In Leading Change, Kotter outlines eight necessary steps to effective change. This article deals with the first of these. We’ve all heard some rendition of the saying, if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. Kotter points out that the very first step to making any significant change is the recognition that change is necessary. He highlights the point by stating unequivocally that change will fail, or not even be attempted, if there is an absence of a visible crisis.

There’s the rub. Recognizing the crisis is not pleasant or easy. It can actually be painful. We plug along, we do what we’ve always done and things just happen. We tweak things, we try this, we try that, we learn along the way and we somehow get a little better and a little stronger.

Real change, the type of change that catapults us to significant success requires a sense of urgency, a sense of crisis. As humans we are pre-wired to look for comfort and to avoid conflict and crisis. By our very nature, we don’t notice subtle changes that happen over time – even though those very changes, if they happened all at once, would accumulate to alert our natural instincts that a crisis had developed.

Here’s an example. Watch this short 12 second video. Be advised up front that there is a change happening. Press the play button now and watch for the change.

Did you spot it? Not likely. Now try it again – this time, Drag the timeline arrow on the bottom of the video to speed it forward and backward quickly and the change will become obvious. If you still can’t see it, try pressing the double arrows to jump to the beginning and the end.

Now play the video one more time at regular speed and look for the change. Wonder how you missed it the first time?

Just like this video, changes are happening around us all the time. They are subtle but they are there. To "create" a crisis, take a look back at how things were just two or three years ago. The unique economic situation aside, what has changed? How has your business reacted the cumulative changes that have taken place to: client expectations, compliance regulations, subtle product changes, technology, staffing, your personal life.. etc.

In aggregate, had all these changes happened overnight, they would have created a crisis. Because they were gradual, we pretty much rolled with the punches, tweaked and adapted.

What does all this mean? It means that if we want to achieve unsurpassed success, we need to “see the writing on the wall” now! Create your crisis. It’s there, you just need to see it.

A goal can only be achieved if it is conceived, planned, articulated and executed. Otherwise, it’s just wishful thinking.

When you clarify your vision for success, you need to write it down in a way that inspires you and your team. You need to write it down because that is the only way to truly analyze its merit and share it with others to test it. Articulation should come in the following concise form:

Clear Vision
Where do I want to go in the next 3 to 5 years and what do I want it to look like once I’m there?

Clear Purpose
Why am I in this business and what is my purpose for serving our clients?

Clear Performance Indicators
What do I need to accomplish in the next 12 months to move towards my goals and not overwhelm me?

Appropriate Strategies
What strategies do we need to follow to achieve our 12 month performance indicators?

Projects and Tasks
Who needs to do what by when?

Have you declared your vision, purpose, performance indicators, strategies and actions? Have you declared success?

Feel free to take our FREE SuQu Business Planning eCourse. And if you really need help, we’d be happy to align you with a SuQu Certified Coach.

How to best pursue success is widely debated, overcomplicated, oversimplified and often misunderstood. But after 10 years helping business owners grow their businesses, over 2 years of research, and several hundred thousand dollars of development we have figured it all out. We have created the most powerful success tool know to business owners.

We have followed success stories and have seen what separates the best form the rest and it’s really quite fundamental. The most successful people in history aren’t just lucky, they don’t just happen to know all the right people, they don’t own money trees, they don’t come from money, and they don’t typically know much more than you.

The most successful people in the world have 5 aces up their sleeves - the Alignment of Awareness, Attitude, Action and Accountability. These same strategies will work for you.

STRATEGY #1: ALIGNMENT

All of their power is directed in one direction. When everything is aligned it’s efficient and effective. They are not pursuing opportunities or actions outside of this alignment. They are incredibly engaged and focused and they are able to sustain this for months on end creating incredible momentum that almost seems endless.

STRATEGY #2: AWARENESS

Successful people understand what they do best and what is needed for them to achieve at a high level. It’s also an awareness of what they are building, what they want to achieve and exactly what success looks like when they get there. They can visualize their success. Check out the focus on this golfers face as he visualizes and hits the shot of a lifetime, or in his case, an average shot.

