Posted by Brandon R Allen on July 3, 2009 under Entreprenuer or wage earner | 
Every once in a while I read something that reaffirms the reason for writing this blog. This morning was no exception. I enjoy the content at bnet.com including advice for improving the workplace but today I read an article that reaffirms whats wrong with being an employee in the article “7 Signs You’re Creating Your Own Workplace Stress“.
The premise of the article is that employees create much of the stress that they encounter in their work day. The 7 signs or issues that employees face are:
- Not making enough money?
- Underappreciated, nobody loves you?
- Your group gets no respect.
- You have a psycho boss?
- Too much work, too little time.
- Peer problems.
- Executive management doesn’t listen or care.
Looking at 1-3, I will say one thing until I die about working for someone else. If you are a great employee, you will never be compensated, appreciated and respected like you should be. It’s almost impossible for an employer to fully meet your needs here. As an employees, you need to accept this or don’t work for someone else.
Number 4 is where the real problems appear. Your boss is an abusive jerk and you should deal with it by getting over it. Why should you accept this? Because unemployment is at 9.5%. That’s the country that we live in today. If someone is abusive to you no money, possessions or status are worth putting up with someone like that period. If your boss causes you stress through abuse, you should leave. Can we be too sensitive about this? Sure but either way you are unhappy.
Looking at points 5-7 and this points speak to all the things that people hate about their jobs. A high workload. Office politics. An indifferent executive team. If you think that executive level management doesn’t care about you or your ideas, guess what, they probably don’t.
My point is if you are so unhappy find out what the root of the issue is. Is it you? or is it the job? I believe that most of us who are unahppy in our careers are unhappy because we are not working in an area that plays fully to our abilities. For the rest, it’s a matter of having a serious attitude adjustment as unfortunately there are those of us who can’t be happy regardless of the circumstance.
If you have stress in the workplace. Identify the root. What can you change and what can’t be changed? From there analyze if it’s you or is it the job. Good luck.
PS…By the way here’s Part 1.
Posted by Brandon R Allen on July 2, 2009 under Business Planning, Creating the Platform |
I worked in the corporate world for a long time before I decided to start my own business. At the outset of my career I had set some specific goals for myself. It turns out that these goals were the wrong goals but I kept working towards them anyway.
One of the goals that I set was centered around moving up the corporate ladder and to get there by a certain age. The great thing about setting goals is that when we set them and use consistent action towards achieving them, we usually come out on top even faster than we planned. This is what happened to me.
Unfortunately, from the start I really didn’t enjoy what I was doing. I was operating under the premise that I just needed to move up and then I would start to enjoy my career. The exact opposite happened. Every move up was a higher degree of misery and more of a feeling of being trapped. Trapped by having a family that depended on me and other people’s expectations including my own. In addition to that, I spent less time with my family and had less enjoyment in my personal life
What I needed was some accountability and to spend some time reviewing my goals to see where I was at. I knew that my goals were the wrong goals but didn’t have a better plan in place so I kept working on what I knew. This allowed me to get more and more trapped into a lifestyle and career that I didn’t want.
Has this happened to you? How often have we worked towards a goal even though we knew it was the wrong one? This is where having some accountability measures in place can help us not waste time and effort on goals that don’t fit with where we want to be.
Having a coach can be very helpful in knowing when to kick us in a different direction when we are not being true to ourselves. Setting aside time to review where we are at with goals is one way we can hold ourselves accountable and keep us on track.
What are some ways that you use to keep yourself on track? When have you been guilty or working towards a goal that you knew was wrong? Are you doing this now?
Posted by Brandon R Allen on July 1, 2009 under Business Planning, The Power of People |
Putting your accountability system in place requires looking at all the resources that you have at your disposal to keep us on track. There are 2 methods of tools that we need to think about to assist us in accountability- internal tools and external tools.
External tools
Your boss, if you are employed, is one tool for external accountability. As an employee we all need help getting to our goals and seeing new directions and good boss can help us do that.
A business coach can help guide business owners in any number of business issues from sales and marketing to building your start up.
Life coaching takes a holistic look at everything you have going on in your life and career and gets to the core of you and why you do what you do. They are able to blend your professional and personal life to allow you to focus on the things in your life that are most important.
Books: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a great book to help build the right personal habits.
Good to Great by Jim Collins is not just a great book about organizations but good insight on how we can apply these principles to our lives as individuals.
Winning With Accountability: The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations by Henry J Evans.
These are just a few examples of books that can help us with external accountability.
Retail programs and workshops can give us great insight on accountability as well. There are a lot of great workshops and programs that exist that can help us develop an accountability plan.
Internal Tools
Goal setting: Or for a business, we can call this business planning. This is a road map that can make sure we are able to assess where we stand throughout our success journey. This is a seriously overlooked and simple tool for success.
