You and I live in the Information Age.  There’s more information around today than there has ever been on any topic you can imagine.  Not only is information available, it’s at our fingertips via the internet.  The Web contains information you can use for improving every aspect of your life.  I don’t know about you, but I have yet to stump Google or Yahoo.

With all this information available to us, you’d think we’d have life figured out by now.  Ah, but such is not the case.  Why?  Because we’ve come to believe that learning and collecting information are one and the same.  The reality, however, is that we must take what we’ve learned and translate it into meaningful actions.  As I’ve said, it’s not what you know, it’s what you DO with what you know that really matters.

Doris Lessing, a novelist and playwright of the last century, once said, “What matters most is what we learn from living.”  Life is a great teacher, if we do something with what we learn.

If you’re familiar with my six-step process for improving performance and productivity, you know that the last of the six steps is ACTION, or what I refer to as STRATEGIC DECISIONS.

While taking action is critical to being a person of success and achievement, I’m not talking about just doing something for the sake of doing it.  I’m talking about doing those things that matter most – and doing them first!  Here are some thoughts on taking action you might find helpful:

1. Develop the habit of being action oriented.  Don’t think about finishing the project or getting the degree, finish the project and get the degree.

2. Get creative in figuring out fun or interesting ways to take on an important project.  Make a game out of it or offer yourself a nice reward when the project’s finished.

3. Make a habit of breaking down projects into tasks that can be completed in a relatively short period of time.  Our attention spans aren’t very long – sad but true, so deal with it and break the task down into doable 15-20 minute segments.

4. Use worst case scenario thinking to stimulate action.  You’ll end up there anyway if you don’t get the project finished or earn the degree.

5. Do the hard stuff first.  Once you get that out of the sway, you’re on the downhill slide.

6. Use momentum to your advantage.  Once you get going on a task, stick with it until it’s finished.

Remember, it’s not what you know that matters, it’s what you DO with what you know that really counts.  Success and achievement are about DOING, not DREAMING.

When we define our performance, we again state clearly our plan for bringing our vision to reality. We set measurable goals and we take specific actions within a narrow time frame. In other words, we link our belief with our behavior.

The third and last step in planting seeds for success is to make sure our beliefs and our behavior are in sync. I call this “maintaining alignment.” This third step is no less important than the first two. In fact, I could argue it may be the most critical step of all.

Maintaining alignment is about reacting to change and making necessary course adjustments as we take those critical steps from where we are now to where we want to be.

Here’s an example from NASA of just how important course adjustments are: The surface of the moon is 240,000 miles from the earth. Mission Control can land a lunar vehicle on the moon’s surface with incredible accuracy. But here’s the amazing reality: from the time a space vehicle is launched until it lands on the moon’s surface, NASA engineers spend 99 percent of their time making course adjustments.

After years of planning a moon landing and paying incredible attention to detail, Mission Control still needs to start making course adjustments, immediately after launch of the rocket.

Take heed, my friend. Having a performance plan is incredibly important but things change, and in our world, things change pretty rapidly. We commit to the process of linking belief and behavior but we cannot afford to be unbending in the execution of the plan. Remember, we’re more interested in results than creating a perfect plan.

So, how do we maintain alignment? We begin with our perspective. Is there alignment between our vision, mission and values? Is there congruency between what we want to accomplish, why and what our behavior will look like in the process?

We maintain alignment by ensuring our performance is congruent with our perspective. We must also make sure there’s alignment between our strategy, goals and actions. Remember, the only measure of what you believe is seen in what you do. Our strategic initiatives must be in sync with the goals we set and the (daily) actions we take.

You’ll be able to measure alignment in the results you achieve. Poor results come from lack of planning and lack of alignment. Alignment turns intentions into actions. Alignment creates the linkage between the ideal and reality. Alignment creates a culture of success and achievement.

There you have it. Three seeds for success and achievement. Develop perspective, define performance and maintain alignment. Start planting! And start today!

Remember, we use principles because they represent basic, fundamental truth. When fads, trends and techniques fail, principles remain. In this case, the principle we’re relying on is: “Belief manifests itself in behavior.” What we say we believe should be seen in what we actually do.

If developing perspective is all about clarifying our belief system, then defining performance is about linking our behavior with our beliefs. It’s about taking three simple – not necessarily easy – steps to put skin on the skeleton of our vision, mission and values.

 Defining Performance – Starts with Strategy

We define our performance by developing strategies. The difference between vision and strategy is best described in the three-letter word “how?” Vision describes what we intend to accomplish, strategies describe how we’ll bring our vision to fruition. Developing strategies requires outcome thinking. As Stephen Covey said: “Begin with the end in mind.”

Both vision casting and strategic planning are admittedly intuitive. In both instances, we’re looking into the future and seeing what could or should be. This is the way of change, seeing what could be, then taking appropriate steps to make it happen.

 Strategy + Measurable Objectives + Action = Change

Strategic thinking forces us to look beyond the present, beyond the current crisis, and identify those things we need to change, or at least do differently, to get the results we desire. Without strategic thinking, we’re left to the tyranny of the urgent, or worse, stuck in the status quo.

