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Why Bother With A Plan?

February 26, 2012 By 1 Comment
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The first business plan for my coaching practice was written on the back of a placemat while waiting for a lobster in an out-of-the-way shack in Maine. It was 2004, and I was on my way to visit some friends for a little R&R. I started thinking about my business and made a few notes:

- How much money I wanted to make in the next year

- How I would price my services to meet my income goals

- How many clients that meant I needed

- What kind of programs that meant I needed to offer

- What kind of additional training I would need

- How I would talk about my services

While I deconstructed a delicious lobster, I noodled on my plan. And when I removed the very attractive bib from around my neck and paid my check, I had a strong, workable direction for my business.

And I put that one-year plan in my purse and didn’t look at it again for six months.

Surprisingly, though, in that six months, I had done everything on my plan. Ahead of plan.

That’s right – I didn’t obsess, or over-think. I just executed.

Because the mere process of creating the plan – just putting my to-dos top of mind – catalyzed my action.

Now, there are those who detest plans. Maybe because they think plans are too rigid, don’t allow for creativity, aren’t that spontaneous, won’t accommodate serendipity.

[These people tend to - in Myers-Briggs talk - have a strong preference for "Perceiving", the dear darlings. They value flexibility above all and will do anything in their power to preserve their ability to go with the flow. And I completely get it. That's why I started this post of with the lobster story - just to show all those P people that planning can be easy. And tasty.]

A great plan, though, is not judged on how many tabs, tables and cross-references it includes.

A great plan is judged on how well it works.

With a plan, you know where to put your energy.

With a plan, you have a direction.

With a plan, you know what to say a whole-hearted “Yes!” to, and what to put in the “When There’s Time” file.

And planning can be easy. Easy-peasy.

Want to do one yourself? OK, take out a placemat-sized piece of paper. [lobster bib always optional.]

Answer these prompts:

- What do you want right now, more than anything?

- What’s your life going to be like when you get what you want? What’s it going to look like?

- Who are you when you’re at your best? What elements are in place? Which of these things already support getting what you want?

- What’s the first thing you need to do?

- Whose help do you need to do it?

- When can you start?

Focus, and put your best effort into these questions. When you’re done, you’ll realize that you have a plan, sugar.

Then fold it up and put it in your pocket.

And I’ll bet you, in six months, you’ve accomplished everything that needs doing.

Bet you a lobster dinner.

 

***

If you need a little help getting your plan together, there are still a few slots available for this Friday’s Get Yourself A Plan Retreat in Arlington, VA.  If you live outside the DC-area, you can sign up for the Virtual version of the Retreat.  Registration closes for the live event on Monday, February 27th, and on Wednesday, February 29th for the Virtual Retreat.

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Filed Under: Blog, Career Coaching, Getting Unstuck Tagged With: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Integrity

January 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Noticed a little bit of conversation these days about politics? Not only in the U.S., where we seem to have a permanent presidential campaign in place, but also in Europe, in Asia, in South America…

Commentators in this country continue to refer to the nation suffering from a “crisis of confidence”. Maybe that’s true.

Maybe we are tired of the law partner who pockets a record bonus but tells the associates and support staff that there’s no money – again this year – for their raise.

Perhaps we’re too used to hearing about the minister with the $100,000 Mercedes parked in front of his mansion.

It could be that we’re fed up with hearing that people are going to “change Washington” and yet nothing ends up getting done.

We see real incongruence between what we expect and what we get, and that’s precisely how our confidence is undermined.

That’s a word I’m loving these days: Congruence.

It’s when things line up. It’s when what you see is what you get.

Congruence is truth.

Congruence is whole.

Congruence makes sense.

And a person who is congruent – they mean what they say, and predictably do what they say they will – is truly a person of integrity. Pundits may see the world suffering from a crisis of confidence, but I’d call it an Integrity Deficit.

Somehow or other, many leaders – some of them self-appointed – seem to have forgotten that people eagerly follow those with integrity. Whether you’re a politician, an office manager or a life coach, being a person who means what she says, and does what she says she’s going to do, is the person who’s really successful.

Now, we all know people whose integrity is, shall we say, “compromised”, and yet they seem to thrive and maybe even get ahead.

That’s an incongruence right there, huh?

But what goes around comes around, and I have never, ever met an incongruent person whose personal narrative ends well. Have you?

That karma thing is plenty powerful.

And it always works.

So, now is as good a time as any to assess your own personal integrity.

  • Do you ever say yes when you mean no, and wince about it shortly after the words have left your mouth?
  • Do you consistently miss deadlines and break commitments?
  • Do you fib about having sent in the payment, when really you haven’t even written the check yet?
  • Do you concoct a story about where you just were, rather than admitting what you were really doing?

OK, you’re human.  But do you feel good about this stuff? Or does it add to your stress?  Create overwhelm?

Then get congruent, baby.

