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5 Life Changing Books to Start Your Year Off Right

Jan 3, 2023 | Business Growth, Business Owners, Goal Setting, Leadership, Motivation, Productivity, Strategic Planning, Success, Uncategorized

5 Books to Launch Your Success This New Year

If you are like 38 percent of Americans, you set some goals this past weekend. Only 39 percent of those will make it through the first month. If you want to be in the winner’s circle next December, now is the time to lay the groundwork for success! Here are my top 5 books to get (and keep) you on track this year.

Mindset, Carol S. Dweck, PhD.

In this groundbreaking book, Stanford researcher Carol S. Dweck makes a case that all people fall into two categories- Fixed Mindset or Growth Mindset. People with a Fixed Mindset are limited by what they believe they have talent for while those with a Growth Mindset think about themselves as capable of change and growth. Important for individuals looking to break out of a rut and parents, educators, and business leaders. A must read for anyone looking to make changes in the new year.

Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, Marilee Adams

Written as an engaging fable, Marilee Adams shows how the questions you ask about your life and circumstances affect your outcomes and experiences. Rather than seeking to shift blame, she coaches us to ask the right questions leading to greater understanding of ourselves and others.

The Gap and The Gain: The high achievers guide to happiness, confidence, and success, Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

This book takes the wealth of information previously known only to the followers of Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coach clients regarding mindset and breaks it down for the rest of us. The premise of the work is that we can either compare ourselves to an ever-changing goal or to our former selves. Those who keep their sights set on an elusive goal will never be satisfied and often feel unhappy and ungrateful. Conversely, when people compare themselves to their former selves, they will see progress and experience happiness and gratitude. This is an important read as you embark on the journey of new year goals.

Triggers: Creating behavior that lasts and becoming the person you want to be, Marshall Goldsmith

This book explores the way decisions are made in the moment and how they are influenced by our past experiences and habits. By taking stock of what your triggers are and how they affect your reactions, you can choose to change, becoming the person that you really want to be. Useful for both business leaders and daily life.

Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankle

Having spent time in Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankle established the well-known thought school Logotherapy. In his groundbreaking book, Frankle explains that man’s main motivator is the search for meaning. When people lose sight of their purpose for living, they descend into hopelessness. He explains that there are two types of people, decent human beings, and indecent human beings. Regardless of your life circumstances, it is your daily choices which determine your mindset and character.

This year, you have the power and the tools to make real growth and change a reality.

Do You Have What It Takes To Achieve New Years Goals?

Jan 2, 2023 | Uncategorized

Do You Have What It Takes to Achieve New Year’s Goals?

Too often, business leaders go into a new year or season with ideas of what they think things ‘should’ look like. It is great to think of the potential, but they often lack what carries them to that new height. They have no plan or strategy, no foundation on which to stand.

The most important thing you can do for your business right now is to build or review a business plan. Who are you? Why are you in business? And what do you want to achieve in the long term? Your plan should include vision, core values, culture, and purpose.

Driven by the tyranny of the urgent, everyday operations, and countless interruptions, it sometimes feels impossible to get traction. To grow your business, you need to have a leadership team that can execute the plan. Effective leadership is the key component driving execution.

Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford Motor Company, said “Leadership is having a compelling vision, a comprehensive plan, relentless implementation, and talented people working together. Talented people are the critical success factor to implement the plan relentlessly.” Alan Mulally turned the company around by implementing one team, one plan, and one goal that was clear to everyone.

The long-term key to success is daily execution by a team of committed leaders. Success or failure is decided by leadership.

Your leaders have a dramatic impact on your company culture, employee engagement, and overall performance of their business. The leaders must be able to supply direction and focus on the major goals and strategy for the future. The principal role of the leader is to set the compass, as we said earlier – vision, core values and core purpose – and to chart the course.

When everyone in the company is following the same vision, values, and core purpose, it creates meaning and positive momentum. Instead of people feeling like they are on the fringe, they become active, engaged, and willing participants to help your business to thrive.

