Previously, we identified five ways to fail – at anything. We looked at lack of desire, failing to take personal responsibility, not having a process for success, not being committed to a success process, and not having an accountability partner to help you stay on track.
In this post, we’ll look at the first of three principles for jump-starting your personal or professional program for improving performance and productivity.
Why principles?
Because, by definition, a principle is a basic truth or law. The principle of gravity, for example, says that, when dropped, an object will always go down, it will never go up. It doesn’t matter whether you personally agree with this principle of physics or not, if you step off a window ledge of second-story builing you’re going south.
Period.
Here are three principles you can use to keep your performance focused, on track and at a very high level. The principles are: develop perspective, define performance, and maintain alignment.
Develop Perspective
Perspective has to do with looking at something from a particular vantage point. I think you would agree that your view of things changes significantly as you broaden your perspective. The more you allow yourself to see, on any given issue, the greater your perspective. Performance improvement is no different. The clearer you can be about your purpose, your mission and your values, the greater the ability to ramp up your performance.
Clarify your purpose by writing a clear and specific vision statement. What specifically do you want to achieve and in what time frame? The key to performance improvement is clarity. Make sure your vision is clear and specific. Otherwise, it’s nothing but a wish and no one ever wished his or her way to success.
Mission describes the grand purpose for doing what you’re doing. Disney’s mission is “To Make People Happy” – not “Build Theme Parks.” Understand and articulate your reason for existence, then make sure it’s congruent with your vision.
Values make up the third piece of the puzzle when it comes to developing perspective. Values are meaningless, however, unless they describe specific behaviors. Integrity, for example, must be described in terms of behavior. What does integrity look like in terms of how you sell your product or services, how you service your clients, or how you manage your time?
Developing perspective is the first principle of performance improvement, because it’s the way we develop and clarify our internal belief system. Clarify your beliefs and you’ll go a long way in improving your performance.
Coming soon, we’ll link our beliefs with our behavior by defining performance.
