Strategic Planning

Three big risks on your way to big goals

January 25, 2011 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

The challenges of a big challenge are many.

Here are just three of the errors that it’s easy to make if you don’t plan and manage your work effectively:

1. Getting into action without a plan

You’re likely in this case to find out that you’re quickly far afield of where you intended to be.

2. Creating a plan but never getting action underway

You’re likely to be filled with fear about something you think you can’t achieve or a problem you can’t conquer. You never get around to turning your great ideas into results that count for anything.

3. Losing track of your target along the way

Here you start implementing your plan, but you don’t follow up well and consistently. You lose your sense of the destination as well as the path there.

Here’s what others advise about these risks, and what happens if you don’t meet them effectively:

Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.
Mark Victor Hansen

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.
Unknown

Any goal without a plan is just a wish.
Larry Elder

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
Frank A. Clark

The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.
Earl Nightingale

If you don’t know where you are going, how can you expect to get there?
Basil S. Walsh

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.
Confucius

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.
Jim Rohn

“It is not the mountain that we conquer but ourselves.”
Edmund Hillary

Filed Under: Business Results, Leadership, People at Work, Process Management, Quotes, Strategic Planning

How to make the milestone of the New Year work for you

December 30, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

At the end of the year, it’s common to feel many things.

These may be just some of the things that you notice when you pause and reflect:

- A sense of accomplishment at the things you’ve achieved

- A bit of regret at goals not met yet

- Excitement about the fresh year just ahead

I was thinking the other day about the finish line of a year, and how to make the most of the end point it represents.

Suddenly, I realized with a smile that the reason I love New Year’s is the starting line it creates, instead.

What does the New Year’s milestone represent to you?

1. A finish line

If New Year’s represents primarily endings to you, consider these things as you look back:

- How are you different now from what you were like a year ago?

- What are you happiest about with the way the year worked out for you?

- What do you wish you could change, or had done differently?

- Are there things you learned to accept, forgive or forget this year?

2. A starting line

If your focus at New Year’s is on new beginnings, and the fresh possibilities of a brand new year, consider these things as you look ahead:

- What’s one change you’d like to make in 2011?

- What would you like to learn this year? How can you do that most easily?

- In what ways would you like to challenge or test yourself in positive ways this year?

3. Both endings and beginnings

If you see both sides of the milestone – the finish line for one year, the starting line for a new one – consider these things as you prepare to move forward well:

- Are there expectations it would be helpful for you to let go of?

- Are there habits you would like to eliminate? How about habits you’d like to create?

- Are there dreams you’d like to give a test drive this year with even a single, simple first step?

However you see the milestone of the New Year, consider how you want to feel about yourself, your work and life at the end of 2011.

Let that felt sense of “you in a year” guide decisions about how you spend time, money, energy and attention throughout 2011.

And let this one be your best year yet.

Filed Under: Business Results, Musings, People watching, Strategic Planning

What do you like best…and least…about your biggest change this year?

November 26, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

It was another interesting Thanksgiving this year.

Among the four families who gathered to share the annual feast, three had sent a child away to college for the first time this fall.

There’s was lots of happy chatter as we reassembled the group, now living in many different parts of the country.

After dinner, a mom whose only child is one of the three new college students asked them:

1. What’s the best thing about being a college?

2. What do you miss the most about no longer living at home?

The new freshmen each took a deep breath, and shared their answers in front of the large group.

All three like living with many students their own age.

It’s still exciting and invigorating. And for the most part, roommates are working out pretty well for each.

One misses her bed at home.

On the other hand, the one boy in the trio, 6’2″, likes his longer bed at school better because his feet don’t hang over the edge of the bed.

Then the rest of us were asked our answers to the same basic questions, in reverse order:

1. What do miss most about having your child (or sibling, in one case) in college?

2. What do you like best about it?

Everyone’s answers were much as you would expect.

Parents miss their kids, a LOT, as much as – and sometimes more – than we expected.

The one sibling-still-at-home expressed it this way, “I miss my built-in best friend.”

And the good thing about this major change?

We have all discovered that this time of great change is, or can be, a very creative time.

In various ways, we each expressed a feeling of rebirth as we rediscover things we used to love to do before our lives revolved around kids’ activities.

We’re seeking and taking on new challenges, and setting new goals of our own again.

What about you?

These questions can help you review big changes you made this year, and prepare well for future change:

1. What was the biggest change you’ve made this year?

2. What do you like best about that change?

3. What do you miss most about the way things used to be?

Filed Under: Musings, People watching, Strategic Planning

Time for a learning tune-up?

September 7, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

For many people, it's September, not January, that feels like the start of a new year.

That new school year feeling – well, it's just hard to shake.

Pause for a quick review or tune-up of your learning plan for the year ahead.

Start here:

1. What skills or knowledge do you want to add between now and next September?

2. What skills or knowledge can you let go, if they're now out of date?

Sometimes to make room for new, we have to let go of knowledge we no longer need.

3. Are there things you must learn this year, like it or not?

Sometimes the learning we want to do brings with it prerequisites we're not very excited about. How will you fit that less interesting but necessary learning into your schedule?

Here's what others advise about the important subject of learning and mastery:

The too soft teacher reinforces the learner's natural wish to retreat and stay safe. The teacher must know when to let the learner struggle. Risk brings its own rewards.
Marilyn Ferguson

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.
Dee Hock

What we want to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
G B Shaw

Treat people as if they were what they might be, and you will help them become capable of being.
Goethe

The germ of an idea doesn't make the sculpture that stands up. The next stage is hard work.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

All learning begins when our comfortable ideas turn out to be inadequate.
John Dewey

Filed Under: Knowledge Management, Musings, People at Work, Process Management, Quotes, Strategic Planning

There is no straight path to many goals

August 15, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Not a straight path, originally uploaded by jcgr.

