If your goal is to have a healthy body, for example, you might set a goal of losing 20 pounds by October 31st, 2010, or you might set a goal of reducing your soda consumption to no more than 8 oz per day by September 1st, or any other goal that helps you reach your definition of “a healthy body”. The exact goals you set will be very specific to you, and there is no “right” or “wrong” goal, just like there isn’t a “right” vision.

In a business context, your goal might be to improve effectiveness of your meetings, and the SMART goal could be something like: Have a clear agenda for each meeting 24 hours ahead of time and end each meeting on time and with a clear set of action items assigned to specific individuals with deadlines. Or: Have only one key issue per meeting, and keep meetings to under 1 hour. Or: Have meetings only when there is a need for discussion and decision-making or quick touch-base meetings, not just to “share” information better presented in writing. All of these are possible goals. The point is to make it specific to your image of what the goal looks like.

To start with, you need to get specific about what things would have to be present for you to feel you have attained your vision. If your vision is to have a healthy body, what does that mean to you? Is it about weight, body fat percentage, how fast you walk a mile, ability to touch your toes, how much you can bench press, how often you exercise, the kinds of foods you nourish yourself with, the measure of cholesterol or other blood chemicals? If your vision is to have effective meetings, what does that mean? Is it about wasting less time, enjoying meetings more, having fewer meetings, building accountability, increasing focus, or just about making clearer decisions in meetings? All of these are possible, and many many more. Sometimes it helps to close your eyes and place yourself in your vision and imagine how you will feel there, and what will have changed for you to feel this way.

Now that you have visualized it, what specific goals did you attain to feel that way? And how can you begin moving in that direction? If you have a specific business-related goal, what are some first steps you could take to work toward your vision?

While setting goals, it is important to remember to set Realistic goals (remember the “R” in SMART?). Too often, we set goals that are very ambitious, but perhaps too ambitious and when we are unable to achieve them as quickly as we planned, we feel that we have failed.

In order to avoid this feeling of failure, but still stretch yourself to push a little further than is “easy”, it is best to set yourself a series of smaller goals for the coming week or month. To stick with our health example, a set of first steps might be to have a physical, stop drinking sugary drinks, and start walking 30 minutes every day. While this might be possible, it might be challenging, so you might set a “minimum acceptable” goal of getting the physical, and walking at least twice a week for 30 minutes, and eliminating sugary drinks during the week. Finally, you might set a target somewhere between this minimum and your ideal, and aim for that. At least if you achieve the minimum, you will feel that you have made meaningful progress, and you may be able to do even more than that in the process.

For our business meeting example, you might start with small steps such as making a list of all the types of meetings you currently have, and identifying the purpose each is serving, and outlining which ones could be eliminated, which ones need to be improved, and what might need to be added. Your “minimum acceptable” goal might be to just have the list of current meetings and their purpose. And the target could be somewhere in between where you have the list of meetings and their purpose, and you identify which ones most need improvement. Again, you will at least be able to make the list, and feel you are “on the path” to making improvements, but also feel like there is some challenge in reaching for the middle and ideal targets.

If your goals are long-term, such a 1-2 year or more away, be sure to set up some interim goals. In most cases, it is hard to set a goal of getting a big promotion, getting married, changing your corporate culture or other multi-step challenges and achieve it in a couple of months, so break your goal up into shorter-term milestones that you can aim for and feel the satisfaction of making progress before you achieve ultimate success.

Now that you have established your goals, write them down. Track them. Review them at least weekly and see how you are progressing. If you find that you are slipping, think about what specifically happens in the moment you slip up, and how you might change your thoughts and emotions to break through the next potential slip and move forward.

More next time on developing strategies around each goal.

A great place to begin this is to start with a deep understanding of your own natural talents, abilities and preferences.  There are several tools to do this, but one I really like is called Strengths Finder 2.0, and it will give you a clear idea of your top 5 strengths and the kinds of activities you will undertake with mastery.  Building a vision that plays to your strengths will drive greater enjoyment and fulfillment.  Anytime that you are working against your strengths, you will find it feels like really hard work.   Your innate talents do not change with training, experience or education, but are intrinsic characteristics of who you are.  Knowing what your talents are is vital to creating a robust and meaningful personal vision.

