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The Secret to Being ...
Do You Need a Push?
Are You Autotelic?
Are You Differentiat...
What Drives You?
The Intersection - R...
Your Talent Strength...
Your Talent Strength...
Personalities: The L...
The Steady Eddie Per...
Personalities: The L...
Bulldozer Personalit...
Values in the Workpl...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
The Nine Foot Sumo W...
Insanity!!!!!!!!!
Turn Insignificance ...
Olympics and Your St...
The Olympics and You...
Take TIme To Think
Farming, Fertilizer ...
Fidelity versus Conv...
Nobility and Potenti...
Fluid Leadership
Outside Your Strengt...
A Diversified Team i...
Don't Waste Time Cor...
Are You In the Zone?
Don't Get Derailed
Multiply Your Result...
Do You Need Pruning?
Becoming Fully Effec...
Competing in a Flat ...
State of the Economy
Break Free of the N...
Dealing With Extreme...
13 Qualities of Winn...
Never Confuse Moveme...
Be a Person with Ubu...
What Are Values and ...
Does Your Soul Need ...
What are Values and ...
Are Values in the Wo...
Be an Integrative Th...
Protean Corporation
Fitness Clothes Don'...
Untapped Potential
The Next Step
Technical Skills are...
Your Personal Board ...
How The Mighty Fall
THE INTERSECTION
Are You Hiring Peopl...
Network to Improve Y...
Cato's Principle: Al...
Morganization
Talent Strength Zone...
Talent Strength Zone
Strength Zone Reflec...
Strength Zone versus...
Obama's Communicatio...
Personal Brand State...
Leverage the Strengt...
Obama - Living in Hi...
Strength Zone Produc...
Strength Zone - No 1...
The Secret to Being ...
Do You Need a Push?
Are You Autotelic?
Are You Differentiat...
What Drives You?
The Intersection - R...
Your Talent Strength...
Your Talent Strength...
Personalities: The L...
The Steady Eddie Per...
Personalities: The L...
Bulldozer Personalit...
Values in the Workpl...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
What Are Values and ...
The Nine Foot Sumo W...
Insanity!!!!!!!!!
Turn Insignificance ...
Olympics and Your St...
The Olympics and You...
Take TIme To Think
Farming, Fertilizer ...
Fidelity versus Conv...
Nobility and Potenti...
Fluid Leadership
Outside Your Strengt...
A Diversified Team i...
Don't Waste Time Cor...
Are You In the Zone?
Don't Get Derailed
Multiply Your Result...
Do You Need Pruning?
Becoming Fully Effec...
Competing in a Flat ...
State of the Economy
Break Free of the N...
Dealing With Extreme...
13 Qualities of Winn...
Never Confuse Moveme...
Be a Person with Ubu...
What Are Values and ...
Does Your Soul Need ...
What are Values and ...
Are Values in the Wo...
Be an Integrative Th...
Protean Corporation
Fitness Clothes Don'...
Untapped Potential
The Next Step
Technical Skills are...
Your Personal Board ...
How The Mighty Fall
THE INTERSECTION
Are You Hiring Peopl...
Network to Improve Y...
Cato's Principle: Al...
Morganization
Talent Strength Zone...
Talent Strength Zone
Strength Zone Reflec...
Strength Zone versus...
Obama's Communicatio...
Personal Brand State...
Leverage the Strengt...
Obama - Living in Hi...
Strength Zone Produc...
Strength Zone - No 1...
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Your Personal Board of Directors
2009-07-25 12:26:47
I know I've talked about Solomon before in past blogs and maybe some of you are getting tired of his quotes but I can't help it. The guy was stunningly insightful for living thousands of years ago!
"Listen to advice and accept instruction and in the end you will be wise." He also said "Plans go wrong for lack of advice; many advisers bring success." and he said "Plans succeed through good counsel; don’t go to war without wise advice."
If this advice was relevant thousands of years ago, it is even more relevant in today's society. It is extremely important to your success that you find a group of people that you can trust that are willing to give you wise advice and counsel. These people have to be carefully chosen because you want people that are going to not only give you wise advice but push you to new levels and hold you accountable. It is critical that the people you chose are experts in their fields and are solid in character. I call these people your "Personal Board of Directors" or PBoD.
Once you have your PBoD in place you then need to set up a regular meeting time with them. These meetings can be over the phone, WebEx, video conferences, one on one or a group setting where everyone gets together. Whatever the setting, you need to be prepared to share your plans and to accept open and honest feedback. Then you need to be prepared to take positive action with the feedback provided and to expect to be held accountable for your actions the next time you get together.