We have a vision, set a goal.

We anticipate a clear path, a nice, straight road.

Often, though, a zig zag path turns out to be only way to go.

Here, a hiker at Bryce Canyon National Park travels the switchbacks to the canyon floor.

Filed Under: Business Results, Images, Leadership, Process Management, Serendipity, Strategic Planning

Flexibility

August 5, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Flexibility, originally uploaded by jcgr.

Getting big things done sometimes requires a plan that you play out exactly as prescribed.

And at other times, success requires great flexibility.

Usually, using both is the best play:

- Planning and adaptability

- Preparation and responsiveness to whatever you find along the way.

Filed Under: Business Results, Images, Process Management, Serendipity, Strategic Planning

Personal themes and motivation

July 7, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

"Know your limits, but don't let your limits hold you back."

That was the response of our son, Matt, to my question about what the theme of his work would be, if he were a novelist or screenwriter.

We were driving the many miles back from college visits in Southern California last week (6 college visits in 3 days – whew!).

"Don't you like the 'sky's the limit' theme?" I asked, a bit surprised, but also amused.

"No, I hate that one!" he said, emphatically.

I laughed, and thought his sister might agree.

They've each spent years, relatively speaking, under the tutelage of coaches in a total of five or six sports, collectively. All coaches, everywhere – sports and business, too – promote the no-limits theme.

The more I thought about Matt's self-motivation and his "know the limits but move the limits" theme, I liked it.

As I let the idea play a bit, it seems to me he's not saying one should be restrained by expectations.

Rather, one should start from the base of reality – the facts of one's initial performance – then test and stretch the limits through hard work, driven by a dream.

The baseline thought? We are not all blessed with Michael Phelps' native swimming talents, Ernest Hemingway's literary ability, or Marie Curie's curiosity and scientific skills. We cannot all win the championship ring in our chosen field.

But given that, we can each do the hard work to move the limits we initially perceive.

And sometimes those limits can move very, VERY far from what we originally believed, with enough hard work, and a big enough dream.

Filed Under: Leadership, Musings, People at Work, Process Management, Strategic Planning

When “obvious” isn’t

May 20, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

"Do you want to know who wins?," I asked my husband about 3/4 of the way through the American Idol finals.

Twitter had provided me the answer seconds after the East Coast knew the results. Half our family HATES knowing the results before the end. Half of the family thinks it's fun.

And for American Idol context, my husband is an amused, some-time watcher.

I catch it regularly, as I do "The Amazing Race." I like to watch how the competitors handle the pressure:
- In the face of so much great competition, all collected in one place
- Under the bright lights
- On the big stage
- In the rapidly changing environment where, week by week, one of the competitors gets an much-unwanted ticket home

But back to the immediate American Idol moment: did my husband want to know who'd won?

"I think I know," my husband asserted, confidently.

"Who?" I asked.

"The obvious one," he answered.

But the "obvious one" wasn't.

When was the last time in your life when the "obvious" choice was ultimately incorrect?

Was the situation a significant one?

Or was it more like this American Idol circumstance – one in which it was fun to know the answer (for me, at least…not for my husband), and in light of that, to watch the story unfold, bit by bit?

It's important to periodically check your assumptions.

Ask yourself:
1. Do I really have as much information as I think I do?
2. Are my sources of information solid?
3. Have I interpreted the information that I have correctly?
4. Does something need to change, based on what seemed "obvious," but was not?

Filed Under: Business Results, Knowledge Management, Musings, People watching, Strategic Planning

Is “change” passe?

May 5, 2009 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Our son, 17, had an unexpected reaction to the speeches of would-be student body leaders at his high school yesterday.

"One kept saying, 'Vote for me. Vote for Change!'" Matt said.

He found it unimaginative, dated.

"It's pretty good there now. We've had a good president this year, and he's done a lot of good things. Why would we vote for 'change,' just to change?" he asked.

"What's new about that?"

"VERY interesting!" I thought to myself. I was glad Matt was standing back to look beyond the surface of the election pitches he heard.

But I also had the question, has "change" already become passe? Is it overused to the point that, as my mother used to say, "They've ruined another perfectly good word."

Or is it more that we all have "change fatigue?"

For each and all of us, there has been SO much change in the past few years – some sought, some dropped on top of us or thrown at us full-force – that we just need time to breathe.

Either way, Matt's reflection on the word "change" was an observation I'll definitely file away. If high school juniors have "change fatigue," it informs many things.

His comments are also an important reminder that any change must be well-made, at every stage, starting with the original idea, and moving on to the plan, communication, implementation, and follow-up.

For example you can ask these basic things about any change process:
1. Is the need for change convincingly made, and then well-communicated to the people involved?
2. Is the implementation path well-conceived, and the plan complete?
3. Is the plan, itself, well-communicated and supported by the people who need to make it succeed?
4. How is the progress monitored during the change process, and fed back to the people involved in, or affected by change so they know if things are on course or not?
5. And when the change is complete, does someone step back (and how do they do this?) to ask and evaluate, "Was the change well-made?" and, ultimately, "Was the change really needed?"

If we're all saturated with change – when many changes are still ahead for each and all of us in almost any industry or organization in which we work or lead – it becomes even more critical that those who are responsible for major change manage it well.

Filed Under: Business Results, Leadership, Measurement, People at Work, Process Management, Strategic Planning