The other elements your personal vision needs to incorporate are:

• Your Skills and Experience: what expertise, knowledge and wisdom have you gained in your life?  What specific skills have you acquired?  Which ones do you want to continue to use?
• Your Interests and Passions:  What gives you energy and ignites your passions?  What needs in the world are you compelled to meet?  What activities or causes create “flow” or a state where you lose track of time?
• Your Communication and Interpersonal Style: how do you prefer to interact with people?  Are you introverted or extroverted?  Do you prefer to deal with data or feelings?  Are you future-oriented in your interactions or more grounded in the here and now?  MBTI, DISC, MAPP and other assessments can help you define this if you don’t already know.
• Your Values:  What are the values that drive you?  Can you name your top five?  Some you might consider:  hard work, spirituality/closeness to God, honesty, fairness, adventure, fun, accomplishment, service to others, family, wealth, mastery, unity, questioning, organization, acceptance, faith, exploration, healing, appreciation, respect… etc.  Taking the time to identify your most important values is worth the effort in making sure your vision honors those values.  (See #2!)
• Your Goals: What you want to accomplish in life, how you see the purpose of your journey and where it is headed.
• Your personal history: what messages have you incorporated from your childhood and early development?  What did your family, teachers and other mentors tell you about your role in life and what you might accomplish?  How do you wish to keep these messages or free yourself from them?
• Your stage in life:  Where you are in your life will determine what you will include in your vision.  Be clear about how this stage of your life is unfolding and what decisions are facing you and how your vision can address this.

Start by just writing what feels right at the moment, and then revisit it and edit frequently until you have a vision statement that inspires you to take action to realize that vision, and begin living like it has already happened.

You will want to post your vision statement in a place where you will see it daily, and make time to read through it at least once a week.  If it starts to feel stale, or your vision of the future begins to shift, just rewrite it.  It’s yours, and it needs to serve to inspire you, so change it until it does that for you.  You may even want to include images that help you feel the joy in your vision, inspiring quotes, or record it with music that uplifts and inspires you.

How can you discover your values?  One way is to look at  list of values and try to select those that speak to you, and then keep shortening the list until you are down to the most important 5 and prioritizing those.  You can also look at moments in your life when you felt most fulfilled, satisfied and full of purpose and ask yourself which values were being honored.  Conversely, when you think of times you were angry, you can ask yourself which values were being violated.

I noticed this myself when I found myself getting angry over trying to change an airline ticket to go home about 12 hours earlier than planned, and being asked to pay more than 3x what the original ticket had cost for the pleasure of doing so.  When I looked closely at my reaction I realized that I have a strong value around fairness, and this situation just felt inherently unfair, and that was the basis for my anger.

Keep a list of your values and once you have the top five, try sorting them in order of importance.  Which one must you honor above all others?  Which one would keep you from being happy were it violated?  Once you have a top value, which one would come next?  And so forth.

These Values help you quickly assess opportunities, people, projects and environments which will serve you and those which will conflict with your core values.  Here’s one list of possible values, but you may find others fit more closely for you – feel free to add your own words and explore what feels right for you.

First of all, if you have, you are not alone.  Some of the symptoms of this type of disconnect between “the real you” and the “you at work” are:

• Overwhelm and Rush.  You always have too much to do, and never enough time to do it, and keeping all those balls in the air is wearing you out.  If you could just add a few more hours to the day it would all work out…
• Urgency overload.  Everything is important and has to be done now, and even small issues feel like major crises.
• “Silver bullet” mentality, or “next week/month/year I will be in control…”.  This can easily become a pattern in your life where there is always going to be time to enjoy your life after the next (big contract/promotion/raise/startup/joint venture/client).  It will all be better as soon as….
• Externally-driven Goals and Priorities.  This looks like striving for goals and focusing on priorities that will garner external recognition, like a title, an income level, an award – because of what other people will think of you when you get there.

The worst part is that these symptoms tend to feed one another, and you can find yourself in a spiral of stress very quickly.  I call this the “Driven Life”.