If you noticed, Tiger visualizes exactly how he is going to hit the ball, where it will land and what will happen to it, in the hole. Would you like to have the power to visualize and focus like Tiger?

STRATEGY #3: ATTITUDE

You have to believe in yourself and the process. A winning attitude is paramount. If you do the right work on a consistent basis, if you grow your company the right way, success in inevitable. You have to believe that to your core. Successful people believe nothing less is possible for them.

STRATEGY #4: ACTION

Masterful implementation is critical. I’ve seen average marketing knock the socks of great marketing simply because of consistent, continuous implementation. I always find myself wondering how successful they’d be if they had professional marketing support. Directed action is what it takes. Clarify your direction then, on a day to day basis, act only in that direction.

STRATEGY #5: ACCOUNTABILITY

If you say you’re going to get something done, do it. Here’s the thing, most people try to do too many things and most of them are not things they ought to be doing in the first place so afterwards they’re even more frustrated and confused. Accountability is about making sure you spend your time doing what you say you’re going to do and only that which you say is in your focus area. I’ll speak to accountability again, it’s huge.

When you engage a quality business coach who is armed with all of the above and SuccessQuest’s new Online SuQu Mapping Tool, you are positioned for amazing results in your business. We recently launched our new company, SuccessQuest, and our SuQu Mapping tool to coaches and business owners. Our coaches and business owners are having much success. People are exceeding even their stretch objectives. We’ve been asked to increase the performance tracking values to account for greater than 100% achievements. That’s right, coaches and advisors needed us to add 110%, 120% and higher as they blow the lights off their goals in an ECONOMIC RECESSION. Crazy but true.

Are vision mapping and accountability coaching right for you? Let us know, we’ll hook you up with a great coach. If you already work with a coach, have them call us and we’ll hook them up with SuQu Mapping.

Make it happen!

You want something. Go get it. Period.

Are you caught in the busy trap? Do you wonder, at the end of the day, what you actually got accomplished? You know you were mega busy and worked harder than those around you. You may have even checked off a couple of items from your to do list; even the ones you wrote down after you completed the task. Those count too. However, were you productive?

Too Many Focuses

If you are like most people, you have either forgotten or never realized that things like voicemail, email, skype, PDAs (Personal digital assistant) , even facebook, linkedin and twitter are tools for your convenience and efficiency; not the other way around. Somehow they have crept in to your life without you even being aware of how to really leverage them for your productivity and efficiency. Each of those is a tool in the physical environment within which you work or operate. The trick is to learn how to set up your physical environment as well as the tools themselves to serve you.

You want to learn how to respond to the alerts and information contained in those tools rather than react to them.

I use the following formula: Set Intentions – Pay Attention – Feel Less Tension.

First - Create a daily “Ta-Da” list in addition to your ongoing To-Do list. (Set your Intentions) Become very clear on what your goals or key objectives are for the day. Determine what 3-6 action items you want to make sure you get accomplished by the end of the day in order to feel productive. These are usually tied to a larger goal , project or mission. Get clear on what you can affect today toward the achievement of the bigger objective. Visualize what your experience will be at the end of the day having accomplished those action items successfully.

Second – Create a Not-To-Do List. (Pay Attention) It is just as important to recognize what the distractions or obstacles to achieving those action items will look like when they show up. They are usually cleverly disguised as emergencies or ultra urgent items. Here is the news flash – they come in the form of email, voicemail, and flawed or outdated to do lists in PDAs. Essentially a distraction or obstacle is any interruption to our productive work flow. Typically these could have easily been avoided with some prior planning. Take a few minutes each morning to identify what the potential distractions may look like before they come hurling at you. This will enable you to be able to limit, eliminate or at least recognize them when they show up and not experience such an emotional charge around them. You’ll see them as distractions and step aside and let them go by you versus making the mistake of trying to square up and tackle it on the spot. This will free up your bandwidth to stay focused on what must be done to move toward success.

