How did I cause this?

As a leader, and one that takes total responsibility for everything that is going on around you, when something (good or bad) happens, we must ask “How did I cause this?”

Even if it was something someone else did or said, ask “How did I cause this?”

In the answers are the secrets to solving your problems and moving ahead.

Are we winning?

Does your team know how success is measured at your business and in their department?

How do they know if they are winning or not?

Shouldn’t they know?

We want to feel progress.

When I graduated high school, I moved out of the house the next day.  We were cramped in a second floor apartment with four kids, two parents and a total of two bedrooms.  (The living room became a bedroom and the dining room became the living room.)  I moved in with my grandfather in the next town where it felt like suburbia – the houses were 15 feet apart, rather than five feet apart where I lived.

That was progress, and it felt great.  I was 17; life was good.

Today, if I lived in the spare bedroom at my grandfather’s house, it wouldn’t feel like progress.

Success is a journey, and we feel successful so long as we feel we’re making progress each day towards our goals.  No matter where you are on your journey, you don’t want to feel stuck.  You want to feel you took another step today.

What step do you need to take to feel forward motion and feel good?

Self-induced friction

“It’s hard” we say.  We struggle with decisions and fear change.

But most of what makes it difficult is in our minds.  It’s hard to make that decision because we are afraid of making a mistake.  It’s hard to get that project done because we built a steep mountain out of it in our minds.

Most often, it’s not the doing that is difficult. It’s fighting our own preconceived notions about how hard things are, what could happen, and conflicting priorities that we created.  

Take your foot off your own brake.  Let go of the fight.  Make a decision, commit, and go!

Naming your product

What’s in a name?  Would you book a vacation to Hog Island?  That was the old name for Paradise Island.

What do you call your product or service?

Creating the future

Go to work on the business you want to have, not the one you have now.

If you were the business you want to be, what would you be doing today?

Concentration

Don’t major in minor things.

Can you/do you focus your efforts where great results are possible?

The Problem Behind the Problem

What’s your #1 problem right now?  Your current constraint – the limiting factor preventing you from getting to your goals?

Ok, now ask, what is the underlying problem?  What’s the problem behind the problem?  What problem(s) is causing the problem?

"Make me feel important"

Your employees have different performance ranges in them. As a leader or manager, your job is to bring out the best in them while accomplishing the goals of the organization.

People want to feel important.  If they don’t, they will operate at the low end of their range.

Do your people feel important to their company and more specifically to their department and the people they work with and for?

What do you need to do today?  Ask for their opinion?  Listen?  Train them?  Acknowledge and recognize them?

Better get on it….

Why aren't you successful yet?

Face the brutal facts. Be honest with yourself.

Why haven’t you accomplished the goals that you say you want by now?

Don’t blame. Take responsibility.

In the answer may very well lie the “secret” to your progress.