Do you have a Vision?
A Vision is something you can see, but isn’t there.
A Vision is something you can feel, but can’t be touched.
A Vision is what drives people without anything being said.
A Vision is a place we’ve never been, but want to go.
A Vision is something you can achieve, even though it’s bigger than you.
A Vision is in your grasp, even when its just out of reach.
What is your Vision?
#business #success #incubator #coaching #consultants
#strategicplanning
Your mission statement means everything to your company right now.杖
Is you mission statement just words that make you feel good?
Or are they words that you live by?
Your mission should define you in good times and bad.
Right now, your mission is most important and now is a true test if actually live by it.
My mission it to be an Incubator of Success, coupled with my vision of Leaving nothing but success in my wake.
These words mean even more to me today as I and others around me struggle with this current crisis.
I still look for ways to share content that inspires and teaches — in Hope’s to provide assistance to those in need of success right now.
See, in times like these, especially in business, it can be very easy to focus only on yourself and your business. Not you customers, partners, or employees.
Yes, being a success incubator also means focusing on my own success, but during this crisis it doesn’t mean to only focus on my success.
If you’re struggling in business right now, reach out below. Let’s discuss innovative ways to get through this together.
Share your mission and how important it is right now to you.
Maybe now is the time you really discover your true mission statement?
#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I am a Personal and Professional Business Coach and Consultant.
But isn’t a Coach and Consultant essentially the same thing? I don’t believe so.
If you know who Tony Robbins is, you’ll appreciate his breakdown:
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/coaching/coaching-vs-consulting/?gclid=CjwKCAjwiN_mBRBBEiwA9N-e_r9iYZdJVc4U2jQgJDs5KXqGQZ_dbrTFKCCX6FRZ0iD0CiNanUYsQBoCIl8QAvD_BwE
However, here is my simple definition of differences…
A Coach guides and advises you on taking action to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and achieve success.
A Consultant takes the action for you.
It boils down to two things: Capacity and Capability. Capacity means that you have the time and resources to take the action yourself. Capability means that you have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to take the action yourself.
You coach someone when they have the Capacity and Capability. When they don’t have one of the two, you step in as a Consultant.
I don’t know how many of you have ever played golf. I personally love the sport.
It’s just you and the course.
It’s also the kind of activity that will really mess with your head if you let it. Golf is all about positive thinking.
In golf, like everything in life, it is important to visualize your success. Good golfers have a routine that includes standing behind the ball. The really good golfers aren’t just lining up their shot; they’re visualizing their shot. They’re picturing, in their mind, the ball’s flight through the air, where it will land, and the course it will take prior to coming to rest.
This is positive thinking at work. The positive thinking book, The Secret, is based on the belief of the law of attraction, which says that thoughts can change a person’s life directly. If you learn to harness the power of positive thoughts, you’ll attract more positive circumstances.
Misery Loves Company – Like Attracts Like
We spend too little time appreciating our joy and the joy of others. We tend to believe that thinking positively and being happy is not a habit. You need to rewire your brain with the power of positive thinking. Gratitude makes us happier. It floods our brains with dopamine, the chemical that has the potential to drown out our negative thoughts and anxious feelings we carry throughout the day. Gratitude invokes the law of attraction.
Throughout this week, I encourage you to take the opportunity to show your gratitude to others at least once a day. Practice your own positive thinking and visualize your week of encouraging the success of others every day. Whether it’s your family, friends, or co-workers, make an effort to recognize them for what they do.
Many people start their own business for a variety of reasons: extra income, want to be their own boss, freedom of when and when not to work, stay at home parent, and a whole host of other reasons. However, many of these businesses fail over time, often because the owner didn’t document, follow, and constantly update a strategic business plan. The often overlooked and seldom thought about aspects of any strategic and business plan, is deep down, why you’re doing what you’re doing and where you want it to go — the mission and vision. Sure, many companies have an idea and even some of them they write it down. But, how good are these statements for your company?
Join John Knotts, a strategic business advisor with over 25 years’ experience working with companies of all sizes to improve their business operations. The first questions he asks in any engagement are: what do you do, why do you do it, where are you today, and where are you going. These questions begin to form, what he calls, the ‘Strategic Bridge’, a visual representation of your strategy at work.
