Tag Archives: goals

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Why Are You So Focused On Your Competition?

“The competitor to be feared is the one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.” Henry Ford

I find it very interesting that about 100 years ago Henry Ford, the inventor of the mass production factory, understood that focusing on your competition added no value to your business. In fact, he knew that focusing on your competition takes your focus off your own business. Focusing on the competition causes you to chase others rather than leading your organization towards achieving your goals, mission and vision.

So if Mr. Ford identified the secret about what to focus on as a business leader 100 years ago, why are so many business leaders today so concerned about what their competition is doing?

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What Are Your Strategic and Operational Priorities?

A few weeks ago I introduced a tool called the Business Compass. This tool provides the means of visually communicating your organization’s vision, mission, values, brand promise, leadership behaviors and strategic and operational priorities. I have previously written about vision, mission and values but what are “strategic and operational priorities”?

Strategic and operational priorities are the most important things your organization needs to achieve over the year. It is best to keep this list to five things or less so that they are achievable and so that you do not overwhelm the organization (I have seen some organizations with over 30 priorities . . . the staff were totally overwhelmed by this and never made any progress on any of the priorities). Note that these priorities are not detailed goals but high level objectives that you have determined to be strategically and operationally critical to your success as you strive to achieve your mission.

Each one of these objectives will have a set of detailed goals associated with it. The goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time specific (SMART goals). However, this level of detail should not show up in the Business Compass. The Business Compass should show the high level summary of the objective and from this you will be able to understand how the objective ties into your vision, mission and values.

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Are You Strategic Or Mindlessly Moving Piles of Dirt?

A few months ago a friend and I were discussing a new leadership role that he recently stepped into. Although he is really successful and likes his new role, he told me that the thing he misses most about his old role was that he isn’t moving piles of dirt anymore. When I asked him what he meant, he said that his old role was much more tactical and at the end of the day he could clearly see what he had accomplished. It was like moving piles of dirt. There was an instant acknowledgement that he was making or had made some progress and achieved something. In his new role as a leader, he is much more strategic and much less tactical. It can be weeks, months or years before the true value of a strategy pays off and he sees results and “the pile of dirt” has moved!

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How to Get The Pulse of Your Organization

In several past posts, Do You Suffer From Continuous Partial Attention Syndrome? and Focused and Clear Communications, I wrote about the speed of communications and how complicated everything can be in today’s “over-connected’ world. As a business leader, there are a number of techniques that can be used to cut through the noise and effectively communicate and lead your organization. I am only going to talk about two techniques here in this post but I will add others in the future.

The first tool that I have found to be very effective is something called “Did you know . . . “ emails.