On the one hand…

“In addition to wasting time, the frequent reconsideration sabotages the effort your subconscious is trying to make in finding ways to make the current plan work. Spending that creative energy wondering about the plan merely subtracts from the passion you could put into making it succeed.”

On the other hand…

“particularly in organizations, failure to reconsider long-held decisions is just as wasteful. Should you really be in that business? Should this person still be working here? Is that really the best policy?”

As with most dilemmas, you don’t solve it, you proactively manage the short-term dilemma to achieve your long-term goals!  If you don’t have long-term goals – good luck!

Part of managing that short-term dilemma is know how and when to shift from tactical to strategic.  This 1-minute video shows you a simple and effective way to make that shift.  I suggest you review it often until you make it a habit.  Also, you should share it with your team or the people around you so they understand what you are doing and don’t resist your efforts!

The GOOD NEWS is that you can make different choices to build an advantage and overcome dysfunction!

Join the Grow Smart Group on Friday, May 18th as we review 2 of Pat Lencioni’s books; The Advantage and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

REGISTER HERE

You will not only learn the material in these books but get other important insights like this 1-MINUTE DISCUSSION on “WHAT IF THIS IDEA OR OPTION IS A MISTAKE?” at our last book review event.

The ADVANTAGE allows you to create an organization with minimal politics, minimal confusion, high morale, high productivity, and low turnover. These are the signs of a healthy organization – one that can sustain success in the long-term!

You DO NOT want to miss out on this important and practical educational opportunity. Seating is limited so REGISTER NOW!

Agenda
7:30am Doors Open (Networking and Coffee)
8:00am Introduction
8:10am Book Reviews
8:40am Discussion
8:55am Wrap-up and Takeaways
9:00am Adjourn

Location
Adept/BringShare office
815 Grandview Ave.
Suite 600
Columbus, Ohio 43215

REGISTER HERE

Jason Ross, Founder of JackThreads, talks about some key business model pivots he had to make and some technology problems he had to address along the path of creating a highly successful on-line men’s fashion retail company.  Ironically, it was those “screw you” moments that were most valuable in helping Jason and JackThreads make the pivots necessary to ultimately achieve their outstanding success!

a pivot is a fundamental adjustment to the product/service, plan, or strategy to better align the vision with what stakeholders will enthusiastically want and sacrifice for.

Photo Credit: Ross Mayfield via Compfight

Stakeholders could be customers, employees, or investors and sacrifice could be in the form of a purchase or the investment of time and energy.  In any case, the fundamental adjustment better aligns the vision for the future with the actions of the present!

NOTE:  I am making a blog technology pivot.  This pivot does not allow me to carry everything forward from my previous blog technology.  Thus, if you find value from my blog posts and want to continue to receive emails or notifications regarding new blog posts, then you need to resubscribe here.  I look forward to continuing our journey into the future together!

Fitness at Work.  Most people are aware of the concept of blending – where we find ways to get multiple benefits from our regular activities or routines.  The most commonly discussed blending approaches for fitness at work are:

• Parking further away from your desired location to get some extra steps in on the way
• Taking the stairs instead of the elevator
• Flexing some muscles while seating in your chair

This article discusses a way to take that blending to a whole new level – strolling on a treadmill that is attached to an elevated desktop with computer and phone.  This is a great case of strategic blending!

Productivity at Work.  Unfortunately, most of us are guilty of making (or being forced into) BAD tactical blending choices in many other ways at work.  As David Allen points out in this article…

Photo Credit: Adam Kuban via Compfight

“(This blending of activities is) causing us to become paralyzed by the dizzying number of options that they spawn…To be successful in the new world of work, we need to create a structure for capturing, clarifying and organizing all the forces that assail us; and to ensure time and space for thinking, reflecting and decision making…The core message is, “I don’t feel good about what I’m not getting done.”

Fortunately, he offers some suggestions in this article for dealing with this challenge of participating productively in this new and turbulent world, and not being paralyzed by it.

How do you determine if blending is a good strategic choice or a bad tactical choice?  There is not an easy answer to this question but the right perspective allows you to make better decisions on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis.  This article by Tony Schwartz suggests some policies and behaviors that will help you make the best decisions most often.

“Communication is everyone’s panacea for everything”

–Tom Peters

Make Performance Fun! Here are some great examples of how communities are “Making Good Citizenship Fun.”  There are lessons here for any company or organization.  To paraphrase a line in this article, “if companies want to encourage high performance, they should try making the desired behavior more fun.”