Bring your current mission and vision statements for you company and let’s examine, along with John, what you do and why you do it.
Bulverde Spring Branch Business Networking
Friday, August 18, 2017, 8:45 am
St. Paul Lutheran Church of Bulverde (The Red Roof Church)
29797 US-281, Bulverde TX 78163
Free to attend
When dealing with any organization, it is important to understand the things that are important to it and the employees. For instance, they may be focused on improving compliance or increasing revenue, but each company focuses on things that are important to it.
Knowing this when dealing with the company or their employees helps understand how they behave.
One way to examine any organization is through the lens of purpose versus process. When looking at organizations from this lens, there are four possibilities. The organization can be purposed-based, process-based, blended, or neither. How they are says a lot about how they operate.
Let me define what I mean by each of these types of organizations:
1. Purpose-based. A Purpose-based organization relies on a strong organizational purpose and reason for being. At the heart of what they do everyday is a greater reason everyone works there. Sometimes the organization defines this in their mission and vision statements and sometimes it is just known. Making money is NOT a greater purpose. A good example of a Purpose-based organization would be a philanthropic nonprofit or military organization. Their reasons for existence, even if not written down, are usually quite clear.
2. Process-based. Organizations that focus on perfecting processes to run an effective and efficient organization, are process-based. Strictly process-based organizations are focused on exceptional product or service delivery and not their reason for being. Money is normally very important to them. Many commercial companies fall into this categor, more so in manufacturing.
3. Blended. A blended organization has a strong purpose or reason for being and operates with strong processes. Organizations with both are difficult to find, but can come from anywhere.
4. Neither. Many companies and organizations have neither a strong defined purpose nor effective and efficient processes. These organizations are quite easy to find because they are everywhere.
Everyone always wants to blame the failure to set a culture, or a bad culture, on leadership. Leaders are responsible for setting the culture, but it takes more than leadership. That being said, learn how leader set the environment that allows for a continuous improvement culture.
Strategic planning, as a structured and systematic process, is successful when it is leader-led and overcomes the five reasons 70% of all strategies fail. Learn how to see your plan through to success. The strategic planning process is where leaders of an organization establish the vision of the organization’s future and then develop and implement the actions necessary to achieve that future. This article expands on the strategic planning concepts addressed in Think Big, Take Small Steps and is designed to help you achieve success in your strategic planning process.
Getting the Most Out of Your Company’s Strategic Planning Offsite.
Especially for companies or organizations that have never really dedicated time to strategic planning, the first facilitation can prove to be a make or break experience for executives.
Up to this point, you have focused on developing the Organizational Assessment in my section on How to Conduct an Organizational Assessment. Executive leadership have been involved from an interview perspective, but they haven’t been engaged to the level that we will expect during Leading Your Leaders to Develop an Effective Strategic Framework.
This is when it “gets real.”
As we discuss this part of developing the strategic framework, we will cover these two subjects:
This section is crucial for setting the stage and pre-planning a strategic planning offsite is almost as critical as holding it in the first place. How you organize and what you do at the offsite is as important as the results. This sets the experience that executives should expect from all strategic planning in the future.
If your offsite is boring, produces little results, feels conceived, and appears to be a waste of time, then your resulting strategy will undoubtedly fail to achieve desired results.
The organization of the event is critical. Executives time is always at a premium and pulling them out of the office for even a half day session is met with resistance. Getting buy-in from the senior leader on the importance of the offsite is critical. You need to get their dedicated time and if they aren’t willing to dedicate time to setting strategy, you need to question their understanding of a leader’s purpose in a company.
My approach to an organization’s first strategic planning offsite takes one dedicated day. If the organization has specific issues to deal with, like determining roles and responsibilities, working through a significant cultural issues, etc., then I might add a day or two where they will work specifically on these issues.
Of course, everything is planned in advance and the organizational assessment should already have highlighted additional offsite planning needs and activities.
This is how I normally organize a strategic planning offsite and why:
Thoughtful organization of your strategic planning offsite will ensure executive’s time is used appropriately and the result will be an effective strategy for the organization.
So, 70% of all plans fail to some level; however, by following these guidelines you can help ensure your strategic plan will be one of the 30% successes that everyone reads about.
Regardless of what your mission and vision statements says, if you focus only on making money, you will fail.
