Focus: A Key Leadership and Success Skill

Focus: A Key Leadership and Success Skill

by | Jan 27, 2014

It doesn’t matter what you do in life staying FOCUSED is paramount to ensure your success. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, had laser-like focus and cites staying focused as one of the key leadership skills any business owner must have.  Staying focused also means that often you need to streamline your offering. According to Jobs it is better to do a few things really well rather than loads poorly. Can you think of a time when you have experienced a mediocre product or service because the company was distracted by too many competing priorities.  Success will always elude you until you get focused.

At a Garden Party in 1994 William Gates II (the father of MicroSoft founder Bill Gates III) posed this question to his distinguished dinner guests who were at the time the two richest men in America:

“What factor do you feel was most important to getting where you’ve gotten in life?”

Both guests, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates replied focus.

Everyone knows focus is vital for achieving success.  But how do you get focus?  And once you have it, how do you keep it?.  The recipe for focus has two ingredients.

  1. The first ingredient is clarity about what you want to do. No surprises here. When people talk about defining specific goals; casting a clear vision; or describing what success looks like they are talking about variations on this one critical point.
  2. The second ingredient is killing the other things you also want to do. This second ingredient is far less obvious, and far more forgotten.  Our natural tendency is to assume that if we just get really clear about what we want to achieve that the seas will part and distractions will magically evaporate. That’s the positivist approach.  Reality calls for a reductionist approach.

In an interesting study, the NYU psychologist Peter Gollwitzer found that writing action plans in a “distraction-inhibiting” way is more effective at keeping us focused than writing the plans in a “task-facilitating” way.  For example, let’s say your goal is to reach a certain sales target for the week. To achieve that goal, you know you that you need to start your day by making sales calls right off the bat.  So, you might set a calendar reminder for yourself that says “the first thing I will do is make 3 sales calls to customers A, B, and C!”

The problem is that this crystal clear “go get em’!” plan doesn’t say anything about the emailing, water cooler chats, and Facebook status updates that will compete for your attention first thing in the morning. Gollwitzer’s research suggests that the best approach to distraction is not doubling your efforts toward the goal, but preemptively naming and avoiding the likely distractions.

I’ve started applying this to my own daily habits and it’s working wonders. For example, when I need to focus on writing this newsletter I write “NO EMAIL!! Write your ezine” and then I turn my phone and email off to ensure that I get no distractions.

As Steve Jobs noted “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do”. So my question to you today is what will you say No to, in order to stay focused on what you really want and rein in that business chaos.

Do you have Entrepreneurial ADD?

Do you have Entrepreneurial ADD?

by | Jan 14, 2014

Staying FOCUSED is one of the BIGGEST obstacles that you can have in business (and I should know as I struggle with this too). How do you decide what to focus on first? How do you organize your day? How do you say “no” to people who need you but aren’t your ideal clients or who you secretly feel you’ve outgrown? Which business strategies are most important to master? How do you keep distractions to a minimum yet still feed your need for community and sharing?

Wow, there is a lot to juggle and when we are not sure what to do procrastination creeps in.  As a business owner, especially those of us working from home, somehow all the house chores or social media seem more important than making that sales call (which secretly you probably dread).  The only problem with this is that your business won’t flourish without clients and in fact you won’t have a business but rather an expensive hobby.  And trust me that’s an expensive place to be, I’ve been there.

For a long time I thought I was working really hard. Well I was working hard but I was working on all the wrong things, activities that didn’t help me grow my business.  You see all successful business owners understand the importance and value of using your time effectively.  They focus on just high impact producing activities in their business. Activities that bring in cash and clients.  They don’t waste their time on activities that don’t grow their business.

So what’s the solution.  It is having a structure and system for all your activities in your business and this includes having a structure to your day.  You see the secret is really quite simple: Systems Liberate You. I used to fight this idea. Structure and systems are what had ruled my life in the corporate world they had kept me on that hamster wheel of getting up at 6:00am, on the train at 7:10am; at my desk by 8:30am, meetings all day, starting work at 5:30pm, leaving the office at 8:30pm; home at 10:00pm.  So when I set up my own business I rebelled and avoided having any structure in my business. I loved the freedom and flexibility but it meant that I had no FOCUS, I let the pendulum swing too far the other way and so had an expensive hobby and not a business.  The result was that I was working really hard and not getting anywhere.

