But as I travel around the country talking and working with leaders, my experience has been that these same leaders are less certain and less confident when asked to summarize why clients or customers buy from their companies instead of the competition.

“Because we’re good at what we do” is a commonly heard answer. So is “Because we’re better than the competition.” Sounds like something a CEO would say, doesn’t it?

Those answers may be truthful, but they don’t reflect your competitive advantage. They fail to articulate a compelling benefit that allows you to separate yourself from the pack in the minds of your customers or clients.

What’s more, my experience has confirmed a lack of clarity in most organizations around plans, processes and procedures developed for the express purpose of leveraging strengths, replicating successes and increasing performance.

Taken one step further, my experience has been that even if the CEO can articulate the company’s value proposition, the likelihood of getting the same answer from the leadership team is small to non-existent. If the leadership team can’t articulate a compelling reason why people buy from you instead of someone else, don’t expect your customers and prospective customers to be able to do so either.

How would the leadership team at your organization fare with these questions?

Good news

If you’re beginning to feel a little uncomfortable about how your organization would answer, there are two pieces of good news.

First, the executives I work and speak with are, for the most part, leading organizations that are already successful. They’re doing a lot of things well. So if you’re in a leadership role in a company that may have trouble answering some of these questions, but the company is doing pretty well, take heart. Then imagine how much more successful the organization could be if everyone knew precisely why customers buy from you instead of the other guys.

Second, I’m happy to share with you a process you can use to gain clarity and agreement around who you are as an organization and what makes your organization special.

In my new book Lead The Way, I include a model called an Identity Pyramid to help leadership teams define points of difference and confirm values, principles and processes that are essential components of the organization. Over the years, my firm developed a list of 100 Critical Questions for use in strategic planning sessions with our clients.

Space doesn’t permit me to share the Identity Pyramid or all of the questions, but here are seven to get you started (I use the term “customers” for customers and clients, since there’s a difference):

1. How would we describe our company today? What’s our culture?
2. How would our customers and prospects describe our company? Why would they say this?
3. What is our unfair advantage that causes our customers to select us over the competition?
4. Have we made our competitive advantage a centerpiece with our stakeholders?
5. Are we charging what we should based on the value this advantage offers our customers?
6. If we charged more for this product or service, would our customers still buy from us?
7. Have we articulated this advantage in a way that is easily understood and compelling?

Clarity around these and other related issues that examine performance from inside-out and outside-in perspectives will inspire greater loyalty to your organization with internal and external stakeholders. What’s more, clarity around these issues will also improve productivity and increase revenue and profitability.

Be yourself

This exercise and these questions and others like them are designed to uncover or confirm your intrinsic competitive advantage – an advantage that already exists within your organization.

It’s not a process designed to make your company into something it is not.

“Be yourself,” said Oscar Wilde. “Everyone else is already taken.”

This is a simple but powerful process for helping your company sell more of what customers and clients already are buying from you.

Take action

Ask and answer the seven questions above.

What other questions can you ask that will confirm, clarify or uncover an advantage you may have been overlooking or taking for granted?

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In my new book Lead The Way, we peel back the curtain on several companies that all started small. Today, they’re big businesses. And they’re among the most admired companies in the world. They are considered the gold standards in their industry – and beyond. Not only for what they have accomplished as organizations. But also for the leaders they have produced and their achievements of innovation, effectiveness and continuous improvement.

And, most important, for the way in which they have achieved and now sustain their success.

From time to time throughout 2008, I’ll share with you some of these lessons. You and your team may be applying these practices in your organization, in which case this information will simply affirm the work you already are doing to sustain high levels of performance. For others, the lessons will serve as reminders that a few simple practices – implemented well – can help you and your team achieve the results you are expecting.

In each case, you’ll see that these concepts are fundamental. But as I travel throughout the country visiting with leaders, I continue to be struck by the fact that common sense is not always common practice.

What gets measured is what gets done

FedEx is an organization obsessed with customer service and focused on tracking it.

The company was founded by Fred Smith and began operating on April 17, 1973, with 14 aircraft connecting 25 U.S. cities. Today, FedEx provides time-definite shipping to more than 220 countries and territories.

A big part of the success of FedEx is built on a foundation of measuring everything with special attention paid to speed, reliability and cost. My friend Keith Martino, a former worldwide sales manager at FedEx whose team was twice recognized as the top global accounts group in the world, says the entire organization is focused on executing against Quality Service Indicators that track 12 key areas of business performance.