But, there is an alternative I call the “Purposeful Life”, and its symptoms include:

• Long-Term focus on Fundamentals.  This means looking out into the future and working on things that form the foundation for achieving your long-term vision.
• Internally-driven Goals and Priorities.  This means setting and prioritizing goals that are based on your personal vision, not based on externally or “system”-driven criteria for success or achievement.  What is really important to you, regardless of what society or your mother think.
• Vision-based Choice and Decisions.  In the purposeful life, you make decisions from a place of balanced vision and can measure any decision against whether or not it is taking you toward or away from your vision.
• Priority-driven scheduling to build balance.  Finally, with a strong personal vision, you drive your schedule, your schedule does not drive you.  You put the things that really matter in your plan, and you begin to eliminate the things that do not increase your energy and your ability to achieve the vision.

I have outlined 10 steps to building a career and life around who you were meant to be, not necessarily who you think you are expected to be.  The first one is:

1. Stop the Rollercoaster and Focus on You

In order to change the way you feel and behave and become the best business person you can be, you have to begin by set aside time to examine yourself and your situation and take the steps required to make permanent change.  This isn’t a 15-minute exercise, either, but rather a long-term commitment to valuing yourself and your unique contributions, desires and goals.

If you think you don’t have time for this, or you don’t have time for this “right now”, look back at the list of “Driven Life” characteristics and realize that you can be stuck in this pattern for life unless you find a way to make a change now, because now is all there is.

In fact, this exercise of becoming the business person you were meant to be can be started in a few hours, but to create meaningful change, I suggest you give yourself a year to allow your logical and emotional minds to collaborate on your vision of yourself, and to fully integrate new thinking and new habits in a sustainable way.  Plan on at least a couple of hours a week over a few months to start.  Build this time into your schedule – what work could be more important?

Next time step 2:  Establish a meaningful personal vision

The surprising answer to motivational deficits are not individual relationships and physical environment or a lack of financial reward, but rather on your ability to control your destiny and the alignment of what you are doing to your personal values and vision.  Certainly all the variables in your surroundings help, and may make your work less onerous, but true motivation comes from internal factors:

• Control of your own work: how, when and by what method you achieve the goal
• Ability to do the job well: having the skills, knowledge and support to do a great job
• Alignment of the goal with your own personal values and goals

The first two are driven by management culture, and are key elements of engagement, but the third is only possible if you have a sense of your own personal vision.  In fact, having a personal vision, a passion for something larger than your own personal gain, is such a strong motivator, that it can overcome the first two factors and drive you to unprecedented success and achievement.

Think about Gandhi who began a career as a mediocre lawyer, and discovered his purpose to overcome the abject poverty of his people, and their feelings of inferiority, and rose to greatness and influence on the power of that vision.

How can you develop your own personal vision?

First, start with identifying your core values, then work on envisioning a future in which those values are all honored to their highest in your life and work.  This becomes your personal vision.  Now look at the work and life you have and start planning how this can change into the life and work you need to manifest your personal vision.

Your vision enables your most powerful self to emerge.

Engaged employees work harder, are more productive, and actively build enthusiasm among fellow employees and customers.  If you are not the primary customer interface, think about the attitudes of the people in your company who are.  An actively engaged employee is going to go the extra mile to satisfy your customers and feel happy about doing it.

If your employees are not actively engaged (and the average percentage who are is 30%), they are either “not engaged” or worse, “actively disengaged”.  You may think of the actively disengaged as the whiners, complainers and others who spread disgruntlement throughout the organization.  You already know what impact the actively disengaged have on their coworkers – have you thought about how they treat your customers?  They don’t necessarily break procedure, but they are less cheerful, less helpful, and generally less willing to do the right thing for the customer.

So, if you weren’t before, you should now understand why engagement is part of any manager’s job.  It’s linked to critical measures like customer satisfaction, employee turnover, productivity and profit.

Secondly, you might ask, “How can I improve engagement?”  You probably have employees you think will never be engaged, but the average company has 25% of employees “actively disengaged”, while world-class companies only have 8% in this category.  Clearly there are some who cannot be budged out of this category, but most of them can be engaged.  Take responsibility for the level of engagement in your organization.  You can make a difference and you are contributing to the level of engagement you currently have.