Then I had that light bulb moment – the epiphany that changed everything.  I realised that some structure was good and in fact secretly, if I was honest, I missed it a bit.  I started creating templates and processes for everything in my business, including a structure for my day. Freedom, focus and business growth were the results. And without all of the chaos and drama. I was finally back in control of my business and I was running my business rather than my business running me.

Take this short quiz to determine if you have entrepreneurial ADD:

  1. You have post it notes all over the place
  2. Your desk is a mess
  3. You have an overflowing email box
  4. You have a backlog of filing
  5. You have more than 3 incomplete projects
  6. Everyday you wonder where the time went
  7. You use social media as a distraction
  8. You let the priorities of others influence what you do

If you answered YES to more than four of these questions, then it’s a sure sign you have entrepreneurial ADD and need help focusing in your business.  If this is you send me an email at connect@businesshorsepower.com with I’VE GOT ENTREPRENEURIAL ADD in the subject line and I’ll schedule a time for us to chat about how I can help you.

Focus: A Key Leadership and Success Skill

How to Get Anything Done in 2014

by | Dec 31, 2013

The big question isn’t whether you’re going to make a resolution this New Year—but whether or not you’re going to keep it! Although studies have shown that 75% of people keep their New Year’s resolution through the first week of the year, only 8% of people are actually successful in achieving that resolution.1

Despite this bleak statistic, the truth is that you can achieve the goals you set out to accomplish, if you really want to. Planning the steps to reach your goal and then fully committing to that plan—rather than just thinking about your goal from time to time—can make all the difference. Studies show that people who make resolutions explicitly by stating their goals clearly and with specific detail are 10 times more likely to reach their goals than those who don’t.2

So how can you make sure the goals you set for yourself will actually come to fruition? Here are five powerful ways to achieve the targets you set for yourself this year.

1. Pick One, Concrete “Must-Do” Goal for 2014

“People overestimate what they can do in a year, but underestimate what they can do in a decade.”—Tony Robbins

Setting goals for the coming year is fantastic. Just make sure that you don’t set too many. By giving yourself too many targets to achieve in one year, you’ll end up scattering your energy and you may have trouble following each goal through to completion.

You can avoid this by setting one major, specific goal you want to accomplish during the year.

For example:

  • Launch my product by July 1st.
  • Publish an eBook by August 15th.
  • Start a podcasting series and broadcast once a month.
  • Create a blog and post on it twice a week.

In addition to giving your goal some necessary focus, you also want to make sure it’s the right goal. Your goal should be . . .

  • A bit of a stretch. You’re going to put a lot of focus into this goal, so challenge yourself. Make sure it’s something you’ll feel really good about achieving. This will help keep you on track if your motivation wanes.
  • Reasonable. Does your goal have some wiggle room to accommodate all of life’s emergencies? If not, adjust it a little to be more realistic. Move your launch date back a month to give yourself some breathing room. If you’re debuting a new blog, start out with weekly posts for a few months before dedicating yourself to posting more frequently. Keeping your goals reasonable will keep you from getting derailed early, which often disrupts New Year’s resolutions for good.
  • Measurable. If you don’t measure your goal, how will you know when you’ve achieved it—or, more importantly, when to celebrate? Define a concrete finish line and the milestones you’ll hit along the way, and assign dates to each. Consistently rewarding yourself along the way will provide some pleasurable incentives to keep going, even when times get tough.

Once you’ve chosen your goal, write it down and put it in a place where you will see it every day: on your refrigerator, in a frame on your desk, on a note stuck to your computer, wherever. Putting your goal on paper does a couple of things. It will help you state in clear terms exactly what you want. It also makes your goal more “real” by giving it tangible form, which also helps you focus on that goal in spite of any distractions in your life.

Now that you’ve decided on your goal, it’s time to . . .

2. Commit Your Resources to Your Goal

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” —Vince Lombardi

If you chose your goal well, recognize that reaching it is going to be a challenge. Life will get in the way, and there will be times when you just won’t feel like working toward your goal. Completing any goal of significant worth is going to require you to remind yourself of why you’re working toward that goal in the first place, and also to continually recommit to it.

This starts by associating yourself to your goal emotionally on a regular basis. Take a few minutes to sit quietly and imagine the emotions you’ll feel when you achieve your goal. Allow them to flood through you. Even though you’re imagining these emotions, you can still get a significant portion of the benefits. The more clearly you can imagine yourself achieving this goal, the more powerful a bond you’ll establish with your goal.3 This bond will help motivate you throughout the project.