These indicators include specific customer service areas such as “friendliness,” “cleanliness of retail locations” and, of course “timeliness.” Each of these 12 areas is further refined to measure specific performance. The area of “timeliness,” for instance, breaks down into categories such as “same-day late” (an afternoon versus morning measurement that helps pinpoint breakdowns at the local level) and “wrong-day late” (which can help FedEx focus on problems occurring further upstream at the airline level).

It’s this measurement system that helps maintain superb levels of business performance and, as a result, extremely satisfied customers. The company continues to fine-tune its customer satisfaction measurement systems “to be sure we take into account everything customers feel is important in creating an exceptional relationship with FedEx.”

Business unit, departmental and individual plans are based on the overall corporate plan. These plans are reviewed as often as the team leaders believe they need to be – for some it’s daily, for other it’s weekly, for others it may be monthly. The plans are then formally reviewed for payout on an annual basis. Individuals that achieve their objectives receive bonuses and opportunities for advancement. Those that don’t meet objectives receive no bonuses and are graded down – a rarity at FedEx because “everyone is focused on hitting their objectives.”

“We make it very clear to everybody what they need to do every day,” says founder and chairman Fred Smith. “We manage the continuous improvement in a mathematical manner every single day. Our service gets better each year.”

Whether you are responsible for sustaining high levels of performance or increasing performance as an organization rebuilds, measurement is key.

Lesson: If it’s important, measure it.

Take action

Ask and answer these five questions:

1. How do we currently define effectiveness in our organization?
2. How do we measure effectiveness?
3. Do we have a system in place to measure customer satisfaction?
4. What about employee morale? Employee productivity?
5. Are we receiving the return on our investments of time, talent and money we want?

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It’s estimated that 80% of executive teams do not take the time to develop a plan. Some of these teams mistake budgeting for planning. Budgeting is a form of planning, but it’s not the same thing. I’ve been told by those that don’t operate from a business plan that planning is a waste of time. Things in the plan will change. Other things won’t get done. Why bother?

Of those that take the time to plan, only one in four actually follows through with implementation.

The Top 5%

That means that only about 5% of companies operate from a plan where all team members know the corporate goals and their individual responsibility for achieving them.

This small segment of business year after year effectively outperforms its competitors. These companies usually outperform themselves. They get better and better year after year.

Currently, there’s talk about whether the U.S. is headed for a recession. Some believe we’re already in a recession and we’re simply waiting to hit bottom.

The CEOs and leadership teams that I work with continue to be cautiously optimistic about their plans for 2008. These leaders are now taking steps to re-evaluate their priorities, consider a range of scenarios that can threaten their business plan, and adapt to new opportunities. All the while watching less-disciplined companies thrash around in the undertows of ineffectiveness and uncertainty.

For those not in the top 5% of planning and execution, it’s not too late to start to improve. What if you could focus your resources so that both you and your business not only survived a downturn but actually emerge from the next wave of economic uncertainty in a stronger position than ever before?

Is it possible to operate at higher levels of effectiveness during tough times? Yes.

How?

Driving Performance

After 25 years of working with and observing hundreds of senior business leaders – during which time I led teams through three U.S. recessions – I’ve concluded that what separates those leaders that are most effective from all the rest is their ability to do one thing exceptionally well.

The most successful leaders win consistently because they have a plan that they work.

That may sound like two things, but to maximize your performance, you must develop a plan and then work it. I’ve seen companies execute without a plan. They can do this for a time, but they will rarely thrive. And I’ve seen companies develop a plan that sits on the shelf. A strategically sound plan that maps specific initiatives and areas for improvement will deliver little new value to an organization if there’s no follow-through or if things continue to be done the way they’ve always been done. On the other hand, consistent execution of a flawed strategy can actually accelerate an organization’s demise.

To improve performance, organizations require a smart plan that’s executed crisply and consistently.

These teams work their plan to deliver results effectively and profitably. They make time work for them by getting everyone in the business focused on the right things and performing at consistently high levels of execution.

Plans fail in their execution for three primary reasons: 1) they’re too complicated, 2) there’s little genuine excitement about the plan, and 3) there’s only lukewarm commitment to execute it. CEOs say, “Give me a fast, simple process my team will believe in and that will produce bottom-line results.”