Without having this open and honest feedback there is a rather large possibility that you will take actions in your day to day life that will cause you much more pain then required. This pain does build character if you learn from it but it can also slow you down in your drive to success. Much of the pain can be avoided by listening to the counsel of your PBoD and taking positive action
You also need your PBoD to help you refine your Strength Zone and determine how you should approach every situation to take advantage of your unique strengths. Listen carefully to their advice and then apply it. Take the results back to the PBoD and continually refine your approach and strengths. This third party group of people can give you excellent "outside" perspective that you need to be successful.
Tags: strengths, , advisors, , board, of, directors, , solomon
0 Comments
2009-07-25 12:26:47
I know I've talked about Solomon before in past blogs and maybe some of you are getting tired of his quotes but I can't help it. The guy was stunningly insightful for living thousands of years ago!
"Listen to advice and accept instruction and in the end you will be wise." He also said "Plans go wrong for lack of advice; many advisers bring success." and he said "Plans succeed through good counsel; don’t go to war without wise advice."
If this advice was relevant thousands of years ago, it is even more relevant in today's society. It is extremely important to your success that you find a group of people that you can trust that are willing to give you wise advice and counsel. These people have to be carefully chosen because you want people that are going to not only give you wise advice but push you to new levels and hold you accountable. It is critical that the people you chose are experts in their fields and are solid in character. I call these people your "Personal Board of Directors" or PBoD.
Once you have your PBoD in place you then need to set up a regular meeting time with them. These meetings can be over the phone, WebEx, video conferences, one on one or a group setting where everyone gets together. Whatever the setting, you need to be prepared to share your plans and to accept open and honest feedback. Then you need to be prepared to take positive action with the feedback provided and to expect to be held accountable for your actions the next time you get together.
Without having this open and honest feedback there is a rather large possibility that you will take actions in your day to day life that will cause you much more pain then required. This pain does build character if you learn from it but it can also slow you down in your drive to success. Much of the pain can be avoided by listening to the counsel of your PBoD and taking positive action
You also need your PBoD to help you refine your Strength Zone and determine how you should approach every situation to take advantage of your unique strengths. Listen carefully to their advice and then apply it. Take the results back to the PBoD and continually refine your approach and strengths. This third party group of people can give you excellent "outside" perspective that you need to be successful.
Tags: strengths, , advisors, , board, of, directors, , solomon
0 Comments
How The Mighty Fall
2009-07-19 22:14:46
I recently read Jim Collins' new book, "How the Mighty Fall". This is an outstanding book that takes a detailed look at companies that were great companies as defined by Collins' previous book "Good to Great", and fell to irrelevance. Collins defines a great company as one that had to significantly outperform the market for at least 15 years in a row. On average, the companies that Collins studied as great companies outperformed the general stock market by at least 6.9 times.
Collins found that these great companies had one thing in common….they followed 3 simple principles;
1. They determined what they could do where they were "best in class" or best in the world at
2. Because they were best in class, they were passionate about what they did
3. They understood what drove their economic engine (i.e., they understood how they could take their strengths and their passion and build a profitable company around these two principles) and they took a disciplined approach at doing so.
The first two principles sound very similar to the Strength Zone concept…….discover what your strengths are and do your best to always leverage your strengths in everything that you do. Good to Great is kind of like a corporate Strength Zone!
As stated above, the book, "How the Mighty Fall", deals with a number of the companies featured in Good to Great that took their eye off the ball, stopped following the three principles and fell to irrelevance or disappeared entirely. Collins determined that there are five stages of decline listed below. Take a look at these and see if you can name a company that falls into any of the stages.
Stage 1 - Hubris Born of Success
• Success, entitlement, arrogance
• Neglect of a primary flywheel
• "What" replaces "why"
• Decline in learning orientation
• Discounting the role of luck
Stage 2 - Undisciplined Pursuit of More
• Unsustainable quest for growth, confusing big with great
• Undisciplined discontinuous leaps
• Declining proportion of right people in right seats
• Easy cash erodes cost discipline
• Bureaucracy subverts discipline
• Problematic success of power
• Personal interests placed above organizational interests
Stage 3 - Denial of Risk and Peril
• Amplify the positive, discount the negative
• Big bets and bold goals without empirical validation
• Incurring huge downside risk based on ambiguous data
• Erosion of healthy team dynamics
• Externalizing blame
• Obsessive reorganizations
• Imperious detachment
Stage 4 - Grasping for Salvation
• A series of silver bullets
• Grasping for a leader-as-savior
• Panic and haste
• Radical change and "revolution" fanfare
• Hype proceeds results
• Initial upswing followed by disappointments
• Confusion and cynicism
• Chronic restructuring and erosion of financial strength
Stage 5 - Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
Now that you have read through this from a corporate perspective, do it again from a personal perspective. Not all of the bullets will apply at a personal level but many of them do.
