts
Apps
Blogging
I think it’s also important to separate family opportunities from business and career opportunities. Make sure you have a list for both.
Once you know where you are (situation), and you have identified how you can get from here to there (opportunity), then I recommend you make a 90-day game plan to achieve at least ONE of your opportunities. Not a goal, an opportunity. January, February, March. Document why you want it, what you have to do to make it happen, and what you’re hoping the outcome of that plan will be.
Here are some details of the achievement plan and process:
Describe WHAT the opportunity is, the OBJECTIVE that the opportunity creates, and WHY you want to take advantage of it and/or achieve it.
A NOTE ABOUT YOUR ‘WHY’: All too often ‘why’ you want something is left at a superficial level. ‘To make more money’ or ‘to support my family’ or ‘to grow my career’ – those are ‘surface whys’ and may not provide enough incentive to achieve. Once you identify the surface why, ask yourself why again and again until the real why appears. “Why do I want to make more money?” “Why do I want to support my family?” “Why do I want to grow my career?” Second and third levels of ‘why’ will provide the real incentive to achieve. Try it. You’ll be amazed at your own answers.
Write a brief, 90-day plan of action. It can be a few short paragraphs or even bullet points. Writing the plan helps clarify your thinking, and solidify your determination to take action.
List and describe your DAILY INTENTIONS. What do you plan to do every day to make this opportunity to achieve a reality? Beyond resolution, it’s your resolve combined with your hard work.
Figure out the DAILY DOSE. What do you have to do each day to keep the momentum rolling?
Come to the realization that in order to achieve, you must take total RESPONSIBILITY for the actions, the results, and the outcome.
Describe the OUTCOME in more detail than you described your 90-day plan. Make sure the ‘after achievement’ is clear.
And then the hard part – do it!
Here’s my formula again – try it, it works: Situation + Opportunity + Objective + Why + Plan + Intentions + Responsibility = Favorable Outcome.
Follow my formula and my concepts, and you’ll take your achievement to a new level – a success level you’ve never attained before. I hope you do.
Happy, healthy, wealthy, fun filled-family holiday season and New Year!
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey 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].
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/JeffreyGitomer.jpg218156StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2014-01-06 06:08:292016-08-07 22:16:18Still making goals and resolutions? Why?
We just had the first live TV musical play extravaganza on television after a 50-year hiatus. The production was The Sound of Music, starring Carrie Underwood. This TV special got a lot of attention because it was unique live, just like opening night of the Broadway show on which it was based.
Truth is that throughout the 1950’s (the Golden Age of Television), there were comparable live TV extravaganzas on the air every night of the decade.
Many of them were consistently great. They were live, in real time. They had top talent behind them. They were well rehearsed. They had the adrenaline of “going live,” and they shined with luster.
Among those crown jewel TV moments were:
Our Town, starring Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint.
Requiem for a Heavyweight, the premiere of Playhouse 90. It was written by Rod Sterling and starred Jack Palance and Ed Wynn.
The Petrified Forest, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda. In it, Bogey reprised the 1930’s Broadway hit and movie that launched his career.
The Ford 50th Anniversary, a two-hour musical starring Ethel Merman and Mary Martin. This was the first TV special and set the tone for thousands of others since.
The first Beatles appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” where the whole world was watching. The Beatles topped that by composing All You Need is Love while they performed it on a global telecast.
I have those any other live TV gems on DVD. I watch them to experience the magical energy of live performances. Many of us remember writing the college theme paper the night before it was due. We recall compiling the case notes or sales projections just before the presentation meeting.
The truth is that we do some of our best work under pressure. We might think that the chaos and delays of life are always with us, but we handle them better when on tight time frames.
Before you know it, you’re on deadline again. Even though the tasks mount up, you have a knack for performing magnificently under deadline, stress and high expectations.
This is not meant to suggest putting off sequential steps and daily tasks. Learn when deadline crunch time is best to accomplish the optimum business objectives. I’m a big advocate of Strategic Planning and Visioning. Every company needs it but rarely conducts the process because they’re knee-deep in daily minutia.
I know from experience that planning while going through the “alligators” is the most effective way to conduct the process. By seeing the daily changes resulting from the planning, companies are poised to rise above the current daily crises. I recommend that diversity audits, quality control reviews, ethics programs and other important regimen be conducted as part of Strategic Planning, rather than as stand-alone, distracting and energy diverting activities.
Those of us who grew up working on typewriters know how to master the medium. You had to get your ideas on paper correctly the first time, without typographical errors and with great clarity. The first time that I worked on a computer was when I was 40 years old. I took that typewriter mentality with me when I had to compose a brochure and do the desktop publishing graphics in the same two-hour window where I was learning how to work on a computer.
There were years where I kept the typewriter on the work station next to the computer. When I had five minutes to write a cohesive memo and fax it off to the client, I wrote it on the typewriter. Though I wrote all my books on computers, I wrote the modern technology chapters on the typewriter, to make points to myself that the readers could never have grasped.