The laser-like approach you’ll find in Lead The Way uses a series of exercises developed from years of watching and working with hundreds of senior leaders who are committed to improving their companies’ results.

With discipline, you can turn your ideas, dreams and plans into improved performance.

Do you have what it takes to be among the top 5% of high-performing companies in business today?

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You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint. Why would you try to build your business without a written plan?

Yet as inevitably as the seasons change, thousands of companies every year shut their doors because of the leadership team’s failure to develop a written plan and then implement it. Tens of thousands of other companies fail to reach their full potential for the same reason.

It’s true that a poor planning process is a giant distraction and a huge waste of time.

Properly conceived and carried out, however, planning can help any organization become more effective. The paradox of planning is that the very act of preparing a plan will help you and your team pinpoint significant opportunities for increased effectiveness and profitability even though the chances are good you won’t implement your plan as it was developed. This is what makes planning indispensable. Other benefits of planning are examined in the first of my book’s three sections (Section Two of the book provides a toolkit along with exercises for leading an effective planning session; Section Three provides tools and approaches for the effective implementation of your written plan).

What’s stopping you?

Why don’t more companies develop a plan that they will implement?

It’s estimated that four out of five businesses don’t operate from a written plan. Most of these are small companies. Yet of those businesses that invest the time to develop a written plan, studies show that only one company in four actually integrates its plan into day-to-day operations.

Do executives believe that preparing a budget is the same thing as preparing a plan? Or are they not sure how to create a plan? Are they intimidated by the process? Or do they believe the idea of planning is a giant time-waster because no single individual really owns what’s in the plan? Are they concerned that changing marketplace conditions will render the plan obsolete within weeks of its development?

Unfortunately, my experience working with leadership teams supports the findings that the vast majority of businesses today operates without a written plan. If these reasons – excuses, really – are what’s stopping you, it’s time to take a fresh look at the power of effective planning.

Most of the CEOs of small businesses that I’ve worked with substitute some form of budgeting for a planning process. Budgeting is a form of planning, but there’s more to planning than just crunching numbers. Other CEOs haven’t committed their plans to paper. They believe everyone already knows what to do, so the mandate becomes doing more of the same thing next year.

I also see some confusion between annual planning and strategic planning.

If you’ve not planned at all or you’ve had difficultly implementing your plans, your initial approach to planning should be to develop an annual plan. This type of approach focuses on affirming values and direction, establishing priorities and translating those priorities into specific objectives with supporting action items, responsibilities and deadlines. An annual plan is fairly tactical and operational. Thought must be given to this plan, but its primary value is derived from getting all of your leaders focused on the most important operational issues that they and their teams will implement over the next 12 months to improve performance.

Once you’ve developed and implemented an annual plan, you and your team can turn your attention in Year 2 to developing and implementing a strategic plan. A strategic plan focuses on determining the new opportunities you should investigate or pursue. Where are the gaps or opportunities in our product or service offerings? What emerging patterns or trends have we identified that we may be able to capitalize upon? Are there any competitors or up-and-coming businesses that we should look at acquiring? Strategic planning should examine fresh opportunities that can increase your profitable growth.

Rate your organization’s performance

First things first. Before you can plan for the future, it’s a good idea to understand your current position.

I’ve developed a 30-question diagnostic tool that takes about four minutes to complete and allows you to assess your organization’s performance, and see for yourself where your business is doing well and where it’s most vulnerable.

Here are six of the 30 questions. Circle 5 if your organization consistently conforms to this statement, 3 if it sometimes conforms, and 1 if your organization rarely or never conforms.

If your score for these six questions is 23 or above, you likely are doing a number of important things effectively, so you’ll want to continue to maintain your strengths and examine areas where renewed focus and discipline can deliver the greatest potential to improve your performance.

If your score is 22 or below, your company’s effectiveness is being diminished significantly. Leadership issues are hampering your organization’s performance, and your score indicates you are responding to issues rather than driving toward a specific goal.

As the leader, your job is to create value for your organization. This quick diagnostic tool can help you pinpoint areas in your organization to increase effectiveness. So ask yourself: “What one action taken today will improve performance in the next 30 days?”

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For busy leaders, time is the most precious commodity.

There simply isn’t enough of it in the day.

