Paul talked about how we can reframe failure and reprogram ourselves to embrace dreams. “I think every person that I’ve ever met, seems to have some kind of a dream, deep down inside of them, that they ultimately want to fulfill and achieve,” Paul says, and we discussed the journey toward fulfilling those dreams.
“What matters most when you think about chasing down a dream”, Paul says, “is the commitment to finish.” When he built his e-learning platform, he had to make a commitment and motivate others to join him on the way to realizing that dream.
In this #WorkTrends chat, we talked about how people can overcome their fear of failure and make plans to fulfill their dreams. We also discussed specific steps on the route to meeting the commitments we make to ourselves.
It really stood out to me that Paul recommended journaling as a way to let things go, as well as document the future. He recommends a consistent morning routine as a route to success.
With that in mind, I encourage you to make a plan for the last couple of mornings of 2017, grab a journal and jot down those goals!
Here are a few key points Paul shared:
Fear is one of the most positive emotions on earth — it’s a catalyst for positive change
Outlook has a lot to do with input
You can’t imprison yourself in negative circumstances
A goal is a commitment with a deadline you need to be able to see in your mind’s eye
Every loss in your life is a lesson — use it as an accelerant to do more, not as baggage to weigh you down
Did you miss the show? You can listen to the #WorkTrends podcast on our BlogTalk Radio channel here: http://bit.ly/2DjCkja
You can also check out the highlights of the conversation from our Storify here:
Didn’t make it to this week’s #WorkTrends show? Don’t worry, you can tune in and participate in the podcast and chat with us every Wednesday from 1-2pm ET (10-11am PT).
Remember, the TalentCulture #WorkTrends conversation continues every day across several social media channels. Stay up-to-date by following our #WorkTrends Twitter stream; pop into our LinkedIn group to interact with other members. Engage with us any time on our social networks, or stay current with trending World of Work topics on our website or through our weekly email newsletter.
Note: #WorkTrends will resume 1/3/18. We hope all our friends in the #WorkTrends community enjoy their time off over the holidays and we look forward to an exciting 2018.
https://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/WorkTrends-Recap-Live-a-Life-of-Real-Intention.jpg5361024Meghan M. Birohttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngMeghan M. Biro2017-12-21 09:34:442020-05-31 19:46:43#WorkTrends Recap: Live a Life of Real Intention
It’s that time of year when we lay out our goals, wishes, dreams, and resolutions for the New Year. Can you believe that 2018 is almost here? I don’t know about you, but I’ve decided that 2018 is going to be my year, when I will tackle all my dreams and goals. Let’s talk about how to live a life of real intention on #WorkTrends this week as we enter into the New Year.
It’s so easy to lose sight of the optimism we had when we were younger. Do you remember that feeling? The confidence that you could do whatever you set your mind to? Let’s explore how to get that back with our guest this week.
Paul Cummings, found of woople and author of It All Matters, knows the devastation of broken dreams. Fortunately, he also knows the thrill of discovering a way back to wonder and confidence.
Paul will be talking with us this week about how we can reframe failure and reprogram ourselves to embrace dreams. He will also touch on the commitment to fulfilling our dreams that we want to chase. “I think every person that I’ve ever met, seems to have some kind of a dream, deep down inside of them, that they ultimately want to fulfill and achieve,” Paul says.
This #WorkTrends chat will talk about how people can overcome their fear of failure and create a plan to fulfill their dreams. We’ll talk about specific steps on the route to meeting the commitments we make to ourselves.
Join #WorkTrends host Meghan M. Biro and her guest Paul Cummings, found of woople and author of It All Matters, on Wednesday, December 20, 2017, at 1 pm ET as they discuss how to create the proper mindset to make positive changes, reignite life passions, and find the strength to live with real intention.
Live a Life of Real Intention
Join Meghan and Paul on our LIVE online podcast Wednesday, December 20, 2017 at 1 pm ET | 10 am PT.
Immediately following the podcast, the team invites the TalentCulture community over to the #WorkTrends Twitter stream to continue the discussion. We encourage everyone with a Twitter account to participate as we gather for a live chat, focused on these related questions:
Q1: What simple steps can we take to live a life of real intention?#WorkTrends (Tweet this question)
Q2: What factors keep us from exploring outside our comfort zone?#WorkTrends (Tweet this question)
Q3: How can we leave negative perceptions behind when planning our future? #WorkTrends (Tweet this question)
Don’t want to wait until next Wednesday to join the conversation? You don’t have to. I invite you to check out the #WorkTrends Twitter feed and our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group. Share your questions, ideas and opinions with our awesome community.
https://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/WorkTrends-Preview-Live-a-Life-of-Real-Intention-1.jpg6781024Meghan M. Birohttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngMeghan M. Biro2017-12-18 11:31:112020-05-31 19:45:35#WorkTrends Preview: Live a Life of Real Intention
A while back, I dropped in on an innovative workspace for one of my software technology clients– it’s a very cool office space. An open-plan, communal space with worktables in rows, very low partitions between areas, and no private offices. Note that I said workspace, because it wasn’t very clear to me how a vast room offering little in the way of private work areas could become a workplace – somewhere to get things done.
Of course, I can’t forget the large sunny cafeteria and the designated area for Foosball table and other games. Ok, call me jaded but….this hip tech culture seemed a bit year 2000 to me, but which the office manager touted as contributing to a happy, productive and engaged workforce.
Part of me remains unconvinced. How can this be?
Some of the teams that I represent as a recruiter for technology talent have ‘thinking’ jobs in the software development realm, which means that they need time, space, and quiet to do their jobs. Sure, they collaborate as team members and absolutely love games and free coffee, coke and popcorn—who doesn’t? These bennies don’t, however, make them engage in their commitment to their employers. It would be great if employers could throw in a few video and board games and get happy employees and top productivity, but that’s not how it works.
Engagement is forged with different tools: trust, loyalty, open communication, clearly articulated goals and expectations, shared values and well-understood reward systems. It really isn’t about how the office is set up, or the toys gathered to distract restive employees, that build engagement. Turns out, employees engage with employers and brands when they’re treated as humans worthy of respect.
When companies like the one I visited tell me their workplace culture and trendy furniture builds employee engagement, I try to make them see that they’re focusing on the wrong part of the equation. They’re focusing on what, not why. What can tell you a lot about a company, but it’s why that tells you it’s a good company to work with. I consult with these organizations and hiring leaders to consider the whys of employee engagement.
Here are my top 5 questions which help construct the WHYS of employee engagement for leaders.
1) Why am I here? An employee will never get to an answer if you don’t communicate a shared sense of mission, vision and goals. Tell people why you want them to work at your company, and why you think they’ll be successful. Then you can focus on what they need to do to be successful.
2) Why should I trust you leadership? Open communications build trust, which is essential to engagement. Respect is essential to mutual trust, and also builds engagement. Communicate clearly and openly about goals and expectations. With open communications, you’ll be able tell the why, then move to the what: what are the tasks and actions necessary to be successful.
3) Why should I be loyal to your company? Engaged employees know why they’re loyal – they are treated with respect and honesty. Companies which rank mutual respect and honesty below procedural activities, such as tracking time, will see engagement and productivity drop. Tell employees why you’re loyal to them.