Start in a small way.  Start by making only those commitments you know you can meet. And then acknowledge to yourself that you did what you said you’d do. Maybe even give yourself a little reward for that.

And, make an effort to really watch your words.  In The Four Agreements, author Don Miguel Ruiz suggests that one way to insure happiness is to:

“Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”

I hear you – truth and love in the workplace? Just for a minute, drop your skepticism and think about it a different way.

I know from experience that shifting toward integrity will profoundly change your work experience. It will profoundly change your marriage, your parenting, your friendships and everything else in your world.

Integrity changes anything it touches for the better.

That is the truth.

You know, I have a dream.  I dream that one day our global crisis of confidence will be replaced with the peace, certainty and progress that integrity engenders.

But that will only happen – our leaders will only become people of integrity – if we, first, become so ourselves.

 

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Career Coaching, Getting Unstuck, Happier Living Tagged With: , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

How To Get A Job – 3 Stories

October 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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Three stories.  All told last week.  Three different people.  Three job opportunities.

Only one gets the position.

Read on.

Sophie went into her interview full of confidence.  Piece of cake. She was highly qualified, and met the job description perfectly. Her interviewer – an older woman.  Another piece of cake. Sophie leaned back, relaxed and prepared to ace the interview.

Then a question came – a tough question – and Sophie wasn’t prepared. She assumed this older lady was going to be an easy touch. Sophie stammered.  Sophie couldn’t find the right words. Sophie felt flummoxed.

She went from leaning back to leaning forward.  Heart racing.  Bombing it.

She did not get the job.

Janice went into her interview a little panicked.  Panic that had started two and a half years ago when she lost her job. And immediately went on a large contract that ended up getting pulled. And then tried consulting. But couldn’t generate any work. She feels like the last couple of years have been all about failure after failure. Plus, she has the kids, and then there’s her husband, and they all have their demands on her time.  She really thinks they would prefer her to stay home and take care of them all day. And, frankly, a part of her would like that, too.

But women who don’t work – who are they? And is it really reasonable to ask her husband to shoulder all the expenses? Especially in this economy.

So Janice went into the interview conflicted. And the energy she gave off to the interviewer was confusing.  Did she want the job, or not?  Because Janice asked few questions, and never really talked about her own strengths and capacity.  She mostly sat there, looking nervous.

She did not get the job.

Kate didn’t have a job interview this week, but she got a new job.

How?

Kate had explored how she could be happier in her work. She analyzed who she enjoyed working with, and what kind of work energized her. Then, she identified people and organizations she’d like to work with, and developed a pitch about how she could specifically help them – how she could do what’s not getting done, and do it efficiently.

And then at a meeting already scheduled with one of her target companies – a client of hers – she said, “What if I joined your team and took care of this for you?”  Eyes lit up.  Hands were shaken.

And she had the job.

What do these stories tell you?

They tell me that not only has the economy changed, but so has hiring.  No longer are organizations hiring warm bodies because the plan says there are six people in that department and we only have five.  Today, organizations hire because they are in pain.  Something’s not getting done.  Something important, that affects the bottom line.  And the maxed out people currently in the department are already doing the work of three people. Each.

So someone gets hired. One someone.

Someone who makes a good case for himself.  Someone who has good energy.  Someone who is not afraid to take a little risk to get what they want.

This is the way people are getting hired.  These are the new rules.

If you are looking for work, check yourself.  Are you playing by the old rules, or the new ones?

 

 

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Filed Under: Career Coaching, Getting Unstuck, Managing Change Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment

Can’t Go Back

September 19, 2011 By 3 Comments
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See this picture?  This was a great day.  A day when I was at my best. A day when I was surrounded by friends, doing something important, using all my skills.

And as much as I might like to, I can never go back.

The day was January 20, 1989.  The group picture above, from left to right – Kathleen, Bobby, Ashley, Rick, Mark, me – were the White House staff assigned to execute President and Mrs. Reagan’s departure from Andrews Air Force base, back to California and private life.  Just over my shoulder in this shot, you can see the Presidential aircraft.  The little white pin each of us are wearing?  The White House Staff pin, issued by the Secret Service, which meant we had all-access, everywhere.

It was a great day.  And a day of much change.  That morning, I woke as a member of the White House staff.  I was 28 years old, had no gray hair, and no children.  What I did have were badges, and pins, and credentials that could get me anywhere I wanted to go.  That day, I put my White House-issued radio on my hip, inserted my earpiece in my left ear and went to do my job.

And did it well.

And at precisely 12:01pm that Friday, a new President was sworn in and I was out of a job.

None of my badges, pins or credentials mattered. At 12:01pm I had no office to go to.  No work to do.  No special status.

I was just me.  Really good at my job, and unemployed.

Sometimes things change in a flash, don’t they?

In the subsequent years, I’d look at this picture and long to go back to this day, to these people.  Especially these people.  Because our team was so good at our work, and we never had the chance to do it again. Not in that configuration. Not for that President. Not at the White House. Not at Andrews.