What if you could focus your resources so that both you and your organization operate at higher levels of effectiveness? Wouldn’t it follow that a more effective operation should lead to increased profitability?

Everyone’s got the same 24 hours in a day. So how do the most successful CEOs do it?

After 25 years of working with and observing hundreds of senior business leaders, I’ve concluded that what separates those who are most effective from all the rest is their ability to do one thing exceptionally well.

The most successful leaders win consistently because they have a plan that they work.

They work their plan to deliver results effectively and profitably. They make time work for them by getting everyone in the business focused on the right things and performing at consistently high levels of execution.

In my first book, Take Charge! How Leaders Profit From Change, I outlined three guiding principles for leading in times of change. Great leaders:

1. Know what they believe – they operate from a set of core values that help them discern right from wrong.
2. Define success on their own terms – in times of change, they buck trends, question premises and try new approaches.
3. Lead the way – they articulate the challenge, explain the importance of what must be done, set the course and instill processes to get the right things done the right way.

It’s this third principle that we’ll examine at length in my new book.

Here’s what distinguishes exceptional companies from average performers: leaders who understand the power of reducing the organization’s priorities to a concisely written plan that can be embraced by the organization and tracked relentlessly to measure progress against specific priorities.

And there’s the challenge. On one hand, a strategically sound plan that maps specific initiatives and improvements will deliver little new value to an organization if there’s no follow-through or if things continue to be done the way they’ve always been done. On the other hand, consistent execution of a flawed strategy can actually accelerate an organization’s demise.

To improve performance, organizations require a smart plan that’s executed crisply and consistently.

Assuming the idea of a smoother-running, more profitable company is important to you, you’ll first need to commit a chunk of time to prepare your company for its self-improvement initiative. I know – this is time that you don’t really have. Too bad. As the leader, you cannot delegate this responsibility.

By now, many of you are likely smack in the middle of developing your plan for 2008.

Going Nowhere Fast

I’ve heard leaders boast that they can develop a plan in an hour. They probably can. My experience has been that half of planning is intellectual and the other half is emotional. Without across-the-board buy-in, your plan will go nowhere fast. You can accelerate emotional buy-in, but you can’t expect to achieve the kind of ownership you’ll need to implement your plan without bringing your decision-makers together and giving them a voice in the plan. That takes time. Becoming a consistent winner rarely happens overnight.

I’ve also seen companies – big and small – take months to develop a plan. You don’t have that kind of time, and it’s not necessary anyway.

This book will provide you with a step by step path to winning. This laser-like approach uses a series of exercises developed from years of watching and working with hundreds of senior leaders who are committed to improving their companies’ results.

There are three primary reasons most plans fail. One reason is that they’re too long. Most of the organizations I work with want quality – not quantity. A long plan does not equal an effective plan. A short, simple plan does not mean that the plan has no value. Today, I favor more of a dashboard approach that whittles down a plan to your most significant objectives or priorities – usually no fewer than three and no more than seven.

When finished, your plan will consist of between 10 – 18 pages with specific, actionable initiatives that will increase individual and organizational effectiveness.

With discipline, you can turn your ideas, dreams and plans into improved performance.

Are you willing to invest your most precious commodity to position you and your business to win as you’ve never won before? With the right approach, consider it time well spent.

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Why are these three things so important? Because they represent essential building blocks for ensuring your organization is achieving its full potential.

Leaders who are consistently successful at achieving their objectives have a plan that they work.

In just two months, leaders will start sizing up their plans, processes and people as they evaluate this year’s results and start planning for 2008.

As the leader, you’re responsible for getting the most effective performance from your colleagues in order to deliver fully and consistently on your organization’s mission. To achieve and sustain this high level of performance, there are 14 important questions you must ask and answer before even thinking about assembling your team for a planning session.

Here are two.

When should you plan?

The best time to plan is in the fourth quarter of your fiscal year. That’s because your current year is complete enough to assess past performance (which is part of the process) before looking ahead and developing plans for the next fiscal year. Even if your business is seasonal, you’ve probably already got a pretty good idea of how you’ll finish the year. Often, whether or not companies run their fiscal year on a January-December calendar, the period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving is another good time to hold your planning session. Perhaps it’s the back-to-school mentality when summer vacations are behind us and company leaders return to more of a routine. I’ve facilitated planning sessions in the middle of summer, two weeks before Christmas and right after the first of the year. It can happen anytime. Don’t confine your planning to a once- or twice-a-year event if there are pressing opportunities or challenges to address. When scheduling your planning session, select days that work best for you and your team, and give people enough notice so that they can clear their calendars. If some people must travel to attend the session, consider ways to minimize their time out of the office as well as time away from families. The main thing to keep in mind is that some times of the year are better for your business than other times, but anytime is better than not at all.

