10 habits to change your life.

 

Ready to change your life?
Start with these habits.

Success isn’t about non-stop work.
It’s about smart, focused effort.

Here are the top 10 habits to start today:
1.       Define Your Direction
↳ Define your biggest dream.
↳ Know what truly matters to you.

2.       Create a Game Plan
↳ Break your goal into key steps.
↳ Plan backward with clear milestones.

3.       Invest in Yourself
↳ Spend on tools that support your goals.
↳ Prioritize what truly helps you progress.

4.       Cut Out the Noise
↳ Let go of time-wasters and negativity.
↳ Avoid relationships that hold you back.

5.       Build Daily Habits
↳ Start your day with purpose.
↳ Make learning and progress daily priorities.

6.       Strengthen Your Mind
↳ Practice mindfulness every day.
↳ See setbacks as steps to growth.

7.       Choose Your Circle Wisely
↳ Surround yourself with positivity.
↳ Engage with uplifting and inspiring people.

8.       Put Yourself First
↳ Get enough rest to recharge.
↳ Balance work and life to stay energized.

9.       Make Bold Moves
↳ Commit fully to your goals.
↳ Act now—don’t wait for the perfect time.

10. Track Your Wins
↳ Regularly review your progress.
↳ Celebrate every small victory.

Your life is shaped by the habits you choose today.
Small actions build into powerful outcomes over time.

https://tinyurl.com/4552kean

Momentum towards useful change

How to Think Differently to Drive Results Innovation Training and Development 

Michael Cardus

Imagine a solved version of the problematic situation by:

• making exceptions into the rule,
• changing the location of the complaint pattern,
• changing who is involved in the complaint pattern,
• changing the order of the steps involved,
• adding a new element or step to the complaint pattern,
• increasing the duration of the pattern,
• introducing arbitrary starting and stopping,
• increasing the frequency of the pattern,
• changing the modality of the problematic behavior.

– Steve de Shazer – Clues pp 99

Each of the above suggestions for change that is different are useful as a skeleton-key to break a pattern and cause you to take notice of what is different and what difference that makes.

I am cautious about the work ‘imagine’  because it may lead us to believe that we are creating a utopian end point.

I’ve argued before that utopian end points ignore the past, create self-imposed stress, and increase resistance due to the fact that they are generally achievable.  In this context imagine is used to hold and slightly vary a pattern of thinking that we currently have in the face of the problem.

Leadership, change, problem solving is contextual interaction. There is an example of something that is a problem and it is worth improving. Knowing the context and observing the interactional difference within the suggestions above may be a skeleton-key that is close enough to open the door to cooperation, then create some momentum towards useful change.

The difference is where the progress is found

Michael Cardus

Note the differences between any hypothetical solutions and the complaint. – Steve de Shazer – Clues pp 99

IN EARLIER POSTS I SHARE 4 USEFUL AREAS TO LOOK FOR PROGRESS CLUES OF CHANGE:

1. Change happens when it seems reasonable
2. Exception to the norm is change
3. Change through a small nudge
4. Digger deeper taints change through assumptions

Noticing what is different and putting difference to work is a task of leadership. When leaders notice what is different and are able to put difference to work they are noticing how change happens, where change matters and what difference it makes to the team.

We become myopic and solipsistic when challenged and resisted. A wonderful response that works, otherwise it would not happen. This can be a counter-intuitive. In some change efforts the idea is bad and resistance is what’s needed. As a leader being thoughtful about difference and a bad idea are a useful leadership capacity.

As you listen to the change documenting, actually writing down, differences teams and people share between the change that seems reasonable and the complaint / resistance may create enough of a landscape to make the next decision.

The difference is where the progress clues are found.

Structure Conduct Performance

Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) is a paradigm coming from industrial economics (1960s and 1970s).

It states that performance (of entire markets and of firms operating in these markets) depends on various elements of market structure (e.g. entry barriers, market concentration, and number and size of competitors), as well as different forms of firm conduct and strategic behaviour (e.g. capacity utilization, marketing, innovation).

The framework is an interesting one to describe an industry (e.g. if you are looking at a potential acquisition opportunity which is a bit outside of your core markets), and get a better understanding of what’s happening and why. A number of academics have worked with this framework, and developed quantitative measures of market concentrations, to then study how this affected conduct and performance.