There have been instance after instance of organizations, especially the leadership, that focused on making money over doing what they were organized to do and then failed.
A lot of it boils down to corporate greed, but that isn’t always the reason.
I was just meeting with my country club’s manager and he experienced the result of the club focusing on the bottom line versus delivering great service and building relationships–their mission. For several years, club amenities were in serious neglect because everyone was focused on keeping their costs low instead of making the club a great place to be a member and thus making more money because people flock to the club. Two years ago, he came in and got rid of the bonuses to everyone for saving money and reinvested that money back into the club itself. This past year, they have made more money then they ever did.
Booz | Allen | Hamilton is one of the most recent mighty that have fallen to this focus on money over mission.
Several years ago, Booz Allen split their commercial and government lines. Commercial associates in Booz Allen made considerably more money because commercial accounts paid much higher rates. Government contracts required Booz Allen to hire lower paid employees doing the same work as commercial to remain competitive. The problem was that the government work was expanding at an alarming rate. This was the start of their demise actually…they just had no idea back then.
Booz and Company split off and became the commercial consulting firm and Booz | Allen | Hamilton continued as the government consulting firm. Their mission and vision was to “Solve their client’s toughest problems and deliver results that endured.” In a nut shell, Booz was a very high paid and effective solution provider and trusted advisor that put solutions in place that did not require the consultant to come back constantly, to have people in place implementing the solution, or require significant software warranties to keep the system running. You went in, fixed the problem, and left with it running without you.
You might imagine that, given how most contractors operate, many clients loved this model and would continue to call you back to help them solve your problems. In 2008, when I joined them, this was a great way to work.
However, the model was already changing. Even then I remember them telling us at Intro how they were different and that we were not a “butts in seats” contractor. The reason they were saying that then was because that is what we were becoming very quickly.
Over the next three years, their model evolved to building new work, building a team to support that work, maintaining the team, and then building more work. Basically, Booz wanted more and more steady income. This could have come from continuing to deliver the best work–what they were known for, but it was easier to hire people and put them in place as lasting solutions. This created quicker growth.
The problem with this model is it is just like everyone else’s out there. Unfortunately, when you compete with that type of model, the next time the contract is up for renewal, someone will always come in cheaper to win that work. Competing in this environment with this model is a downward spiral for the contracting companies, the employees, and the government…no one wins.
As you can imagine, people start fighting over work, cheaper employees are brought in with limited skills, they stop investing in employee talent development, and talented employees are pushed out the door.
You can only solve the toughest problems with really smart people and when you stop hiring, developing, and paying them, you fail to be able to deliver on your mission.
Regardless, the executives want to continue to make the same amount of money they always have, so they start cutting people from the bottom of the tier…the ones costing them money. Fancy layoffs, what they called furlough letters, started going out. The company stopped training. People got rid of others so they could rape and pillage their existing clients.
Out of the 60+ people I worked with on the Strategy and Organization team, about four still exist. Just this week, they made another drastic manpower cut and forced many people to take pay cuts and work longer hours. The mass exodus continuos.
Now there are those that will blame the economy, or government spending. I don’t buy that. When all other contractors were suffering in 2008/2009, Booz was growing at a double digit rate. They were growing because many people still focused on the mission and vision then. However, as the new model really took hold because it was how everyone was rated and promoted, their growth quickly came to a halt. This drove poor decisions and even some illegal activities, which they were caught doing. If they stuck to their mission and vision and their original model, they would still be very strong today.
This is the same old story played out over and over. What will actually happen is one of two things…
1. They will continue to thrash about like and tree trying to save the dying heart, cutting off limbs in spite of itself, until they simply go bankrupt and this 100 years old company dies.
2. Or, the CEO is replaced with an outsider who gets rid of all the crap executives, cuts everyone’s pay, and reduces the organization to a manageable amount so it can refocus on the original mission and vision.
Either way, people on all sides will lose because several years ago greed overcame mission and vision and the poison slowly took hold.
And this boys and girls is how the mighty fall.
Leadership is a dying art in the world today. The great leaders of the past are found few-and-far between these days. There are some that have been fairly successful that have rose to an iconic status, but have they been truly great leaders or just really successful at running something?
