2013 is fast approaching, are you willing to
unleash the creative power of your dreams and allow them to project the
kind of business you want to have and the quality of life you want to lead. Now
is the time to create a positive mind-set, where you orient yourself to
constantly be on the lookout for fortuitous situations or circumstances. It is
extremely difficult to identify opportunities, when you are not looking for
them and impossible, if you do not believe in yourself, your abilities and the
potential that any opportunity offers.
Stop
making any more excuses about delaying taking the action you know you need to
take to live your dreams? Become enthusiastic about your potential today and
create a crystal clear picture of exactly what you want to achieve in your life
and business in the future. This vision will serve as the starting point to
begin setting meaningful goals and creating an action plan to make just that
possible for you, during next year and beyond.
Everything starts out as only a Dream
Anything outstanding that has ever been achieved started out
as only a dream, an idea in someone’s head. You too can create wonders with
your dreams and hopes, if you commit to nourish them, by investing in your
personal growth and that of your key team members. You protect them by creating
a set of realistic goals for your business and you commit to nurse these goals
to fruition, by building meaningful action lists, which are consistently acted
upon daily.
What is Possible for you?
The size and scope of your dreams determines what you can
achieve and permits you to preview what could be. Clarity of purpose coupled
with consistent, planned and focused action by all team members in your business,
allows you to convert this probability, into possibility and finally your new
business reality. Dare to dream, create a vision and goals to deliver on your
dreams and you will get to create the business of your dreams.
Vision
All
the super achievers and extraordinary businesses, which I have followed and
researched, do not possess any special super powers, or unique talents. The one
thing that I have noticed they do have in common is a very clear vision about
what they want to achieve in the future. This vision is written down and
converted into an easy to understand and apply mission, which they and their
team can act upon daily.
Action Idea:
Explore your vision and mission for your business. Once you have clarity on
exactly what you want to create in your business, ensure that everyone in your
organisation understands your vision and their role required to deliver on your
vision.
Clearly Understand and
Communicate your Businesses Picture of Possibility
Vision
is a picture of possibility for the future, a direction the organisation is
going to travel in. So it is of little value to write out a difficult to
understand vision statement, which is plastered on the wall of the reception
area of your business, which looks really pretty, but no-one in the
organisation understands or feels passionate about. Vision is something people
must be able to easily see and connect with.
I
recently worked with the Information Technology department at one of the large
universities in South Africa. They have had a really flowery and eloquent
vision, which has been displayed throughout the corridors of the university for
many years now. When we started the strategic planning session for 2013, I
asked who knew what their vision for the future was. Only two people in the
room had a vague idea of the content of the vision statement and even they did
not feel that it had any meaning for them.
After
exploring what they really saw as important for the future, which was to become
a real value adder, to their students and the community at large, delivering
top quality students and internationally recognised research in the Information
Technology arena. We created a pictorial representation of what that meant to
them. This pictorial representation was made of various analogies and pictures
which allowed them to all grasp exactly what was required of them. This picture
of possibility, will also serve to allow them to easily communicate this
picture to all the other stakeholders in the university. The feedback from the
university has been extraordinary. Everyone now understands the vision and most
importantly their role in delivering the vision.
Creating your Vision
Action Idea: Get clarity around exactly what you
want to create in your business in the future. Then invest time with your team
to get their input towards, understanding of and buy-in, to this vision. Now
all that is left to do is to convert this into understandable pictures and
phrases, which your team can comprehend and most importantly one they feel committed
towards using. To make this work in the long term, it is important to consistently
remind your team about the vision and their commitment towards it.
Goals
Work
with your team to convert your vision and mission into understandable and
achievable goals. These goals must be easy to understand, written down and each
team member must clearly comprehend their individual responsibility to deliver
on the organisations goals. The way to make this process really work requires
you to take the big picture and for you to break it back into smaller pieces,
which individual team members can take action to achieve.
Each
organisational or departmental goal must be broken back into individual projects
or smaller bite size goals, which must then be allocated to individuals to
achieve. These individuals must commit to a reasonable time frame to complete
each project and they must create a set of measurement criterion, to measure
their progress daily, weekly and monthly.
Action Idea:
Each individual project must then be converted into action lists, which each
individual can use daily to guide them on exactly what actions they need to
take to achieve each project. These action lists are the input documents each
team member uses to drive their daily activities.
Make it Fun and Don’t Give Up until you Succeed
To
successfully fulfil all your business goals, requires consistent and persistent
effort on the part of every team member. So if you want to make the journey
more pleasant and sustainable, find ways to create an atmosphere of fun,
excitement and real deep passion around this process. When you do this, it
changes the concept of that dirty four letter word called work, into something
people enjoy, is fulfilling and something everyone will eagerly want to
participate in doing daily.
I
know it sounds counter intuitive, where you make work fun, but when you can
find creative ways to make your team members enjoy their work every day, they
become far more passionate and driven to deliver their best. Many organisations
such as Zappos shoes, Caribou Coffees and Google have introduced the concept of
fun in the workplace. They encourage people to enjoy their work daily. As you
know all these businesses have shown exponential growth since they opened their
doors for business.
Making this work in your
Business
Action Idea: Introducing fun as a concept in the
workplace is not as simple as walking in one day and telling everyone they must
have fun at work. It is a long term investment into creating a new culture,
where people feel empowered to deliver their best and are encouraged to enjoy
the process. This can only happen in an environment of openness, support and
understanding. So to start the process, you need to ensure that everyone
understands the vision, their role in delivering it and they must be supported
and encouraged to be autonomous, master their abilities and enjoy the process.
Make Time Available
Each
team member must be allowed to be at the helm of their own job and commit to
implement their part in achieving the overall plan daily. They must be
supported and encouraged to take inspired action daily, which will help the
team achieve the desired results. To do this, they will need a system to make them
both effective and efficient. This means that each team member will need a
system to help them manage their time, activities and energy productively.
Action Idea: The first
and most crucial element, when introducing a system to support your team to
become effective, must ensure that they are clear on exactly what actions need
to be taken. Once each team member is certain that they are taking the right
actions, introduce a system which allows them to improve their efficiency, or
in other words one that allows them to allocate how they will utilise their available
time daily. The system you introduce must be flexible and must be suitable to
support each team member’s unique circumstances. Allowing them to allocate time
to their top priorities, whilst ignoring time wasting things, which do not
serve their purpose or fit in with the overall vision.
Whatever Gets Measured Gets Done
When
on the path to achieving your organisational goals, you will need to have
consistent and regular checks, to ensure that you and your team remain on
track. Each team members commitment towards monitoring their progress on a
regular and frequent basis, will allow them to constantly measure their daily
actions, to see if they are delivering the desired results. Should the
individual or collective actions not be aligned with where you want to go, you
can quickly change or improve them to ensure that you eventually do achieve the
desired results. When each team member monitors their actions daily, the team
leaders monitor the their teams activities weekly and the organisation monitors
their progress monthly, it means that only small corrections are necessary to
ensure that everyone stays on track
Action Idea:
During the planning process, ensure that each team member’s goals or projects
are time defined and their progress is easy to measure. Each team member, department and organisation needs
to have a predetermined set of measurement criterion to help them regularly
measure their individual and collective progress.
Have Fun
If you want to invite sustainable long term success
into your business, then you and your team must commit to have fun and deliver
your best every day. Encourage them to look at their own mirror of assessment
and to enjoy what they do. When everyone commits to the businesses’ success and
they take bold focused and prioritised actions every day, success is inevitable.
This daily commitment to take the right inspired action daily will make you and
your team unstoppable.
Author: Andrew Horton a
Motivational Speaker
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