4) Why don’t you communicate your company values? Fail to show employees your organization has core values and you might as well forget about engagement. Even worse, if you talk about values and then behave in a vastly different way, you’ll telegraph just how little management actually believes in and practices those values. Explain why a value system is important to you, and the what – the actual list of values – will follow.
5) Why aren’t you clear about the rewards of working in this company? People need to know what to expect – not just what’s expected of them, but what they can expect in return. If you’re very clear and open about the rewards system – which includes everything from pay to benefits, bonuses, vacation, and the path upward in the organization. Explain why you have the rewards you do, and people will sign on and believe. Be crystal-clear, consistent and unambiguous in creating and distributing rewards, or engagement will go out the window.
Innovative workspaces have their own place and some employees that I’ve spoken with love these creative places. If you have a multi-generational workforce, focus on the whys of working for your company before you spend a moment on the whats: what desk, what chair, what computer. Engagement is innovative when it looks at why people behave and believe as they do rather than what might motivate them.
So break it all down—focus on the why, and the whats will come. If your employees cannot answer these five questions above all the cool workplace culture in the universe will not make a difference. Please let me know how it goes leaders and employees alike. I’m listening and engaging in the interim.
A version of this post was first published on Forbes.com on 10/14/12
00Meghan M. Birohttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngMeghan M. Biro2016-04-01 06:30:372020-05-31 15:13:48Your Employees Are Engaged…REALLY?
Today, I had an unusual exchange of emails with a top executive (client and close friend). I’d sent, perhaps too casually, a note with a critique and suggestions on a project his team had been working on, somewhat related to the things I was doing with the organization.
It was a very tough project, they had done a good job, despite the circumstances and restrictions they faced. But there were some areas that need to be addressed to help in executing the overall strategies and plans we’d been working on with the executive. I dashed off a quick note with the observations and recommendations.
The note elicited an unusual response, “I know, I know…..we suck at everything…….” It went on to point out that I really didn’t understand what was going on and my critique was unfair.
I was stunned by the note, the response was so atypical of every exchange we’ve ever had. Before reacting, I reflected on a few things:
Something else had to be going on. We’d had a number of very tough and blunt conversations in the past, but never eliciting this kind of response. I was lucky in this case, I realized two days ago, he had a board meeting that we both knew would be very challenging. I also remembered later this week he will be reporting earnings/performance to the markets and analysts. It will be OK, not great, perhaps disappointing some investors, I know he was preparing for the analyst discussions. He was also completing an important acquisition, it was consuming a lot of his focus.
As I thought, I realized much of his tone and response may have been influenced by stuff completely separate from the specifics of my original note.
On further reflection, I realized both the timing and wording of my note was probably poor. I was so focused on the project, I was completely insensitive to these other things that were completely unrelated. The project and the results the team were trying to achieve were important to me. They were important to this executive–but at this moment, he had bigger battles to fight.
Fortunately, we were able to set things straight. The exec needed to vent a little and this note gave him the opportunity to let off some steam.
Often, we may run into similar things, yet be completely unaware of what drove the response. We may call a customer or prospect with an idea, getting a response that seems uncharacteristically harsh.
We may be trying to get to a prospect with an idea, but somehow can’t break through–they seem unreasonable.
We may talk to our manager or as managers we may be talking to our people—getting responses that seem completely inappropriate to the nature of the conversation.
As we decide what to do, how to handle the situation–whether it’s a conversation with our people or managers, with customers or prospects, we have to think:
Are they fighting a battle we know nothing about?
The reactions and responses we may be getting may be totally unrelated to us or what we are doing. They may be driven by other things that are distracting them, or influencing their behaviors.
Often, we miss these signals. We may be so focused on ourselves and what we want to achieve, that we lose sight of, or are insensitive to the things our customers, prospects, managers, or people are facing.
We may be catching them at a bad time–interrupting them when they are facing a critical deadline. They may be distracted, focused on something more critical. They may have just received bad news or been surprised by something. They may be facing issues or pressures we are completely unaware of. There could be any number of things that cause them to behave in ways that are atypical for them, or may not represent who they are or what they feel about us/our offerings.
There are obvious things we should be sensitive to—month end/quarter end/year end are no times to talk about new projects or initiatives. Sales people and managers are busy closing business. Operations/manufacturing/customer service may be consumed with fulfilling orders.
If the executives we deal with are at the very top of their companies, timing around board, investor, analyst meetings is tough. They are always focused on those.
If there are critical deadlines, projects, or unrelated problems, we may want to consider the timing of our approaches.
There may be personal circumstances–an illness in the family or anything else that is distracting them.
The only way we ever realize the person/organization we are trying to work with may be fighting a battle we know nothing about, is by focusing on them–understanding them as people, understanding their business, and drivers.
Being driven by our goals and objectives blinds us to the person we are trying to engage and work with. We never realize the roadblock we seem to be facing has nothing to do with us, but may be all about something else.
I was insensitive to the battles my friend was fighting, as a result, I got an unusual and quite unexpected response. Fortunately, we have a strong relationship and were able to get around the misstep.
Make sure you think about the battles your customer/prospect/manager/people are facing.
*This quote came from Tim Ferriss. I’m a great fan of his podcasts, there is always something to learn from them.
00Dave Brockhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDave Brock2016-03-10 09:00:442020-05-31 15:05:23Everyone Is Fighting A Battle You Know Nothing About!
More and more employees are working remotely these days. In fact, experts are expecting more than half of all employees will be working from home on a regular basis by 2022. That will present a significant shift in how employers manage their teams and keep employees productive. Working from home can be full of distractions for some people, and even those who are able to stay on task for eight hours a day may find it hard to say no to turning on the TV or taking a two-hour lunch. Fortunately, there are a few different golden rules employers can make use of to keep their remote teams productive.
Change your Hiring Process
How many times have you seen the perfect resume come across your desk only to meet the candidate in person and see that they have blue hair, a nose ring, or a large tattoo on their arm? For some employers, this is an immediate turn-off. They don’t want someone working in their office who may not fit in with everyone else. While there’s definitely debate about what is and is not an appropriate look for the office, that debate can be set aside if you’re hiring someone who will be working from home. In fact, many employers who are doing remote hires do a phone or online interview and don’t know what the other person looks like. Some employers do want to have a face to face interview, of course, if the candidate lives close enough to do so.
While appearance may no longer play a part in your hiring process, there is one thing that needs more focus: motivation and focus. If you hire someone who simply isn’t that motivated to go to work or doesn’t have the focus to do their job without getting distracted, you’re going to have a problem. When interviewing, it’s important to ask questions that will lead potential candidates to talk about their motivation and to stress that they have to meet deadlines.
You can also expand your search parameters to include those in other cities, states, or even countries. When it comes to working remotely, there’s no difference between an employee who is several miles from you and an employee who is several hundred. Looking further for potential candidates can mean finding better-qualified employees.
Focus on Goals, Not Work Time
If you’re working in an office, you expect to see your employees at their desks for the full work day. When employees work from home, however, you don’t necessarily know when they’re working. Some may get up early and have put in a full work day by three in the afternoon, while others might not start their work until ten or eleven in the morning and work later. Having this freedom is one of the biggest advantages of working remotely, and it’s one that you shouldn’t try to control. Trying to force too much structure on your remote employees is only going to make them less efficient and feel like they’re being micro-managed.