Developing leaders is what we do here at Achievement Unlimited, reach out to Michael@achievable.com to discuss how we can help your business develop or update your strategic plan for the new year.

3 Words to Start Your New Year Right

Dec 27, 2022 | Business Growth, Goal Setting, Leadership, Leadership Development, Motivation, Productivity, Strategic Planning, Success, Uncategorized

 

3 Words to Start Your New Year Right

Here in the hustle at the end of one year and the beginning of a new, it seems like everyone is talking about resolutions. The Oxford Dictionary defines resolution as “a firm decision to do or not to do something.” Success does depend on deciding to do a thing; but there is more to achievement than deciding and leaving the results to chance.

If you want to achieve remarkable things in 2023, take the next few days to get Clarity around what you want to do, clear the distractions to Focus, and strategize to get those Results.

Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation Institute, said “If you aren’t making the progress you would like to make and are capable of making, it is simply because your goals aren’t clearly defined.” Over the years this has proven so true in my life and the lives of my clients.

Clarity – Do you have extreme clarity on your goals for 2023? Far too many people have clarity around what they don’t want in business and in their personal life rather than what they really want their future to look like. What matters most in your life and business? Hazy goals produce hazy results. SMART goals produce tangible results – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.

Focus – Goals are meant to supply direction. This means you should have just a few significant goals. The more goals you have, the less focus is available. You will only achieve those goals to which you are fully committed.

Meyer also said, “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.” Everything in that statement will exponentially take your power to focus to a new level.

Results – Results are tied to your system. A goal is the end-result you want to achieve personally and professionally. To really achieve an important goal, it is critical to have a system- a strategy.

You can’t keep doing what you’ve always done and expect different results. John Dryden said, “We first make our habits and then our habits make us.”  Your daily routine and rituals, daily huddles with team members and focus on high payoff activities are the keystone of your personal and professional life. Putting these systems in place will earn you the desired results.

Now, find a little time over the next week to sit down with your notetaking app of choice and get some clarity, focus and results to guide you through 2023.

Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

Nov 30, 2022 | Uncategorized

Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

 

We are living in crazy busy times, in the fast lane with no slowdown in sight, so we better be focused on what is most significant and important in life. Pay attention to those things and say no to everything trying to derail us.  

 

We all have 168 hours per week to accomplish what we want to do. And everyone I talk to could use more like a 200-hour week. Every time I have a computer problem, the first question the tech guide asks is “Did you reboot the computer?” When the last time you stopped to reboot your life?

 

  1. S. Lewis said, “You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream.” As we look forward to the new year, let’s take time to review our goals program and create a blueprint for future success.

 

An honest evaluation of the past is the first step toward a vision for the future.  It is important to evaluate last year’s goals. By doing this we can see several things.  Did we achieved them? Did you shoot too high or too low? In what areas did we do well and why? Conversely, in what areas did we do poorly, and why? This will enable us to make better, more realistic, and achievable goals for the coming year. After reviewing the past year’s accomplishments and failures, we want to review our wheel of well-being to see if we are riding down the highway of life in alignment and balance.

 

Below are the six pillars of life that are important to your success:   

      Family and Home 

      Spiritual and Ethical 

      Physical and Health 

      Social and Cultural  

      Learning and Intellectual  

      Financial and Career 

 

In each of these areas, you want to develop a crystal-clear vision of where you are going.

 

Describe the life you’d really like to live.  What’s possible? What does it look like when you’re living up to your best expectations in each area? Describe what it looks like and what it feels like when you are happy with each. Write in the present tense, as if it is already in place. This represents a picture of your future as you prefer it to be. 

 

That clear vision allows you to set goals in the direction of your preferred future. That vision provides motivation, energy, purpose, and direction. It helps you to communicate your desires with the people around you. 

 

Many people continuously work on personal tasks that are leading nowhere. I believe Thoreau could have been referring to those people when he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. Many have made financial objectives their sole concern and paid a heavy price for their success – poor health, failed marriages, neglected friendships, no personal development in any area except business.

