Your mind is your mental workshop.
You can build anything you want in it.
Visualize what you want in your mind.
See it. Feel it. Taste it. Believe in it.
Make your mental blue print and then begin to build.
First, think about what you want out of life.
The beginning always takes place in your imagination.
Then organize your thoughts into definitive plans.
Next, it’s time to transform your thoughts into reality
by taking some positive action.
Visualize then actualize your success.
Archive for March, 2010
Daily Motivation – It’s Possible To Live Your Dreams
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010Daily Motivation – You Are Your Environment
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010The first step toward getting somewhere
is to decide that you’re not going to stay where you are.
Always be mindful that you are a product of your environment.
So choose an environment that will best develop you
toward your objective.
Analyze your life in terms of your environment.
Are the things around you helping you toward your success,
or are they holding you back?
You’re not a captive of your environment.
If you don’t like where you are,
change your environment, you’re not a tree.
Don’t say, “You would, if you could,”
say, “You will, because you can.”
When you become a part of anything, it becomes a part of you.
Daily Motivation – Reality Is Something Your Rise Above
Monday, March 29th, 2010You’re more important than any of your problems.
You’re bigger than anything that can happen to you.
Great things are accomplished when you believe
that what’s inside of you is superior to your circumstances.
What you have outside you counts less
than what you have inside you.
Courage is a special kind of knowledge.
It’s the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared
and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.
True courage is a result of reasoning.
A brave mind is always impregnable.
Nothing external to you has power over you.
Daily Motivation – View Every Problem As An Opportunity
Friday, March 26th, 2010There is always a good side to every situation.
Stay optimistic and try to see an opportunity in your calamities,
not pessimistic and see calamity’s in every opportunity.
The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole.
You can develop success from any failure.
Failure is one of the surest stepping stones to success.
No element can do as much for you as failure can,
if you’re willing to study it and make capital out of it.
When it is dark enough you can see the stars.
Daily Motivation – Prepare Yourself For Success
Thursday, March 25th, 2010Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
Don’t miss out on an opportunity because you’re not prepared.
There is no shortage of opportunity.
Everyday you’re presented with countless opportunities to be,
or do whatever you desire.
Your preparation is absolutely essential.
To achieve success, you must have self discipline.
You must increase your knowledge and develop your skills.
When you’re prepared,
you’re always at the right place at the right time.
Daily Motivation – Success Depends On Using Not Opposing
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010The world is primarily constituted on the basis of harmony.
Everything works in cooperation with something else.
Personal relationships are the fertile soil
from which all advancement, all success,
all achievement in real life grows.
Put yourself in another’s place.
Only then will you know why they think and do certain things.
Once you understand how quickly people will grant your requests
when those requests appeal to their self-interest,
you can have practically anything you go after.
It’s through cooperation, not conflict,
that you’ll achieve your greatest success.
Daily Motivation – You Can Always Do Your Best
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010It’s your constant effort to be first-class in everything you attempt
that will help you conquer the heights of excellence.
Make it your rule of living to always do your best.
Let superiority become your trademark.
Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.
There is always a best way of doing everything, find it.
Do a little more than average
and from that point on your progress multiplies itself
out of all proportion to the effort you put out.
Do more than you’re supposed to do
and you can have or be or do anything you want.
If you want to enjoy enduring success,
try traveling a little in advance of the rest of the world.
True greatness comes from being great in little things.
Daily Motivation – Apply Persistence To Your Possibilities
Monday, March 22nd, 2010Your success is not a matter of idle chance,
it’s a matter of making the right choices.
It’s not something you wait for,
but rather something you’ll achieve with effort.
Things won’t turn up in this world until you turn them up. Success is neither magical nor mysterious.
The people that truly succeed in the world
are the people who look for the circumstances they want,
and, if they can’t find them, make them.
Don’t sit on the sidelines, get in the game.
Your access to success has no real limits. The great opportunity in your life is where you are right now.
Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity for you.
You have grand opportunities all around you.
Open your eyes, and you will find it. If you have the desire, you have the power.
Taking action is all that is required.
Daily Motivation – No Authority Is Higher Than Reality
Friday, March 19th, 2010Truth isn’t a matter of your personal viewpoint.
Learn to see things as they really are,
not as you imagine they are. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.
No matter what you believe, it never changes the facts.
If they are there, the facts always speak for themselves. The truth does not change because it is, or is not,
believed by a majority of people.
If sixty million people say a foolish thing,
it’s still a foolish thing. The sky is no less blue because the blind man does not see it.
The Four Ps of Strategy Creation
Friday, March 19th, 2010By: Ron Price
When it comes to creating a strategy for your business, it is rarely wise to move forward with just one carefully thought-out course of action. Instead, it is wiser to encourage vigorous debate and develop several alternatives as part of the strategic discussion. The best scenario is to have three to five alternatives that are all so good that you experience a lot of angst over which one to choose. This process provides several benefits; among them are better critical thinking, increased creativity, and a number of alternatives to choose from as the future unfolds.