Enhance your environment to support your goal. Surround yourself with things that bolster your goal and put you in a mindset to pursue it. Share your goal with people who will back you and be your support system while you work to achieve it.

When you start to lose faith—or feel like playing hooky—recommit to your vision. Remind yourself of why you’re working toward this goal in the first place, and what the outcome will be once you achieve it. Imagine how things will be when you’ve reached your goal.

Now that you’ve got yourself emotionally invested in your outcome, you’ll need to . . .

3. Make Your Goal a Part of Your Schedule

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” —Aristotle

“Finding time” is a myth. None of the entrepreneurs we know have ever stumbled upon an extra half hour in the day. If you really want to get something done, you need to make time for it.

Schedule a consistent block of time during the week to work on your goal. This could be 9:00-10:00 am every day, or 2:00-4:00 pm, or maybe even 10:00–11:00 pm at night—whatever works for you. Put it in your calendar as an important event, so it’s an unbreakable appointment in your schedule. Don’t allow that time to get co-opted, even by clients. Remember that your work is just as important as everyone else’s.

When life catches up to you—as it often does—and you absolutely have to reschedule, don’t wait to make another date with yourself. Reschedule that missed appointment immediately, just as you would an important meeting.

These unbreakable dates with yourself will add up and become a powerful force that moves you closer and closer to your goal.

Of course, you’ll also want to . . .

4. Give Yourself Permission to Slip Up

“Fall down seven times, get up eight.” —Japanese proverb

There will be some weeks when you’ll take big steps toward your goal, and then there will be times—even months—when you’ll find yourself off track. When the inevitable happens, don’t get mired in beating yourself up about it.

Instead, acknowledge your misstep and focus on what you can do next time that will prevent it from happening again.

Determine what happened that threw you off track. Narrow it down so you know exactly what occurred that caused the misstep, whether it was one isolated event or a series of them.

Figure out what you can do to prevent it from happening again. What action can you take to stay on course?

Recommit to your goal. Remind yourself of why you’re setting out to achieve this goal in the first place. How exactly is it going to benefit you?

Plot your next step. What do you need to do now in order to get back on track and continue toward your target?

Keep in mind that any project is ultimately a work in progress. You are in the midst of achieving your goal, and it will take time to get there. The important thing is that you have committed to a goal in the first place—a huge achievement in itself—and are taking action toward reaching it. You’ve taken that first step forward, and then the next, and then the next. Acknowledge yourself for coming this far and pushing yourself to realize your dreams.

Rather than harping on your errors and missteps along the way, focus instead on the fact that you are working toward accomplishing a goal you’ve set for yourself—which is more than many people can say for themselves.

And, finally, make sure you take time to . . .

5. Celebrate Your Achievements

“Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” —Brian Tracy

Sometimes we feel that our hard work goes unnoticed by others, which can be frustrating. Even more concerning, though, is how often we forget to acknowledge our own achievements.

Remind yourself to take a step back, look at what you’ve accomplished, and pat yourself on the back for it. Celebration for hard work is an important part of maintaining a positive attitude about what you do. Consider these points about the value of celebrating:

  • A study conducted by Healthstream, Inc. shows that “companies that effectively appreciate employee value enjoy a return on equity and assets more than triple that experienced by firms that don’t.”4
  • The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 81% of employees feel that career celebrations help them feel appreciated for their work.5
  • In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey, PhD, writes that next to physical survival, “the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival, to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.”

To ensure that you acknowledge all of the hard work you’re putting in as you go along, try keeping track of your journey. Record the milestones you reach on your way to your goal by jotting them down in a notebook or a Word document on your computer. Sometimes we don’t realize how much we’ve gotten done or that we actually are moving forward and growing.

Then, once a month, take some time to review the progress you’ve made toward achieving your goal. Look at the successes you’ve experienced so far. Whenever you get discouraged, reviewing the milestones you’ve recorded and seeing all of the things you’ve accomplished thus far can really help pump up your spirit and determination.

Reward yourself for achieving your goal, as well as all the mini-goals you reach along the way. Every time you jump to a new stepping stone on the way to your goal, treat yourself in some way—with a nice dinner out, a weekend trip, or a new gadget you’ve been eyeing. When you reach your ultimate goal, be sure to reward yourself with something really special.

And although we’re focusing on the acknowledging yourself for working toward your goal in particular, it’s a good idea to also do this for your progress in other areas of your life!