In mounting your next strategic Planning process for your company, go back and analyze what elements from the past can be rejuvenated as your future. That’s a trademarked concept that I call Yesterdayism.
With planning and organizing, you can meet and beat most deadlines without working in a pressure cooker. Don’t work and worry yourself into exhaustion over every detail. Sometimes it makes sense to move the deadline to the 11th hour. Having too much time to get projects accomplished tends to breed procrastination.
Here are my final take-aways on the subject of doing your best work when on last-minute deadlines:
Learn what working style goes best with you.
Care about deadlines.
Prioritize the real deadlines, apart from the artificial or self-imposed ones.
Review the work that you’ve done on tight deadlines. Analyze what makes it different.
Know your own strengths and limitations.
Work on your own timetable.
When working with teams, determine the best compromise working tempo.
Get Your ‘to do lists’ in order.
Evaluate your progress.
Remove the distractions to doing your best-focused work.
Ready… Set… Be productive.
This article was written in one hour, just before the impending deadline.
About the Author
Power Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.
Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.
Power Stars to Light the Business Flameis now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/HankMoore2.jpg333290StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2014-01-03 06:18:232015-12-19 21:48:11The Big Picture of Business – Doing Your Best Work on Deadlines: Mobilizing the Energy for Best Business Success
Today, in almost every sector of society, we are facing a crisis of leadership. This cry is heard in newspapers, magazines, and TV debates and at dinner tables across the nation.
In the realm of business in particular, the need for leadership has become crucial. When we compare our country’s economic performance with that of countries like China and Germany, it’s clear that we have been losing ground and that despite the ravages of the recent economic crisis, over the last 10 years, our competitors have been doing better.
In the U.S., we are contending with wave after wave of jobs moving overseas, markets that whip up and down, and energy prices rising at an unprecedented rate. As business leaders, we are troubled by the regular announcements of once-proud companies being sold, broken up, or downsized. There is a nagging sense that something is not right as we face still more layoffs and plant closings while profits go up.
Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:
Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.png00StrategyDrivenhttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngStrategyDriven2014-01-02 11:26:212016-01-31 13:59:25Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, part 1 of 6
Organizational performance measures drive behaviors but, in order to be effective, the information they provide must be known and acted upon in a timely manner. Today’s business leaders can easily be overwhelmed with information; obscuring critical performance metric action prompts. Furthermore, the fixed publication frequency of performance monitoring reports may preclude leaders from receiving action-prompting information in a timely manner. Automating performance notifications, triggered at the time of occurrence, can help alleviate these issues.
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Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library
Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).
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Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
https://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/AutomatedNotification.jpg282425Nathan Iveshttps://www.strategydriven.com/wp-content/uploads/SDELogo5-300x70-300x70.pngNathan Ives2013-12-31 06:20:492020-10-24 15:44:16Automated Notification of Responsible Individuals
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Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag 5 – Identifying Mostly Strengths
/in Business Performance Assessment Program, Premium/by Nathan IvesHi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.
Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).
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Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag 5 – Identifying Mostly Strengths for just $2!
About the Author
Still making goals and resolutions? Why?
/in Practices for Professionals/by Jeffrey GitomerHoly frijoles, 2013 is over! How did you do? How did those resolutions and goals you made at the end of last year work out?
Think about the word resolution – the root word is resolve. What was your 2013 resolve? What got in the way of achievement?
Personally, I am against traditional resolutions and goals.
And if my thinking bugs you, don’t be too concerned, you’ll soon be receiving a barrage of offers from various ‘experts’ encouraging you to achieve goals this year and have your ‘best year ever’ – the very same goals you didn’t achieve last year.
Most resolutions and goals set for the New Year are never achieved. Reason? They’re set emotionally and they’re set without an understanding of the circumstances around the goal. Better stated: Your circumstances.
For your 2014 (and all years to come) I have created an easy-to-understand, ‘achievement opportunity’ formula. Once you read it, and a few of the details, you will at once see where your achievement opportunities are, how they may fit into your life, and how you can use this formula to make this coming year a raging success.
Here’s my formula: Situation + Opportunity + Objective + Why + Plan + Intentions + Responsibility = Favorable Outcome.
STOP BEFORE YOU START: Don’t make any resolutions for the future until you have defined your present situation.
IDENTIFY YOUR BIG PICTURE: What’s going on in your life and your career right now? What’s going on with your family, your money, your health, and your happiness? Will your present situation help you achieve and encourage you to achieve? Or will it be a barrier to achievement? What are you seeking to accomplish in 2014 and what is your real resolve to make it happen?
WHAT CAN BE? Identify, in writing, your opportunities. Think about the opportunities that might change or enhance your present situation. What triggers are you hoping to pull this year? What mountains are you hoping to climb? What hurdles are you looking to leap over (without knocking them down)?
Look for opportunities in places you may not be thinking about:
I think it’s also important to separate family opportunities from business and career opportunities. Make sure you have a list for both.
