And thanks for your support.

Only through a pro-active approach to managing change will you be able to take advantage of this environment, and capitalize on others’ not being ready to handle change in their world. Here are 10 directives I think are imperative to successfully leading through change projects:

1. Understand the new environment better than ever before – Being the first to understand and capitalize on today’s emerging trends will be the first step out of the current quagmire

2. Make others understand this new environment - We are not in Kansas anymore.  It is time we acknowledged this fact and moved forward.  As soon as you can get your team to understand this fact, you will start making forward progress.

3. Be a strategic thinker – Think broadly about your new opportunities, and bring your resources to bare in new ways

4. Establish focus and prioritize – Once you set your direction, focus on your tasks like a laser beam. Get the important things done now.

5. Be aggressive – New opportunities exist, but they will only be discovered by the ones who want it the most.

6. Ensure alignment - Make sure everyone on your team is working toward the same goals for the same reasons.

7. Execute – It has never been more important to be hands on with your business

8. Diligently monitor results – Use real data to make decisions and change things when necessary. You cannot manage what you do not measure.

9. Communicate constantly - Honest and open communication builds morale and makes people feel more confident, even when things are their shakiest.

10. Be resilient – Perhaps the tallest and most consequential order of them all: Be optimistic in the face of adversity.  If you don’t carry the torch, who will?

Now get out there and lead something!

The beauty lies in the fact that the goals you list every day cannot be those longer-term goals, like “Get that MBA,” or “Open that dance studio.” Rather, they are the immediate , shortest-of-term, action-oriented details that all need to be accomplished in order for you to make your larger goals – whatever they may be – a reality.  And, doing so over and over every day has 2 huge benefits: 1) it gets you ever closer to accomplishing your goals, and 2) checking off to do lists feels so good.

But accomplishing daily goals, it turns out, might not be that easy.  Daily interruptions, busy work that must be completed, a phone call from a long time client that must be taken, all eat into your day making it difficult to get three things done, let alone six.  So, Chet offers more tips on how to accomplish these important incremental milestones:

Touch it Once - Don’t handle the document or open the email at all, unless you are ready to deal with it right then. Do the math: Just 15 minutes a day of re-touching old emails, bills, letters, memos, etc eats up 65 hours a year – over two and a half days!

Allocate Sufficient Time to Each Goal to Accomplish All 6 – He suggests that you should only allot 6.5 hours per day to accomplishing your 6 goals. Because we all have busy work and responsibilities to fulfill.

Plan the Day - Plan time for getting your proactive tasks done, and time to attend to your reactive responsibilities. If you group your reactive time into their own focused time slot, they will not distract you when you are focused on accomplishing your tasks.

Prioritize - Rather than putting your most difficult task off until later in the day, after you “get going,” Chet suggests placing your most difficult task first every day, so you can get it out of the way and go in through the rest of your day with a feeling of greater accomplishment.  Another way to go might be to consider the time of day when you are most productive and try to work on difficult tasks then.

Throw Away Unnecessary Clutter – 80% of what we keep as “important” is ultimately of no value to us. If you look at something in your hand and recognize that if wouldn’t hurt to throw it away (or recycle it), then do it. Right now.  Get rid of it and move on.

My To Do List for today follows. What’s yours?

Follow up with new contact (check)

Develop target customer profile (check)

Find technical information for website developer (check)

Finalize coaching agreement for new client (check)

Prepare market assessment for real estate deal (check)

Post this Blog (now…check)

…Best of luck.

1. A dash of brevity.
2. A heaping tablespoon of clear and grammatical expression.
3. A pinch of humor.
4. A teaspoon of personal context.
5. A scant cup of nicety.
6. A seasoning of structure.

Sounds like this recipe would also work well applied to just about any aspect of your life or business.

Habit #1: Be proactive – Your life doesn’t just “happen.” Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you. The choices, after all, are yours… (more)

Habit #2: Begin with the end in mind – Envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes… (more)

Habit #3: Put first things first – To live a more balanced existence, you have to recognize that not doing everything that comes along is okay… (more)

Habit #4: Think win-win – sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one. Win-win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions… (more)

Habit #5: Think first to understand, then be understood – Communication is the most important skill in life. You spend years learning how to read and write, and years learning how to speak. But what about listening? (more)

Habit #6: Synergize – “two heads are better than one.” Synergize is the habit of creative cooperation. (more)

Habit #7: Sharpen the saw – having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual… (more)

There is a lot of gold in here. (Certainly, there has been for Dr. Covey!) Over the coming weeks, I will delve into each Habit in turn, and talk about how each works in today’s economy and marketplace.

If you have a comment about any one of these Habits, please leave them here. Let’s discuss each Habit in detail.

And yet we dream. We dream of a better life, of how things “should” be. We see the world around us, and envision how it could be better.  But… making it better involves change. And change involves work, and uncertainty. And uncertainty is dangerous…

Whether starting a business, or getting back on your feet, or improving a relationship, we all can identify things in our lives that we’d like to make better. The question is, how do you take the edge off that uncertainty? How do we make it easier – and more advantageous – even in the short term – to take that risk and challenging the status quo?