Who should attend?

Think carefully about who should attend the planning session. Most planning sessions will involve eight to 12 leaders. The group size can grow, but 20 participants (with some exceptions like planning for churches, schools, other not-for-profit organizations, government entities or Fortune 500 companies) should be the top end of your planning group. Everyone who reports directly to you should attend. All senior decision-makers with P&L responsibility. Partners, if that’s how your organization is structured, should be there. What about board members and investors? You know their objectives and they should already be telling you what they think of your performance. Their participation at a planning session can be a distraction. Inform them of the outcomes of your planning session, but think twice about inviting them to participate. [If your organization is a not-for-profit entity, it’s essential that board members be invited – and expected – to participate.] Are there people in your company whose industry or company knowledge makes their attendance worthwhile? Invite them. Many times, more than one sales person is included to obtain their perspective and to help them fully appreciate the issues faced by the rest of the organization. There may be others viewed as influential leaders even though their responsibility is limited. Consider the impact their participation in and commitment to the plan will have on the planning group and the company as a whole. Once you’ve determined who will attend, extend the invitation personally and help each invitee appreciate that their involvement in the planning process is an honor and privilege. Your choice of attendees determines what is discussed, what is decided and what will be done to help your company improve.

If you’re interested in receiving for free all 14 question to help get the most out of your organization, or you would like to order an advance copy of Greg Bustin’s new book or you would like to visit with him about facilitating your next planning session, simply visit our contact us page.

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In our work with senior leaders, we most always are engaged to help organizations accelerate profitable growth or mitigate serious issues that can threaten the organization’s future.

In attempting to shine a spotlight on areas of the company where it can improve and move toward its full potential, we’ve learned from some of history’s greatest thinkers that asking a series of questions will eventually reveal the true nature of the problem or opportunity while illuminating possible solutions.

Cynics may believe that those who ask questions - doctors, lawyers, consultants and sales people at the top of their game are among the best at this - are simply borrowing your watch to tell you the time. There’s some truth to this notion. But the reality is that asking questions of another person while listening intently to what they say (and what they don’t say) while suspending judgment and - even harder - refraining from jumping to conclusions prematurely is an approach that can prove beneficial for those on the receiving end of the questions.

The Greek philosopher Socrates is regarded as the father of using questions to illuminate core truths. Today, the Socratic Method is recognized as one of the most effective forms of getting to the truth - whether it be for a person, a work team or an entire organization. Socrates believed that deep within everything concrete is the idea of the thing itself, or its essence. “Know thyself,” Socrates said, noting that self-knowledge is the starting point of discovery because the greatest source of confusion is the failure to realize how little we know about anything, including ourselves.

Another way to think about how decisions are made is by considering your “blind spots.” We all have them - we are simply oblivious to certain people, situations or even our own actions that others see all too clearly or in a completely different light.

Whether you’re leading an organization, parenting a child, or attempting to sell your products or services to another person, asking smart questions is one of the most effective ways for uncovering a person’s or organization’s true wants, needs, hopes and fears. Asking questions is an effective way of revealing blind spots to those you seek to help.

Critical questions to ask

Voltaire, the 17th century writer, philosopher and lawyer, said that we should, “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”

Over the years, we’ve developed five general categories of questions, and we almost always start an engagement or a strategic planning process with this one: “What do you want to celebrate one year from today?” The difference between talking about “objectives” and making plans for a “celebration” changes the mindset of those answering the question.

A second group of questions begins by asking, “How would you describe the company today?” A follow-up question, “How would your customers describe the company today?” often reveals gaps between what leaders consider the company’s current situation and where it needs to be to meet customer expectations. Based on answers we’ve gotten from some leadership teams, we wondered if these co-workers were describing the same company. We’ve also found that there are often many things a company does that its employees (including its senior leaders) take for granted - indications of hidden value that can be leveraged for the company’s benefit. Other times, there’s an inflated view of a process, product or service. Still other times, no one knows why things are done a certain way - they’ve just always been done that way and no one ever stopped to question why.