But how do you build engagement?

Engagement starts with taking a personal interest in each employee.  Understand what they get out of work, help link their personal values and goals to those of the company or workgroup.  After this, begin to think of employees as assets that need development.  If you had expensive capital equipment on the factory floor, don’t you think you would pay for maintenance and upgrades as needed?  Well, employees are often the largest expense in any company, and yet they don’t get the training, mentoring and career development opportunities that would improve their productivity.

Find out what their strengths are, and find ways of using those on the job.  Find out their interests and look for ways to provide opportunities to grow and learn in areas they are interested in.  Celebrate successes, learn from failures and treat them like the valuable human capital they are.

You won’t be sorry you did.

Most of us have found certain people difficult to work with from time to time, and just being the boss doesn’t make managing these people any easier, so what can you to keep work productive and less frustrating all around?

1. First seek to understand.  What do you know about this person?  What motivates them?  Where are their strengths?  In what areas are they an asset to the team or business?  In areas you find them difficult, what about your own preferences may be conflicting with theirs?
   How could you adjust your way of communicating and working with this individual to make them feel more comfortable and motivated?
2. Develop common goals and teamwork.  It’s harder to have conflict when you are united with others around a common goal.  But big goals that are a year away or depend on so many other factors are not very motivating or unifying.  Under the “big” goals, a team needs frequent, small measurable goals that they can share.  Do you have a goal for how many calls to make?  Response time?  Meetings completing their agenda on time?  Anything that is frequent, measurable and requires the team to get it done will work.  Make sure there are some rewards and recognition associated, even as small as a “Well Done” sign where everyone can see, or lunch for the team at the end of the month.  It doesn’t have to cost a lot to be effective.
3. Clarify expectations.  I know, you are always very clear.  But, really, are you?  Is the message you are transmitting being received the way you intended?  Are you being specific enough about what is needed and how it is to be delivered?  Spend time not only communicating your expectations, but also hearing them played back to you so you can make sure the message was heard clearly.  “Be more courteous” could mean more pleases and thank yous to one person, but mean always showing up 5 minutes early for meetings to another.  Which did you want to have happen?  Be specific and concrete.
4. Give and receive feedback on the spot.  When you see a behavior that isn’t in line with your expectations, or have a communication or meeting that goes badly, don’t let 2-3 weeks or even 2-3 days go by before you sit down and talk about it with the people involved.  Take 5 minutes right then and there.  Cool down if you need to, but make sure you provide feedback or gather feedback while the incident is still fresh in everyone’s mind.  You may discover that you are someone else’s “difficult person” and that a few small changes will improve the environment for everyone.
5. Don’t hesitate to let a bad actor go.  If you’ve tried to understand motivational and personality differences, built common goals, clarified expectations and given and received on the spot feedback and someone is still behaving badly or wrecking your team dynamics, sometimes you need to just amicably part ways.  There’s nothing harder on a team than watching someone else “get away with murder” with seemingly no consequences.In one client’s company I remember an employee saying “You can’t get fired from here”.  Well, if that doesn’t just encourage bad behavior, I don’t know what does.  Stop the bad actor or eliminate them, and morale will improve.

Workplace harmony begins at the top, and it isn’t about agreeing or hugging each other.  It’s about finding ways to leverage differences rather than letting them become barriers to growth.  Healthy disagreement and dialogue usually lead to better outcomes, but they need to remain goal-focused, respectful and based on data whenever possible.

Most of all, I feel a positive wind of change in the air.  I don’t know what 2010 will hold, but I am excited about it and meeting it with eyes wide open and charged up to take on whatever comes my way.  I am thankful for the energy to do this, and the support of my husband to keep pursuing my dreams.

What are you giving thanks for this holiday season?  What has blessed your life this year?

However, taking risks doesn’t have to be the same as being reckless. For most businesses, there is a logical set of steps in researching the market, the customer, the competition, in order to assess the level of risk, and manage it.