Instead, focus on goals. If everyone is meeting their deadlines and turning in quality work, when they’re working doesn’t necessarily matter. However, you don’t want to learn someone is missing a deadline on the day the project is due. That’s why you need to make sure you keep up with your employees in a few different ways:
Have regular virtual meetings with the entire team to discuss the status of each project and get reports on where each person is.
Have quarterly team goals for each team member to meet to keep them motivated.
Provide team members with the tools needed for them to track their progress and time on tasks.
Offer encouragement and help those who are falling short of their goals, learn new time management skills.
Make use of the Cloud
The cloud can serve as your virtual office, allowing you and your remote employees to share files and other information no matter where you’re located. With secure logins and other protection, you don’t have to worry about losing anything, and you can give each employee their own access level so they can only retrieve files you’ve cleared them for.
But the cloud can do more than that. For instance, you can make use of a cloud-based business phone system that will give all of your employees their own business phone number so customers and clients can contact them. There are several benefits of this system:
There are no long distance charges.
Employees don’t have to give out their home phone numbers.
Employees can make use of their cloud-based number on a variety of different devices, so they can take calls no matter where they are.
Cloud-based phone systems have all the features of a traditional phone system, including voice mail, call forwarding and conference calling.
Many of these systems offer video conferencing, too, which is great for team meetings.
Have Meet Ups
Even if you didn’t have a face to face interview with some of your employees, try to have meet ups from time to time. If your team is local, you might want to do this monthly or quarterly. If you have employees who would have to travel, perhaps a yearly holiday party would be better. Either way, having face to face time can be vital in managing your employees and keeping them focused. It reminds everyone that they’re more than just an email address or face on a screen.
It’s also a time to bond as individuals. People who work together in an office celebrate birthdays, have casual Friday, and may get together outside of work from time to time. Doing something like that regularly with your remote employees will help foster that sense of being a team, and that will help motivate them.
These are just a few of the ways that you can manage your remote employees and help keep them focused on work. Do you have any additional tips, or have you found one of these tips to be particularly helpful? We’d love to hear from you.
00Sheza Garyhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngSheza Gary2016-03-02 09:00:212020-05-31 15:03:02Golden Rules to Manage and Keep Remote Teams Productive
While annual planning and performance reviews are very structured processes, most organizations don’t have structured models for managing execution and goal achievement between plan and review. How are your planned outcomes versus actuals monitored week over week and how much does your approach vary over the course of the year? Loosely structured con calls, staff meetings that don’t address goals, confusion on work ownership, and changing deliverables lists with little accountability are signs that execution is too ad hoc. Without a consistent execution framework, it’s easy to lose time and hard to achieve ambitious goals. For high velocity goal achievement, try a more explicit and structured execution methodology:
1. Get the Goals Right
Set explicit, quantifiable and material goals for business outcomes such as revenue target, market share gain, profit margin or other quantifiable result. Don’t confuse activity with outcomes and resist the temptation to set motion-based goals. (It’s not the number of swings that matter, but scoring more runs than the opponent.) Focus goal setting on end-state or end-point outcomes and make sure everyone on the team understands them. Create the one-page dashboard you will use to track progression against goals over the quarter – what are the metrics and meters that matter?
2. Plan the Work Required to Achieve The Goals
Define the streams of work and identify the key deliverables within each stream. Map the key metrics from your dashboard to the workstreams. All the deliverables should be defined by the explicit outcome expected and a due date. Analyze the work plan to ensure that the deliverables and their outcomes do add up to the results needed! Every deliverable on the plan should be assigned to a single owner, and every member of the team should have clarity on how his or her deliverables impact goal achievement. Next, add measurement for deliverable completion to your dashboard.
3. Work The Plan
Now work the plan rigorously and relentlessly! Meet with staff members at the beginning of each week to review the week’s deliverables list, then ask for a status report on results against this list at the end of the week. This is the single most effective way to achieve the plan; working and reporting against the same list concentrates effort and action where they’re needed. The deliverables list and status report form the agenda of the following week’s one on one meeting and drive execution consistency and accountability. Use the status reports with weekly outcomes to update your dashboard.
This higher cadence monitoring of plan vs actual will help you more quickly identify execution gaps that threaten goal achievement or where the plans need to be revised. Team members will have confidence they’re working on the right things and that their work matters. See what the team can achieve with a consistent, outcome-focused execution framework.
Tools like Workboard are a great way to communicate goals, define workstreams, assign deliverables, and automate status reporting – you’ll have a structured execution model and real transparency with less effort from everyone. You can try it for free or learn more here.
People with goals achieve more and are more successful — a lot more successful — than peers without them, whether they’re scientists, students, or corporate execs. Organizations whose employees are actively engaged in goal achievement have 3x greater operating margins in any given year than companies with lower engagement levels.
If you’re not in the habit of setting and measuring goals for your team, then doing so can seem like added complexity. In fact, just the opposite is true. Goals simplify and clarify what your team should do and provide a common definition of success.
Instead of trying to read your mind, members of your organization know what to focus on and how they’re measured; their decision quality improves and managers spend less time reacting and recovering from ill-informed choices.
The “process” of managing starts with goal setting; when goals are missing or forgotten, disproportionate time is spent on execution triage and the whole team does more work yet experiences less satisfaction.
Want To Achieve Your Goals? Use These 8 Tactics
Goal setting is both art and science; goal achievement results from inspiring and aligning the efforts of others and diligent management. These 8 tactics can improve how you set and how often you achieve your goals:
Difficulty Scale 8 (out of 10): Set goals that require stretch and growth, but are within the realm of possibilities. Science suggests that people make less effort to achieve easy goals, which can undermine achievement. Worse, goals that are perceived as impossible inspire even less effort and demoralize people.
Inspire To Aspire: Use language that inspires people to want to achieve the goals. “Triple revenues” doesn’t inspire nor speak to the heart (except for maybe the CEO and shareholders!). Use aspirational “change the world” language, the equivalent of morning coffee for your organization – energize the team and provide the jolt of progress.
Less Is More: More goals don’t result in more achievement. Limit the number of goals to concentrate action on what really matters, and you’ll achieve your goals more often. Goals should focus efforts and enable people to optimize time and decisions.
Quantify Success: Define the timeline for achievement (a 6-8 week period can be most effective for dynamic organizations) and quantify what success looks like. To help your team map the “change the world” goal to their work and get the right work done, quantify several success metrics for each goal. These might include bug clearance rates, response or consumption targets, revenue or growth targets, quality or customer satisfaction targets.
Plan To Achieve The Plan: The odds of goal achievement increase to 90% when the goals and committed actions are written down. Break the goals down into action and consistently hold people accountable for delivering on those actions – something half of your peers fail to do.
3 Second Rule: Your team should be able to find the goals and see progress against them in 3 seconds. That’s about how long it takes to focus on the last message in their inbox – which is your goal’s competition for their time and focus.
Don’t Drive Blind: Implement a real-time dashboard that shows your goals, metrics, key actions and their status, and make it visible to yourself, your team and your upline manager. You’ll be able to triage priorities to reduce risk and improve achievement velocity. (If you’re the manager, this is essential to your job and success.)
Celebrate Progress: To achieve truly hard goals, science shows it’s often better to focus on how much progress has been made rather than the distance yet to go. Seeing what’s possible and what’s been achieved renews and reinvigorates teams for continuing challenge. Recognizing individual’s contribution pays off even more – 83% of employees rank recognition more valuable than compensation.
00Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-10-12 06:00:282020-05-31 13:57:20Want to Be More Successful? Set Goals.
The formula for achieving goals is straightforward: apply team, time and budget to the specific work needed to reach the right results. Very successful people achieve goals faster and with fewer resources than peers; their execution velocity is high, which raises their career velocity. Their capacity to execute is focused on achieving clear goals so they need less time or resources to get from point A to point B; great business and career results follow. Stellar team members gravitate toward these managers, so their teams — and results — get stronger over time.
Our capacity is almost always constrained, so how we manage that capacity is a crucial factor in goal achievement and it’s one of the biggest challenges managers face. Goals face intense competition from incoming emails and daily dramas, which tend to erase all memory of the original goals. Keeping people aligned and working toward the goal is hard, but losing even a day a week is a 20% capacity hit.
Without clear goals, operational transparency and capacity focused on goal achievement, even awesome teams end up moving the wrong mountain. These four disciplines can help increase your velocity to goal:
1. Know Your Point B.
Make sure the team knows the specific goals and the metrics for success. Keep them present and visible day-to-day to counter rising environmental noise. With clear goals, people make better decisions and waste no time trying to figure out what matters. As importantly, they have a continuing understanding of how their efforts contribute to group achievement. Without that clarity, time and goodwill are lost redoing work and achievement is pure luck.
2. Know Your Point A.
To define the actions and investments necessary to get from where you are to goal, be rigorous about operational transparency. While the goal shouldn’t move much, current state changes constantly. Set your transparency threshold by the cost of time — if losing five days will undermine goal achievement, then it’s too long to wait for execution facts. Tell your team that you value facts (even when they are not happy facts) and why those facts are essential to success. Real-time transparency maximizes your ability to recover quickly by optimizing your resources as facts change.
3. Concentrate Resources On Goal Achievement.
When goals and current facts are opaque, the team’s capacity goes everywhere except goal achievement. Your velocity to goal is a function of how much friction and distraction there is on your path from point A to B. Make sure your full capacity is laser focused on goal achievement. Hold yourself and the team accountable for where time and effort are spent — these are your most valued assets. Deciding what not to work on is hard but necessary; use team meetings to rule out distractions and lower priority work so goals can be achieved.
4. Make Transparency A Constant.
Define dashboards for transparency on goals, actions, progress and team efforts then automate them so they don’t take time away from goal achievement. Most organizations can recoup 25% – 40% of people’s time by making goals and facts clear and eliminating endless status meetings and reporting. These resources and transparency improve velocity — in fact, they’re an opportunity to achieve goals with fewer resources and speed than peers. And because no member of the team enjoys status meetings, read outs and reworking bad decisions, stellar team members will gravitate to your team where they can spend more time doing great work, achieving goals and building their own career velocity.
While productivity often refers to doing more every minute, increasing velocity to goal means deciding where not to spend time and resources. You’ll cover the path to goal in less time and with less effort. It’s not more work, it’s just more achievement.
Tools like Workboard provide dashboards and transparency on goals, actions, progress and effort and automates status reporting. It enables everyone on the team to make better decisions, stay goal aligned and increase their velocity — it’s free for managers and their teams.
00Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-10-02 06:00:262020-05-30 14:01:324 Ways to Increase Your Goal Achievement
Ask most executives and managers if they are great leaders and you’ll hear, “No, but I have every intention of becoming one!” Aligning time, skills and effort to the intention to build leadership skill and capacity is not easy, but it is more important than ever.
Two startling studies reveal that 87 percent of employees aren’t actively engaged in their work and 20 percent of those employees undermine value created by more engaged co-workers.
What’s more, experts put the blame on how managers spend their time and how effectively they lead. Too much time goes to low level details and not enough goes to leadership activities that engage people for great performance, such as communicating goals, shaping strategies, coaching and recognizing strong performance.
While the vast majority of employees aren’t engaged in achieving the organization’s goals, a whopping 77 percent say their performance would improve with more feedback. In fact, regular feedback engages 60 times more employees than none at all. The need for leadership is obvious given the stark contrast between a disengaged, even destructive workforce and a high performing one.
How much capacity do you have today?
How can leaders working long days get operational facts and status needed for execution and find more capacity to lead? Goal achievement requires understanding where you are and where you’re headed so resources and efforts align to desired outcomes.
Facts are often hard to come by and are captured through mind-numbing meetings, conference calls, emails and spreadsheets providing a stale picture that saps managers’ time. Without transparency, time is wasted reacting to surprises. These cycles become habitual and detract from leadership activities like communicating goals, coaching and recognizing contributions.
Establishing a culture and systems of transparency for both goals and current status across the organization provides managers with efficiencies that increase their leadership capacity. Employees have greater clarity on the mission and their contribution to it.
The following quick assessment can help determine out how much transparency you have today, how effective you are at leadership activities and where opportunities for more skill and capacity exist.
Ask each team member to answer these four questions:
Our top five priorities as a team are…
The 10 most important action items and deliverables I’m responsible for in the next 21 days are…
I’m [totally aware] [sort of understand] [baffled] how my actions support our business goals.
My career aspirations for the next year are… In three years, I’d like to be…
Ask yourself these five questions:
I last communicated our goals ___ [weeks] [months] ago.
I last communicated specific feedback to every team member ___ [days] [weeks] [months] ago.
Our five priorities and strategic initiatives for the next 90 days are…
My 10 most important action items and deliverables in the next 21 days are…
To get status on our progress toward goals takes me [five minutes] [55 minutes] [five hours ] [five days] [six weeks into next quarter]
Build leadership capacity and skills. To give ample time to both engage as a leader and execute on goals, you need tools to more efficiently communicate goals and status for greater transparency. To move from reactive, transactional manager to an effective leader who coaches, enables, empowers and executes also requires new practices and mindset.
This daily framework for balancing time across execution and engagement activities can jump start new habits.
Monday, set your intention. Start with the intention to be a great leader. Get centered on your strategic goals and assess what’s needed to achieve them.
Tuesday, communicate the mission. Communicate or reinforce the mission and ensure team activities align with goal achievement through direct engagement.
Wednesday is for coaching. Invest time in enabling your team members to succeed. Rather than asking for status, ask what you can do to help. And listen to the answers!
Thursday is for execution. Focus on what you need to do to achieve the goals. Guard against diversions on misaligned or reactionary activities (e.g. ignore email missiles!)
Friday, calibrate: Tune into your top, mid and bottom performers and their needs and contributions. Identify career paths for each and allocate time advancing them on it.
Saturday, rejuvenate: Don’t work, even a little. Renew your energy with exercise and enjoyment.
Sunday, reflect: Bring your inspirations and aspirations consciously to mind.
To sustain new practices, focus on the day’s theme. Week by week, your intentions will get stronger, the mission clearer, your coaching better, execution more consistent and skills stronger. Transformation takes time, but it’s well worth it personally and professionally!
Tools like Workboard, provide a holistic approach to high performance. Its next-generation performance solutions allow HR leaders to help organizations raise their achievement velocity and helps line of business managers share engaging short-range goals, align and simplify execution, and elevate people and performance with continuous performance conversations.
