March 15, 2003

A free Ezine sent to you twice a month by Glen Rediehs, Ph.D.: Personal Coach, Corporate Coach, Organization Development Consultant

Web site: www.SolutionLeader.com

E-mail: Glen@SolutionLeader.com

Solution Leader Ezine will give you solutions for your personal life and the people side of your business. Every issue is filled with practical strategies plus a little humor.

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In This Issue:

Celebrate Life and Your Accomplishments (Part Six of a Six-Part Series)

A Little Humor

Thought for the Day

To Change or Not to Change – What’s Best For Your Organization?

In the Next Issue

Celebrate Life and Your Accomplishments

(Part Six of a Six-Part Series)

Part One of this series challenged you to scale your level of satisfaction with different areas of your life and begin developing some goals.

Part Two showed you how to set goals that will actually work.

Part Three helped you produce an action plan that will get you what you really want.

Part Four told you how to put power behind your action plan – make it really work!

Part Five gave you the secrets of overcoming barriers to achieving your goals.

To see Parts One to Five, go to www.SolutionLeader.com/archives.html.

You did it! You have made something even better in your life! Celebrate!

If you were following the last five issues and working on your goals, you deserve a chance to recognize what you’ve accomplished and how you have improved your life in the last three months.

If you weren’t with us during the series, celebrate anyway! Notice whom you have grown to be. Notice your successes over the years.

It’s hard for some people to congratulate themselves and celebrate. Maybe you are one of them. How in the world could this be?

Sometimes we let the critical voice in our head take over and cheat us out of the well-deserved opportunity to celebrate what we’ve done, the difficult changes we’ve made, all the ways we have improved our life.

For example, Fred’s boss comes over to Jake, a valued employee. “Great job, Jake,” the boss says. I wish we had more people who could innovate as well as you.” Jake’s reply? “Well, thanks. But, I don’t really deserve it. I could have done a lot better. If I had just …”

The critical voice in Jake’s head turns up the volume and shouts down the compliment. “You didn’t do as good a job as you could have done.” “You’ve always come up a little short and here it happened again.” “When are you ever going to learn?”

Other times, achievement motivation steals away the chance to revel in our successes before we move on. We’re already focused on the next step on the ladder and don’t even notice how far we’ve climbed already. We drive ourselves from one level to another and lose sight of the meaning of the climb. We miss the joy that comes from viewing our progress and celebrating.

Your life satisfaction will grow when you take time to re-energize yourself by celebrating your successes and accomplishments – all the ways you have made life better for yourself and others.

So, celebrate!!

Most of us keep a “To Do” list. Why not make a “Done” list and post it on the refrigerator right next to the “To Do” list? Read through your done list. Congratulate yourself. Toast to it. Shout back at your inner critic. Send your achievement motivation on vacation for just a little while. Think about what your accomplishments and successes tell you about yourself and what you are making of your life.

WANT A LITTLE HELP?

Need a little help achieving the future you want for yourself?

It’s been my life’s work and my passion to help individuals and organizations create their own best futures. Let’s work on your future together. You can make it happen!

PLEASE CALL ME at 704-788-9184 or Email me at Glen@SolutionLeader.com.

A Little Humor

The Magician and the Parrot

A magician was working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. The audience would be different each week, so the magician allowed himself to do the same tricks over and over again.

There was only one problem: The captain's parrot saw the shows every week and began to understand what the magician did in every trick. Once he understood that, he started shouting in the middle of the show. "Look, it's not the same hat!" "Look, he's hiding the flowers under the table!" "Hey, why are all the cards the Ace of Spades?" The magician was furious but couldn't do anything. It was, after all, the captain's parrot.

One day the ship had an accident and sank. The magician found himself on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean. The parrot was by his side. They stared at each other with hate, but did not utter a word. This went on for several days. After a week the parrot finally said, "Okay, I give up. What'd you do with the boat?"

The Doorbell

A priest is walking down the street one day when he notices a very small boy trying to press a doorbell on a house across the street. However, the boy is very small and the doorbell is too high for him to reach.

After watching the boy's efforts for some time, the priest steps smartly across the street, walks up behind the little fellow and, placing his hand kindly on the child's shoulder leans over and gives the doorbell a sold ring.