Have you taken your eye off the ball at a personal level? Have you forgotten to leverage your strengths? Is it time to re-evaluate your strengths and determine how you can best apply them to each role that you have in life?
Don't brush this off to quickly. You cannot reach your full potential unless you work in your areas of strength…..just like the corporate principles identified by Collins in Good to Great.
Tags: strengths, , talents, , jim, collins, , how, the, mighty, fall, , strength, zone
0 Comments
2009-07-19 22:14:46
I recently read Jim Collins' new book, "How the Mighty Fall". This is an outstanding book that takes a detailed look at companies that were great companies as defined by Collins' previous book "Good to Great", and fell to irrelevance. Collins defines a great company as one that had to significantly outperform the market for at least 15 years in a row. On average, the companies that Collins studied as great companies outperformed the general stock market by at least 6.9 times.
Collins found that these great companies had one thing in common….they followed 3 simple principles;
1. They determined what they could do where they were "best in class" or best in the world at
2. Because they were best in class, they were passionate about what they did
3. They understood what drove their economic engine (i.e., they understood how they could take their strengths and their passion and build a profitable company around these two principles) and they took a disciplined approach at doing so.
The first two principles sound very similar to the Strength Zone concept…….discover what your strengths are and do your best to always leverage your strengths in everything that you do. Good to Great is kind of like a corporate Strength Zone!
As stated above, the book, "How the Mighty Fall", deals with a number of the companies featured in Good to Great that took their eye off the ball, stopped following the three principles and fell to irrelevance or disappeared entirely. Collins determined that there are five stages of decline listed below. Take a look at these and see if you can name a company that falls into any of the stages.
Stage 1 - Hubris Born of Success
• Success, entitlement, arrogance
• Neglect of a primary flywheel
• "What" replaces "why"
• Decline in learning orientation
• Discounting the role of luck
Stage 2 - Undisciplined Pursuit of More
• Unsustainable quest for growth, confusing big with great
• Undisciplined discontinuous leaps
• Declining proportion of right people in right seats
• Easy cash erodes cost discipline
• Bureaucracy subverts discipline
• Problematic success of power
• Personal interests placed above organizational interests
Stage 3 - Denial of Risk and Peril
• Amplify the positive, discount the negative
• Big bets and bold goals without empirical validation
• Incurring huge downside risk based on ambiguous data
• Erosion of healthy team dynamics
• Externalizing blame
• Obsessive reorganizations
• Imperious detachment
Stage 4 - Grasping for Salvation
• A series of silver bullets
• Grasping for a leader-as-savior
• Panic and haste
• Radical change and "revolution" fanfare
• Hype proceeds results
• Initial upswing followed by disappointments
• Confusion and cynicism
• Chronic restructuring and erosion of financial strength
Stage 5 - Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
Now that you have read through this from a corporate perspective, do it again from a personal perspective. Not all of the bullets will apply at a personal level but many of them do.
Have you taken your eye off the ball at a personal level? Have you forgotten to leverage your strengths? Is it time to re-evaluate your strengths and determine how you can best apply them to each role that you have in life?
Don't brush this off to quickly. You cannot reach your full potential unless you work in your areas of strength…..just like the corporate principles identified by Collins in Good to Great.
Tags: strengths, , talents, , jim, collins, , how, the, mighty, fall, , strength, zone
0 Comments
THE INTERSECTION
2009-07-12 20:29:08
So you have identified your top six values, your personality profile and your top five talents…..what now? How do you combine this information to define your overall Strength Zone and what does this mean once you do and how do you use this information anyway?
Well…..lets try to take these questions one at a time.
How do you combine this information to define your overall Strength Zone?
I would suggest making three lists, side by side, of your Values, Personality traits and Talents, like this.
Values - Faith, Family, Courage, Achievement, Integrity, Wisdom
Personality - Creative, Dominant, Challenge, Competitive, Problem Solver, Driver, Change Oriented, Planner, Achiever
Talents - Achiever, Ideation, Learner, Maximizer, Belief
Note that the Personality traits should come from your Personality profile. Just pick some (6 to 10) of the key words from your profile that seem to best describe you. If you haven’t taken a DISC personality profile, go to www.strength-zone.com and purchase a copy of Strength Zone as it comes complete with a DISC profile.