Often there is contention between the skills that a leader needs and what a manager needs. I believe, if you’re not a good leader, you won’t be a good manager, and if you’re not a good manager, you won’t be a good leader. It is my contention that those who apply both of these talents expertly demonstrate what I call, “LeadermentSM.” This is the expert combination of Leadership and Management together.
LeadermentSM | Envision the Shot, Believe in the Shot, Take the Shot
Have you ever heard that Great Leaders possess Great Vision? It’s more than just “having great vision.” It’s believing in that vision and acting upon it. It is easy to think and dream big, but it is risky to go forward with your vision.
A true Leader and Manager, under the LeadermentSM YouniversitySM not only has to be able to envision the future, but believe it is possible, and be willing to take the risk by moving forward and executing on the vision.
As an avid golfer, I understand the power of positive thinking. Golfers can take from 60 to well over 100 shots on a golf course in a single round. Professional understand that every shot requires a routine of mental activity. When preparing for your shot, you stand behind the ball and picture in your mind how the shot will look. Confidence in the shot looking like that comes from practice and experience…if you have the practice and experience, you can believe that the shot will happen as you envisioned it. Then simply trust in your skill to make the shot happen and be willing to accept the consequences if it doesn’t.
You might remember the saying, “It’s better to aim high and miss then to aim low and hit.” Leadership requires all three variables: Vision, Confidence, and Execution. Bringing the three together is a core skill in Leading Yourself in the LeadermentSM YouniversitySM.
Let’s explore these three things a bit closer:
Envision: To picture mentally. Visioning is the act of purposefully thinking about the future of something. Strong leaders and managers are effective at stopping what they’re doing as a routine of their day and envisioning the future. LeadermentSM is about making this routine in your day-to-day life. The best place to practice this is at home. Take a few minutes to sit quietly in a room or in your back yard. Look around and ask yourself if you are happy with the way things look today. Think about the future of your view…what could change over time. If your view could look differently, how would you like it to look. Getting that mental picture doesn’t take hours, days, or weeks–it takes minutes. When you come to work in the morning, envision your day. When faced with a new project, envision the end of the project and the results you expect. Being able to briefly stop what you’re doing and actually think about the future of it is active visioning. Doing that throughout the day is powerful for any leader or manager. I’m not advocating that you spend hours day dreaming at work, just being a little more thoughtful about what you do. Many of us tend to get so wrapped up in what we are currently doing that we seldom think about why or even challenge if we’re doing the right thing.
As part of routine, you should be able to stop often and consider what you’re doing. Think about playing golf, even if you never have before. In a four-hour round of golf, let’s say you take 90 shots–that’s a shot about every 2.7 minutes. To be effective, you must develop a routine of envisioning that shot before you take it. That’s stopping yourself briefly and really thinking about what you expect this to look like. I want you to think about something…professionals normally score in the low 70s and high 60s in golf, while amateurs normally are over 100. Both professionals and amateurs take four hours on average to play a round of golf. This means professionals take about 3.5 minutes to execute each shot and amateurs take over a minute less for each shot. Why? Because they don’t take the time to envision the shot and thus end up taking an average of 30 more swings of their clubs during the same four hours.
That’s a pretty power thought picture isn’t it? If you have eight hours in the day, how would you like to get the same amount of work done 30% better? Simple visioning activities can make this happen–now tell me you think it’s a waste of time!
Above is a simple daily routine of being more thoughtful about what you’re doing and thus becoming better at doing the same amount of work in the same amount of time. However, some things require a bit more dedicated thought. When first given that big project how do you react to it? Do you dive in and get started making it happen or do you stop and take your time thinking about what you’re going to do? I’m not talking about the simple visioning routine above, but more of a dedicated thought process. The extent of the project could dictate taking an hour, a day, or several hours over several days. This is when you need to employee effective visioning approaches and tools. Here are some ideas:
These approaches can obviously be used together in any number of ways or you can use all of them. They also can be used over and over again with the same thought at different times or with small groups either in person or over the internet. The size and scope of the task should dictate how much time and effort you spend on this. If you are starting out the year and developing your strategy for the next several years, you probably want to take much more time than if just dealing with a short project.