Third – Notice Your Wins. (Feel Less Tension) Somewhere between diapers and getting our business cards printed we forgot the art of celebrating our wins. We became too cool for school and conditioned ourselves to notice all the stuff we don’t do well or could have done better instead of all the stuff we are doing well. I am here to challenge you to start noticing and yes, even celebrating your wins throughout your day. You will feel better about yourself and what you are doing. When you feel better you act better and when you act better you get better results. It’s an upward spiral. The better it gets, the better it gets. This is experiencing less tension. Imagine what you could actually accomplish if you experienced no stress. It’s a lot better than the downward spiral most people operate within that winds them so tight they eventually snap or blow a tube. So, to start with, just notice then when you are ready celebrate.

Make it up, make it fun, make it happen!

I’m going to try this.

Anyone else game for more vacation, more clarity, more energy and more focus?

We all read Snow White as children and we know that in the book, her ugly stepmother asks the mirror the question, “Who is the fairest one of all?”

Was it insecurity that made her ask that question? Was it because she couldn’t believe what she saw, that she needed an outside opinion to feel validated?

Have you ever stopped to think about how many of us have to ask what others see in our mirror?

Several years ago, I was the facilitator at a retreat for a group of professional women. They were all at the top of their field and feeling very secure in their career choices.

In one exercise, I gave them a mirror and asked each one to tell me what they saw. They all said that they saw a face, with a variety of types of eyes, noses, mouths and skin tones – they described in detail their features, not one of them saw anything else.

I asked them to pass the mirror to a colleague and to ask what that colleague saw when she looked in their mirror. They were amazed at what was said.

No one said anything about the face in the mirror. They all began to describe the person behind the face. They used words like open, sharing, caring, warm, friendly, dependable, strong, witty – all those words came from just looking in the mirror of someone else! Each of the women wrote down what her colleague saw in her mirror and then they were asked to expand on those words in another exercise.

It was amazing how easy it was, once they had the received outside validation. They not only liked what they heard, they were able to increase their self esteem by adding examples to the words given to them.

Why can’t we see what others see? Why can’t we recognize that our magnificence - that “fairest one of all” is not just in how we look, it is in how we act. And it is what others see, time and again.

I believe that each of us needs someone else to look in our mirror and to reflect what is seen to others. We all need at least one minute of fame where we can shine brighter than our peers. I encourage everyone to pass the mirror to a friend and ask them what they see – it’s truly gratifying to know that we can all be stars.

The women went home from the retreat, with a new perspective and their mirror! Each starring in their own movie, their own one minute of fame - where they were the “fairest of all! “

Donna Messer can look in your mirror and help you gain a new perspective. She is a speaker, author, coach and mentor. If you want your “one minute of fame – where you can be the fairest of them all” call Donna. Go to www.connectuscanada.com or call 905-337-9578.

Let me explain what I mean by messy. It’s when you’re trying to plan for what success looks like and exactly how you’re going to get there, every single excruciating step. It’s when you think it’s simple then you realize that’s why everyone else is stuck just like you, because you only take the time to think everything halfway through. It’s when you realize that your lack of clarity is holding you back. It’s when you understand that your lack of focus is slowing you down. It’s when you realize that nothing else matters more than getting more clarity and focus so your dreams are possible. It’s when you challenge your thinking like never before. It’s when you challenge yourself to take your business to new heights. When it hurts the most, when you’re really frustrated yet still incredibly motivated, that’s when you’re there, wonderfully messy.

You see, SuQu Mapping is not about filling in the answers to the questions a typical coach or consultant might ask you in completing your business plan.  It’s about coming up with real answers to only that which truly matters in the pursuit of your success. SuQu Mapping will cause you to dig deeper than you ever have in your business life. SuQu will help you filter the clutter in your mind so that you can focus on only that which directly delivers you to your one-and-only destination, your vision of success. Is there any other place worth going?