Once your list is complete, begin to look for an overlap between these three areas. The list shown above is my list. There are some obvious overlaps. First, Achiever or Achievement is common across Values, Personality and Talents. Secondly, Learner and Creative seem to be a second theme. This is not an exact science and sometimes you must really spend some time reviewing your Values, Personality and Talents to find the overlap.
So based on my information shown above, I would say that my Strength Zone® is Achievement and Learner/Creative.
So now what …..what does this mean and how do you use this information?
You can only answer this question through reflection and asking yourself some tough questions. Take a look at the different roles that you have in life both at work and at home and ask yourself the following questions;
1) Am I already applying my strengths in my roles?
2) How am I doing this?
3) Is it effective?
4) If I am not applying my strengths to my roles how can I start?
5) What new things do I need to learn to improve in my areas of strength?
6) What things should I stop doing because I am no good at them?
7) What activities am I involved with that energize me?
8) What activities am I involved with that seem to suck the life out of me?
9) How can I leverage my Strength Zone into each of my roles more effectively?
The following examples illustrate the some of the results of this reflection process for me and how I was able to leverage my Strength Zone to make myself more productive.
Achiever –I must have a system in place to measure my progress against preset goals. I have to make progress against these goals. My goals are balanced between personal, spiritual, relationships, health, career, fun and financial. I have to measure progress in each of these areas each week, and I review these goals daily. It is not good enough to achieve one thing per month. I have to achieve something daily. This does not have to be a major accomplishment, but it does have to be something that takes me a step closer toward a major accomplishment. Making progress yesterday is not good enough. I need to accomplish something each and every day. This energizes me to do even more and allows me to be very productive. I do need to make sure I have a balance between personal, spiritual, relationships, health, career, fun and financial or the achievement may result in negative behaviors. When I don’t structure my roles in this fashion I experience some level of frustration which then causes me to be a lot less productive than I should be.
Creative/Learner – I am always striving to learn something new. Learning energizes me and when I am able to take something that I have learned and see it productively applied in a role that I have, it is very gratifying. I love to read, take courses, attend seminars, listen to books on CD or podcasts about all kinds of topics and then “cross-pollinate” these learnings into the roles that I have. Not everything that I learn can be applied and not everything that I apply is successful although the majority of what is applied is successful. The process of learning and applying is energizing and the productivity gains can be huge.
Take the time to define your Strength Zone and then take this knowledge and reflect on how you can best apply it to maximize your effectiveness in every role you have in life!
Tags: strengths, , personality, , values, , talents, , DISC, , strength, zone
0 Comments
2009-07-12 20:29:08
So you have identified your top six values, your personality profile and your top five talents…..what now? How do you combine this information to define your overall Strength Zone and what does this mean once you do and how do you use this information anyway?
Well…..lets try to take these questions one at a time.
How do you combine this information to define your overall Strength Zone?
I would suggest making three lists, side by side, of your Values, Personality traits and Talents, like this.
Values - Faith, Family, Courage, Achievement, Integrity, Wisdom
Personality - Creative, Dominant, Challenge, Competitive, Problem Solver, Driver, Change Oriented, Planner, Achiever
Talents - Achiever, Ideation, Learner, Maximizer, Belief
Note that the Personality traits should come from your Personality profile. Just pick some (6 to 10) of the key words from your profile that seem to best describe you. If you haven’t taken a DISC personality profile, go to www.strength-zone.com and purchase a copy of Strength Zone as it comes complete with a DISC profile.
Once your list is complete, begin to look for an overlap between these three areas. The list shown above is my list. There are some obvious overlaps. First, Achiever or Achievement is common across Values, Personality and Talents. Secondly, Learner and Creative seem to be a second theme. This is not an exact science and sometimes you must really spend some time reviewing your Values, Personality and Talents to find the overlap.
So based on my information shown above, I would say that my Strength Zone® is Achievement and Learner/Creative.
So now what …..what does this mean and how do you use this information?
You can only answer this question through reflection and asking yourself some tough questions. Take a look at the different roles that you have in life both at work and at home and ask yourself the following questions;
1) Am I already applying my strengths in my roles?
2) How am I doing this?
3) Is it effective?
4) If I am not applying my strengths to my roles how can I start?
5) What new things do I need to learn to improve in my areas of strength?
6) What things should I stop doing because I am no good at them?
7) What activities am I involved with that energize me?
8) What activities am I involved with that seem to suck the life out of me?
9) How can I leverage my Strength Zone into each of my roles more effectively?
The following examples illustrate the some of the results of this reflection process for me and how I was able to leverage my Strength Zone to make myself more productive.