 

By developing and pursuing your own personal strategic plan, you will increase your energy, motivation, and your sense of satisfaction- your happiness. It’s your choice to make. So, as you turn the page of your calendar in a few weeks, be ready to make the rest of your life the best of your life.

Strategize Your Way into the New Year

Nov 26, 2022 | Uncategorized

Strategize Your Way into the New Year

In this “do more with less” age, everyone is under siege to improve performance at every level.  In the global marketplace, sustaining success is increasingly more difficult.  Are you prepared to cope with the changes in the economy, the impact of global competition, and supply chain disruptions?  Not to mention workforce shortages and Quiet Quitting?

This is the fundamental reason for developing a strategy.  

How can you develop a strategy for your company in a world where the only constant is change? Most people are wary of planning in the first place; preferring instead to keep doing the same old thing and getting the same result. (That of course is the definition of insanity!) The biggest fear is setting a rigid plan that will hinder their ability to pivot quickly.  Which is precisely why you need a proactive strategy.

Strategy is the process of planning and allocating your resources to optimize success.  Without a strategy, the only motivation is survival.  To do more with less, you need crystal clear vision, guiding principles, and unique value proposition.  Create a strategic plan to be a living document communicated throughout the organization for optimal success.  

With only a few weeks left until the new year, there is no better time to start strategizing for 2023! Block out some time to evaluate where you succeeded and where you fell short this year.  Note what you hope to improve and what you want to keep doing.  Use the following to inspire and inform your plan.

A good strategic plan: 

Crystallizes priorities 

Creates a sustainable value proposition,

Defines shared values and guiding principles  

Develops a system to inspire and motivate change  

Aligns employee and company intentions

Communicates strategy to stakeholders

Creates a plan of action

The strategic planning process is one of the most powerful tools you have in your arsenal to improve organizational focus and effectiveness.  Again no one can predict the future, but rather than sit back and wait, the effective executive plans and anticipates what lies ahead.   

We have many tools in our arsenal to help you and your team develop a strategic plan to lead your employees into the new year with focus. Are you ready for it?

 

Asking the Right Questions to Lead Your Team to Success

Nov 20, 2022 | Business Growth, Business Owners, Goal Setting, Leadership, Strategic Planning, Success, Uncategorized

Are you asking the right question to lead your team to success?

What Really Matters Most in life, leadership, and organizational development?

As we prepare to move into the coming year, let’s take a deep dive into this question. Essentially is it a question? Or is it a matter of focus? I believe it’s both.

In order to focus on your life, leadership, and organization, you must first address “What Really Matters Most?” as a question. To transform it from a question to a focus, you must assess where you are now compared with where you want to be.

Rather than reacting to past results and current circumstances, focus on “what really matters most” requires an awareness of and commitment to your vision and purpose. As the saying from Proverbs goes “without a vision, people perish.” There is no pragmatic way to determine how to spend our time, effort, energy and resources without answering this question.

Without focus, you become a victim of current achievements, constantly reworking to compensate for unintended outcomes. We must do some deep work to design our vision.

Today’s leaders face unprecedented positive and negative forces on organizational management. These forces of change present special challenges to leadership and to the workforce. To become a results-driven team, you need extreme clarity on your vision, purpose, and strategy communicated to all involved in supporting its execution. Organizational performance measurably improves as everyone develops an absolute focus on results. This companywide focus on ‘what really matters most’ allows all members to consistently create, develop, and track the results in tandem.

You also need to develop your leadership team, creating programs that give them tools to change their thinking and behavior to achieve sustainable results, growth, and profitability. By developing your people into self-leaders, they will grow and move forward to answer “What Really Matters Most” for your business.

Future looking leaders will use the competitive edge found in developing self-leadership in employees at all levels of the company. Your people are the ones to make it happen. Hence the need for clarity, focus, and a real understanding of “What Really Matters Most” at all levels. Do you have a winning strategy to get you to What Really Matters Most?