Once you know where you are (situation), and you have identified how you can get from here to there (opportunity), then I recommend you make a 90-day game plan to achieve at least ONE of your opportunities. Not a goal, an opportunity. January, February, March. Document why you want it, what you have to do to make it happen, and what you’re hoping the outcome of that plan will be.
Here are some details of the achievement plan and process:
A NOTE ABOUT YOUR ‘WHY’: All too often ‘why’ you want something is left at a superficial level. ‘To make more money’ or ‘to support my family’ or ‘to grow my career’ – those are ‘surface whys’ and may not provide enough incentive to achieve. Once you identify the surface why, ask yourself why again and again until the real why appears. “Why do I want to make more money?” “Why do I want to support my family?” “Why do I want to grow my career?” Second and third levels of ‘why’ will provide the real incentive to achieve. Try it. You’ll be amazed at your own answers.
And then the hard part – do it!
Here’s my formula again – try it, it works: Situation + Opportunity + Objective + Why + Plan + Intentions + Responsibility = Favorable Outcome.
Follow my formula and my concepts, and you’ll take your achievement to a new level – a success level you’ve never attained before. I hope you do.
Happy, healthy, wealthy, fun filled-family holiday season and New Year!
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
The Big Picture of Business – Doing Your Best Work on Deadlines: Mobilizing the Energy for Best Business Success
/in Practices for Professionals/by Hank MooreWe just had the first live TV musical play extravaganza on television after a 50-year hiatus. The production was The Sound of Music, starring Carrie Underwood. This TV special got a lot of attention because it was unique live, just like opening night of the Broadway show on which it was based.
Truth is that throughout the 1950’s (the Golden Age of Television), there were comparable live TV extravaganzas on the air every night of the decade.
Many of them were consistently great. They were live, in real time. They had top talent behind them. They were well rehearsed. They had the adrenaline of “going live,” and they shined with luster.
Among those crown jewel TV moments were:
I have those any other live TV gems on DVD. I watch them to experience the magical energy of live performances. Many of us remember writing the college theme paper the night before it was due. We recall compiling the case notes or sales projections just before the presentation meeting.
The truth is that we do some of our best work under pressure. We might think that the chaos and delays of life are always with us, but we handle them better when on tight time frames.
Before you know it, you’re on deadline again. Even though the tasks mount up, you have a knack for performing magnificently under deadline, stress and high expectations.
This is not meant to suggest putting off sequential steps and daily tasks. Learn when deadline crunch time is best to accomplish the optimum business objectives. I’m a big advocate of Strategic Planning and Visioning. Every company needs it but rarely conducts the process because they’re knee-deep in daily minutia.
I know from experience that planning while going through the “alligators” is the most effective way to conduct the process. By seeing the daily changes resulting from the planning, companies are poised to rise above the current daily crises. I recommend that diversity audits, quality control reviews, ethics programs and other important regimen be conducted as part of Strategic Planning, rather than as stand-alone, distracting and energy diverting activities.
Those of us who grew up working on typewriters know how to master the medium. You had to get your ideas on paper correctly the first time, without typographical errors and with great clarity. The first time that I worked on a computer was when I was 40 years old. I took that typewriter mentality with me when I had to compose a brochure and do the desktop publishing graphics in the same two-hour window where I was learning how to work on a computer.
There were years where I kept the typewriter on the work station next to the computer. When I had five minutes to write a cohesive memo and fax it off to the client, I wrote it on the typewriter. Though I wrote all my books on computers, I wrote the modern technology chapters on the typewriter, to make points to myself that the readers could never have grasped.
In mounting your next strategic Planning process for your company, go back and analyze what elements from the past can be rejuvenated as your future. That’s a trademarked concept that I call Yesterdayism.
With planning and organizing, you can meet and beat most deadlines without working in a pressure cooker. Don’t work and worry yourself into exhaustion over every detail. Sometimes it makes sense to move the deadline to the 11th hour. Having too much time to get projects accomplished tends to breed procrastination.
Here are my final take-aways on the subject of doing your best work when on last-minute deadlines:
This article was written in one hour, just before the impending deadline.
About the Author
Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.
Power Stars to Light the Business Flameis now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, part 1 of 6
/in Management & Leadership/by Chris MajerToday, in almost every sector of society, we are facing a crisis of leadership. This cry is heard in newspapers, magazines, and TV debates and at dinner tables across the nation.
In the realm of business in particular, the need for leadership has become crucial. When we compare our country’s economic performance with that of countries like China and Germany, it’s clear that we have been losing ground and that despite the ravages of the recent economic crisis, over the last 10 years, our competitors have been doing better.
In the U.S., we are contending with wave after wave of jobs moving overseas, markets that whip up and down, and energy prices rising at an unprecedented rate. As business leaders, we are troubled by the regular announcements of once-proud companies being sold, broken up, or downsized. There is a nagging sense that something is not right as we face still more layoffs and plant closings while profits go up.
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Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!
About the Author
Automated Notification of Responsible Individuals
/in Organizational Performance Measures, Premium/by Nathan IvesHi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.
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