Tag Archives: action

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5 Remarkable Principles That Will Guarantee Business Breakthrough

What I Learned in 2016

What important principles have you discovered this past year that can make a dramatic impact on your life and business in the future?

I know it can seem cliché at the end of the year to reflect on the past year and set goals for the next year. However, it is critical to our businesses and to each of us individually to stop, take a moment and reflect on the year that has just past and determine the things that have made the biggest impact on us, our business and our family.

  • What are those things?
  • Have you learned from them?
  • Are you making changes in your life or business to leverage these important things?
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14 Easy Ways to Move Out of Your Comfort Zone and Improve Your Business

It is natural for us to always look for the easiest path through life. It seems so much more pleasant in the short run if we can avoid struggles and conflict. However, hardship and struggle are key ingredients for personal growth. Without these ingredients, it is hard to see any substantial personal or business growth.

As Gary Keesee says, “If you are not doing the hardest thing you have ever done, then you are not growing.”

Looking at all of the amazing, humanity-altering discoveries and inventions made over the last century, I am not aware of even one that was made by a person who sat around all day shooting the breeze, drinking coffee or playing video games.

However, I can give many examples of people who embraced challenges, hardships and struggles and created world changing technologies, products and businesses like; antibiotics, vaccinations, microchips, X-rays, MRIs, SpaceX rockets, personal computers, the Internet, iPhones, Google, Amazon, and the list goes on.

These things have all impacted the world we live in but they were not created without extreme struggle and hardship.

Challenging Yourself Has Many Advantages

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How to Know When It’s Your Turn To Step Up And Make A Difference

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Seth Godin’s customer service entitled How to Wow Your Customers and Increase Your Sales. The book that Godin was shipping me was his latest project entitled “What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn). It is written in the typical Godin style; thought provoking, short, insightful and witty.

The basic premise of the book is that each of us needs to step up, take action and make a difference. We should not be worried about failure or what others think. We should concentrate on what we do best, our areas of strength, and put these strengths to work.

I found the book challenged me as I am often guilty of procrastinating and not stepping up to do something that I know I can do well. Because of this challenge, last week I posted How To Get Unstuck and Start Moving Towards Success. This post was more personal and how on a personal level we need to step out and start moving to get unstuck.

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How Do Leaders Get Their Organizations From Vision to Action?

“Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, Encourage the Heart”  Kouzes and Posner

 

I attended the annual CII conference in July this year and was really impressed with the quality of the presentations and tools that were offered. Construction Industry Institute, CII, was initiated by the University of Texas and is a collaboration between academia and industry to research some of the tough issues that industry faces and to come up with practical approaches and tools to deal with these problems.

Every year, CII selects a number of these tough problems and creates research teams comprised of academia (professors and grad students), representatives from owners, construction companies, engineering firms and suppliers to research these problems and come up with potential solutions. Each team has 2 years to do its research and to compile the results along with tools or guidelines to help address the problem identified.

Every year, CII holds its annual conference and the research teams report out their findings to the conference attendees. I would highly recommend membership in CII to anyone that is involved in engineering or construction.

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Code of Ethics

I recently read “Die Empty” by Todd Henry. This is an amazing book that challenges the reader to understand their purpose and to live out their life fully so that they will not have any “unwritten novels, never launched businesses, unreconciled relationships and all the other things that people thought ‘I’ll get around to that tomorrow'” left in them when they die. One of the better concepts that I pulled out of the book is something Henry calls a “Code of Ethics.” This is not a list of rules like the 10 commandments that everyone absolutely needs to follow everyday. A Code of Ethics is a set of principles that apply to you personally and define how you approach everything in life. This code will be different for everyone as we are all unique individuals with unique gifts, talents and interests. Although I had thought about this some in the past, this book motivated me to write out my Code of Ethics. They are;