Crouching down to the child's level, the priest smiles benevolently and asks, "And now what, my little man?" To which the boy replies, "Now we run!

Thought for the Day

Steps to Happiness

Everybody Knows:

You can't be all things to all people.

You can't do all things at once.

You can't do all things equally well.

You can't do all things better than everyone else.

Your humanity is showing just like everyone else's.

So:

You have to find out who you are, and be that.

You have to decide what comes first, and do that.

You have to discover your strengths, and use them.

You have to learn not to compete with others,

Because no one else is in the contest of being you.

Then:

You will have learned to accept your own uniqueness.

You will have learned to set priorities and make decisions.

You will have learned to live with your limitations.

You will have learned to give yourself the respect that is due.

And you'll be a most vital mortal.

Dare To Believe:

That you are a wonderful, unique person.

That you are a once-in-all-history event.

That it's more than a right, it's your duty, to be who you are.

That life is not a problem to solve, but a gift to cherish.

And you'll be able to stay one up on what used to get you down.

-- Unknown

To Change or Not to Change

The forces of change and innovation are all around us. Stubbornly doing the “same old, same old” can kill a business. But, changing things every time you get a bright idea or go to an inspiring seminar can do your company in, too. The winners will be those who know what to change and what to keep the same.

What Needs to Change?

In 24/7 Innovation, Stephen Shapiro says, “One of the few certainties of today’s business environment is that it never stands still. Only one approach to this unsteady state of affairs makes sense: perpetual innovation – the constant shifting of strategies and tactics to reshape the business and take competitors by surprise.”

Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan increase the drumbeat for change in Creative Destruction. They claim that markets now change so quickly that companies should embrace discontinuity, constructively destroying and re-creating themselves as needed.

Every organization has the capacity for useful innovation. Writing for the Peter F. Drucker Foundation, Gary Hamel makes these practical suggestions to foster innovation in your business:

• Start new conversations. Bring together executives with employees of all ranks

to question corporate orthodoxies and search for new ways to do business.

• Seek new perspectives. Discover a new vision. Try a new vantage point.

• Spark new passions. Innovation comes from the heart as well as the head.

• Institutionalize innovation by building a safe place for people to think new

thoughts.

What Needs to Stay the Same?

In the midst of the pressures for change, it’s important to ask, “What needs to stay the same?” Jim Collins offers an answer in Good to Great. Collins and his team researched 28 companies who rose from merely “good” to truly “great.” All achieved outstanding, sustained growth for more than fifteen years.

The secret to success was not grand programs launched with great fanfare, killer innovations, magic mergers, flamboyant new CEOs, or any other miracle events that allowed these businesses to jump to the top.

What the “good to great” companies did was reach an understanding of where three issues intersected in their businesses:

• What can your organization be the best in the world at?

• What drives your company’s economic engine?

• What are you deeply passionate about?

Collins calls this the “Hedgehog Concept,” after Isaiah Berlin’s parable, “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” Berlin divides people into foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and never integrate their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything.

In the style of the hedgehog, leaders in “good to great” companies pursued a single organizing idea: What could their business be the best in the world at -- that would simultaneously drive the company’s economic engine and embrace their passion. Then, they kept that focus – no matter what – for years. It became the frame of reference for all decisions. Change and innovation were useful only when it served their Hedgehog Concept. Collins attributes the success of Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo and other companies to following this approach.

So, how do you know what to change and what to keep the same? Try this:

• Pursue an understanding of your company’s Hedgehog Concept – the single

organizing idea that will drive the success of your business.

• Embrace change and innovation only when it serves that focus.

Want to know more? Read Good to Great by Jim Collins.

How do the owners and managers you know go about deciding what to change and what to keep the same? What strategy brought their organizations success? Send your stories, quotes, thoughts. As space permits, I will try to publish them. Send them to Glen@SolutionLeader.com.

WANT A LITTLE HELP?

It’s been my life’s work and my passion to help individuals and organizations create their own best futures. Let’s work on it. You can do it!

PLEASE CALL ME at 704-788-9184 or Email me at Glen@SolutionLeader.com.

In the Next Issue:

Adversity is Inevitable, Misery is Optional

A Little Humor

Thought for the Day

How Good a Coach Are You?

In the Next Issue

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