Success is a topic that everyone loves to talk about, but few will do what is necessary to achieve success. When it comes to success, it’s about shutting up and getting down to the business of success:
I can’t stress how important it is to actually define success. Without a clear definition of what success means to you, you’ll never know if you are successful.
So what is your definition of success? What does success look like? What does it feel like?
When you look at most successful businesses and organizations, a key characteristic is that the leaders of these organizations know how the organization or business is doing at any given time. They know because they measure, not just results, but more importantly activity and key indicators. I wrote a short article about this idea. Here’s a couple of the paragraphs:
One of the most important parts of any strategic plan is the implementation of that plan. Without implementing what you’ve laid out, all you’ve really done is a nice exercise in philosophy.
A key to implementation is measuring results. A common question I hear is “but what do I measure?”
The big question of course comes down to what to measure. Each business and organization is different. When in doubt, measure something, anything - you’ll learn over the course of a short time span if what you are measuring is what you need to measure - is it a key indicator for how well your business is doing or is what you are measuring a lagging measurement that tells you something after the fact. If what you are measuring is not assisting you to make future adjustments, then change what you are measuring. Just like most things in life - the hardest part is getting started.
I wrote a short article for my weekly newsletter on goal getting - that is, accomplishing goals. So often in our society and especially in the development field we focus on the first part - goal setting.
The key to a great strategic plan, that most people forget, is not the goal setting part. I work with many clients on goal clarification. Without the clarification, nothing else can happen, so don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here.
To make a strategic plan truly “great” or effective, the focus needs to shift to goal getting once the plan is in place.
The simple version of what success is can be summarized into two parts - set the goal and be clear about what it is and do actions necessary to accomplish the goal. So simple! And here’s the thing - most entrepreneurs struggle with this because it is so easy. Entrepreneurs aren’t into doing things the easy way - they exist to figure their own way of doing things. That’s a great trait to have and at the same time it can be a huge detriment. The key is knowing when to use this strength and when to lay it aside. When we master that, simple is acceptable - the switch flips in our minds that says that what we are doing is easy, so long as we allow it to be easy. And that’s where the goal getting starts to happen.
I wrote an article on being organized - my definition of being organized is probably not what you would expect.
For me, organization has nothing to do with perfection. Let’s be serious for a moment - my wife and I have three children aged 5, 3, and 1 - perfect organization just doesn’t happen in our house. There is no expectation that everything will be in its own place and tidy.
To me being organized is not about spending a great deal of time cleaning, buying organizational supplies, sorting, etc. My definition of being organized has everything to do with effectiveness.
The questions you want to ask yourself when it comes to being organized are:
What’s your definition of being organized? Are you looking for perfection? Do you need to alter your definition and expectations based on your circumstances and your personality? What small changes to your physical space could you make that would make you feel 10% more organized? How about mentally? When’s the last time you looked at your strategic plan?
I wrote a post about dealing with unexpected events - those things that are out of our control. Unexpected things are like wrenches in our plans, however they are also the things that let us know that we are alive. Only people who are alive have to deal with unexpected things, or challenges, or problems - so in that sense, we should celebrate the unexpected.
Here’s one way to handle unexpected things:
We can never fully expect everything that will happen over the course of the week, or each day. That’s why it’s important to allow yourself some cushion. You need not only a financial cushion to pay for necessary unexpecteds, but also a time cushion, and a stress cushion. Never pack your day so tight with activities that a small unexpected could throw the whole day into chaos.
You can read the whole post here.
I wrote an article about washing my cell phone. Yes, it’s true - I wasn’t careful, didn’t check the pockets of my shorts and ended up with a clean, but unworkable phone. In times like these, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from such mistakes. In fact, events like this give us a moment to ask some questions of ourselves. Here’s a sample of the questions this event caused me to ask:
I tell you this story for a couple of reasons - first when you go through an unpleasant experience, what’s the silver lining? What are you learning from the experience? What do you have control over?
Second - make an assessment - ie. ask yourself questions - How bad do I need a phone? Can things wait until a later time without chaos happening?
Recently, I wrote a post on the idea of change and status quo. The deeper issue is control - what is control? What do we have control over? How do we use this? How does control affect entrepreneurs? All great questions.
Here’s a short part of the post:
It’s been said that the only thing that stays the same is change. Yet how often do we attempt to hold on to something? Why is it that we attempt to keep things the same?
The simple answer is control. As human beings, most of us are obsessed with control - especially us entrepreneurs. We will do whatever we can to prevent change and hold onto the status quo in order to have control of a situation or our lives.
Read the rest here.
Today I wrote a post about control. Here’s an excerpt:
What do you have control over? Be honest, and I mean really honest, with yourself - what do you really have control over?
The answer is - not much. You really don’t have control over much of what happens. About the only control that you have, to some degree, is how your react to things. Even then, our subconscious habits control most of how we react.
Today on my EADDblog, I posted an article on saving money and how it relates to life and business. Here’s an excerpt:
This past week, I cut out about six different monthly services that my wife and I haven’t been using all that much. These were for both business and personal use - including the landline phone at home. It’s been months since I picked up the landline to make a call - so why did we keep paying the phone company $35 each month?
In total, we’ll be saving just under $200 each month by canceling the services that we did. So why didn’t we do this months ago? Why did we keep sending our hard earned money to other people for things we didn’t use?
and…
The lesson is simple - small things, when combined, can make big impacts. It’s true when in comes to money. It’s also true when it comes to time.
Over on my EADDblog, I posted an article about signing up for the Hartford Marathon, why I decided to run another marathon and how it relates to business. Here’s an excerpt:
The marathon signifies so many things to me - perseverence, dedication, development, pushing yourself to your limits and beyond, attitude, focus, and more. People ask me how I can do it, year after year. How can I do all the training that is required, especially with a young family. How can I run 4 hours straight. How can I be excited about getting out an running in the rain in the early morning. How can I…
The simple answer is that I can’t do any of that - what I can do is be someone who takes one step and then another and then another. It’s not about running 26.2 miles - it’s about running up to the next corner, or taking the next step - pushing myself to do just one more because I know I can. Small and simple is the way you do a marathon. As the old Chinese proverb goes - the journey of a thousand miles begins with one first step. The same is true with a marathon.
The key for you, my dear reader, is to relate the marathon to yourself. What is your marathon? Is it your business?
Enjoy.