A SuQu Epiphany is that moment when you realize that the only way to achieve real success, the right way, means doing it the hard way, getting messy. And right after you are convinced that the hard way is the only way is when it really hits you; it doesn’t have to be that way. Now, I can do it the SuQu Way.

That, my friends, is a SuQu Epiphany.

Today I woke up...

Today I woke up and I was everything I wanted to be.

I forgave myself of everything that had ever made me feel ashamed.

I loved everyone everywhere… even those who hurt me.

I sent love to those who have lost their way.

I wasn’t afraid… of anything anymore.

I realized… I was endowed with all the power of the Universe, to think… to feel… and create, and to love all that I have created.

I reveled… in the realization that this… is the sum total of all I have intended for myself to date.

I realized… that right NOW is the only moment there ever really is, was, or will be.

I knew… that all my past, except what was good, was gone.

I made a pact with myself never to forget… to hold this feeling as if it were a little child… for indeed, it was.

~ Daniel Votino

I had the pleasure of rafting down the Ottawa River a few weeks ago.  It was an incredible day and as I was going through it, an amazing thing happened.  The tour company we went through led us through the experience with virtually the same process we use at SuccessQuest.  Some say that synchronicity is the arbitrary alignment of seemingly unrelated events.  Some say that if you look for it, you can find synchronicity in almost anything.  Either way – the parallel between a great white water rafting experience and building your business is uncanny.

Self Discovery:

The first thing they did was gather us all together to do two things. One, assess our experience level and two,  have us tell them what we wanted to get out of the day.  Did we want to go hard or easy? Did we want to hit the big waves or the small ones? Did we want to get a little wet, or a lot?  Were ready for a thrill ride?  Where were our team strengths and who wanted to just enjoy the ride?

On a Mission

Vision and Mission:

Next, they helped us build a mental image of what we would achieve based on our stated preferences.  They let us know that the water level and temperature were perfect for what we wanted to achieve. We were going to get really wet and, with a team effort, we were going to hit the big waves.  They gave us an overview of the day including the first leg, lunch, the second leg right up to our departure.  Before we even got on the boat, we had a clear picture of the entire day and why we were doing it.

Objectives:

Two major objectives were set and both needed to be achieved.  First:  have fun – this would be measured by the hooting and hollering.  Second:  be safe – zero injuries.  Clear instructions were given on how to achieve both.

Strategies:

They instructed us on the strategies we would be pursuing to achieve our goals:

Following our Strategies

• Follow the guide’s instructions.
• Put our muscle and risk seekers up front for power.
• Hit the waves hard.
• Paddle in unison for maximum maneuverability.
• Always wear safety equipment.
• Follow instructions if thrown from the raft.

Projects:

Each set of falls or rapids was taken on as a separate project.  Before the run we would discuss who needed to do what to achieve the impacts we were looking for.  Before we went down each run everyone knew their respective roles and the importance of that role to the team’s success.

We also did some cliff diving and body surfing.  Once again, there were clear instructions on how to perform the task for the maximum “thrill” and what to do if someone got into trouble.  Defined processes and accountabilities were part of every piece (project) of the day.

Measurement:

Achieving our Goals

Mission accomplished:

Imagine the difference between this excursion, complete with discovery, vision, objective setting, strategies, accountabilities and measurement, and the opposite extreme of just escorting us to our boats and starting to paddle and then just “going home” afterwards.

Would the possibility of having a great day still exist? Sure.  Would it be as probably? Definitely not.

The same is true with business.  It is possible to achieve success without first understanding your passions and then documenting a plan to achieve them.  It is however unlikely.

Coaching:

The Power of Coaching

In the business world your guide is your business coach.   The SuccessQuest process, resources and software was built by coaches for coaches to assist coaches in leading their clients to unthinkable success.

There you have it: synchronicity!