And I want to go back for another reason, too.   Ashley lost her husband suddenly in 1998, and then we lost Kathleen in 1999 to ovarian cancer. Rick’s wife Pam died in 2007. Bobby’s in New York, I mostly see Mark on TV, Rick travels the world, Ashley is out in California.   This moment frozen in time – when we were young, we were healthy, we were so good at what we did – represents a time that was unimaginably precious. I only realized how precious much later.

Loving that time, and loving who I was then is an awareness which points me toward greater understanding of who I am at my best.  That’s the greatest gift of the past.

But now I know, as wonderful as it was:

I cannot go back because it the past only exists in memories.

You can’t go back.  This picture captures just one moment in time, and maybe the past is simply a series of moments in time.  Which by the time you note them, have already elapsed.

With so much turmoil and tumult in the world today, many of us are casting our minds back and saying things like, “I wish I still had that job.”  Or, “I never should have left that job.” Or cataloging a lifetime of “mistakes”.   I must hear it every week.  That job you loved and left?  Let me ask you this: Who’s still there? Has the mission changed? Have you changed? Is it really the same? Could it possibly be the same? Is anything the same about the time and place… and you?

No, because the precise alignment of people and place and time and mission and purpose is fleeting.

It’s like some wonderful experiment where a drop of Bobby plus an ounce of Kathleen and a measure of Ashley and a dollop of Rick and a helping of Mark and me yielded magic.  Pure magic.  True excellence.

Which is the real thing I loved about that time and place and people.

When I seek that – that one true thing – in what I’m doing now, then the magic can truly be replicated.  Anew.  Right now.  Today.

Perhaps you can learn from your longing for the past.  What’s it tell you about what you miss?  Who were you at your best, at that time of your life?  And what does that tell you that you need more of right now?

 

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Filed Under: Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Happier Living Tagged With: , , , , , , 3 Comments

Happy New (Fill In The Blank)!

January 3, 2010 By 1 Comment

OK, I live with teenagers. And teenagers are amazing, wonderful, vexing creatures. They are truly experimenters – trying on this idea, that sweater, this hairstyle, that belief system.

I love them.

Because they remind me to think outside the box and change things up, too.

Let me ask you this: Why is it, just because we started a new calendar year, that people do all sorts of planning, resolutions and intention-setting? (“Calendars are arbitrary and made up by some ancient Romans anyway, Mom,” says the Dude, true to teen form.)

Well, my coach brain says: “Doesn’t really matter. Today’s just as good as any other day.”

And I do love me a good plan. So, I jumped right on in, regardless of who made the calendar.  Just before the end of 2009, I released a Personal Planning Tool and about a thousand people have downloaded it.   You can, too, by clicking on the highlighted text.

What I tried to do with the tool is create a way to make a Plan That Works.

But let’s take a minute to talk about change. Because I can make all the plans I want, and if I don’t execute them… they ain’t nothing but paper.

And if I don’t execute them, it’s likely because I’m afraid of change.

Laurie would like to leave her job. She’s been there five years, there’s no room for growth, her co-workers are not “her people” and she doesn’t fit in.  It’s time to go.  But she can’t.  Oh, she routinely tries.  She puts together a resume, sends out one or two, has a coffee with a prospect and gets cold feet and stops looking.

Why?

Because she’s scared.  Because she tells herself that maybe  things aren’t really that bad where she is, that maybe she’s unhireable, maybe she needs that Master’s degree, maybe all jobs are disgusting, time-sucking, mind-numbing black holes – so in that case why not stay in the time-sucking, mind-numbing black hole that she knows?

Here’s the real thing holding Linda back – she sees no real, positive outcome to making a change.

Not one positive thing.

And until she can see one, she’s not going to execute her plan.

Same goes for Kristen, who wants to lose 40 pounds.  Ask her to envision an outcome to that kind of weight loss, and if she’s honest with you (and herself) she’d say: “People would expect more from me, because they would see that I can make things happen. Oh, wow, I might have to dress better. I might look like a hoochie-mama. I might find someone other than my husband attractive, I might get divorced, I might have to move. What about my kids? I dunno, losing weight would mean I have to change too much.”

Who would lose weight with that kind of dismal future in mind?

When you complete your Personal Planning Tool, there might be things you’ll need to change.  And you might feel some teensy (or humongous) resistance.  That’s the moment to say to yourself, “What will happen if I really do this?”  Listen to the negative outcomes and learn everything you can about your fears. But don’t let fear stop you, baby.  Immediately start focusing on one positive outcome.  Just one.

“If I find a new job, I can have more friends.”

“If I lose 40 pounds, I can start skiing again.”

Just one positive thing.  It’ll do the trick.

So, Happy New (Fill In The Blank)!  How are you going to fill your blank?

Filed Under: Career Coaching, Getting Unstuck, Managing Change Tagged With: , , , , 1 Comment
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