A third set of questions explores the ways in which a business interacts with its customers and prospects. How does each step of your operation bring value to your customers? Market leadership, after all, is defined by your customers and stakeholders.

And since value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, research must be gathered to help shape objectives, strategies and to determine the value of your company’s products or services. What do customers and prospects like most and least about your company? What are the barriers customers and prospects must overcome to take the action we desire? What reward can we provide them for taking the action we desire? While market research can be expensive, the most expensive research is none.

A cartoon showing two children playing in a sandbox underscores the importance of asking questions: “I still don’t have all the answers,” says one of the kids, “but I’m beginning to ask the right questions.”

Ultimately, the question that only you as a leader can answer is this one: “What changes are we committed to making?”

Knowing yourself means understanding how you’ll respond in the pressure-cooker environment that’s often created by change. You’ll find that your mettle as a leader is not truly tested until your principles are put to the test. This means principles aren’t principles until they have the potential to cost you something. Money. Power. Position. Lives. Reputation.

Where are your blind spots?

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If you’re like most high-achievers I know, you found some quiet time during the holidays to reflect on 2006 and look ahead to 2007.

Now you’re back at work and facing obstacles and distractions.

Goals created during your year-end reflection or at an offsite planning meeting now seem to float away as unexpected issues emerge. Your fourth-quarter growth spurt has placed new pressure on cash flow. Your most important customers have new needs – and only you can address them (or so it seems). That huge new business opportunity you spent most of 2006 cultivating is ready to move forward, but you’re not sure you have all the necessary people or systems in place to deliver on your promises.

In short, your time is not your own. Whether you’re a CEO or a department head, you really want to achieve your goals so you’re looking for some kind of system that will help you do so.

You’re in luck. The system you need is resting atop your shoulders. It’s between your ears. Attitude – more than any other factor – is the single greatest contributor to achieving the goals you set.

So whether you call the process making New Year’s resolutions, goal-setting, business planning, time management, list-making or something else, leaders who follow seven proven steps achieve more of what they’re after. If these seven steps sound simple, you’re right. They are. But just because they’re simple doesn’t mean they’re not difficult to implement.

1. Be clear about what you want. It all starts with setting clear objectives – whether at the outset of an engagement, an internal project or a New Year. Clarity helps reconcile priorities, time constraints and budgets, and establishes a specific vision of success. Clarity is a critical component of success. If we can’t define success precisely, we can never achieve it.

   Plans of any kind – personal or professional – dissolve when:

   -Goals are abstract or ambiguous
   -You live in the past and only dream about the future
   -You don’t set your attitude to make the required changes
   -You don’t see that what you’re doing today makes a difference toward achieving your goal

   So set clear, measurable objectives. Limit yourself to three measurable goals. Trying to achieve more than three goals will dilute your efforts. When you achieve them, develop three more.

2. Set a deadline. Assigning a deadline to a specific goal makes the goal more attainable. Deadlines are powerful tools. We start our planning process by asking, What do you want to celebrate one year from today? Be specific. Wanting to lose weight is a dream; losing 10 pounds by July 1 is specific.
3. Write it down. Saying it isn’t enough. Committing your goals to writing requires discipline and increases the odds of success. In fact, studies have shown that individuals that commit their goals to writing are 10 times more likely to achieve their goals than those who don’t.
4. Commit to improvement. Ferry Porsche believes “Change is easy, but improvement is far more difficult.” Last August, I started running again after a 20-year hiatus. The first day, I couldn’t jog around the block. The second day was better. And the third day was better still. By the end of the week, I was up to a mile. It’s a mind-set. The choice is yours.
5. Make each day count by holding yourself accountable. Work back from your ultimate goal and break it into bite-size chunks. Review your progress regularly.
6. Never give up. Quitting is a matter of mindset. Resist the urge to give up. Recalibrate your objectives if you must, but don’t quit.
7. Celebrate victories. Reward yourself if your goal is personal. Reward your team if it’s a group goal. Celebrations are important because they acknowledge short-term successes and refresh minds, bodies and spirits for the next step on your goal-getting journey.

In 2006, Lewis Gordon Pugh became the first swimmer ever to complete a long-distance swim in all five oceans of the world – a feat many considered to be the Holy Grail of swimming. He also became the first person to complete a long-distance swim in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.