This year, let’s break the mold together and make our New Year’s resolutions a reality! Follow these 5 steps to achieve whatever goal you set for yourself in 2014. Then, once you’ve finished (and celebrated!), feel free to use this same process to do it all over again. With each goal completed, you’ll move yourself closer and closer to a reality that matches your vision.

References:

1Statistic Brain, “New Years Resolution Statistics,” http://www.statisticbrain.com/new-years-resolution-statistics.
2Ibid.
3The Best Brain Possible, “Get the Picture,” http://www.thebestbrainpossible.com/tag/alan-richardson.
4Forbes, “Make More Money By Making Your Employees Happy,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevecooper/2012/07/30/make-more-money-by-making-your-employees-happy.
5O.C. Tanner, “Celebrate Careers,” http://www.octanner.com/institute/white-papers/celebrate-careers%C2%99.

What Type of Christmas Host Are You?

What Type of Christmas Host Are You?

by | Dec 24, 2013

When it comes to Christmas and the Holiday Season I’ve noticed that there are three types of hosts – the Avoider, the Excessive and the Trusted Christmas Host.  Which one are you?

The Avoider is someone who just avoids Christmas. For them Christmas is nothing special, it is just another day in the week.  Oftentimes they will escape and go on vacation just to get away from the Christmas hype and so avoid being a Christmas host.  They can’t relate to all the Christmas festivities and it appears to them that Christmas is just one big waste of money.  Who needs all those presents anyway – many of them are just useless.

The Excessive does just that. They go overboard at Christmas. This is someone whose house is covered in a myriad of Christmas lights that keep the entire street awake at night.  Money is no object and there are a plethora of presents under the tree.  The fridge is stocked with food and drink and there is a no limits attitude in this household.  They have a need to impress at this time of year.

The Trusted Christmas Host gets the balance just right. They think about their guests and select just the right present for them.  Their house is decorated with Christmas touches but nothing too elaborate.  There is plentiful food and drink but not to excess.  There is a real sense of joy and fun in the house and much laughter as harmony pervades.

Over the years I’ve realized that I have adopted many of these roles.  Certainly when I was in the corporate world I was definitely an Avoider.  Perhaps because I don’t have young children Christmas has never been a special time of the year for me. So instead I used my well-earned Christmas time off to take a well-deserved vacation.  For five years in a row I escape to Thailand and the lovely Spa resort that I have just returned from.  There was nothing more satisfying than going back to work in the New Year having released 4 kilos through fasting and detoxing, and feeling energized and motivated, when all my colleagues were wallowing in self-pity at having over indulged!

I’ve never really been an Excessive host at Christmas, however in recent years my New Years parties have been anything but meager.  My five course dinner parties were legendary in the Sussex area with us often celebrating the New Year still sat at the dinner table unable to move for all the excessive food that we ate.  I loved hosting these dinner parties and being the centre of attention, but maybe the vast array of food and drink did not serve my guests, many of whom had to get up early the next morning.

To be fair I think I have only been a Trusted Christmas Host once when I had a household of family and friends over to celebrate the big event.  It was a lovely affair, with us going out early in the morning to celebrate Christmas with my horses. They love a half pint of Guinness and some bananas on Christmas day! Then, as there was snow on the ground, we took the horses for a short walk in the woods and watched the squirrels, rabbits and birds all having fun.  Then it was back to the house for a splendid late Christmas lunch followed by some traditional Christmas TV in front of a roaring fire.  That for me was a Christmas to remember.

This year I’m not playing Christmas host in any capacity, as I am house/horse sitting at the yard where I keep the horses as the owner is away.  Tomorrow morning I’ll get up early and go and watch the sun rise with my horses. We’ll chill out for a while before they get their special Christmas breakfast.  Then I’m planning on preparing breakfast for the other liveries and maybe we’ll have some mulled wine! Later in the day I’m off to my friends house (where there will be four small people – can’t remember the last time I celebrated Christmas with children around).  We’ll walk to the pub for some Christmas cheer before returning for Christmas lunch with all the trimmings.  Then after some well deserved relaxation it will be back to the yard to make sure the horses are all well before retiring to bed.

Whatever type of host and Christmas you have this year I hope that it is filled with joy and harmony and not stress and overwhelm.  Remember you choose how you feel at Christmas so make it a good feeling.

What’s Your GPS?