But the attached example shows that the SCP framework can also be used descriptively, and the key words listed on the first PPT page are a good checklist to remember.

One criticism of the framework: It is obviously quite deterministic and linear. Structure is the exogenous (explanatory) variable, everything else is dependent of that. In reality, structure itself is probably also affected by firms’ conduct.

5 Practices for Delivering Strategic Change

Elizabeth Harrin

Companies that are good at organizational change management complete twice as many strategic initiatives that meet their original time, budget and content goals.
The study, called Enabling Organizational Change through Strategic Initiatives, from PMI, shows that if you are good at change management, your organization will:

· Meet the goals of strategic initiatives 65% of the time
· Complete strategic initiatives on time 64% of the time
· Complete strategic initiatives on budget 63% of the time.

When you compare those figures to companies who are minimally effective at delivering change, they are almost double in every case.The study identifies 5 practices that are important for delivering change effectively, and therefore for completing your strategic projects successfully. Let’s take a look and see how you can implement these in your business.

1. Well-defined milestones and metrics

Clear measures will help you monitor and control initiatives that implement strategy. Every initiative should have clear success criteria. These set out exactly what success looks like and how the team will know when it has been achieved. You can then measure against these during the project (you’ll have to put sensible metrics in place to do this if they are not already there).

Milestones are points on the project plan that mark a significant event, such as the start or end of a phase. These allow you to track progress against the project’s schedule and identify any slippage.

In your organization: Make sure every project has success criteria set in the business case. These should be monitored and tracked throughout the life of the project to ensure it is still a viable initiative. Each project should also have defined milestones – at least one per project phase.

2. Committed senior management

Are the business leaders at the top of your organization committed to innovation and growth? Implementing strategy is sometimes a leap of faith, and you need to know that your colleagues are with you. A senior management team that is dedicated to the delivery of your strategy is essential if you want it to have any chance of success.

In your organization: Work with your peers and those above you to drive support for the strategic initiatives. This shouldn’t be difficult: there should be a clear link between the project and the strategic objective it supports. While companies do have to do tactical work throughout the year, these strategic projects should have high-level support and oversight.

3. Ownership and accountability

People need to feel as if they ‘own’ their part of the strategy. While no one person is solely responsible for completing every single task, there should be someone in an authority position who is accountable for the success of the initiative overall. Their team members should take ownership for the tasks that are assigned to them.

In your organization: Make sure that there are clear lines of responsibility. Set out roles and responsibilities at the start of every initiative. Keep people accountable by building targets into their personal performance objectives for the year. Put methods in place to track progress and ensure your key personnel are empowered to deliver.

4. Standardized project management practices

Standardized project management practices are in place in 86% of businesses who manage strategic change effectively. This means defining processes for all elements of the project life cycle including:

· Preparation and submission of business cases
· Project selection in alignment with strategic goals
· Resource allocation
· Change, risk and issue management
· Budget management and financial forecasting.

Good governance helps ensure that these processes are adhered to. Processes should be scaleable: not all strategic initiatives have huge budgets and take a long time. To ensure your delivery teams stay nimble and innovative (and not bogged down by too much paperwork) only apply the level of process that you need to get the job done.

In your organization: Find out how many project managers have had formal training in the last 12 months. Upskill those who haven’t. Consider investing in formal accreditation such as credentials from PMI, or the IPMA organization in your country.

5. Strong sponsorship

Any strategic initiative needs an executive sponsor. Unfortunately, those people who end up in the role haven’t always had prior experience of working on business-critical projects. Sponsors should be able to adequately support the team they are working with who, after all, are doing the hands-on work of delivering the strategy.

The executives who sponsor strategic initiatives should be charismatic and influential people within the organization who can adequately:

· Remove roadblocks
· Champion the initiative at all levels of the  organization
· Motivate the team
· Negotiate for resources
· Influence other senior leaders.

The project sponsor should also constantly be monitoring progress at a high level to ensure the project is still on track to deliver something of value and move the business closer to achieving its strategic goals.

In your organization: Consider putting those senior managers who sponsor projects through a program of sponsor training. Make sure they understand how to interpret project data. Give them the tools they need to unblock problems for their project teams.

These five practices will help you deliver strategic change successful in your organization. Have you tried out these tips? Let us know how they helped you in the comments below.