Unfortunately, many organizations don’t value this approach and they quickly move strategic discussions toward consensus. As a result, these organizations often end up caught by the marketplace when circumstances change. While their strategy may have been great at the time they created it, factors outside of their control can change the dynamics of their business and, without alternatives that were developed in their strategic planning process, they cannot respond quickly enough to leverage an opportunity or avoid a significant threat.
In order to remain relevant and effective, businesses need some way to monitor both the execution of their strategic plan and the changing environment in which they do business. With these management tools providing input in real time, organizations can quickly adjust course as circumstances present new opportunities or threats. A simple model made up of ‘Four Ps’ can help companies create this advantage. These Ps are Perceptions, Performance, Purpose, and Process.
Perceptions
There are six different stakeholder groups you should be listening to periodically to determine whether you’re moving in the right direction. These six groups are:
1. Customers: How your customers see you is critical to any organization. Since not all feedback systems work equally to uncover customer perceptions, you should use a variety of feedback systems. Some examples are suggestion cards, phone calls, emails, interviews, and focus groups.
2. Employees: You should to track your employees’ level of engagement and satisfaction. Again, you should use a variety of feedback systems to gauge their perceptions. Your employees have a big impact on your long-term performance, especially when you’re trying to execute changes in strategy.
3. Vendors: In the old world, companies didn’t care what their vendors thought of them. But in the new world, everyone is connected and a part of a greater whole. In developing flexibility with your strategy, all of your relationships are potential assets that you can draw upon to execute or change your strategy when it’s necessary. So understanding how your vendors perceive you is important. Do they view you as one of their prime customers, or as one of the troublesome ones?
4. Regulators: Depending on your industry, you have different guidelines to follow. Sometimes those guidelines play a significant role in strategy. Therefore, know how your industry’s regulators view you.
5. Owners or shareholders: Whether your company has one or several major investors, you need to fully understand how each perceives the organization. Since the person or people who hold the purse strings play a major role in the company, they have dynamic relevance in terms of strategy.
6. Community: This could include the Chambers of Commerce, the media, the other significant businesses in the area, or even government agencies.. How these outside groups view your company can significantly impact your strategy.
Performance
Performance relates to the following four questions:
1. How are we doing implementing and executing our strategy, including the goals and the timelines? Are we ahead? Are we behind? Are we performing according to plan or are we in some way out of sync with the plan?
2. What are the current economics of our business? Has anything changed from what we assumed when we created our strategic plan?
3. What are the operational results that we’re producing? If you break these down to business units or individual strategies or functions, figure out the actual operational results you’re getting. You may be doing a great job executing on your strategy, but it may not be producing the results you anticipated.
4. How are we performing relative to the performance agreements that we established in the organization? The performance agreements are the specifics of the operational plan that were created in the strategy. How are you lining up with the milestones for specific initiatives? Or what’s happening with the consequences? Are you getting greater or lesser results than expected?
Purpose
When you review your purpose as an organization, you need to ask the question, ‘What has changed?’ or ‘What is or will be changing in the environment?’ Your answer should impact the way you look at your vision or your long-term goals for the organization. The goal is to look for new opportunities or to identify what threats may be emerging because of changes in the environment.
Continually ask, ‘What has changed internally since we met last?’ Do we have some new strength that we didn’t have before? Did we obtain some new equipment, technology, or intellectual property? Did we get some great talent that we didn’t have before that should be impacting our strategy? Has there been a new limitation that’s emerged since we last looked at this scorecard?’
Based on your answers, you should review whether you still have the right strategy, goals, or timelines. You also have to determine what you can redefine and adjust in your plan to improve in any of the areas you’ve analyzed. Finally, you need to ask yourself, ‘Where should we focus our improvement efforts to create new value in the future?’
Process
All work is a process. It’s a series of tasks combined to achieve a particular goal. Such is the case with strategy as well. There are steps you go through, there are people involved, and there are processes you have to look at to determine where you can improve your implementation and in what order of priority. Are you creating waste? Is there rework? Are there inefficiencies in your various processes? Are the processes really creating the results you’re looking for? How are you doing tactically? How are you improving your processes? How should you adjust your resources?
Finally, you should be asking how you can create the sense of urgency and the accountability to ensure superior execution of your plan. You may have a great plan, but if you don’t have the right sense of urgency or the right level of accountability in the execution of it, the plan will produce poor results.
Keep Score for Better Results
Good strategic thinking and monitoring takes the four Ps into consideration. It’s about constantly looking at your environment and adjusting your plan as necessary. Developing this kind of monitoring system, combined with robust alternatives in strategy, will move you away from rigid organizational charts toward more team-based environments. As a result, you’re better able to adapt your strategy to the environment while it’s changing. When you implement the four Ps into your organization, you keep your strategy fresh and it won’t become stagnant or obsolete in its implementation
About the Author(s)
Ron Price
is the founder and CEO of Price Associates, a company dedicated to helping business leaders and entrepreneurs solve problems, identify solutions, and implement change in strategy and performance. Price is the author of Finding Hidden Treasures, a series of essays with action steps to aid readers in mining their own inner talents. For more information, visit www.Price-Associates.com or call 866-442-0556.