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Traditional goal setting focuses on the beginning and the end—start strong and keep your eye on the prize. Unfortunately, that process doesn’t work for every kind of goal, says Scott Young, author of How to Change a Habit. “A lot has been taught around the classic self-help style of Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins where you have a clear goal, you visualize it, write it down, and focus on the starting point,” says Young, cofounder of the career development course Top Performer. “Some goals, though, aren’t clearly sequential.” The middle can and should be your starting point when you’re setting a goal where you’re unclear of the level you can achieve within a particular timeframe. This is especially the case with daunting, unfamiliar goals where you don’t yet have a strong sense of the big picture.
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Many strategy execution processes fail because the firm does not have something worth executing. The strategy consultants come in, do their work, and document the new strategy in a PowerPoint presentation and a weighty report. Town hall meetings are organized, employees are told to change their behavior, balanced scorecards are reformulated, and budgets are set aside to support initiatives that fit the new strategy. And then nothing happens. One major reason for the lack of action is that “new strategies” are often not strategies at all. A real strategy involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do. Many strategies fail to get implemented, despite the ample efforts of hard-working people, because they do not represent a set of clear choices. Many so-called strategies are in fact goals. “We want to be the number one or number two in all the markets in which we operate” is one of those. It does not tell you what you are going to do; all it does is tell you what you hope the outcome will be. But you’ll still need a strategy to achieve it.
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How should teams of experts working on knowledge-intensive projects be structured? Should they be hierarchical? Or will flexible, self-organized groups perform better? Teams often struggle with how to get the most value from the members’ expertise, to minimize conflict, to integrate their diverse expertise, and to leverage it during all phases of a project. The traditional approach is to put the person with the most experience and expertise in charge — for example, a head coach or a chief programmer. The assumption is that this person has the expertise to make the best decisions about how to allocate tasks and responsibilities. Teams that adopt this model feature a rigid hierarchy, whereby final decisions are centralized through this single, formally designated individual.
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Who isn't tired of obsessing over their body and their food? The struggle to break free from yo-yo dieting and self-sabotage is real, and yes I know it sounds a little like an infomercial, but it's actually Sheila Vier's ethos. After successfully exiting her first company in 2015, she decided it was time to develop a company - SheilaViers.com - to help people recognize that entrepreneurs are still human and that they have all the same issues and insecurities that are human nature. But part of being the best CEO you can be is feeling powerful in your own skin. That's what Sheila Viers helps her clients capture. I have always tried to empower women through my agency's work, and to do that you have to address issues of health, wealth, relationships with ourselves and others, and even spirituality. It has to be a well-rounded approach to achieve stasis. Here are Sheila's best practices to manage the tightrope walk of life as an entrepreneur.
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You see people succeed all around you and it seems effortless for them. You feel you've stalled, or worse -- you feel like you've wasted your time doing what you're doing, and time is running out. I get it. I've been there, and I can help. So now what? Now it's time to unleash positive change in your life once and for all. Start with a question: What do you love to do? For those of you who struggled with the answer. I'm going to help you get there. Here are four steps to unleash positive change in your life immediately.
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For many of us, 2016 began with a promise—a promise that this year we will accomplish that which has eluded us. Often it’s the everyday things that prove most difficult—managing your schedule, treating people the way you ought to, and keeping things in perspective when chaos is at hand. There are two reasons why we’re so bad at reaching our goals: The first is that we bite off more than we can chew. It may seem reasonable to pick up three or four new skills to add to your repertoire, but that’s an expectation the mind can’t execute. When we try to develop too many new skills at once, they become competing priorities that leave us distracted, discouraged and overwhelmed. The second reason most self-improvement efforts are doomed to fail is that our emotions have a nasty habit of hijacking our behavior. Without a strong ability to recognize and manage our emotions as they occur, old habits are sure to die hard
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Are you a successful leader? This is a difficult question to answer: No matter how good you think you are, the only evidence of leadership is whether people follow you. Self-serving bias distorts your perception of your own successes and failures. Even if you’re incredibly self-aware, you may have trouble with an objective assessment because your direct reports may only appear to be following — they don’t get an option to be physically present — and not every company conducts rigorous engagement surveys or 360-degree reviews. So how can you gain a reasonably accurate understanding of your success as a leader? Try integrating three distinctive views.
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Do you care about your job? No, you know, really care. Do you care so much that you will defend your company's product at dinner parties when someone mentions that it snapped in two on first use? Or do you mumble: "Yeah, we cut back on manufacturing costs for a little more profit. You can't blame us, can you?"? I muse on this because there's a certain trend for companies to take themselves a little more seriously. By "more seriously" I mean focusing on something other than pristine clean lucre and the CEO's large cut of it. Something akin to a larger purpose, for example. This means that in hiring staff, they're increasingly looking for people who are able to have -- or even have naturally -- higher goals than mere money-making.
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Many business leaders subscribe to the classic definition of strategy as a set of actions designed to achieve an overall aim. In other words, they believe strategy starts with a goal. But for companies that have implemented winning strategies, that’s not how it typically happens.
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When making a decision, does happiness win out over all? It’s important —even for decisions with implications that go far beyond simply achieving contentment, says Wharton operations and information management professor Alex Rees-Jones. But, as the saying goes, happiness isn’t everything. Often people knowingly forego the choice that will give them the most pleasure for one that satisfies other ideals or factors that are important to them.