Morning routine: We call our morning routine a “power hour“. Regardless of how we do it or what we call it, the key is to get a routine implemented and do it.
Daily markers: Markers in conjunction with your goals are powerful tools to help keep us on track by reviewing where we are at daily.
Time management: How we manage our time is critical to dictating how we hold ourselves accountable in other areas as well. Getting a consistent time management system will ensure that we are doing the things that need to be done in a timely manner.
There is not a one size fits all accountability system. It’s a matter of trying different things out and seeing what works for us personally. This takes a little time but once we have it done, it makes a huge difference in how effective we are.
What works for you with regards to accountability? How have you figured out what works and what doesn’t?
Putting Your Accountability Plan Together [9:32m]:
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Posted by Brandon R Allen on June 30, 2009 under Business Planning |
Time. We all have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else. One thing that separates the successful people from those who struggle to find success is how they use their time. Making the best use of our time is one of the first steps to a solid accountability plan.
I will spare you the old time cliches like “time is money”. In essence how you hold yourself accountable from a time management standpoint is how you are going to hold yourself accountable for others things in our life. When we waste time, we miss opportunities for sales, idea creation, networking etc. Pick a system for managing your time that works for you and stick with it.
This includes taking time to review our goals and plans to help us keep our plans in place. This ensures that consistently have time scheduled in our day for execution of our plans and follow up to see how we are doing. The important thing is to keep ourselves accountable for how we are using our time and that it is used for activities that really matter to us.
How are you using your time? How have you held yourself accountable for your time? How have you failed in that area?
Posted by Brandon R Allen on June 25, 2009 under Business Planning |
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
-Unknown
Looking at what successful people do and how they behave is a tremendous resource for our own success. It’s not an accident that when you analyze these people that they all have similar behaviors that guided them through their daily lives. Building the right habits is a key to long term success.
I ran across an old post about daily habits that I thought was excellent from the Change Blog. The post breaks daily habits up into morning, afternoon and evening. Some of the items:
- Wake up early
- Exercise
- Review goals
- Visualize your day
- Write a “to-do” list (or your daily action items)
- Review Your day
- Spend time with family
These are just a few of the daily items for success.
What habits would you add that work for your success? How can we ensure that we put new habits into practice?
Posted by Brandon R Allen on June 24, 2009 under Business Planning, Your Life Your Purpose Podcast |
What are you doing right now? What was your game plan for today? How are you doing so far? Putting a game plan and executing it is a winning habit that will take us where we want to go in our personal and professional lives. This post may motivate some to go out and change some behaviors…tomorrow. If we are really serious about changing how we go about our day, why not start now?
Do you know anyone whose whole life seems incomplete? They have tons of unfinished business going on. They always use words like some day. Their life is in perpetual crisis. They never seem to get anything done on time. (If this is you, it’s going to be OK.) They want to take action but it always seems to be starting the next day.
When we identify behavior that is keeping us from achieving success, it’s important to stop that behavior as soon as possible. Here are some steps to utilize to help you with this, Four Easy Steps To Change Thoughts-Feelings-Behavior. I would also recommend meditation as well to help you with the thought control that the 4 easy steps talks about.
If there are some things that need to be changed, will it start now? What are you waiting for with regards to changing of behavior? How can you more positively impact those around you by getting the important things done in your day consistently?
Achieving High Daily Results [14:04m]:
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Posted by Brandon R Allen on June 23, 2009 under Business Planning, Uncategorized |
Has this ever happened to you? You are getting set to wind down a long day of work. You were really busy putting out fires, answering phone calls and finishing up paperwork. Because of this, your day got away from you and you didn’t do anything that you actually wanted to accomplish.
What do you do next? Do you stay late and get some of things accomplished or do you walk away from it and tell yourself that you will get to it tomorrow? This scenario has happened to me more times than I would care to admit. If you have a boss, they may remind you that you came up short and make you stay until your important items are done. If you are an entrepreneur, most likely you are on your own. How do you make sure that you don’t compromise your daily success?
We have talked a lot about planning; when to set up your day, how to do it, how to manage your time. The hardest part to implementing any of this is to break the bad habits that have been developed for days, months, years. It’s so easy to keep doing things the way we have always done it. It just feels natural doesn’t it?
I have heard that it takes 21 days of consistent committed action to break an old habit and another 31 days to create a new one in it’s place. That takes commitment to make that kind of change. It certainly doesn’t happen on accident. Where does that a leave us entrepreneurs with the bad habits? It means that today, we look at what needed to be done and ask ourselves if it got done. If it did. Pat yourself on the back. If it didn’t, start getting it done now and don’t walk away until the mission’s complete.
This is one of the best pieces of advice that I ever got working in corporate America from an old boss. He told me when I walk away from the day and don’t do what I told myself I would do, I tell myself that it’s OK to fail. He was/is right and it lead to me changing my behaviors. This had a huge impact on my productivity and my abilities as a leader as people respected me more because I was less willing to compromise my success or theirs.
