Five Reasons to Set Impossible Goals: Don’t Be Afraid to Push Yourself Too Hard

Five Reasons to Set Impossible Goals by Laura Stack #productivity

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."— Sir Arthur C. Clarke, British science and science fiction writer. If you never dare to dream the impossible dream, you'll never know how much you can achieve. We all know this in our hearts, but many of us never apply it to our work lives. There's a saying that goals are just dreams with deadlines; so why should you ever hesitate to set impossible goals?  (<-- Click to Tweet.) No matter how impossible they may seem, goals offer solid targets for you to shoot at. They also stitch together intention, planning, ability, talent, execution, process, teamwork and more into a fabric of productivity you can constantly and consistently tweak higher, through the application of more and newer … [Read more...]

Balancing Short-Term Tactics and Long-Term Strategy

How do you make sure today's actions are supporting the long-term goals? … [Read more...]

The Perfect World: Helping Your Team Understand and Commit to Team Goals

The Perfect World: Helping Your Team Understand and Commit to Team Goals by Laura Stackn #productivity

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment." ― Jim Rohn, American business and motivational speaker. In a near-perfect world—the type most people would love when they join a new company—a department, division, or team's leader would act purely as a facilitator, establishing the group's goals, communicating them plainly to everyone on the team, and clearing the way from the team's current location to their future destination. He or she would promote the team goals in a way that made it clear what each team member should expect, precisely what they needed to do, and how the tasks the team member accomplished moved the entire organization toward its ultimate goals. These near-perfect conditions do exist in some organizations I’ve worked. They aren't common, and they don't … [Read more...]

Shaping Your Destiny: Aligning Your Mission With Your Organization’s

Shaping Your Destiny: Aligning Your Mission With Your Organization's

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and Philosopher. Independence has always been a part of the American character, from frontiersmen hacking farms out of the wilderness to modern-day entrepreneurs hacking niches out of the marketplace. As a nation, we're well aware of this; after all, this is the Land of Opportunity, where rags-to-riches stories are a dime a dozen. As the statesman William Jennings Bryan once pointed out, "Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved." Bryan is a case in point, a man born to relatively modest means who graduated as valedictorian of his college in 1881, then went on to serve as Secretary of … [Read more...]

Plan for Goal Achievement

Plan for Goal Achievement by Laura Stack #productivity #strategy #execution

Good strategic alignment consists of practices that connect organizational strategy with employee performance as fully and directly as possible. When you properly align your organizational structure, your employees act as strategic enablers of company policy, mission, and vision—all working from the same standards toward the same ends. This chapter looks at useful strategies for getting your team into alignment and keeping it there. 1. Share your goals. Only when you willingly share your goals with everyone and set up procedures to make sure people stay on track can true alignment occur. Goal-setting is no longer be limited to the C-suite. When your strategic priorities trickle down, work with your team to determine how best to get there. 2. Clear the air. People mistrust or distrust … [Read more...]

How to Escape a Workplace Productivity Rut

How to Escape a Workplace Productivity Rut by Laura Stack #productivity

By now, you've internalized the basics of time management in an effort to maximize your productivity. You know you must be self-disciplined, shut down distractions, eliminate time-wasters, improve information handling, and make every effort to smooth out your workflow. The problem is, you can do everything right and still end up with poor results if you're not careful. After following the straight and narrow path for a while, you may discover that you've worn yourself into a constrictive rut, where speedy reaction to the evolving business environment becomes difficult. In the end, your efforts to save time might result in a willingness to do no more than necessary to meet minimal standards. It's happened to us all at one time or another, sneaking up on us due to lack of time, poor … [Read more...]

Using Scoreboarding to Measure and Advance Your Goals

"Money is a scoreboard where you can rank how you're doing against other people." -- Mark Cuban, American businessman and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. "It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality." -- Harold S. Geenan, American businessman and former CEO of ITT. It's harder to fix what you can't measure, because it’s harder to know if you’re improving. All business leaders require a decent understanding and consistent knowledge of basic performance metrics, like last quarter's sales figures or the week's labor percentage. But how often do all team members see figures telling them how they're doing or how their work contributes to the bottom line? Very rarely—except when … [Read more...]

Super Bowl Time Management Tips

There’s a Lot to Learn About Personal Goal Setting From Football It’s that time of year again! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – The Superbowl offers a great acrostic game opportunity for learning productivity techniques. What does time management have to do with Super Bowl football? Everything! Football pros competing in the Super Bowl use great goal-setting techniques. By studying the game, you too can learn a lot about how to set objectives. Successful football teams devote a great deal of thought and time to planning how to move the ball down the field. And successful people devote time to planning what they’ll accomplish in business and in life. Ask the coaches who’ve led teams to the Super Bowl. They know you can’t win without a good game plan. The term “SUPER BOWL” … [Read more...]

Prioritization: Reordering Your World

Prioritization sits near the top of any list of successful leadership skills. This holds true whether the leader involved runs an army or the night crew at the local donut shop. It holds true everywhere on Earth and has for all of human history. In general, prioritization represents the order in which you organize and ultimately accomplish the goals most important to you: your faith, your family, your friends, your career, your self-care, and your daily work. You have to look closely at each and decide which items should come first and how everything else should follow. While all these categories are important, they aren't equally important at all times. As we limit this discussion to the work arena, prioritization may involve several levels of responsibility, starting with the personal … [Read more...]

Do You Have Written Goals?

Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro(R), discusses the importance of having written goals. (C) 2011 Laura Stack. All Rights Reserved. https://theproductivitypro.com … [Read more...]