Developing strategy starts by developing strategic categories. Identify areas of your life or your business you need to change? Individual categories might include income, education, relationships or health. Business categories would be sales, marketing, process improvement or professional development.

Remember, your strategies do not have to be measurable and could, in fact, be viable for years. Here are examples of a strategy statements relating to specific categories:

• Improve my health through nutrition and exercise;
• Become a Project Manager in XYZ division by the end of this year;
• Develop a marketing plan for our customer service initiatives;
• Increase pretax profits by 5 percent company-wide.

At this point, don’t worry about how you’ll measure or make the strategy a reality. That’s the role for your objectives and action plans. For now, just identify a few personal or organizational categories where you want to see improvement or change.

Write three strategy statements for areas of your life you want to improve personally, and three statements for improving your business or your professional skills. Next time, we’ll move from just wanting things to change to actually making it happen.

“Moving From Activity to Achievement, lays out a simple yet powerful process for linking belief and behavior. It’s a must read for anyone desiring to improve their performance and productivity – individually or organizationally.”

Dr Tony Alessandra,

Author of The Platinum Rule and Hall of Fame Keynote Speaker

“This book is packed with principles you can use to take your life and your career to a new level. Chapter 5 alone, on ‘The Value of Vision,’ is worth the price of this book.”

Joel Weldon, CPAE,

Joel H. Weldon & Associates, Inc.

Available at Amazon.com

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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.

#1 Lack of Desire

Desire is something more that wanting or wishing or hoping that one will be more successful or that the business or organization will produce the product or service it was built to produce.

 The reality is no one ever wished his or her way to success and achievement. Success is about doing, not dreaming. Desire is that fire in the belly that causes one to do those things that need to be done to reach a specific level of success or achieve a particular objective.

 #2 Failing to Take Personal Initiative

 Here is a cold, hard fact, no one else is responsible for your personal growth, your personal success or for seeing to it that you accomplish whatever you say you want to accomplish. That responsibility belongs to you, and you alone.

 Failing to take personal responsibility and personal initiative for the results we want, personally or professionally, is arguably the single greatest reason for lack of promotion, poor performance, low self-esteem, and failed relationships.

 #3 Lack of a Process for Improving Performance

 W. Edwards Deming, one of the great management thinkers of the last century, said: “If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Why is having a process for improving performance and productivity so important? Because process adds form and function to our desires and our ideas.

Without a process for improving performance and productivity, we’re leaving the possibility for success and achievement to chance. We’re hoping that something good will happen or we’ll find that silver bullet that will transform our current condition or status into something better. Hello! That isn’t going to happen. Personal improvement is the result of doing certain things a certain way, every day. Luck isn’t part of the equation. Being diligent at following a process is.

 #4 Lack of Commitment

Commitment to what? Commitment to personal improvement and commitment to a process, making sure you achieve what you want to achieve.

Just trying something for a day or two or for a week will not create the habits for success and achievement you’ll need to create. Commitment to getting better is essential because some days are better than others, some things don’t work the way we want them to, and people will sometimes let us down. You get the point, we have to commit to some type of a process for improvement and then trust that process, if we want to get better doing whatever we’re doing. Your personal commitment to self-improvement and to a process for improvement are critical to your success.

 #5 Lack of Accountability

This is the missing link in putting together a performance improvement program, but it’s truly essential for ensuring we stay focused on those things that matter most.

It’s just too easy to get caught up in the grind or to start majoring on those minor things that rob us of real achievement. We’ve all experienced the benefit of having someone support and encourage our most important activities. Accountability starts by holding our own feet to the fire for doing the things we need to do to accomplish what we want to accomplish. But having said that, having a spouse, friend or colleague hold us accountable is important as well.

Sharing our desire with someone we trust and sharing with them the process we intend to follow to achieve our goals will go a long way in achieving the success we want to have.

Let’s close by converting a negative approach to a positive one. Improve your performance and productivity by, developing a healthy desire for success, by taking personal responsibility for your performance, by having a process in place for seeing you through the tough times, by being committed to that process and, lastly, by getting an accountability partner to help you stay focused on what you want to accomplish.

Ever heard of the Law of Cause and Effect? Most of you have but just in case, this law says in order for something to take place, The Great Depression for example, World War II or, more recently, Hurricane Katrina, something happened that caused the occurrence.

I would argue the same is true for your current level of success – personally or professionally. If you’re not as successful or as productive as you’d like to be, consider what some of the causal effects are of your current activity or schedule.

I’m doing my annual review of Peter Drucker’s outstanding book, “The Effective Executive.” his assertion is that effectiveness can be learned. Moreover, effectiveness must be learned in order for (an executive), or…you, to be effective. To that end, he suggests FIVE KEYS to effectiveness:

• Managing your time
• A focused effort on making contributions
• Making your strengths productive
• Concentrating your efforts on those tasks that are most important (to your contributions)
• Making effective decisions

If you’ve attended one of my workshops or seminars or, if you are enrolled in my coaching program, these terms are very familiar to you. You know how much each of these practices is foundational to what I teach.

