Strategic Discipline Blog

Yesterday was the first half day of Gazelles International Coaches Summit in advance of the Fortune Sales & Marketing Growth Summit here in Las Vegas.  One of the breakout sessions pooled our coaches on the resources and techniques they use to discover our client's Brand Promise and BHAG. 

Forgive the short detour from the One Page Strategic Plan Quarterly priorities.  Yesterday I had about 4 + hours of windshield time and listened to Gallup's audio on Strength Based Leadership.  One business coaching tool that I've been recommending for my clients is the Strengths Based Leadership test.  [A word of warning you may have difficulty navigating this site before you purchase the audio or the book]

A recipe for a great meal is only as good as its presentation.  Clarity in your business is only as good as your ability to communicate it and then implement.  So perhaps your buying into to the idea of creating a vision for your business as the recipe for growth.  What's next? Gazelles One Page Strategic Plan provides clarity and action steps to not only broadcast your intentions but to provide steps to get everyone on board and contributing to the momentum of your top priorities.  It's the key to not only achieving clarity in your business, it provides the next action steps.  You must not only indicate where you are going, you must give your team a way to climb on board and contribute.

In Clarity Dissolves Resistance we discussed how many business owners and executives fail to understand the importance of determining a vision for their business.  While small business owners [less than $1M in revenue] may be more guilty of this than mid-size business owners, it’s not hard to find this lack of vision in larger companies.  The changing economy, advancing technology, competitive pressures, internal challenges all contribute to this so-called fog of war.  It can dull the senses and reduce the leader’s appreciation for developing a vision.  Setting priorities and communicating them to employees is critical to growth. 

How do you motivate action?  Whether it's your employees or customers it's a good idea to make them feel like they have a head start to the finish line.

Have you ever encountered a difficult customer that you weren’t able to satisfy no matter what you did to try and appease them? One of my clients had a large number of these customers. It seemed that frequently when he got a job completed he was stuck waiting for payment due to the unrealistic demands these customers had. He wanted to know what he was doing to attract these customers, how he could avoid it, and possibly determine how he could identify them before he began doing business with them.

Paul Orfalea, the founder of Kinko’s has an interesting story with lots of anecdotes.  However I'd like to provide you with a question and book for you to considering picking up that really speaks to the heart of why you are or aren't achieving what you want.

The book [I'm listening to it on CD] is the Power of Story, by Jim Loehr, the gentleman that co-authored the Power of Full Engagement, another one of my favorite books.  Having only read a portion of it I can only give you the flavor of it.  Like most books I enjoy I plan to get the hard copy now that I've found the audio portion is so engaging.

The book offers a very good perspective that most of us are caught in a web of deception and limitation due to the stories we continually tell ourselves. 

Two stories that stood out was of a tennis player they worked with that they helped determine her mission.  When they originally asked her what her mission was, she announced it was to win lots of money and become a top ten tennis player.  She realized very quickly that wasn't very fulfilling, and discovered the emptiness of this when she achieved what she wanted and still felt unfulfilled. 

Through a number of questions similar to our Primary Aim and what most people would recognize as a discovery process for your mission statement this female tennis player had an epiphany.  She announced one morning that your mission was, "I want to be sunny!"  

She wanted to be a beacon of happiness, which eliminated the stress and anxiety she had been feeling about her striving to achieve.  Uninhibited by her previous constraints and only concerned with living her mission, she promptly went out and played her best tennis ever upsetting one of her previous nemesis in her first grand slam event.

Story #2 is about a business owner who while performing extraordinarily well after taking over his father's business never felt happy or satisfied.  He realized that his obsession to build the business was more about making his father feel he was good enough rather than any desire of his own. 

Unfortunately many if not most of us face the same situation as the latter story.  We have never really figured out what makes us happy.  In fact we are busy constructing stories, most of them compelling lies about how we are not good enough or what we can't do rather than positive life affirming messages of the person we are truly capable of becoming.

I plan to write one of my newsletters on this, once I have gotten through more of the book.  The idea the Power of Story, by Jim Loehr offers is that we can change our lives by simply changing our story.  Perhaps simply isn't the best word to use here, but let me ask you, what's your story?  Where have you been deceiving yourself into believing you are less than you are capable of?

Finally I leave you with a quote from Marianne Williamson [Also sometimes attributed to Nelson Mendala] that I have built my business purpose around,  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous." Actually, who are you NOT to be? Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won't feel insecure around you. We are born to manifest the glory that is within us. It is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”    

Reading the Power of Story, makes me appreciate the power that Paul Orfalea created in achieving his success with Kinkos.  What your story, and how much do you wish to achieve?  I'll talk about Kinkos in my next blog.