Originally published in Entrepreneur, Copyright 2014 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
https://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Road-.jpg6001018Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-09-30 06:00:482020-08-12 11:02:42Achieve Your Leadership Aspirations
Objectives and Key Results or OKRs have helped hyper-growth Internet companies like Google achieve phenomenal success. They combine ambitious, qualitative goals and quantitative success measures with weekly execution and accountability cadence. When teams institutionalize OKRs, they enjoy clarity of purpose, fast-paced progress, and can achieve game-changing results. Use OKRs to embolden your goals, define how success is measured and achieve execution excellence:
1. Define Ambitious and Inspiring Objectives
Create qualitative objectives. The objective is your team’s mission – it becomes personal, inspires people and provides shared purpose. Objectives should be for a set period of time and achievable by your team (not dependent on others). To increase engagement, use words the team itself would use rather than corporate speak. “Launch 2.0 product customers LOVE” is more inspiring than “release v2.0” and puts the emphasis on the impact of the product; the former invites the team on a mission to greatness, while the latter tells them the mechanical process is all you’re after. Re-think how your goals are expressed: can you frame them to inspire the people on your team?
2. Quantify Key Results
Key results are the target metrics that prove you’ve achieved the objective and how the team will know IT has succeeded. What’s unique about the OKR approach is that it focuses on achieving great rather than predictable results. KRs should be a reach, not a slam dunk. KRs are quantitative results from your efforts, and there are typically several such as revenue, performance, engagement, quality or growth. How will “customer love” be measured? When 25% of customers refer their friends, 40% use the product more than 6x a day, and 30% expand use to adjacent products within 30 days are results that might signal customers love the new product. How would you define key results for ambitious objectives that feel just out of reach but with real effort, the team just might make it happen?
3. Execute Like Crazy
Make OKRs part of a weekly execution cadence and give everyone transparency to OKR achievement. Each week, identify the priority deliverables and who is responsible for them; don’t get lost (or procrastinate) in the minutiae! Focus on the major outcomes, and constrain the week’s plan to the real priorities. Use weekly status reports to track and communicate status of these deliverables and confidence ratings on hitting the KRs. In status reports include the prior week’s outcomes, the priority deliverables for the current week, blocker items, and the priorities you need to address the following week. If you’re managing the team, use reports to ensure the team is executing high priorities rather than the infinite distractions that tempt us all.
Finally, don’t lower or abandon the metrics when it looks like you may fail; get as close as you can and learn from the stretch. You’ll find out what the team is capable of when it goes for gold… And you may even get the gold!
4. Inspired Culture
Going for gold takes tremendous passion and tenacity. But it also takes a lot of experience notwinning the gold, missing the podium or just getting the bronze. Create an environment that inspires people to pursue the gold medal but celebrates the bronze and silver. Foster and reward champion effort, continuous learning, and the drive to miss the medal but continue to compete. Setting bold, ambitious goals with stretch metrics means you’ll surprise yourself with greatness but you’ll also miss the mark – so celebrate striving.
Inspired teams with ambitious goals who feel accountable to each other can achieve tremendous results. Getting the objectives and key results right takes iteration and self awareness from the team, but the effort pays off when the team is full engaged in the mission and striving for greatness. Try OKRs with your team for Q1 and Q2 and see what you can do!
00Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-09-24 08:00:132020-05-30 13:57:56Use OKRs To Achieve Bold Goals
Work stresses people out — fear of failing, pressure to achieve, having to reply on others for our own success, overload, self-doubt and more… In fact, one million Americans call in sick over stress every day and 25% say work is the most stressful thing in their lives.
These 4 tips can help you achieve more success and keep your balance, even when things get stressful!
1. Organize
Increase your odds of achieving your goals by 64% and eliminate stress by writing down what you need to do to achieve your goals. If you manage a team, ask for transparency on what each team member is doing, where their attention is focused and what their progress is. If you don’t have a tool to see progress on actions and goals yourself, do daily meetings with the team to make sure everyone is aligned on the best use of their time. With more clarity and transparency, you’ll stop worrying about what isn’t getting done, and have more time to work on what matters!
2. Prioritize
Not everything on your list or the team’s can get done. Sometimes, it shouldn’t! Ruthlessly prioritize where your time and your team’s should go every morning. Spend your energy on work that ties clearly and directly to your team’s goals and metrics… in other words, those things that actually move the needle for you and your boss. Using the matrix below can help distinguish what matters and make it easier to stop expending energy stressing about the rest.
When you find your anxiety or anger rising, it’s better to take a break. A short walk or standing, stretching and take a few deep breaths can help you get back on track. Try a few “compassion breaths” to relax and lighten your perceived load:
Focus your attention on the sensation of anger, anxiety or stress – is it anxiety about lack of time, fear of failing or forgetting something critical, worry about achieving key milestones?
Rather than shifting away from the sensation, hold it in your attention.
Now think about all the millions of people in the world you don’t know that have that same anxiety or worry.
Take a long inhale, imaging that you are breathing in the collective anxiety, anger or stress of those millions of people.
Exhale, imaging that you are breathing out calm, peace, success or the antidote to those worries to all who experience it, including yourself.
Repeat three times, deepening your breath and holding it in longer each time and being more genuine in the compassion you convey with each out breath.
At the end, your sense of being alone with pressure will be replaced with more compassion for yourself and others — and your load will be lighter.
It’s always a great time to develop new habits:
Set and share clear goals aligned with organization objectives
Allocate your efforts to achieving your goals above all else
Ensure you have the capacity to achieve goals operationally, emotionally, and physically
00Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-09-16 06:00:562020-05-30 13:53:564 Steps to Less Work Stress
Two days before Yolanda’s performance review, she sent a 26-page PowerPoint deck intended to summarize her accomplishments for the year. She’d clearly spent hours on the deck, perhaps more than a day packaging and positioning accomplishments. She’d even asked four colleagues to write emails lobbying for her promotion. Although she’d only been on my marketing and strategy team for 18 months, Yolanda had been in the same role at the same level for more than 5 years.
In her mind, this was her year to get ranked at the top of the team and get promoted — the performance model at the company. The 26 pages of presentation and emails were intended to seal the deal.
The goal to get promoted had become the one and only goal.
Her promotion goals eclipsed Yolanda’s efforts to achieve her group’s goals or add value to the organization. Her focus became skewed to getting her contributions “on the record” rather than making great contributions — often consuming team time and draining rather than adding value in the process.
Inevitably, she did not rank among the highest performers on the team. She’d forgotten that career rewards come as a result of value creation and goal achievement, not time in job, positioning and lobbying.
While I respected Yolanda’s desire to advance her career, she would have been better off investing her energy in four key disciplines rather than on self promotion and her outcome at the expense of the organization’s:
2. Know your progress against goal.
Time flies, as the saying goes. Work the list of actions that achieve the defined goals and do a weekly check point on your progress. You own your achievements; don’t rely on others to ensure you get there.
4. Let results do the talking.
Deliver what you committed and then some. If you achieve and exceed measurable goals consistently, you create real value for the organization. Results like that speak for themselves and for you.
Alignment and Accountability Are The Leader’s Job
As Yolanda’s manager, I fell short too. Like many managers according to Harvard Business Review, I avoided hard accountability discussions. I could have helped her be more successful for our team and in her career aspirations over the course of the year by being more consistent in four key areas of management:
1. Keep goals and priorities visible.
To make it easier for Yolanda and others to stay aligned with the team’s goals, I should have kept specific, measurable goals and status of their achievement more consistently visible to the team. Beginning and end of quarter aren’t sufficient in organizations with tens of thousands of people and millions of emails.