What’s Your GPS?

by | Dec 22, 2013

For those not in the know GPS stands for Global Positioning System, and it is what we use in our Sat Nav to help get us from A to B.  However at a recent conference I was surprised to learn that you need three co-ordinates in order to establish your GPS.  Well this got me thinking.  I know the GPS of my home but I wondered what three co-ordinates would inform me of how I was doing in my business.

Then I remembered a very powerful exercise that I often do with my clients during my Jump Start Your Business Days. It’s called positions of empowerment. During the positions of empowerment exercise my clients get to review their situation from three different perspectives. These are:

  • From self
  • From other
  • From observer

It is amazing what happens when you step back from a situation and see things through different eyes.  So often we are stuck in the position of self that we forget to see what impact our actions have on others (eg our clients) and also our wider community.

What I realized whilst I was on vacation was that I had been so stuck in my business, in the position of self, that I had failed to use the other perspectives to look at how things were progressing.  Now clearly you don’t need to go on vacation to do this but I have to say being unplugged from the office for two weeks really enabled me to see things differently.

OMG, it was so insightful and happened at the perfect time as part of my vacation was based on planning for 2014.  Getting out of trenches enabled me to come up with loads of new ideas for the business, things that I could never I envisioned last week.  So look for some significant changes happening in the New Year.  I really hope you will love them as you have inspired them.

So what new perspective could you take on any situation in your business or life. Look at it through a different lens, from a different perspective, and you will get answers that you had never thought of.
Mastermind groups are powerful groups that can help you to grow your business by enabling you to see challenges from another perspective.  Faced with a challenge the other members provide a different viewpoint and help you come up with solutions that you could never had thought of on your own.  You see each person has their own frame of reference and experiences which is why they see your challenge in a different way. The other members help you see the other and observer points of view.

So what new perspective could you take on any situation in your business or life. Look at it through a different lens, from a different perspective, and you will get answers that you had never thought of.

Ways To Cope With An Increased Workload

Ways To Cope With An Increased Workload

by | Nov 8, 2013

I don’t know about you but recently I have been feeling the pressure of an increased workload.  It’s probably something to do with the fact that I have been out of the office so much lately (two trips to the US within 5 weeks)!.  When things pile up you can start to feel overwhelmed and stressed.  The challenge is that this just compounds the problem, so here are my top tips on how I am coping with all the extra work. I hope they help you. 

  1. Let go of perfection. It could not serve you less at this time. Good enough is good.
  2. Identify time-wasters. Once you’re clear what they are, start reducing them.
  3. Plan everything. It will help keep you sane, centered and on track.
  4. Keep a list. When work piles up, commitments can slip through the cracks. Write down everything you have to do and check them off as you complete them.
  5. Establish priorities. Start with the highest priority items on your list. Distinguish between important and urgent priorities.
  6. Outsource or delegate everywhere possible. There are limits to how much you can do and still deliver value to clients, customers or your organization.
  7. Negotiate with your boss or clients. Don’t just accept without question an impossible situation.
  8. Minimize distractions. Check email only twice a day. Use earphones. Close your door.
  9. Exercise. Working out charges up your energy reserves and helps you sleep better at night.
  10. Breathe deeply. Even a few deep breaths at your desk will calm you.

Learning to say No to things is a great way to put you back in control of your schedule, during this time or any other. Also it is imperative to be clear on your priorities, because they might not be what you think they are.  The way I like to prioritise is to allocate all my tasks into four different quadrants that are as follow:

 

Urgent and Important

Urgent but Not Important

Important But Urgent

Not Urgent and Not Important

It always amazes me when I do this that I find everything urgent and important. If that is the case for you take a step back and really think about what is happening in your business right now.  What tasks can you delegate? What activities can you ditch as they are no longer relevant? What do you really need to do now.  You can then focus on these activities and park everything else.  You will feel liberated once you have stuff prioritised and know the way forward.

So if you are struggling with busyness in your business then connect with me so that we can schedule in a complimentary strategy session where we can identify the key areas where you are wasting your time, energy and resources and the next simple step you can take to move things forward.

Are You Too Busy?

Are You Too Busy?

by | Oct 30, 2013

Time is the great equalizer. Everybody gets the same amount: 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour. We can’t save time or accumulate or rearrange it. We can’t turn it off or on. It can’t be replaced.

But these days, it seems as if the lament of not having enough time has become a national anthem. Everywhere people find themselves constantly in a rush, over-booked and over-scheduled with no time off. Life is accompanied by the ongoing stress of not enough time. And sometimes doing too much and being too busy can be a way of numbing feelings or disguising depression or anger.

