A High Performance Alternative to New Years Resolutions

What’s the fastest way to sully the new year and dampen your spirits?  Make a list of all the things you don’t like about yourself and then write some resolutions designed to ”fix” your faults.  Give me a break.  We all know dwelling on weaknesses is not upbuilding and does not lead to growth - so why do we persist with this negative tradition?  Habit.  It has become so habitual that during the month of January we hardly greet a person without making some mention of the deadly “R” word.

I’m not against goals or self improvement.  In fact, I’m a big proponent.  What I object to is the negative slant associated with resolutions.  Here’s my proposal.  Let’s approach this from a strengths-based perspective and see if we get better results.

Taking a strengths-based approach
Take that same piece of paper – you know, the one where you were going to record your faults.  Shake your head a few times to rid yourself of thoughts of shortcomings.  Then write down 3 strengths you possess.  If you haven’t tried this approach before it may take you a few minutes.  If it’s really hard to do, ask someone you trust to help you.  Here are some examples of natural talents or strengths:

  • Problem solving
  • Organizing
  • Team leadership
  • Writing
  • Ideation
  • Inspiring others

Once you have 3 strengths written down, set a goal for each one.  This will stretch your performance by leveraging your talent.  In other words, you’re throwing your energy at the areas that will net you the biggest results.

Happy New Year to all!

Why Social Media Works

From infancy, humans understand the direct connection between communication and survival. Before we learn our first word, we perfect the art of getting our physical needs met through whatever vocal abilities we can muster.   Later, curiosity about our environment and a strong desire to be understood drive us to master language skills.

We want to be heard and we want to be relevant within our community.

Social media has become the vehicle that powers two-way conversations across time zones and over borders. Even language differences are no longer a barrier with the availability of free tools such as Google Translate and Yahoo’s Babelfish.

We inform.  We learn.  We debate.  We might even argue.  The point is, everyone has a chance to be heard.

What Every CEO Should Know About Social Media

It’s not enough to create a great product or deliver top notch service.  Brands today need to cultivate a strong sense of community.  This means listening and interacting in real-time.  Web 1.0 is dead.  Those were the days when you could put text and graphics out on the internet and leave them there, secure in the knowledge that you had a website working for you.  Web 2.0 is a two-way conversation.  Clients and prospects are talking out loud through social media.  It’s the new normal.

The Fastest Way to Build Community is to Engage the Entire Workforce

This is not an activity that belongs to the marketing department.  It needs to be part of the fabric of the organization.  If you’re not engaging your staff and helping them create intentional impact, you’re losing a leveraging opportunity.  Or worse.

Fast Company published a fascinating article on this topic.  You can access it here.  Happy reading and happy socializing.

More Progress – Same Hours

How do you put more progress in your week without adding additional hours?  Future pace your time.

True or False:  If you start the day with no objectives, no goals, and no hot priorities tied directly to your objectives, your day will still fill up with tasks and busy work.

True.

There is an alternate path.  Future pace your week by imagining exactly which steps toward achieving your major objectives you will accomplish by week’s end.  Reinforce the picture by imagining how great it will feel to leave at the end of the day Friday knowing that you have made real progress on your deliverables.

Open your calendar right now and insert 1 next action step for every major goal.

Added bonus:  Reserving time to work on what’s most important will give you the conviction you need to say no to some of the requests for your time that are coming your way.

You might also enjoy:

Big Rocks – Creating Time for Success

Too Much Work and Not Enough Day?

Finding Time for Strategy


What Our Words Say About us

Web sites attract traffic by featuring and repeating key words – not unlike the way we humans attract or repel others with our speech.

If we could capture our words for a week and then view them in aggregate,  what would we learn about ourselves?  How often would our most important words show up?  Which words would be conspicuous by their absence?

Here’s an interesting way to visualize what your speech looks like.  Go to the Wordle site and input your most commonly used words.  Or, you can copy and paste text from documents you’ve written to generate your own word picture like the one above.  Have fun!