Posts Tagged ‘Improvement’

What’s Holding You Back?

December 9th, 2011

What is really impact­ing your pur­suit of the results you want to achieve? If there is some­thing hold­ing you back in your life and cho­sen career, what can you do about it?

Cer­tainly the econ­omy — domes­tic and global — has impacted most of us, and will con­tinue to have a neg­a­tive impact for at least a few more years. But it is too easy to blame out­side influ­ences and avoid tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for what we need to do in order to reach our goals.

There are exter­nal fac­tors — includ­ing biases, prej­u­dices, reg­u­la­tory bar­ri­ers, and so on — that are out of our imme­di­ate con­trol. Yet there are things we can do that will improve our sit­u­a­tion if we per­sis­tently stay the course.

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Getting the Best Out of Yourself

June 27th, 2011

During a recent coach­ing ses­sion, I was asked, “How do we get the most out of ourselves?”

Sev­eral ideas came to mind, and I quickly rat­tled off a short list. Upon fur­ther reflec­tion, I thought it was a list worth shar­ing, because we all have the poten­tial to do more than we are doing today.

Here are eight ways that you can unleash the best from within yourself.

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Find Inspiration in Your Own Obituary

April 12th, 2011

One of the great things Build­ing Cham­pi­ons’ coaches do in help­ing peo­ple pre­pare their Life Plan is to ask them to com­pose their own obit­u­ary. You write it the way you want to be remem­bered by your fam­ily, friends, col­leagues and oth­ers impor­tant to you. For me, this was a pow­er­ful experience.

But how I wanted to be remem­bered was prob­a­bly not how it would really be writ­ten if my life had ended right then. There were gaps that I needed to address.

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Employees Can Improve Productivity

April 12th, 2010

I don’t believe peo­ple come to work hop­ing to be mediocre. Most employ­ees want to do well and to be rec­og­nized and rewarded for their contributions.

In order to excel, your employ­ees must be engaged, encour­aged, and empow­ered to make a dif­fer­ence. Employ­ees see the good and the dumb ideas passed down from man­age­ment. They know first­hand what doesn’t work, or hin­ders their effec­tive­ness. That is why you should involve employ­ees in improv­ing your business.

There may be a busi­ness whose prod­uct, process, or mar­ket hasn’t changed in twenty years. It’s pos­si­ble, but for the vast major­ity of busi­nesses these things evolve reg­u­larly. What worked ten years ago (or even five) would prob­a­bly yield dif­fer­ent results today.

If you want to improve pro­duc­tiv­ity, lis­ten care­fully to what you hear from the trenches, from the peo­ple doing the work every day.

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Performance Slips When it is Not Measured

March 29th, 2010

Without clear stan­dards and reg­u­lar mea­sure­ment, per­for­mance suf­fers. Even the self-motivated achiever will pro­duce dis­ap­point­ing results when they lack direction.

Every man­ager and employee must have a clear under­stand­ing of what’s expected of them, and they must be mea­sured against those expec­ta­tions daily. Inspect often to ensure the results you expect are achieved, and let every­one know where his or her per­for­mance ranks.

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Be Part of the Solution

January 11th, 2010

Working TogetherIn times of stress our “com­plain meter” can eas­ily rise.  Things big and small annoy us, but com­plain­ing only increases our frus­tra­tion and does lit­tle to resolve issues.  This is when lead­er­ship skills really pay off, and being a leader isn’t just the province of CEO’s.  We can all make a dif­fer­ence in resolv­ing issues or improv­ing dys­func­tional sit­u­a­tions when we pos­i­tively lead oth­ers and our­selves to the right solutions.

This process is not rocket sci­ence.  In many ways it’s related to work­ing more effec­tively with oth­ers as a team.  We have all heard the expres­sion “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”  But over time, our com­plain­ing can work against us, shut­ting us out of con­tribut­ing to the solu­tion.  We can get more done by con­struc­tively par­tic­i­pat­ing in change rather than being a roadblock.

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It’s Time to Look Back

January 4th, 2010

The abil­ity to look for­ward is a great attribute for man­agers and lead­ers.  A clear vision and pur­pose­ful direc­tion ener­gizes your team and builds pos­i­tive momen­tum.  How­ever, no team or busi­ness endeavor works per­fectly.  Mis­takes are made.  Stuff hap­pens.  What do we do about it is the key.

Past Present Future

 

Per­son­ally, I really hate to look back­ward, but it’s nec­es­sary.  The pur­pose is not to beat up on your­self or oth­ers.  Instead, it is to reflect con­struc­tively on what has worked well and what should have worked bet­ter.  Not only is this reflec­tion nec­es­sary for you, but your team also needs to learn from it.

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