Though it may not always seem so, how we fill our time and how we spend it is our choice. Answer the following questions to discover if you’re caught up in the “too-busy” cycle.

  1. I constantly find myself doing “urgent” things and trying to catch up.
  2. I allow myself to drift into obligations when I don’t know how much time or energy they’ll require.
  3. I find myself running from when I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night. I’m always tired and never feel like I accomplished enough.
  4. I seldom schedule a day off for myself and when I do, I tend to fill it with activities.
  5. I don’t make time for “self-care” activities: physical exercise, nurturing or “pampering” myself, cultural stimulation, spiritual well-being, learning something new, playing, or simply doing nothing.
  6. I seldom have time to do the things I really love.
  7. My work and project areas are cluttered with “I’ll look at this later” stacks and “to-do” piles.
  8. I often miscalculate how long certain activities will take.
  9. I often miss deadlines or work long hours to meet a deadline.
  10. I respond to interruptions such as phone calls, faxes, email, beepers and pagers, and allow them to take me off track.
  11. I try to keep things in my head rather than making lists. If I do make a daily “to-do” list, it’s impossible to complete in a day.
  12. I tend to move from one urgent thing to the next, rather than working toward specific goals and objectives.
  13. I find myself constantly wishing I had more time or projecting an imaginary future when I have more time, making comments such as “as soon as…” or “next year…”
  14. I spend time running errands and rushing because I didn’t plan well enough.
  15. I spend time doing things I could pay someone else to do.
  16. I often do things because I “should,” or continue to do things that no longer fit who I am.
  17. Other people complain that my schedule doesn’t allow enough time for them.

If you’re stuck in the too busy cycle why not schedule a complimentary 30 minute  coaching session with me to explore where your business is not Joined Up and is draining you of time, money and energy.

Are You Too Busy?

The Importance of Follow Through

by | Oct 23, 2013

It’s no surprise that step five of the CANTER model to create a Joined Up Business is Execute The Plan and follow up is an integral part of this. It does not matter whether you’re learning to swing a golf club, baseball bat or tennis racquet, coaches always emphasize the importance of follow-through. It’s not just hitting the ball that matters, it’s how you continue your swing once contact is made.

The same thing applies in job interviews, networking, sales and almost any work situation: without purposeful follow-through on your actions and interactions with others, you won’t really be able to reach your professional potential.

“Failure to meet deadlines, honour commitments, monitor staff, return calls and keep track of long-term projects is the most underrated cause of chaos and failure in business life,” writes Stephanie Winston in Organized for Success.

So often we feel we’ve completed a task because the action of it is “done,” but we under-emphasize how powerful it is to continue developing, tracking and monitoring operations and relationships even after they’ve been set in place. As Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan note in Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, “Follow-through is the cornerstone of execution, and every leader who’s good at executing follows through religiously. Following through ensures that people are doing the things they committed to do, according to the agreed timetable.”

It’s Not Just What, But How

When we think of follow-through, we tend to think of taking action. But a large part of follow-through is about first figuring out how things will be done. Once you define your goals, set aside some time to decide just how you will reach them. What steps will be needed to accomplish them? Who will do which steps and when? What is the desired time-line? If a strategy does not address the hows, it is almost certainly doomed to failure.

Take meetings, for instance. A plan for follow-through should be detailed at the end of every meeting. “Never finish a meeting without clarifying what the follow through will be, who will do it, what resources they will use, and how and when the next review will take place and with whom,” Bossidy and Charan suggest.

Organizing and Delegating

A good organizational system will support follow-through more than almost anything. If you are among the organizationally challenged, do one of two things:

1. Make a vow, buy an organization book or two, reserve a weekend or a week, and just do it. Get organized once and for all. You’re not likely to follow through well, if at all, when the disorganization gremlin has hold of you. Getting organized is one of the biggest keys to success; not doing so is an extremely common and most unfortunate form of self-sabotage.

2. Hire someone to organize you and keep you that way. The investment will pay for itself when you begin following through more consistently.

Delegating should also be part of an organizational system. “Getting things done through others is a fundamental leadership skill,” according to Bossidy and Charan. “Indeed, if you can’t do it, you’re not leading.” Delegating is an efficient way to ensure that the greatest number of tasks, including follow-up tasks, get done in the shortest amount of time. In other words, if you want to be successful, don’t be afraid to dole out the workload to others. The key is to always think in terms of the big picture instead of focusing only on whatever task is in front of your face at the moment.