What drives him? “I never do the same swim twice,” Lewis says. “The next swim must be harder and more challenging, otherwise I am going backwards. Sometimes we set boundaries for ourselves in life, or even worse, we allow others to do so. In many cases, these boundaries are just in our mind and need to be pushed away.”

Put your attitude to work for you in 2007.

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We’re five weeks into the 2006 football season and the contenders are beginning to separate themselves from the pretenders.

How will you and your team finish the season?

Ten of the NFL’s 32 football teams have new coaches this season – a turnover rate of nearly 30 percent. Meanwhile, a Booz Allen Hamilton study shows that a record number of CEOs were punted off the team in 2005, with nearly half of the departures the result of mergers or poor performance.

You can argue that CEOs have less time than ever to satisfy impatient investors and customers, but the harsh reality is that CEOs are paid to increase the value of the organizations they lead. They must find a way to make their organization number one in the minds of investors and customers. A head football coach, likewise, must get grown men to do things they don’t want to do in order to achieve something they all desperately want: win a championship.

So as leadership teams begin to assess the 2006 performance of people, programs and processes and start 2007 planning, it’s appropriate to examine the steps to developing a winning game plan and the characteristics of the most effective coaches and their winning teams.

Six steps to developing a winning game plan

There are six essential steps to developing a winning game plan. Here are two:

1. Assess reality. What do your customers think about your products or services? How’s the morale of your employees? Where are your competitors vulnerable? Our firm helps organizations answer these questions. Objective. Impartial. No sugar-coating. “Find out where their weak side is and then go for it,” said Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne.
2. Leverage your competitive advantage. Third-party research will help you uncover or confirm what your customers value most. Armed with this information, develop a game plan that capitalizes on what you do best that your customers value most. This is how you win. Heading into a championship game, Texas coach Darrell Royal was asked if he planned to open up his run-based offense and pass more often. “We’re going to dance with who brung us,” Royal famously replied – recognition of his team’s competitive advantage.

Characteristics of winning teams

An examination of winning professional football teams over the 40 years since the Super Bowl was first played reveals a remarkably short list of characteristics that championship teams share. Here are two:

1. Take time to plan. Bill Belichik has guided New Engald to three Super Bowl championships and developed the defensive game plan that helped the New York Giants win two Super Bowls, including an upset of the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV. This game plan is preserved in the Football Hall of Fame. It’s no surprise that Belichick places a premium on planning. He uses preparation to neutralize opponents’ strengths and exploit their weaknesses. “It is better to be prepared and never have the opportunity than to have the opportunity and not be prepared,” says Bilichick.

   Do you and your organization take time to plan?

2. Consistently high levels of execution. After the objectives have been set, the strategies selected and the team engaged, it all comes down to execution. Cliff Harris, a four-time All-Pro as the star safety on the Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl-winning teams, tells a story about Coach Tom Landry’s approach to winning football games. Harris couldn’t wait to hear Landry’s thoughts as the team prepared for its first game that season. Harris was on the front row waiting for Landry to deliver a pep talk like he’d never heard before. Landry stepped to the front of the room and said, “You’re a great team. You’ve got a good game plan that you’ve studied. You’ve practiced hard. Let’s go execute.” That was it. No “Win-one-for-the-Gipper” speech. No yelling. No emotion. “Coach Landry brought a business-like approach to the game of football, and that’s one of the reasons he was such a winner,” says Harris. There’s no question that Tom Landry was an inspiration to his team and had other ways of motivating players. All great coaches and, for that matter, business leaders do. But Coach Landry’s belief – built on selecting talented players, studying and practicing hard and developing a thoughtful game plan – was that it’s ultimately consistent execution that wins football games.

   Perform or perish. Are you tracking performance? Have you established consequences to reward success and penalize mediocrity?

“Winning is not a sometime thing”

“Running a football team,” said legendary Green Bay Packers coach, “is no different than running any other kind of organization: an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win — to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is. Winning is not a sometime thing.  It’s an all time thing.  You don’t win once in a while.  You don’t do things right once in a while.  You do them right all the time.  Winning is a habit.  Unfortunately, so is losing.”

Do you have what it takes to win? As you enter 2007, will you be punting away time, money and opportunities, or kicking the extra points that follow game-changing touchdowns?