2. Track actions and have clear ownership for each deliverable.
To avoid confusion about responsibilities and ensure goal achievement, I should have over communicated expectations and ownership of deliverables. The clarity on actions reinforces what to focus on and provides an accomplishment roster at year end.
3. Use regular status reports to assess progress and create feedback opportunities.
By getting a regular status update on the specific actions and deliverables required to achieve goals, both Yolanda and I would have the same fact base on her results and impact. This creates a specific trigger to note great progress, identify performance gaps on deliverables for goal achievement and establishes strong follow through in the 50 weeks between goal setting and performance review.
4. Give more continuous feedback.
By providing more regular and specific feedback on work product, I could have reduce the gap between Yolanda’s perception and her actual execution. It’s natural to want to avoid difficult conversations but performance conversations just get more difficult with time. Feedback tied to the work product and actions needed to achieve defined goals is essential throughout the year.
These are fairly obvious best practices but difficult to sustain in complex organizations, particularly with the global teams and travel complexities I had at the time. It is incredibly time consuming to compile and communicate the performance fact base and my days were already three time zones long. Email archiving and fractured productivity tools made matters worse by breaking the business narrative into a thousand tiny pieces (lists of deliverables in Excel, dashboards in PowerPoint, endless document revisions in SharePoint and the discussion of status and quality in email and email archives). Without transparency and management efficiency, accountability is hard to achieve on a distributed team.
Recalibrate Now
The human and business cost of goal and expectation gaps are high, and this is a perfect time to reset for the year. Commit to transparency, accountability and achievement as fundamentals in your management model and sustain them in practice. Recalibrate with team members to make sure goals are well understood, close gaps in execution or expectations, and give course-correcting or rewarding feedback where needed. Your performance and your team’s will go up in the second half — you and your Yolanda will be happier!
00Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-09-11 11:00:202020-05-30 13:52:03Goal Alignment: Job One for Managers
In many ways, setting goals is similar to dreaming of success – goals are desired outcomes. [easy-tweet tweet=”Goals are desired outcomes” user=”@workboardinc” hashtags=”#goals “]But achieving goals (and with them, success) is infinitely harder and more complex. While many things on the road to success like Estée Lauder’s are beyond your control, how you apply your energy toward success is something you have a great deal of control over. To put Estée Lauder’s maxim to work, consider these four tips for using your energy and capacity to achieve greater professional success.
1. Align goals up, then break them down.
Make sure you are crystal clear what the organization and your boss expect and need from you. Next break down longer-range goals into actionable elements and defined tactics for each quarter and then each month. Validate these with your leadership team to make sure you invest your time and energies on the right things.
3. Keep your own score, ignore everybody else’s. Be relentless about your own goal achievement and hitting the milestones you set for yourself. But waste no time or energy on what others are doing (or not) or the credit they may be getting organizationally — tempting though it may be. Focusing all your energy on your own results will keep them high, while focusing on others’ takes time away from your achievement and diminishes you in almost every respect.
4. Face forward.
Things will inevitably go wrong, so practice quickly analyzing why they did and then moving forward fast. Replaying the situation or getting caught up in real or imagined dialogue around it wastes time and often exacerbates the situation. Once you’ve harnessed the learning, just drop the angst, stop the replays and get back to the value mission.
— The Velocity Gurus @ Workboard
00Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-09-10 06:00:562020-05-30 13:51:11The Difference Between Dreamers and Doers
What is it you want to accomplish in 2015? What steps and actions will you take to achieve your goals?
Chances are your first thought was about improving your direct work product, productivity or domain skills rather than improving your competencies as a manager. However, if your goals include a career and performance leap, improving your leadership skills may be the decisive factor in your success.
Most managers and executives work hard, but hard work isn’t the same as leading the way. Harvard Business Review, McKinsey and Gallup cite how managers spend their time as the root cause of many terrible employee statistics – too much time is spent on low-level tasks like getting and reporting facts and not enough is spent communicating goals, holding people accountable, and providing coaching and feedback.
A giant career and performance leap requires a real leap in leadership and management practices because achieving truly remarkable results requires a team of people wholly aligned and committed to ambitious shared goals coupled with management discipline to drive transparency and high-velocity execution.
Assess Your Current Management Practices
Well-understood goals and metrics, clarity on the specific actions required to achieve those goals, progress accountability and feedback and reward practices are the hallmarks of good management. Assess your current management practices with these questions:
When was the last time you communicated goals to the team, and how frequently did you communicate them in 2014?
When was the last time you communicated specific feedback to each member of the team, and how frequently did you in 2014?
What are your top priorities and strategic initiatives for the first half of the year? How well can you articulate them yourself?
What are your top 10 deliverables in the next 30 days?
How long does it take you to get execution status from team members on goals and how frequently do you get it?
How would your team members answer similar questions? Do you know what their career aspirations are, and how your feedback helps them achieve those goals? How effective are the managers and leaders on your team?
People can’t achieve goals they don’t understand or care about, can’t get motivated when they don’t feel appreciated, won’t follow through if no one is accountable, and can’t improve without feedback.
Resolve to Manage Better To Achieve More
Building new management competencies and leading your team to remarkable achievements means developing new habits and practices.
The framework and infographic below can help you create new habits that will you accomplish more in 2015.
Baseline: Establish systems of transparency on goals, priorities, committed actions, and progress to plan to create accountability and the capacity for better leadership.
Anchor on Mondays: Anchor your week and your actions with your intention to lead your team to great achievement (versus muscle it yourself). Get centered on strategic goals and assess what’s needed to achieve them.
Mission on Tuesdays: Reinforce the goals and metrics that matter for your team. Ensure team activities wholly align with goal achievement through direct engagement and assess goal gaps early in the week.
Coach on Wednesdays: Invest time in enabling your team members to succeed. Rather than asking for status, ask what you can do to help. Listen to the answers and work to provide the help requested.
Execute on Thursdays: Allocate the full day to executing what you need to achieve personally. Guard against diversions on misaligned or reactionary activities (e.g., ignore email missiles!) so you spend a full eight hours accomplishing priority work.
Invest on Fridays: Tune into your team and reflect on your top, mid and bottom performers and their unique needs and contributions. Allocate time to advancing their careers by providing direct feedback, support for training or skill-building programs or opportunities to excel.
Rejuvenate on Saturdays: Don’t work, not even a little. Renew your energy with exercise and enjoyment. Give yourself permission to set work aside for the day to give your mind the day off.
Reflect on Sundays: Bring your inspirations and aspirations consciously to mind on Sunday evening; reconnect with your resolution to drive remarkable achievement. Drop all doubt about your ability to achieve.
The daily themes will help keep you from sliding back into old habits and reacting to what comes at you.
Week by week, habits will align more closely to intentions, the mission will be clearer to the team, the quality of coaching will get better, execution more consistent and your ultimate results will be stellar.
About the Author: Deidre Paknad is currently the CEO of Workboard, Inc. Workboard provides apps for managers and their teams to share goals, action items, status and feedback and to automate status reports and dashboards, and is free for teams.
00Deidre Paknadhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngDeidre Paknad2015-02-23 15:00:582020-05-30 11:52:11Commit To Building New Leadership Habits
“The hardest thing to learn is not “how to juggle,” but how to let the balls drop.” Anthony Frost
“My name is Lisa, and I am a multitask-aholic.”