I often work with entrepreneurs, and one of the most common things I find is that serial entrepreneurs can be victims of their own success. What does that mean? Well, many entrepreneurs did well by doing one or two things right, and then getting extraordinarily lucky. They hit a market at the right time, with the right product or service, and in spite of doing little or no “traditional” business management, and bucking the models, they were successful. What do you learn from this? Well, many of them believe in the power of their own success, and that the models are useless and that they can succeed at anything based on the sheer power of their personality and acumen.

Surely you can see the flaw in this logic, but also why it is so seductive. It is not unusual for these successful people to go on to start one or more additional businesses – and fail. They take the lesson of success and continue to disdain traditional management, planning, strategy and organization. Occasionally they will again get lucky, but far more often I see them fail and wonder why the magic didn’t work again.

Those who overcome this learn that hard work and smart management of a company is a surer path to success than the force of personality or luck. They begin to do more research, and look at more data. They begin to track their failures and identify root causes. They begin to learn more about motivating people, creating great organizations, channel marketing, sales strategies, partnering, product development, and many other management topics. In other words, they evolve into great leaders and business people.

When you look at your business or group, are you using the best tools available to maximize your chances of success? Have you discarded management tools and theories because they aren’t perfect and others have succeeded without them? Do you have a coach or consultant helping you find the best out there and applying it to your business problems? Are you tapping into the creativity of your team to build on best practices and create new innovations in running a business, or are you repeating mistakes made by many others before you?

I invite you to look at how you are working and running your business and how you could build a sturdier foundation for the growth you can achieve.

Have you ever been to a training where you learned about a new exciting tool and came back ready to kick off a new way of working, interacting or planning, only to find that enthusiasm dampened by day 2, and the training forgotten within a few weeks? This is a result of poor environmental design.

You have a new tool or skill, but you come back to the same office, same desk, same tasks, same co-workers – all of which supported the old set of habits and skills. Without support and an environment that actively and passively encourages the use of new skills, the old patterns re-emerge quickly.

So what can you do to really look at your environment and how it impacts your ability to implement change? Here are 5 ways to look around and see what is supported in your environment:   

1. Physical Environment. Look around and see what is in your immediate work environment. Is it neat and organized or cluttered and messy? Where do new items land? Where do “important” projects and tasks land? Do you face colleagues or a wall or window? What can you hear in your environment? When you look at your physical environment, does it encourage you to take the actions you need? Is it more conducive to collaborative work or solitary research/writing and thinking? Does it help you focus? Does it keep you abreast of what everyone in the team is doing? What is important to you and your progress, and does the physical environment support that? How could you make it more supportive of your goals?
2. Social Environment. What do you get from the people in your work, home and social environment? Do they encourage you to reach your goals? Do they have compatible goals? Are they prone to sabotaging your efforts, or are they excited to see you change? If they aren’t supportive, who could you recruit to spend more time with who would be more encouraging?
3. Temporal Environment. How do you structure your time during the day and over the course of a week, and how does that impact your ability to make changes and achieve your goals? Are you able to use your most productive hours on the most difficult tasks? Are you actively managing your energy levels and scheduling tasks when the right energy is there to support them?
4. Intellectual Environment. What kinds of intellectual stimulation do you get from your environment? Do you have challenging people with new ideas in your environment? What kinds of reading material, news, radio and other media do you keep in your environment and how does that impact your goals? What changes might improve your motivation and ability to stay on track with new behaviors and skills?
5. Measurement Environment. What is tracked and measured in your environment? How is progress noted and how often? Are the things being measured encourage you to make change? If not, what kinds of measures might make more sense? How often are they measured?

In order to effectively make a change or build new behaviors, you can make it infinitely easier by designing the right environment. Think about someone trying to start a new diet. One of the first changes is to take “forbidden” food out of the kitchen, maybe join a support group or begin the diet with a friend or spouse, to get new recipes supporting the new diet and setting up a measurement and tracking system to see daily progress and understand any setbacks.

All changes are similar in many ways. They are hard, and can only be tackled when the motivation is there, but that is rarely enough. In order to create success, you need to carefully examine your environment and create stimuli and support for changes, new behaviors and new skills.