Beginning with the end in mind is Habit #2 in Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and is generally a good strategy for almost everything we do. According to Dr. Covey, this strategy (or Habit) “is based on imagination–the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint.”

Think of it this way: if you are climbing into your car for a cross-country adventure, you will be wise to have with you a map.  Wiser still will be to have studied the map, chosen a destination, and made plans and decisions based on the knowledge you have right there in your hand. Any time you take a journey, or set out to build something of any substance, you should first consider where exactly you want to go; what exactly you want to end up with.

This holds true for just about every human endeavor. (I challenge you to name one where it falls short.) In the event you are starting a business, running or managing a business, or dreaming to someday doing so, the principle of “beginning with the end in mind” is of crucial importance.  How will it end? What will happen when it is time for you to move on? What’s your exit strategy?

In his article from About.com:Entrepreneurs, Mitchell York discusses what you really need to be doing now if you intend to sell your business sometime in the future. York points to an expert on the subject: John Warrillow, author of Built to Sell.  On his blog, Warrillow suggests 7 things you should start doing in 2010 to begin making your business more sellable down the road when you want to retire.

…And yet we dream. Well, dreaming is easy. Delivery is hard. But if you know where you are going, you are more likely to get there, no matter how difficult the road.

Among other things, Jan teaches business and leadership classes at many prestigious universities along the Front Range. In a recent blog post, Jan shares a long list of phrases and quotes one student had collected over the term of one of his courses – over 50 “little nuggets.” Most of them are fantastic. Here are just a few of my favorites:

• Face your own hypocrisy.
• Your present life is the result of the choices you have made in the past. The same will be true of your future. – Michael LeBoeuf
• The way to demonstrate your values is where you spend your time.
• Empowering people means giving up some power.
• Put yourself in places where you are in over your head.
• Try to learn something big every day.
• Develop a distinguishing personal art-form of service.
• Leadership is a process, not a position.
• Behaving as and becoming a leader is a secondary by-product of an intense commitment to a purpose.
• Ready, Fire, Aim, Fire, Aim, Fire, Aim…

Look forward to more references to Jan in the future.  It was a real pleasure to meet him!

Note well, #10 on the list: Get a Coach. Getting a coach will help you overcome individual obstacles and provide much needed structure and accountability as your project grows and matures. A coach is a personal adviser who will help you maintain clarity, focus, and productivity – all essential to successfully executing the list below.

The list below is a simplified version from the larger article. Read the whole article (link below) for the author’s further insights into each item.

1. Offer what people want to buy, not just what you want to sell.

2. Get cash flowing ASAP.

3. Always find new ways to keep costs low.

4. When planning, always overestimate expenses and underestimate revenues.

5. Focus on sales and marketing manically.

6. Find ways to exponentially increase profits. In business, there are five drivers that impact profits.

7. Test and measure everything.

8. Accept that learning more equals earning more.

9. Don’t discount, add value.

10. Get a coach.

Can you think of any others?  If you think of something that is missing, please comment on this post.

This list was put together by Brad Sugars, founder and chairman of ActionCOACH, and originally published on Entrepreneur.com. Read the whole article by clicking here.

For many, this seems easier said than done. A pipe-dream of convenience, not to be taken literally – here in the real world. There are bills to pay and I’m just lucky to have a job. Indeed… There are bills to pay and present commitments to uphold.

But that does not change one fundamental reality: if what you are doing on a daily basis is not personally fulfilling – if it does not fill your soul up with joy and energy – it will eventually prove to be unsustainable. Eventually, something in your life will have to give. So what’s it gonna be in your life? Career? Relationship? Health?

Let’s say none of the above. I have a proposition for you. I started my coaching practice to help people like you get over the walls separating you from your ideal life. I have set a goal for myself to coach over 100 new clients by the end of next year. I want you to be one of those clients.  I am offering a free hour-long one-on-one coaching session to anyone who is interested in exploring the opportunity to develop a better, more balanced life.

If you want to change course in your life, you have to grab the reins and begin to steer. This does not mean quitting your job today and opening that taco stand you’ve always dreamed of owning tomorrow. What it means is, if you ever want to own that taco stand in the future, you must start laying the ground work today. You must begin actively working to make it happen – Right now.  Change does not occur overnight.  The sooner you begin the journey, the sooner you will reach its conclusion.

If you are even just a little curious, contact me and we’ll discuss your options. The first hour is free and I guarantee you will take something f value away from the conversation.  Even if you’re not interested, leave a comment on why that is so.  Thanks and good luck!

It is uncanny how these nuggets of wisdom apply to so many different situations. It also has special poignancy for me, as I have a son in Kindergarten. We work on each of these principles just about nightly. It is amazing that life really is just this easy to understand, and yet so few seem to grasp it. Copy this list and paste it in a word document for your later reference. It remains helpful throughout your life, in most every situation.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Be Well!