(Hi, Lisa…)
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a support group where already overextended HR professionals could come together and share the burdens of having to do everything all at once?
Multitasking has become the modus operandi of the corporate world, and Human Resources is no exception. Because of the involvement of HR professionals in so many aspects of a business, they often feel they have to multitask in order to succeed. With days filled with planned and unplanned meetings, recruiting, hiring and training new employees, along with taking care of payroll, benefits, employee relations, and everything else in the mix, there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. –Amanda Banach, Demand Media
Human Resource specialists often feel that they are accomplishing more when they work on several projects at once, but in actuality they are less productive. Research shows that chronic multitaskers have trouble ignoring irrelevant information (oops, time to check my email; I’ll be right back.) They have trouble organizing their working memory and they switch from one task to another inefficiently. Multitasking leads to more stress, less sleep and a feeling of always being on the hamster wheel. Not fun.
So how do you break the multitasking habit?
According to a famous skit that Bob Newhart did several years ago on Mad TV, there are two words that will cure you – STOP IT! It’s a magical mindset and a constant reminder. You may find it helpful to encourage yourself as well as those you work with to just “STOP IT!”
Here are some tips to get work done efficiently and effectively – without multitasking:
1. Concentrate on one activity at a time and work on it until it’s done or until you’ve reached a logical place to stop. Let’s say that you have an hour and you want to get the following tasks done: (1) Sort through a stack of resumes, (2) Check your email, and (3) Send follow-up letters to potential candidates. You often get so involved with getting through all of the resumes or checking your email that that’s the ONLY thing that you get done (and the emails keep coming.) It doesn’t make you feel very productive, does it?
Instead, use a timer (every Smart Phone now has one) and distribute the time you have to get done what you want. Using the above example, you may choose to set the timer for thirty minutes to go through the resumes. When the timer goes off, no matter where you are in the process – STOP! Set the timer again for fifteen minutes to take care of your email/internet tasks and again, when the timer goes off – STOP. You now have fifteen minutes to write your correspondence. If any of the tasks don’t take as long as you’ve given them, congratulations. Take a break before embarking on the next round of tasks. The key is to assign to each task less time that you think it will actually need. You’ll surprise yourself with how much more productive you are when working within a time constraint versus when you’re left to your own devices. (Think about how much you get done right before you go on vacation.)
2. Turn off your email notifications and other distractions. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but minor interruptions can cause major inefficiencies in your work day. When you look away from what you’re doing, even if only for a few seconds, it takes longer for you to readjust and get back into the groove. Chances are good that you will also make more mistakes than if you had kept to the task at hand. Start to notice and track the things that distract you throughout the day. Once you are aware of how often these incidents happen, you can prepare yourself to reduce or eliminate them from your day.
A great gift to share with your family or other significant people in your life is to “unplug” when you are with them. Begin to have dedicated time that you will not be checking email, answering calls, or working online. Give your attention to the important people in your life, even if you start off with a thirty-minute time slot in the evening. Work can wait.
3. Take a break. Make sure you get away from your office during the day. Go out to lunch, or if it’s a beautiful day, sit outside, enjoy the sunshine and converse with colleagues or friends. Not only does taking a physical and mental break from your work recharge you and give you more energy to get your tasks done, you’ll build stronger relationships as well
It’s also helpful to set up a few interruption-free times to stick to your goals. Schedule these times on your calendar and stick to them. You may decide that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00 – 11:00 that you are not going to schedule any meetings. This will give you a regular block of time to get focused on the projects you want to complete.
Which balls will you let DROP today? Start saying “no” more often and give yourself the time to pay attention to each task. You’ll feel better about yourself, your time will become your own, and you can once again become a human BEING instead of a human DOING.
Additional Info about the author: As Founder of Grategy, Lisa Ryan works with organizations to create stronger employee and customer engagement, retention and satisfaction. Her proven gratitude strategies (Grategies) lead to increased productivity, passion and profits. She is the author of six books, and co-stars in two documentaries: the award-winning: “The Keeper of the Keys,” and “The Gratitude Experiment.”
https://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/large_4229364807-e1397827032174.jpg353700Maren Hoganhttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngMaren Hogan2014-04-21 08:26:042020-05-27 17:20:22Stop Juggling! Reach Your Goals by Doing Less
Most of us with entrepreneurial drive have a similar passion for other pursuits. For me, it’s about long-distance running. For example, in a recent month I ran 120 kilometers (about 75 miles), including a half-marathon.
That’s a lot of time on the road — just me, some music, the sound of my (sometimes ragged) breathing, and most importantly, my thoughts.
Lately, I’ve used some of that time to think about the similarity between my progress as runner and how to apply that mindset in running a company. What did I conclude? Here six suggestions based on my experience:
1) Work only when you’re productive and focused
I used to motivate myself in a very threatening, reactive way. I would decide to run a half-marathon, and then “demand” (of myself) to run specific distances in specific times. Regardless or how I felt, I was “forced” to comply with those requirements.
Recently, I decided I wasn’t going to set a rigid, arbitrary goal of running in a specific half-marathon. Instead, I decided to run just because I love it.
Sometimes at the start of a run, I can feel that my body isn’t responding, or I’m just not in the right mental space. On those days, I cut the run short and go home. On the flip side, sometimes I plan to run 5km but end up running 10km instead, because I feel good. That’s double the return for “doubling down” on that good feeling.
Entrepreneurs are guilty of this. We force ourselves to work, even when we’re not being productive. Stop. Get up. Do something else that’s unrelated to work. But when you discover you are in the zone, double down and you’ll achieve much more, instead.
2) Avoid burnout
Earlier this year, I got greedy and, for about a week, I pushed myself too hard, aggravating an injury. Instead of just stopping, I kept pushing. The result was that I developed a severe case of shin splints that kept me out of running for two full months.
As entrepreneurs, we know how to push (hard), and we know how to use adrenaline to fuel us. However, burnout is a very real threat and should not be dismissed lightly. The problem with injury or burnout isn’t the pain; it’s the frustration. Once you’ve injured yourself, there are no more shortcuts. You have to do the time.
So don’t give burnout a chance to stop you in your tracks. Try getting eight hours of sleep a day. Eat nutritious foods. Exercise regularly and immerse yourself in non-work activities, too. All of this will help strengthen your entrepreneurial fitness, so you’ll have a consistently high level of ambition and drive.
3) Reward yourself
When I eventually recovered, I decided to get a weekly sports massage to help prevent shin splints from recurring. Although these treatments began as preventive work for my muscles, the pampering began to feel more like a reward. I loved this downtime, and it became a motivating factor for me to run even more.
The same is true with work. For me personally, money isn’t enough motivation to work harder or do more. But rewarding myself with experiences does work. On the expensive end of the scale, that translates into traveling as much as I can. But on a more regular basis, I reward myself with a bottle of fantastic red wine.
The key is to connect the dots between the work and the experience, knowing both need to be present to make that connection.
4) Nurture consistency
Running every-other day has become a routine for me. This consistency is one of the primary drivers behind my ability to run 120km in a month. Running has become a habit.
I’ve seen the same scenario with my inbox. All of us get a boatload of email, and it’s probably the number one complaint of busy people. But when I’m disciplined and consistently keep my inbox neat and clean, I avoid the problem. As soon as I lose that consistency, it becomes a mess.