Communicating the picture better through Infograhics. The saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Here is an Infographic on “How Small Business Blogs Increases Sales” – surely this is worth a thousand words in painting the picture!

Important Internet Tolerance Information. This article shares some important tolerance information to be aware of in building successful internet marketing and e-commerce for your compan y.  You could be losing opportunities in the blink of an eye!

Distinction as a “Value Creator.” To create sustainable results in anything, you must know your distinction as a value-creator.  This article presents five questions that will help you, as an individual, determine your differentiation as a value creator!

“But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.”

–Abraham Maslow

Creating Teamwork that Scales©. This article provides some lessons from Ford Motor Company as they navigated some extremely challenging times.  Mr. Fields states “What’s important is that everybody is pulling together to solve issues and not score points.” I would argue that the leader of people’s number one role is to create Teamwork that Scales©.  So, don’t substitute efficient managers for effective leaders!  Look for these 7 qualities for the leaders of people at every level in your organization!

Five Social Rewards and Threats to Culture. A leader who continuously lets down his or her team won’t create sustainable compounding results.  A lack of emotional intelligence is probably the top reason for failure of previously successful managers moving into the fundamentally new and ambiguous roles of leadership.  The leaders that succeed have an acute awareness and appreciation for the five social rewards and threats that impact their ability to create a winning culture!

Quick Entrepreneurial Leadership Assessment. Wondering whether or not you have what it takes to be successful entrepreneur.  Rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 with regards to the 6 observed attributes of successful entrepreneurs in this article.  Then, get to work on making these attributes your strengths or finding ways to manage around your weakest attributes!

“The most important thing in communication

is hearing what isn’t said.”

–Peter Drucker

Creating a Business that Scales© through the Customer Experience. In this hyper social communication age, the customer experience is a major differentiator for companies and something that can allow you to create a Business that Scales©.  Seth Godin does a great job of laying out this opportunity – a scalable way to delight!

This framework and approach has worked for start-ups going from $0 to $40M in 3 years and companies like Intuit successfully launching $50M in offerings that did not exist a year earlier!

Further evidence of the importance of lean innovation can be found in this New York Times article on the impending debut of the new iPad.  This 2 year old innovation is a huge slice of Apple’s revenues and is dramatically changing the computer industry.

“The iPad, which seemed like a nice side business for Apple when it was introduced in 2010, has become a franchise for the company, accounting for $9.15 billion in revenue in the holiday quarter, or about 20 percent of Apple’s total revenue.”

It is time to master Lean Innovation!!!

Join us as The Grow Smart Group offers a group book review and discussion on this important topic.

BringShare will be hosting this event and Co-Founder, Justin Spring, will be sharing specific changes and dashboards he has implemented in the last 30 days since I gave him my book review of The Lean Startup.

You DO NOT want to miss out on this practical and important educational opportunity.  Seating is limited so REGISTER NOW!

Agenda:

7:30am Doors Open (Networking and Coffee)

8:00am Introduction

8:10am The Lean Startup Book Review

8:30am The Lean Startup Group Discussion

8:50am Wrap-up and Takeaways

9:00am Adjourn

Location:

Adept/BringShare office

815 Grandview Ave.

Suite 600

Columbus, Ohio 43215

REGISTER HERE

So, the question is, did you take advantage of “leap Day?”

In the United States, we have a great event (my favorite sporting event ever) that we refer to as “March Madness.”  It is a name used to describe the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament.  In more recent years, the term has been expanded to include year end conference tournaments as well.

So many people in the U.S. are aware of this term and theme because 40 million of them enter into NCAA Tournament Pools on-line and at their office.  The tournament pools do not start for another 2 weeks but the theme “March Madness” begins today.

So I ask, “What is your “March Madness” theme to help you leap forward?”

Life is short but the entrepreneurial journey is a marathon.  Thus, if you don’t set up your journey to include peace and joy, you might arrive at the end of your entrepreneurial journey having paid too significant a price!

We do not enter life with all the specific instructions for peace, joy, and success on our journey.  We are blessed with natural talents and given the opportunity to find ways to create value with those natural talents.  Unfortunately, as we try to figure out our own personal puzzle, others complicate our path.

Choosing to take your leap only amplifies your challenges and complications! With the wrong mindset, peace and joy are virtually impossible on that journey.  However, peace and joy may not be fully experienced without an attempt to take your leap either!

You see, you could choose not to take your leap in life and focus on peace and joy in the moment instead.  But, what if finding and experiencing true peace and joy is about deploying your natural talents to create significant value in this world? If that’s the case, you must learn to operate from a mindset that allows you to re-frame short-term disruptions, setbacks, challenges, and complications as opportunities to raise your momentary peace and joy on the path of ultimate peace and joy in this world.