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It's that time of year--leaders everywhere are charging employees with the task of establishing goals for 2018. If you've never been through a structured process, this exercise can be daunting, and frankly, feel like a big waste of time. I can assure you, it's not. Setting goals is critical. Goals provide direction, help you focus, prioritize your time and energy, and ensure that you can objectively prove you've advanced the company's agenda. But just any goal won't do. Research shows that goals are not only important but also that the level of specificity and difficulty matters. Goals that are both clear and challenging drive higher levels of performance. To set their teams up for success, many organizations use SMART goals. Google leaders use something a little different--"Objectives and Key Results" (OKRs). On Google's re:Work site, a resource that shares the company's perspective on people operations, Google explains the concept.
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Many of the most successful people had to fight tooth and nail for opportunities to learn new skills and advance up the corporate ladder. That’s often because what they wanted to learn and achieve wasn’t in sync with what their bosses wanted for them. You’re not a data scientist. You’re not cut out for engineering. Sales isn’t what you do. Lines like this are still used all too frequently when employees tell their managers that they want to move in a new direction. But this is only half the story. Managers are under tremendous pressure to generate results. You have annual quotas, quarterly goals, and increasing competition. Who has time to let employees go learn skills that may not be relevant for years, or may not serve your unit at all? I hear these challenges all the time as I work with managers at all levels, particularly in large corporations. I’ve also faced them myself with the companies I founded and scaled. It’s a tough balancing act. But I’ve learned key lessons to help managers turn lofty goals — such as making learning and development a central pillar of the workday — into real actions that mitigate damage to, and even help strengthen, the bottom line. Here’s how.
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Ever wondered what the best bosses whisper to their employees to get them motivated and glad to be working every single day? Here's your chance to find out.
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You're pouring all your energy into a goal expecting an outcome worthy of the effort you're putting in. Yet, months have come and gone and you're not where you want to be. Maybe your business isn't growing as much as you anticipated. Maybe your weight isn't sliding off as easy as you expected. Your level of motivation is like a boxer who's on the ropes and is close to being TKO'ed. It's in these very moments where it's tempting to wave the white flag, especially with self-doubt and negative chatter whispering in your ear. You'll have moments where your hard work seems to be for nothing. Results seem like a distant fantasy. But, this is part of the journey of growing as an individual. It's during these times when your perspective is of the utmost importance. Here are five effective ways to stay motivated about your goals, even when you feel like giving up.
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Some days you work at your best, other days you just don’t. Your good days probably outnumber your bad, but chances are you know how it feels to really slog through work inefficiently. That’s why lots of us try productivity hacks and strategies in the first place. And a lot of the time, they work—at least for a little while. But they tend to wear off. The most truly productive people manage to make progress on their most important goals consistently. And while there are multiple reasons why, psychological research on motivation suggests a few steps you might be able to take to not just boost your productivity but hang onto it—depending on the way you already view your work.
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One of the biggest roadblocks to success is the fear of failure. Fear of failure is worse than failure itself because it condemns you to a life of unrealized potential. A successful response to failure is all in your approach. In a study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers found that success in the face of failure comes from focusing on results (what you hope to achieve), rather than trying not to fail. While it’s tempting to try and avoid failure, people who do this fail far more often than those who optimistically focus on their goals. This sounds rather easy and intuitive, but it’s very hard to do when the consequences of failure are severe. The researchers also found that positive feedback increased people’s chances of success because it fueled the same optimism you experience when focusing solely on your goals.
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It's finally December, and you've worked hard all year long. You wrote enough emails to fill a novel. You spent an average of seven hours a day on your computer. And, if you were working full-time, you probably spent 42 hours of your life battling traffic during your daily commute. Whoa. If anyone deserves a chance to kick back and relax, it's you! But as tempting as it may be to spend the rest of December curled up with a big mug of cocoa, a snuggly blanket, and a never-ending Netflix queue, you probably want to avoid hibernating all month long. Regardless of whether your job status is employed or unemployed, you shouldn't underestimate the importance of getting a jump-start on your career in the year ahead in the final days of the month. Use the next few weeks wisely so that you can finish 2015 feeling clear, focused, and organized when the year comes to an inevitable close. (If you're job hunting, this is an especially good time to get your ducks in a row because January is one of the best times to apply for a new job.) Here are 20 career-boosting action steps to complete before the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve.
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As hard as we might try to accomplish everything we've set our minds to do, obstacles and roadblocks can stand in the way of our success. While we may normally take these obstacles and roadblocks in stride, some days it seems like nothing goes right for us. The result? We feel down and wonder what it's going to take to get ourselves back on track. This is when it's time to take a step back from whatever it is we're doing, recharge our batteries, and inspire ourselves to try again and again--until we achieve our goal. Here are 17 super positive quotes that will inspire you to be exceptional--and to reach for the stars (and catch them!).
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How many goals have you set in your life? A hundred? Ten thousand? Even more? How many of these goals have you actually achieved? If you're like most people, this second number is going to be a fraction of the first. A big reason is that as soon as you set a goal, three things emerge to stop you. But most of us don't even realize what they are, and as a result, we are just left with our unaccomplished goal and an unshakable feeling of failure. What if you could not only identify these obstacles but also learn to welcome them? Well, the good new is that you can....
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It always seems the job you would love never comes with the pay you want. Money is unfortunately a necessity that we all need in order to survive, and its significance causes us to make decisions and create goals that are derived from the idea of attaining wealth. It is often our primary motivator in life. However, if we look back at the most successful people in the world, their motivation and drive had less to do with money than one may think. And this surprisingly enough is often what enabled them to succeed.
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Some goals aren’t clearly sequential. Here’s the case for rethinking your approach.