What’s the plan?

Weekly Insights

By: Ed Varhola | Posted on September 6, 2018

Throughout my adult life, I have been fortunate to mentor and coach business professionals who are leading teams and organizations and are ultimately responsible for their employees’ success. I have also mentored and coached youth football players who have relied on me to lead them to victory every Saturday morning.

As I sit back and reflect on these roles, I begin to think about the responsibility we, as leaders, have to actually achieve success. For instance, when I was coaching football, if we lost – what was my role as the leader? After all, I put the plan together. Was it my fault that it wasn’t executed? Or did I not communicate what was needed in order to be successful?

In business, leaders claim to have strategic plans for their organizations. These strategic plans are updated on an annual basis during an offsite retreat where the executive team collaborates to gather all of their hot-topic words or phrases on a nice poster. They then shake hands, and voila – a strategic plan that will guide their entire organization for the next twelve months is produced.

Herein lies the problem: a strategic plan is not something that you do. It is not something where you can check boxes and mark as complete. A strategic plan is something that must be the foundation of your organization’s journey. It should reflect where you want to lead your team and define the impact that it will make once achieved.

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Muscle Memory Challenge

Consider this: How often do you start to work on something and then get distracted by the internet, social media, a colleague or even another piece of work? Distractions are everywhere in an office and make focusing on a singular task virtually impossible. This week's muscle memory challenge is a way to eliminate those distractions and increase your focus on one task. The Pomodoro Technique is the method of setting a twenty-five minute time period for yourself to shut out all other distractions and focus solely on the task at hand. Shut your door and put away all electronic devices. Once you have eliminated all distractions, set a timer for yourself. Practice these short twenty-five minute periods of "shutting off" from everything but the task at hand and see how many projects you are able to tackle.

We want to hear from you! Give it a try this week and shoot us an email (newsletter@solutions21.com) to let us know about your experience with the MMC. Your stories will be published in next week's newsletter!

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Develop These 5 Communication Skills to Succeed at Business
Why you should read it: Because "speaking clearly, in written and verbal forms, makes a big difference in your business and environment." When leading groups of people, "the language you use is just as important as how you approach goals and problems." Take a look at these five good communication skills that will help you and your team succeed.

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Why you should read it: Because "doing something typically feels better than doing nothing." We tend to overestimate our ability to control events that happen without any influence of our own. Read about the buttons that we push everyday that may not be working after all.

What We are Listening to...

A Decision Making Jedi
The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
Why you should listen: Because there is always room to improve, especially when it comes to the decisions we make. Host Shane Parrish talks about how to improve your decision making and how to build better decision making models. From base rates to training your intuition, this episode of "The Knowledge Project" will help any leader improve their decision making skills

Quote of the Week

“The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”

What People are Saying...

Writing my goals for the next day before I leave the office was something I never considered. Doing this for a few days has already made my mornings more productive.
-Tim Hinkle on 9/3's MMC

Body language is something I have not been very conscious of in my early professional career. Practicing eye contact and smiling this past week at clients has brought me outside of my comfort zone for the better!
-John Resetar on 8/27's MMC

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