To experience anything, we must cultivate it in our lives. Thus, peace and joy must be cultivated everyday of your life.  It will ebb and it will flow but it flows most abundantly where it is cultivated.  And, it will be experienced most grandly when you are engage in delivering significant value to the world through your natural blessed talents and skills.

So, commit to cultivating peace and joy everyday of your life.  See the daily experience as a small but critical part of the ultimate experience.  Don’t wait until the end of the journey to experience peace and joy.  Instead, find ways to cultivate peace and joy amongst the chaos and challenges!

Remember, the tide goes out and the tide comes back.  The pendulum swings in one direction and then back to the other.  There is a natural rhythm, pulse, and flow to all things.  When we remain centered and at peace, we allow that rhythm, pulse, and flow to come back to us.  We either allow it to happen by cultivating peace and joy or we block it by not cultivating it.

• Take Your Leap
• Take Your Leap: Dealing with Fear
• Take Your Leap: Preparing for Success
• Take Your Leap: Craft a Vision
• Take Your Leap: Learn from Others
• Take Your Leap: Make Your Own Luck
• Take Your Leap: Be Tenacious
• Take Your Leap: Manage the Risk

The second part of managing stress is understanding the difference between good stress and bad stress. The final part is to always find ways to build more margin in your life.

http://www.StrangeCosmos.com

Good Stress and Bad Stress

In 1975, Hans Selye provided breakthrough information on stress based on his life long study of the subject.  His book, Stress without Distress, provided a new paradigm for stress in our lives.  Up to that point, most people (and many still do) viewed stress as only a negative force in their lives.  However, Selye provided a new model for stress that looked at both negative stress, distress, and positive stress, eustress. In fact, the subtitle for the book is “How to use stress as a positive force to achieve a rewarding lifestyle.”

Most people refer to stress in terms of the negative.  Selye defined this type of stress as distress.  More specifically, it is an aversive state in which a person is unable to adapt completely to stressors and shows maladaptive behaviors. People under constant distress are more likely to suffer illness.  Ultimately, these maladaptive behaviors and illnesses stand in the way of sustained success!

Eustress, on the other hand, is a healthy stress.  It gives a person a feeling of fulfillment or other positive feelings. Eustress is essentially a positive, interval-based challenge and the opposite of a persistent, constant anxiety more commonly known as stress.

We thrive when we have eustress in our lives.  We die (or at least suffer on the road to dying) when we have constant stress in our lives.  Yet, we do not totally control the stress in our lives.  Thus, we must actively manage our stress and utilize eustress to live fully and achieve our goals.

Create Margin to Reduce Stress

The final part of managing stress is to always find ways to build margin in your life through your daily actions and activities.  Most of us do not have large gaps of margin in all areas of our life.  This lack of margin increases the amount of negative stress in our lives when things do not go according to plan.  Things rarely go 100% according to your initial plan – there will plenty of challenges and setbacks!  You need to have margin to effectively address these challenges and make course corrections. So, with each step you take to do things faster, better, and easier make sure you also build margin in your life.

Five areas for building margin are extremely valuable:

• Faith – With each step you take, you should look to build your faith in yourself and something larger than yourself.  If you decide to build faith, your mind will help you find clues and examples to build it further.  That faith will come in handy as you face the many challenges and setbacks on your journey.
• Time - It is your most precious resource!  We all have the same amount of time available to us each day (24 hours).  We must learn to direct our attention, intention, energy, and effort appropriately in that given time.  Be very strategic in how you direct your time – some should be structured, some unstructured; some for energy expenditure, some for recovery; some for specific actions, some for specific relationships.
• People - Steven Covey covered this best when he discussed Emotional Bank Accounts in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  When you regularly make deposits in your relationship bank accounts, you create margin for facing the challenges and setbacks that will occur on your journey.
• Money - When you have more money flowing in than you need to cover your living/operating expenses, you have margin.  You should constantly and consistently look for ways to create more margin through proper investments that increase the flow in and savings that increase your gap.  The 2008 recession was a lesson for all of us on margin and leverage!
• Energy - This is really the most important and fundamental area for margin.  The right energy can help turn around bad flow in any area of life.  Thus, you need to manage your energy in order to achieve your vision.  Don’t just show up to throw up – bring the right energy to capitalize on your opportunities and deal with your challenges.  You should shift your focus from Time Management to Energy Management as suggested by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement.