Committed to Excellence

In Change Your Thinking Change Your Life, Brian Tracy writes how you think and feel about yourself is determined by how effective you feel you are in the important things you do. To be with the top 10% in our field we have to decide to “be the best”. The market pays superior rewards only for superior performance. Ambition is the most important quality of high-achieving people. Our self-esteem is our power source. The more we like and respect our self the better we do at everything we attempt. High levels of courage and confidence will help us break the bonds of what could hold us back from reaching our goals.

To succeed at our jobs we need to identify the key result areas (tasks that have to be done well) of our job and make a plan to improve in each area. To improve in an area we first need to measure how well we are doing. That gives us a baseline. Then we identify our lowest scoring areas and make a plan to improve in those areas as quickly as possible. We should think of ourselves as a personal service corporation and develop a personal strategic plan. Strategic plans are aimed at reorganizing resources and activities in such a way that we achieve a higher rate of return. We want to get a good return on our energy.

Companies need a competitive advantage or unique selling proposition to grow. We are not different. We must develop an area of uniqueness. First we have to ask our self: What is our competitive advantage? What are we excellent at doing? What is it we want to do better than anyone else? What unique set of skills do we possess? Next is to look at the trends in our industry and determine what our competitive advantage should be in three to five years? If you are not sure, ask your boss or co-workers.

If you are like me, you are now wondering… What is my competitive advantage…what makes me unique? Brian Tracy writes to for us to think back into our past. What fascinated us? What holds our attention? What do we enjoy to read, talk about and learn about? Ask friends and family what they think. Often people around you can see clearly what you should be doing, even if you cannot see our self. Successful people do what they love to do. But we need to be prepared to walk away from doing what we are currently doing. We need to have the courage to do what we love.

Personal Strategic Planning has several concepts that will improve our results.
• Draw the line. – Take a “time-out” from life and work to ask yourself, “If there is anything in your life (knowing what you know now) you would not get into or start up gain if you had to do it over? Why keep trying to make something work that you wouldn’t even get into if you had to do it over again.
• Hold your feet to the fire. – Is there a relationship – personal or business – that knowing what you know now, you wouldn’t get into today? Is there a business process, procedure, activity, investment you wouldn’t get into today? If it is not working, abandon it and do something else.
• 80/20 rule. – This rule states that 80% of our results comes from 20% of our activities. We must discipline ourselves to focus on the one or two things we can do that are more important and valuable than the eight to ten other things.

Time is our most valuable asset and our scarcest resource. We cannot save time, we can only spend it. If we want a different future, we have to spend our time differently. Time is like money. Spend it or invest it. Therefore, everything we do, we need to make sure we are making wise choices and eliminate activities that do not give us a high return on our energy.

To summarize, a Personal Strategic Plan needs to be:
• Specialized
• Differentiate
• Segment – identify our ideal “customers
• Concentrate – focus
As President of our own life and career, we must become excellent and continue to get better in one to two areas that the market will pay for. Do not leave nothing to chance. Do not sit around hoping for a miracle or wishing for a lucky break… it is up to us!