Is Your Success Recipe Balanced?

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Recipe Disaster

One of the things I like to do to relax is cook. A couple of years ago I decided to make a special treat for everyone and I wanted to make a Caramel Flan for dessert. Now I had never made one before and so I had to find a recipe and follow it closely. One of the ingredients in the recipe was one cap (capfull) of Vanilla Extract. Well, I misread the recipe and thought it said one cup of Vanilla Extract. I thought that was extraordinary but the recipe must be right. So I had to run to store and buy more vanilla and added one cup of Vanilla Extract to the mix.

Well, as you may guess, the result was horrible. The smell and taste of the vanilla was so overpowering that no one could eat it and we had to throw it out!

I had the right ingredients but I didn’t have them in the right balance.

Seeking Balance

As an entrepreneur, as a small businessman, and as a leader we make those choices for balance on a daily basis. We recognize the importance of balance but it is very hard to achieve.

We need to keep things in perspective and understand first of all that you are never going to achieve perfect balance in our lives. There are always going to be things that happen daily that tip the scale one way or the other. No matter how good our plans are, life will get in the way of our quest to achieve balance.

What’s important to us is progress, not perfection.

Right Ingredients, Right Mix

A key to making progress is having the right ingredients in the right mixture.

The right skills in the right quantities
The right knowledge and information we need to make good decisions
The right spirtual foundation
The right team members around us
The right environment

Again, understand it will be a continual struggle. We want progress and not perfection. You will make balance choices each day and the scales will tip first to one side and then the other. The real balance is in the choices of how we spend our time and where it is most important to spend it now. Being consistent with those choices will help move us towards balance.

[snaptweet]

Don’t try to balance your life; work, home, church, community, friends. Instead, try to be consistent. Consistency seeks its own balance.

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Here’s a few things that will help you along towards making progress on achieving balance:

Establish priorities in advance – when your priorities are clear, decisions about where to spend your time become easier.
Gather an effective team – Without the support of people around you, you tend to view yourself as indispensable. When you do that, leaving work becomes harder to do. A good team gives you confidence.
Seek wise counsel to give you perspective – We all need someone to take our blinders off and see other points of view.
Find an accountability partner – Someone to help hold your responsible for your commitments. Someone who is preferably not your spouse or business partner.

Have you achieved balance? What things do you do on a daily basis to balance you life?

What’s a Real Lasting Impression?

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Leaving a Legacy

Most people think about legacy. They think about living on, making a lasting impression. They place it in buildings, programs, and offspring. But do they really know what a legacy is?

A legacy is something that carries on; something that continues on. It is something that goes beyond our time and makes a difference and an impact on the world in some way, shape, or form. Anybody can be a flash-in-the-pan, but it takes somebody with background and with depth to create a lasting legacy.

What does that have to do with business or being a leader?

It’s because the impact we want to make in this world…if you’re a small businessperson and you went into business because you want to make a difference, not just make a buck (although that’s nice too). If you are a leader, it’s because you want to make an impact in the lives of other people. You thought you could bring a team together and make great things happen. And those great things need to go beyond just you.

That’s what building a legacy is all about and that’s why it is critical for us to look to develop a legacy.

If you have seen the movie 42, it is about the integration of Major League Baseball. Branch Rickey, the General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, brought Jackie Robinson in as the first black man in Major League Baseball.

Think about the difference that has had on the world! Today, baseball is fully integrated. Every year, on one day in April, every player on every team wears the number 42 to commemorate the impact of Jackie Robinson on this world. In fact, Jackie Robinson said it best:

[snaptweet]A life isn’t significant except for the impact that it has on others.[/snaptweet]

At the end of all of this, money is not going to be a legacy. Buildings aren’t going to be a legacy. Even heritage isn’t going to be a legacy.

[snaptweet]The real legacy you are going to leave is the lasting impact you have that goes well beyond the time that you are around.[/snaptweet]

Whether that is a team that continues to function and perform after you have left it; or the lives that you leave around after you have gone from this Earth.

John Maxwell said that at the end of your life people will summarize you life in one sentence. Pick it now!

Here’s some things you can do to look to leave a lasting legacy with other people:

MODEL THE LIFE – Develop yourself to be a model for others. You can probably think of people whose lives have had an impact on you; who helped you become the person you are today or become more than the person you are today. You need to do the same thing for others; engaging in a life and engaging in behaviors that other people look at and want to model.
SEEK TO MENTOR – Actively seek out others you can mentor and guide. Not everyone will be open to that, not everyone is going to be ready and willing to seek the help of a mentor. That’s part of the search process – actively seeking out and connecting with people who can mentor and bring along to help create your legacy.
GIVE WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED – Pour yourself into the people you have chosen to mentor and mentor them with no conditions.

What’s your next step to leave your legacy?

Nurture The Success Around You

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The Animal Nature of Nurture

One of the benefits of living in Central Florida is all the attractions around here. One of the attractions, of course, is Sea World. Sherry and I love to watch the animal trainers work with the animals at Sea World. It’s really interesting how they can do so well with it. There seems to be a very special relationship with the animal and many a trainer will tell you exactly that.