How have you been victim to this habit? Have you overcome it or does it still nag at you?
Posted by Brandon R Allen on June 22, 2009 under Business Planning |
Some say that men typically have this problem….
Some say that it’s a problem in society in general…
It has to do with our problem with the word commitment.
When it comes to our day, most us commit to one simple action item…trying. We can’t tell you that we will achieve a result, we can only tell you that we will try. Effort and try are noble words that when practiced carelessly, lead to failure.
Daily success and achievement starts with a commitment to achieving our daily game plan consistently. Too often we go about our day with either no game plan or no real commitment to doing what we say we need to.
When it comes to commitment and accountability, we are talking about behavioral issues. Our Soul Purpose deals with inherent gifts, talents, proclivities etc. Traits that are inherent. Behavioral issues are learned and practiced. It’s the reason why some our kids know how to behave at a restaurant and some don’t. It’s why we all have a friend (or maybe it’s us) that have unlimited potential but can’t seem to put into practice.
Have we made our ability to commit and hold ourselves accountable seem like they are inherent as well? Do we think that some of us have the ability to behave this way and some just don’t? The reality is that commitment and how good we are at holding ourselves accountable takes practice. It’s learned by how often we compromise success or how often we refuse to fail.
How guilty are you at letting a day go where you know you didn’t win but went home anyway? How often do we shrug our shoulders when we do it? How has this affected your confidence going forward?
Posted by Brandon R Allen on June 19, 2009 under Business Planning |
Whether you work for yourself or someone else, the one thing that is constant is the fact that you need to produce value on a day-to-day basis to get where you want to be in your career. We often overlook our daily production due to a lack of systems for making each day as productive as possible.
If you want to learn about productivity/time management systems go here. Yesterday I talked about setting daily goals. Today I want to talk about how we assess our day when it’s all said and done.
The first thing that must happen for this to work is for you to have your day mapped out before it begins. I prefer to do it the evening before. Some do it the morning of. I prefer the former due to once my day starts, I want to hit it running.
Next, you should have your daily markers put into your day so that you can stay on track for goal achievement. These daily activities are what we have defined as essential to making your business work.
From there, we can set certain times of the day where we assess how we are doing. How often you do this is up to you. However I will say this. If you wait until the end of the day to see how you did and it was a failure, it’s too late to correct most likely. This is why I prefer to assess a couple of times throughout the day to make sure that I am on track.
This assessment consists of looking at my calendar to make sure I haven’t overlooked any items on there. Looking at goals for that day to see where I am at in relation. This may sound like too much hassle but once you get in the habit, it only takes a few minutes. A small price to pay to keep you from calling your spouse and telling them that you are working late again due to a project that you forgot about.
The by-product that is so powerful for assessing your day is in relation to your core values. For many of us, spending time with our family, on hobbies, church etc. are important to us. When we don’t keep our day on track, these other activities fall by the wayside leaving behind strained family relationships, broken promises, guilt a nd frustration. It’s hard enough to be a business owner, there is no need to make it more challenging.
Take a look at how your day looks at least 2 times/day with one of those being an end of the day assessment on how you did and any improvements that need to be made for the next day. Doing this will ensure that you stay on track with your goals and ultimately achieve success.
How have you been at assessing how your day is going while it is happening? What improvements can be made? What challenges exist that keep this from happening?
Posted by Brandon R Allen on June 18, 2009 under Business Planning |
We have goals. We have a plan. The trick is executing those in a manner that doesn’t take a lot of thinking so we can just go out and make things happen. As business owners, we can make things easy on ourselves by making our action items short, sweet and manageable. This means setting daily markers for ourselves so that we can manage our goals on a day-to-day basis.
Most of us, if we have them written out, don’t manage goals and important items frequently enough. When we finally do look at them, it’s a huge ordeal because we waited a few months and now we don’t know where to start. Daily focus on your goals starts when your goals are set. At that time, we sit down and map out the year down to the day on what needs to happen for our goals to become a reality.
A daily practice of achievement is a great accountability tool that keeps us energized and focused on what we want to accomplish. It get’s us in the winning habit which I will talk more about next week.
All of this assumes that you have your goals down. If you don’t, stop what you are doing and get them done now. Then look at your goals and ask yourself what practices are going to be essential on a daily basis in order for me to achieve this plan. For an entrepreneur, I would put selling your product on that list of daily “musts” as an example. Once you have those items established decide what time of the day they will be worked on and start developing markers for what success looks like on a daily basis. If you are not sure what daily success should look like, use your best guess and then adjust as you get going.
Daily planning and achievement a re a key driver for your success plan in life and in business. Identify these daily success tools and start working on them today.