As an entrepreneur, these habits are key to helping you get stuff done, stay focused on what matters, and keep moving forward. Consistency is your friend.
5) Shed excess weight
Running with excess weight is hard work. Now, I’m not obese, but you probably won’t see me on the cover of GQ, either. So about six weeks ago, I started the Paleo diet, and I’ve since decreased my body fat 5%. It makes running a lot easier.
In business and in work, excess weight can take many different shapes and forms. I used to take responsibility for things that either I didn’t need to do myself or weren’t important. I was really bad at prioritizing my time. Now I focus on the most important things every day. I get more done, and I am happier.
Shed the excess weight on your to do list. I guarantee that, afterwards, you’ll run easier.
6) Run your own race
While running my last race, I realized we’re always competing. We’re always measuring ourselves against other entrepreneurs and their companies. We read about how they do things, how they manage to be successful and how we should be applying all of those things to our own lives.
In fact, you’re doing that right now, but reading this post.
But this is your life. In every race, you can only run against yourself, and try to improve on your personal best. What the other runners (or business leaders) are doing shouldn’t influence the way you run your own race.
Do things for yourself — and rely upon your own instincts, for a more satisfying outcome. Be a little selfish every now and again, and remember to invest in yourself.
What are your thoughts? How can leaders apply athletic training principles to run their companies more effectively?
(About the Author:Adii Pienaar is the ex-CEO and Founder of WooThemes. He has a passion for helping other entrepreneurs, making new mistakes (of his own) and, as such, is working on his new startup, PublicBeta. He is also a new dad, ex-rockstar and wannabe angel investor.)
(Editor’s Note: This post was adapted from Brazen Life via The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), with permission. Brazen Life is a lifestyle and career blog for ambitious young professionals. Hosted by Brazen Careerist, it offers edgy and fun ideas for navigating the changing world of work. Be Brazen!)
(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)
https://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/4702159685_2328d3e999_o-2.jpg349700TalentCulture Team + Guestshttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngTalentCulture Team + Guests2013-12-26 09:47:042020-05-27 16:46:31Startup Leadership: Lessons From a Runner’s World
Most of us with entrepreneurial drive have a similar passion for other pursuits. For me, it’s about long-distance running. For example, in a recent month I ran 120 kilometers (about 75 miles), including a half-marathon.
That’s a lot of time on the road — just me, some music, the sound of my (sometimes ragged) breathing, and most importantly, my thoughts.
Lately, I’ve used some of that time to think about the similarity between my progress as runner and how to apply that mindset in running a company. What did I conclude? Here six suggestions based on my experience:
1) Work only when you’re productive and focused
I used to motivate myself in a very threatening, reactive way. I would decide to run a half-marathon, and then “demand” (of myself) to run specific distances in specific times. Regardless or how I felt, I was “forced” to comply with those requirements.
Recently, I decided I wasn’t going to set a rigid, arbitrary goal of running in a specific half-marathon. Instead, I decided to run just because I love it.
Sometimes at the start of a run, I can feel that my body isn’t responding, or I’m just not in the right mental space. On those days, I cut the run short and go home. On the flip side, sometimes I plan to run 5km but end up running 10km instead, because I feel good. That’s double the return for “doubling down” on that good feeling.
Entrepreneurs are guilty of this. We force ourselves to work, even when we’re not being productive. Stop. Get up. Do something else that’s unrelated to work. But when you discover you are in the zone, double down and you’ll achieve much more, instead.
2) Avoid burnout
Earlier this year, I got greedy and, for about a week, I pushed myself too hard, aggravating an injury. Instead of just stopping, I kept pushing. The result was that I developed a severe case of shin splints that kept me out of running for two full months.
As entrepreneurs, we know how to push (hard), and we know how to use adrenaline to fuel us. However, burnout is a very real threat and should not be dismissed lightly. The problem with injury or burnout isn’t the pain; it’s the frustration. Once you’ve injured yourself, there are no more shortcuts. You have to do the time.
So don’t give burnout a chance to stop you in your tracks. Try getting eight hours of sleep a day. Eat nutritious foods. Exercise regularly and immerse yourself in non-work activities, too. All of this will help strengthen your entrepreneurial fitness, so you’ll have a consistently high level of ambition and drive.
3) Reward yourself
When I eventually recovered, I decided to get a weekly sports massage to help prevent shin splints from recurring. Although these treatments began as preventive work for my muscles, the pampering began to feel more like a reward. I loved this downtime, and it became a motivating factor for me to run even more.
The same is true with work. For me personally, money isn’t enough motivation to work harder or do more. But rewarding myself with experiences does work. On the expensive end of the scale, that translates into traveling as much as I can. But on a more regular basis, I reward myself with a bottle of fantastic red wine.
The key is to connect the dots between the work and the experience, knowing both need to be present to make that connection.
4) Nurture consistency
Running every-other day has become a routine for me. This consistency is one of the primary drivers behind my ability to run 120km in a month. Running has become a habit.
I’ve seen the same scenario with my inbox. All of us get a boatload of email, and it’s probably the number one complaint of busy people. But when I’m disciplined and consistently keep my inbox neat and clean, I avoid the problem. As soon as I lose that consistency, it becomes a mess.
As an entrepreneur, these habits are key to helping you get stuff done, stay focused on what matters, and keep moving forward. Consistency is your friend.
5) Shed excess weight
Running with excess weight is hard work. Now, I’m not obese, but you probably won’t see me on the cover of GQ, either. So about six weeks ago, I started the Paleo diet, and I’ve since decreased my body fat 5%. It makes running a lot easier.
In business and in work, excess weight can take many different shapes and forms. I used to take responsibility for things that either I didn’t need to do myself or weren’t important. I was really bad at prioritizing my time. Now I focus on the most important things every day. I get more done, and I am happier.
Shed the excess weight on your to do list. I guarantee that, afterwards, you’ll run easier.
6) Run your own race
While running my last race, I realized we’re always competing. We’re always measuring ourselves against other entrepreneurs and their companies. We read about how they do things, how they manage to be successful and how we should be applying all of those things to our own lives.
In fact, you’re doing that right now, but reading this post.
But this is your life. In every race, you can only run against yourself, and try to improve on your personal best. What the other runners (or business leaders) are doing shouldn’t influence the way you run your own race.
Do things for yourself — and rely upon your own instincts, for a more satisfying outcome. Be a little selfish every now and again, and remember to invest in yourself.
What are your thoughts? How can leaders apply athletic training principles to run their companies more effectively?
(About the Author:Adii Pienaar is the ex-CEO and Founder of WooThemes. He has a passion for helping other entrepreneurs, making new mistakes (of his own) and, as such, is working on his new startup, PublicBeta. He is also a new dad, ex-rockstar and wannabe angel investor.)
(Editor’s Note: This post was adapted from Brazen Life via The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), with permission. Brazen Life is a lifestyle and career blog for ambitious young professionals. Hosted by Brazen Careerist, it offers edgy and fun ideas for navigating the changing world of work. Be Brazen!)
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https://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/4702159685_2328d3e999_o-2.jpg349700Meghan M. Birohttps://talentculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TCLogo_web-272x60-1.pngMeghan M. Biro2013-12-26 09:47:042020-05-27 16:46:42Startup Leadership: Lessons From a Runner's World
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