Pro-activity and Integrity

Following through means taking action and keeping your word. Below are some additional considerations regarding follow-through.

•  When you say you’ll do something, be scrupulous in meeting your commitment, whether to a client, supervisor, customer or direct-report. If you can’t deliver it, don’t promise it.

•  In job interviews and networking, rapid follow-up can mean the difference between landing the job and/or client. Hiring decisions are often made very quickly after interviews. And getting in contact with people soon after meeting them means they will remember you, increasing the likelihood they will eventually buy from you.

•  Be sure to send a thank you note after you close a sale or receive any courtesy. This will make you stand out from the others, inviting an ongoing relationship to develop, or continue to develop. Also, a short thank-you note gives you a great excuse to add anything you forgot to say in a meeting or interview, or to highlight details you only glossed over.

•  All top salespeople are masters at follow-through. Lack of follow-through is the primary element missing when sales are not keeping pace with leads generated. You may have hundreds of leads with a great deal of potential. But unless you follow through and actively market/sell to these leads, they will not turn into sales.

•  Following through after sales have been made also makes good financial sense. Getting business from new customers costs significantly more than securing additional business from existing customers.

When it comes to follow-through, something is better than nothing. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing. The best is to follow-up as frequently and best as you can, a practice that can even affect productivity positively.

“On a day-to-day basis, consistent, automatic follow-through can deflect a lot of the firefighting that can push your day off course,” Winston writes

I’d love to hear where you are failing to follow through in your business and the impact that this is having on your success.  Recently I estimated that my lack of follow through was leaving c£30,000 on the table each year. Ouch!!!  Now maybe that will prompt me into action.

Are You Too Busy?

Increasing Personal Productivity

by | Oct 8, 2013

Step Five of the CANTER model to enable you to create a Joined Up Business is Execute The Plan, but often it seems we’re so busy putting out daily fires that we don’t ever get to accomplish anything of real significance—those things that would make us happiest in the long run. Life becomes something to “get through” instead of an exciting path to greater fulfilment.

The efficiency of technology only increases the pressure we feel to do even more than ever before. All of it leaves us feeling too busy and robbed of a sense of accomplishment. So what can we do to increase personal productivity? Below are some tips to help you to get more done in less time—and do what you really want to be doing.

Mission possible

Often busy-ness is a cover for not really knowing what’s the best thing to be doing. To get around this, you have to know what your priorities are in the moment. To determine this you need know what your larger life priorities are.

Stephen R. Covey, best-selling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, suggests writing a personal or organizational mission statement, a statement that summarizes your higher purpose and goals in life. Here’s an example:

To create a balanced, healthy and value-driven life by creating nurturing relationships and guiding others to see their full potential through my work as a therapist.

Without a mission, you won’t be able to say no to tasks. You can only know what to say no to when you know what to say yes to first.

Self-motivate

We can learn all the self-management tricks in the book, but none of them will be worth a dime if we don’t follow through and use them. That’s where self-discipline comes in. There’s no easy, painless way to enforce self-discipline, but if we don’t utilize it, we will be left forever unfulfilled.

Brian Tracy, one of the world’s top business speakers and author of 35 books on business and personal productivity, offers some very simple advice: Simply start doing what you know you need to do. Stop pushing it off for later. Once you start seeing the results active self-discipline yields, the desire for the payoff begins to become greater than your resistance to taking action.

To more easily promote successful self-discipline, Covey and Tracy suggest breaking down tasks into smaller chunks and then simply focusing on taking the first steps. This way all your tasks and goals won’t feel so overwhelming, which makes it easier to take action.

Clean up the loose ends

David Allen, author of Ready for Anything, points out how crises typically arise because secondary priorities have been neglected. He suggests working on unfinished tasks to open up your creativity. It’s more difficult to focus on the bigger, more urgent tasks when you’re painfully aware of ongoing but necessary projects that you never seem to start, such as reorganizing your files, catching up with your accounting, or updating your phone book. So set aside some time—even if it’s just an hour or two a week—to work on these longer term, but less urgent projects. Just don’t let these tasks become distractions from working on the bigger picture goals.

Shattering the creativity/organization myth

Allen talks about how many people believe that if they’re organized they can’t be as creative. As if having too much structure limits one’s artistic expression. But every form of art needs structure. A painting or a photograph needs composition. Each individual scene in a screenplay needs to work with each other as a whole. The truth is, your creative capacity actually expands when you give it structure. That’s because when you’re organized, you actually know what to do and how to do it—as opposed to having all these wonderful, but unrealized, ideas bumping around in your head.