Achiever –I must have a system in place to measure my progress against preset goals. I have to make progress against these goals. My goals are balanced between personal, spiritual, relationships, health, career, fun and financial. I have to measure progress in each of these areas each week, and I review these goals daily. It is not good enough to achieve one thing per month. I have to achieve something daily. This does not have to be a major accomplishment, but it does have to be something that takes me a step closer toward a major accomplishment. Making progress yesterday is not good enough. I need to accomplish something each and every day. This energizes me to do even more and allows me to be very productive. I do need to make sure I have a balance between personal, spiritual, relationships, health, career, fun and financial or the achievement may result in negative behaviors. When I don’t structure my roles in this fashion I experience some level of frustration which then causes me to be a lot less productive than I should be.
Creative/Learner – I am always striving to learn something new. Learning energizes me and when I am able to take something that I have learned and see it productively applied in a role that I have, it is very gratifying. I love to read, take courses, attend seminars, listen to books on CD or podcasts about all kinds of topics and then “cross-pollinate” these learnings into the roles that I have. Not everything that I learn can be applied and not everything that I apply is successful although the majority of what is applied is successful. The process of learning and applying is energizing and the productivity gains can be huge.
Take the time to define your Strength Zone and then take this knowledge and reflect on how you can best apply it to maximize your effectiveness in every role you have in life!
Tags: strengths, , personality, , values, , talents, , DISC, , strength, zone
0 Comments
Are You Hiring People Without Properly Assessing Their Strengths?
2009-07-05 20:04:37
Thousands of years ago Solomon stated "Like an archer who wounds at random, is he who hires a fool or any passerby." Although Solomon was arguably the wisest and richest man that ever lived, he lived thousands of years before the advent of the modern day corporation, publicly traded companies, balance sheets, income statements, press releases or Human Resource departments. It is stunning to realize that he had the foresight to state that you cannot hire just anyone to fill a role.
In fact, he is equating the act of hiring "warm bodies to fill seats" to an archer who wounds at random. This is not a pretty picture! I am sure that every leader has been guilty of hiring the wrong person at some time in their career. Solomon knew that the only way to properly build a team would be to hire people whose strengths fit the role they were being hired into and that they had character, integrity and discipline.
Although this seems like such a simple concept, it can be very hard to follow. It takes discipline on a leaders part to invest the time and energy to first define the role that is vacant and then evaluate candidates to ensure their strengths, character and chemistry will be a fit. Failure to invest this time up front inevitably results in employee turnover and more cost down the road. Conservatively, it can cost upwards of $50,000 to replace a low level executive position and over $100,000 to replace a higher level executive. This does not take into account the cost of lost business and ineffectiveness while the position is empty or the cost of loosing your client's confidence when they see the continual turnover. If you cannot get it right and end up hiring multiple times to fill a role, it can become a huge financial burden for your company.
Make sure you take Solomon's advice and don't hire a fool or a passerby. Take the time to understand your needs and then target hire a person with the strength zone to match.
Tags: hire, , strengths, , strength, zone, , Solomon, , employee, , turnover, , corporation, , riches, , wisdom
0 Comments
2009-07-05 20:04:37
Thousands of years ago Solomon stated "Like an archer who wounds at random, is he who hires a fool or any passerby." Although Solomon was arguably the wisest and richest man that ever lived, he lived thousands of years before the advent of the modern day corporation, publicly traded companies, balance sheets, income statements, press releases or Human Resource departments. It is stunning to realize that he had the foresight to state that you cannot hire just anyone to fill a role.
In fact, he is equating the act of hiring "warm bodies to fill seats" to an archer who wounds at random. This is not a pretty picture! I am sure that every leader has been guilty of hiring the wrong person at some time in their career. Solomon knew that the only way to properly build a team would be to hire people whose strengths fit the role they were being hired into and that they had character, integrity and discipline.
Although this seems like such a simple concept, it can be very hard to follow. It takes discipline on a leaders part to invest the time and energy to first define the role that is vacant and then evaluate candidates to ensure their strengths, character and chemistry will be a fit. Failure to invest this time up front inevitably results in employee turnover and more cost down the road. Conservatively, it can cost upwards of $50,000 to replace a low level executive position and over $100,000 to replace a higher level executive. This does not take into account the cost of lost business and ineffectiveness while the position is empty or the cost of loosing your client's confidence when they see the continual turnover. If you cannot get it right and end up hiring multiple times to fill a role, it can become a huge financial burden for your company.
Make sure you take Solomon's advice and don't hire a fool or a passerby. Take the time to understand your needs and then target hire a person with the strength zone to match.
Tags: hire, , strengths, , strength, zone, , Solomon, , employee, , turnover, , corporation, , riches, , wisdom
0 Comments