There are some professional approaches out there that can help you envision the future. Here are just a couple that I like:
Grove’s Strategic Visioning Model. Grove’s model is part of their visual techniques for brainstorming and thought generation. I particularly like their cyclical visioning model because it makes you think about how to reflect on the past, think about the future, and ground yourself in the present. I love using this quote, “Plan for 100 years, live for today.” Grove’s model kind of sums up that quote.
TRIZ. TRIZ (pronounced “trees”) is an innovative Russian problem solving methodology. I really like the basics of the concept and one specific item has always stuck with me. “Someone somewhere has already solved your problem.” In a nutshell, the solution or approach you’re looking for has already been done, you just have to look for it. Additionally, the TRIZ approach addresses ways of using the problem as part of solution and focusing on contradictions to solve a problem. It’s a very interesting topic that is quickly gaining ground in the western cultures. Back in 2007, there was little out there about TRIZ and now it’s becoming a common approach to innovative thought. I think it provides a nice set of tools for visioning.
Believe: To have faith, confidence, or trust. It’s great to have big dreams and ideas, but for many of us, this is about as far as we go. Much of this is because of fear–we are afraid of failure. If I openly share my ideas and dreams with others, they might ridicule me. Most of the time I think this because I’m personally challenging these myself. The power of believing is nurtured by experience and mental fortitude. First you have to believe in your vision and then you have to be able to share your belief. Most people will not believe in you if they have no experience in your vision. In my role as a consultant, I often have to share a vision of what I believe can happen to people who don’t believe it’s possible.
In golf, you can have blind faith–which basically means you’ve never experienced it and have nothing to convince yourself that what you believe is actually true, but you believe in it anyway. I believe; however, that this leads to “over confidence.” Practice on the range and the course is what builds confidence. Taking chances and trying new things in the game, especially when nothing is on the line, builds a level of understanding of what you can and cannot do. However, you always have to push yourself to do better. All you have to do is watch professional golfers play and you know that anyone can do better.
So, being able to believe is about having the confidence to know that what you believe is at least possible, if not definitely probable. Confidence comes from experience and knowledge. The combination of these two things makes leaders and managers powerful, because now you can believe in your visions. Gaining the confidence comes from reading, education and training, talking to others, going to conferences, attending webinars, and basically being a voracious consumer of information around the subject. Additionally, practicing and actually performing the thing you believe in greatly builds your confidence. If you’re going to give a speech, they say to practice the speech in front of a mirror and in front of others. If you’re going to practice leading others, do so through volunteering. This is a great way to practice the skills I’m teaching you through the LeadermentSM YouniversitySM.
Execute (Take the Shot): To put into effect, or carry out. If you have a vision and believe in that vision, the final step is to simply act on that vision–just do it! All too often, leaders and manager don’t have the follow through. They come up with great ideas, or at least big ideas, and they talk up a great game, but their ideas never actually materialize. I find this with volunteer leaders in professional organizations all the time. We’ll have a meeting or go to an annual conference and everyone will start dreaming up ideas based on what is being discussed and what they’re learning. They will talk about what they’re going to get done between now and the next gathering, then nothing happens. This is “follow through;” when people do what they say they’re going to do. Some don’t because they don’t know how, some don’t because they’re too busy, some don’t because they’re afraid of failure, some don’t because they’re just lazy; most don’t because of a combination of all these reasons.
In golf, when I have the shot in my mind and I am confident I can make that shot, I line up the shot, address the ball, take one or two practice swings, check my distance, and then I step up and take the shot. If I shank the shot, or pull it left, it is what it is. Examining what you did wrong before you even take the shot is admitting defeat beforehand–failure is sure to follow and thus confirm your belief. Trust and execute.
A great movie and book that I have enjoyed over the years is The Secret. many people have read this book, watched the movie, or both. I definitely would suggest you do the same.
As part of Leading Yourself, The Power of Positive Thinking is a basic tenant of LeadermentSM. Learning to Envision, Believe, and Do in your daily life will greatly improve your ability as a leader and manager.
Now when you think of great leaders think about what styles and concepts of LeadermentSM they employed. What did they do that was so effective…that propelled the masses under them to great things. As we can see, these styles vary in application, but an effective leader and manager should understand and apply all traits in a combined approach as appropriate.
LeadermentSM and YouniversitySM are service marks of Crosscutter Enterprises