Every week I share a few ideas to help you finish strong. A great ending sets the stage for success next week.
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1. Call a Timeout and Assess Your Progress on the Big Items
Days turn into weeks turn into months and the daily urgent issues keep us sprinting, often unable to stop and catch our breath and assess where we’re at on the bigger plans we established earlier in the year. Take time today to call a timeout (or lock one in to your schedule soon) to assess how you’re doing with the important and bigger picture activities you committed to months ago.
The issues that are often pushed off to some never-to-be reached time in the future include critical personnel decisions, structural changes, new program creation and the ever-important employee development actions. Oh, and don’t forget about your own developmental plans. How are you doing on your own personal growth objectives?
Too many great professionals let the days manage their agenda instead of the reverse. The daily fires will never disappear, however, the big issues that promote significant positive change take focus and discipline. Recommit to working on the big items and then do it!
2. Change Your View
I’m a constant nag on the need for all of us to better understand the view from functions other than our own. Spend too much time observing the world from your department’s windows, and you start to develop functional tunnel vision. Reach out to a peer in another group and ask to be invited to a team update or, invite him/her to one of yours. Do this regularly and strive to learn more about the view others have on market or organizational issues. Better yet, find common areas to collaborate on for improvements.
If you’ve been sitting too long with the same view, it’s time for a change.
3. Revive Your Summer Reading Plans
Read and grow smarter. My suggestions for business reads:
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by General Stanley McChrystal
And
Team Genius: The New Science of High Performing Organizations by Rich Karlgaard and Michael S. Malone.
(Are you hearing a consistent theme with my recommendations?)
For sheer great writing and a unique view into Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in the time leading up to World War II until Franklin’s passing, try “No Ordinary Time” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The intimate insights into these two remarkable individuals coupled with the challenges of navigating extreme uncertainty and risk by Franklin, are fascinating. This is one of the only historical biographies I’ve consumer where I could not stand to put it down.
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That’s all for this week! Finish strong and the new week will look brilliant. -Art
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An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.