Balancing stress and recovery

Top athletes around the world know the value of alternating periods of intense activity and focus with periods of rest. Balancing stress and recovery is also critical in managing personal energy—and thus, productivity—in all areas of our lives.

“Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery eventually leads to burnout and breakdown,” write Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in their book, The Power of Full Engagement. “Too much recovery without sufficient stress leads to atrophy and weakness.… Full engagement requires cultivating a dynamic balance between the expenditure of energy (stress) and the renewal of energy (recovery) in all dimensions.”

Work when you’re supposed to be working!

If you want to maximize your productivity at work and balance it into the larger scheme of your life, focus is crucial. Tracy says the reason people’s lives get out of balance is not because they have too much work to do, but because they do too little work. And he means they waste too much time when they’re supposed to be working. If you have to, turn off the phone and shut down your email. You’ll find the more work you do get done, the better you feel—which motivates you to keep doing more of the same.

And some quick tips…

  • Write out your goals.
  • Break down your goals into actions.
  • Break down these actions into bite-sized chunks.
  • Schedule these chunks into your planner.
  • Follow through with action.
  • NEVER give into the temptation to do the small things first just because they’re small.
  • Intersperse periods of intense work with periods of recovery, even if brief.
Finally, the best way to stay productive is to focus on the taks you love to do and delegate and outsource the tasks you hate.  Sometimes we can defer from delegating tasks as we think that no-one will enjoy that task (simply because we don’t).  That is not true.  There will be someone out there who loves doing all the things you hate  So understand where your strength and talents lie and then it is easy then to hire people with complementary skills.  In doing so you create a Joined Up Team that is balanced and gets all the tasks of he business accomplished.  You can take your talent dynamics test here and if you need any help in creating your Joined Up team just let me know and we can schedule a Joined Up Business Strategy Session to jump start your business to the next level.
Are You Too Busy?

It All Begins With Trust

by | Oct 4, 2013

You know when you know something, but you don’t know it, that is what has been happening to me recently and it reminds me of the old Zen saying “To know and not to do is not yet to know”.  I have known for some time about the importance of developing trust in relationships but it was during an exercise at a workshop with the amazing Jackie Lowe Stephenson and the Spirit of Leadership that the lesson finally landed.

Jackie and her husband Herb do the most amazing transformational work with horses and I was able to spend two days in the company of her and her inspiring herd of horses (which by the way also includes a Zebra, Holly).  Jackie’s herd are masters at teaching you about building trust and connection and managing your energy.  Approach them with too much energy and they will run away, not have the right intention and commitment, they’ll let you know.  Need connection from a place of wanting and neediness and they will not engage with you.  They taught me many lessons and reminded me, whilst we were hanging out in the fields, of why we need to lose attachment to the outcome and just be in relationship.  Once you just be, rather than do, the relationship can begin.

So for me there are three principles that create the magic formula for developing  a great relationship whether with your horse or with your work colleagues.

 Bond + trust+ respect = foundations for a great relationship

Without these qualities in place any relationship will falter when put to the test.

My great AHA occurred when I was asked to lead my team with a blind fold on. As a walked around the arena I had to rely on my team-mates to keep me and them from walking into danger.  It was a humbling position to be in knowing that I could not do it by myself and needing to trust my team-mates implicitly to keep me out of danger.  And it was during this time that I realised that my horse must trust me implicitly.  As I take my pony Bracken to new places she has never been before (she is figuratively blind folded) as she does not know what is round the corner. She has to trust me implicitly that I will not take her into a dangerous situation.  Now I have spent nearly 21/2 years developing a relationship with Bracken and she does trust me but would another horse.  It is an interesting thing to think about.

And for those of you in business I would extend this analogy to what is happening in the workplace. We are living in uncertain time. Change is happening rapidly and as a leader you are continually leading into the unknown (like being blindfolded).  The landscape changes on a daily basis so you cannot know all the hazards ahead.  All you can do is set the direction and then trust that others on your team will help steer you around the challenges that come up.  But what if trust is lacking in your business and you don’t trust your team members.  How challenging leadership becomes.

So today, whether at work or with your horse make sure that you create and develop a trustful environment by being true to your character and being competent in your job.  Because as Stephen M.R Covey noted the key attributes of building trust are character and competence.

I’d love to hear on the facebook page about how you are developing trust in your relationships

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