Drucker reminds us that to be effective and productive we must do the right things in the right ways. Want to be more successful and more productive? Do what other successful and productive people do. And, spend a lot of time reading Peter Drucker.

Remember, success is not an accident – and failure isn’t either.

Improving performance and productivity is much more about understanding “the fundamentals” than applying new gimmicks or buying the latest time management software.

Here are a few of the “fundamentals” you might want to reflect on this week, if you’re interested in getting better at whatever you do:

1. Your general health and energy level are critical to excellent performance. Focused, productive performance will be directly associated with how you feel physically and emotionally. There’s just no substitute for good nutrition and exercise.

2. Clarifying your mission/purpose will be foundational to what you produce and how you perform. A clear purpose provides the focus and motivation for what we do – in any of our life roles.

3. Attitude is everything! In my workshops and seminars, I present the formula E+R=O. It stands for Event +Response = Outcome. What this says is that your response to any given event has more to do with the outcome than the event itself.

4. You’ll never hit a target you can’t see. Ninety-five percent of the audiences I speak to believe that written goals are critical to success and achievement. Only five percent (or less), however, write their goals down. Go figure!

5. Yesterday’s a memory and tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. What we do have is what I call “the precious present.” Make the most of every minute of every day. Focus on the things that matter most. Learn to say “No” to those things that will not move you in the direction of your mission/purpose.

Understanding the fundamentals and then practicing them consistently will produce the results you desire. Just ask anyone who remembers the Green Bay Packers when Vince Lombardi was their coach.

PS: Under Lombardi’s direction, the Green Bay Packers collected six division titles, five NFL championships, two Super Bowls (I & II) and acquired a record of 98-30-4.

When people ask me what I do for a living, I always say, “I help individuals and organizations improve performance and productivity.” Their response is often, “So, you’re a motivational speaker!” That response always causes me to bristle because: one, I’m not a motivational speaker; and two, helping people and organizations improve performance involves much more than just giving a pep talk.

I have to be careful though, because having a positive attitude and being optimistic are important factors in performance improvement. Someone once said, “I don’t believe in motivation, it doesn’t last.” Well, neither does bathing, that’s why we do it every day.

Rather than talk about motivation though, I’d like you to give some thought this week to the value of being optimistic. We live in a very negative world and, in order to get past the constant barrage of negativity, optimism can be a very useful tool for improving or maintaining a high level of performance and productivity.

Studies by the American Psychological Association show that there are some real advantages to being optimistic, whether you’re in sales, managing a business or raising children. As a matter of fact, studies show that our general outlook on life came from the way our parents looked at life. That’s a good reason to be really careful what we say and how we respond to life’s difficulties around our kids.

Here are four reasons why it pays to be optimistic:

1. Being optimistic enables us to better handle and/or receive negative information when it has the potential to be useful. We can learn a lot from failure – if we approach it with the right attitude.

2. Optimists tend to realize that not every problem can be solved. As a result, they’re better able to recognize the problems they can’t solve and stop devoting time and effort to a losing cause.

3.Optimists tend to have better coping skills than pessimists. They try multiple solutions to problems, ask others for help and recognize what’s not in their control.

4. Optimists tend to behave in ways that provide them with more information. Ever hear “there’s more than one way to skin a cat?” That’s an optimistic approach.

So, on a scale of 1 to 10, where do you stand in terms of being optimistic? How do you handle negative situations? How do you approach a problem? Do you face a difficult issue head on and look for multiple solutions, or do you give up and walk away if the first solution didn’t work?

Here’s what it all boils down to: being optimistic or being pessimistic is a choice. You can choose to see the glass half full or you can see the glass half empty. And, you can choose to not react to life’s difficulties the same way everyone else does.

I think the choice is clear. If I want my circumstances to improve, I’ll have to start doing those things that will create the positive results I’m looking for. Or, I can have a pity party, invite lots of friends, and complain about a glass half empty.

Make sure you’ve got the facts

You wouldn’t dive into a pool of water without first knowing the depth, so it’s wise not to jump into a quick decision before gathering a little background data. Who? What? Where? When? How? Asking a few of these types of questions can help in gathering the info you need to make a good decision.

Think outcome – from the outset

A good place to give some thought to the desired outcome of a situation is before a final decision is made. When faced with a problem, think about the best case scenario for the outcome and try to work toward that end as you process through the issue(s),

Choose advisors wisely

Be careful not to allow yourself to be overly influenced by another’s perspective on the issue. While it’s important to get feedback from others, be discerning with regard to personal agendas that may be involved.

Develop a decision making model

Create a model by which you make all key decisions and stick by it as various challenges avail themselves.  Making key decisions the same way every time will improve the quality of the decision immensely.

Track the results

On all key decisions, carefully monitor the results to make sure the decision was sound. Closely monitoring a decision allows you to make timely adjustments. It will also afford you the opportunity to study the effectiveness of your process and apply those lessons to future decisions.