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You have 100 days remaining in the year to achieve your 2006 business objectives.

Does this fact surprise you? Is this a concept that piques your curiosity? Or a statement with which you disagree?

“How can there be 100 days left in the year when it’s only July?” you may wonder. Well, when you subtract weekends, a week or two for vacation and time off for holidays, you’re left with about 100 business days in this year. You may quibble and say you don’t take vacations (a huge mistake for leaders, by the way) or that you always work on holidays. Okay.

Or you may be thinking, “Our business isn’t based on a calendar fiscal year, so saying there are only 100 days left in the year is flat-out wrong.” Okay.

If these and other thoughts are drifting through your mind, you’re missing the bigger point.

Here it is: Now is a good time to catch your breath, assess your position and begin making any adjustments that will allow your organization to finish the second half of 2006 strong.

But this time of year also means that if you’ve not already achieved or made significant progress toward achieving the goals you set for yourself and your organization months ago, it will now take more effort to accomplish what you said you wanted on January 1.

When you miss the first month’s target, it’s hard to catch up. When you miss your first-quarter target, it’s even harder. So if you’re still behind your plan in July, you have got one monster hill to climb to come out on top.

What’s to be done?

Unleash the power of the present

Have you ever wondered what our most precious commodity is? It’s time. Because once we lose it we’ll never get it back.

One reason most people (and countless organizations) fail to achieve goals is the failure to “live in the now” – to unleash the power of the present.

Living in the now is critical because the past is over – you can’t change it. The future is uncertain – you can’t foresee it. The past and the future are illusions. Only the present is within our grasp and, God willing, it’s the closest thing under our control.

By focusing on the present, you commit yourself to change and to success. This attitude embraces the idea that if you act today and do the things that you commit to doing, you can succeed. “Successful people,” said Earl Nightingale, “are willing to do the things unsuccessful people are not.”

But annual plans dissolve when goals seem too abstract. Or when we live in the past and dream in the future. Or when we don’t set our attitude to make the required changes, figuring it’s more comfortable living with the devil we know rather than the devil we don’t know. Or when we don’t see that what we’re doing today makes a difference toward achieving our goal. These thoughts and others like them are nothing but excuses.

Clarity is key

Clarity is essential to goal-setting and what I call goal-getting. Clarity requires discipline. You must:

• Be very specific about what you want.
• Set a deadline
• Write it down

Wanting to lose weight is a dream; losing 10 lbs. by Labor Day is specific. Wanting to grow sales is a dream; increasing your revenue by adding five new accounts by December 1 is specific.

Assigning a deadline to a specific goal sharpens your focus, and increases the odds of attaining the goal. Deadlines are powerful tools. In our work with companies, we use a series of 100 questions to uncover opportunities, examine problems, gain agreement and set goals. The first question we always ask is: What do you want to celebrate one year from today? Because if you don’t achieve your 12-month objectives, you can forget about your 3- and 5-year plans. It’s healthy to dream, and we leave room for that as we work with companies, but we must be focused on achieving specific, concrete, doable, measurable goals by a certain date.

Committing goals to paper (or disc) allows you to preserve your thinking and measure progress. Saying it isn’t enough; writing down goals – whether they’re personal goals or company objectives – requires discipline and increases the chances of success. What are we doing? Who’s doing it? By when? At what cost? For what expected result?

Just do it

There’s a phenomenon we’ve observed over the years that occurs in organizations every September regardless of whether they are operating on a calendar fiscal year or not. It’s the Back-To-School Syndrome.

Once the vacations are memories and the kids are back in school, exceptional organizations – for-profit and not-for-profit alike – adopt their own Back-To-School mentality. They re-focus on planning to do more of what’s working, and they examine their options for jettisoning under-performing programs, products, processes and people.

Thomas Watson, the leader who turned IBM into a juggernaut, said, “The outstanding leaders of every age are those who set their own quotas and constantly exceed them.”
Here are six deceptively simple but remarkably powerful ways to come out on top:

1. Stay focused on the things critical to your success. Avoid distractions.
2. Communicate these priorities regularly and consistently to your team.
3. Track progress. What gets measured is what gets done.
4. Hold people accountable – starting with yourself.
5. Celebrate victories – even small ones. Doing so recognizes progress and builds morale.
6. Replicate successes and eliminate (but learn from) mistakes.

What will you do with your 100 days?

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