Recently I discovered how they are able to work with them so effectively. When an animal trainer is going to work extensively with an animal, it is critical during a developmental time that the trainer spend one-on-one time with the animal.

They will feed the animal
They make physical contact
They talk to the animal and encourage it.

This nurturing, one-on-one time allows the animal and the trainer to build reciprocal trust. The reciprocal trust and the nurturing that allow the trainer and animal to be able to work together effectively and safely.

The Human Nature of Nurture

As humans, we aren’t any different. We need nurturing ourselves.

We are all desperate for people to recognize that we are significant
We want them to recognize that we have an impact.
We want them to encourage us
We want them to guide us.

We all need that.

Giving Nurture

The flip side is that we all have the ability to nurture other people, it doesn’t come out naturally. It has to be intentional and it has to be developed over time.

Why would I want to bother to do that in a business environment or as a leader?

When we are able to nurture people, we are able to connect with people. When we can connect with people, we can build our influence with them. When you can build our influence, then you can help them get the most out of themselves. That’s what we want to able to do as a leader or businessperson: get the most out of others.

[snaptweet]”People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”[/snaptweet]
John Maxwell

Here’s some things you can do to build those nurturing relationships:

COMMIT TO PEOPLE – you have to be committed to their development. It doesn’t mean you are an enabler, it doesn’t mean that you take over their lives; it simply means that you provide the circumstances and that you are committed to helping them help themselves if they are willing to take the steps to go in the right direction.
BELIEVE IN PEOPLE – If you don’t believe that they can become better or that they can achieve greater things, then you are not going to be able to get anything out of them because that belief will show through. Whether you believe they are worthless or believe they are worthwhile, it will show through in everything you do.
GIVE WITH NO CONDITIONS – Pour yourself into them and do it without setting any conditions. A lot of people thing that giving is a reciprocal thing; I do something for you and you do something for me. No conditions here. Go in and pour yourself into them simply because you want to see them get the best out of themselves. You will benefit in the long-run but you can’t go into it with the expectation of a tradeoff because there isn’t necessarily going to be one.

Why Integrity is the Core of Your Business

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It Comes Down to INTEGRITY

If you take a quick look back in history for the last 20 years or so, integrity in business has seemed to take a huge hit.

If any of these names seem familiar to you then you can relate to what I am talking about. All four were giant, multi-national companies that had equally giant implosions due to a lack of integrity inside of the business.

Failure From Way Back

Another example: Dutch East India Trading Company. Another huge, multi-national company that fell apart after more than 100 years in business due to massive corruption. And that was in the 1700’s.

A lack of integrity isn’t unique to this generation.

Integrity That Drives Business

For contrast, look at Johnson and Johnson, the makers of Tylenol. One of the items in their mission statement is that they will do all things with “honesty and integrity”. They have placed a huge focus on the well-being of their customers as being vital to their success. Executive management is asked to agree to and commit to all of this in order to be part of the organization.

Putting It to the Test

Back in 1982, there was a big scare with Tylenol. Several containers had been tainted with poison and several people lost their lives as a result. Within hours of the discovery of this, the President of Tylenol ordered the immediate removal of all containers of Tylenol from store shelves across the country. This despite the fact that this would cost the company millions of dollars (over $100 million). Someone later asked him how he could make such a decision so quickly in the face of the consequences involved, including the financial hit. He responded that he was simply acting in accordance with the values they had agreed upon from the very beginning.

“It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” -Roy Disney

The result today

Tylenol is one of the most trusted brands and Johnson and Johnson is doing well.

Integrity Matters!

It is the foundation of creating long-term, sustainable success in your career or your business. If you don’t have integrity, it becomes clear to everyone sooner or later. It permeates everything you do, everything you say, and everything you say about what you do.

Build integrity to build success.

So here’s three things you can do to build or maintain your integrity:

BE TRUSTWORTHY – It starts with honesty. It continues with showing respect to everyone. Give it before they earn it and until they unearn it. Be consistent in how you treat people, with caring, consideration, kindness, and politeness.
BE RELIABLE – Don’t ever promise what you can’t deliver and always deliver what you promise, no matter the cost. Let people know what and who they can count on.
DO TOUGH, UNPLEASANT THINGS FIRST – The benefits for you is that it gets em over with, it makes the rest of the day better by comparison, it gives you confidence, helps people develop confidence in you, and identifies you as one who can get things done.

What are other qualities you can think of that demonstrate INTEGRITY? Share your thoughts here or contact me at psimkins(at)BoldlyLead.com.

Doing Right More Often, More Quickly, More Reliably

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Doing Right Means Making Right Decisions

Hard Decisions

It seems one of the most difficult and terrifying things we do as an individual or a manager of an organization is make decisions. In the background is this agonizing thought that somehow the decision we make is going to send us or our organization irrevocably in the wrong direction and it will lead to disaster. As we mature over time, we find that it’s just not true; we will almost always find a way to recover. But we can all learn to be better decision-makers.

First understand that generally there are three categories of decision-makers who make mistakes.

Snap Decision-makers who take immediate action because they think they need to act quickly without exploring options or gathering information. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t work, it can be disastrous.
Deliberative Decision-makers want to make sure they have explored all the options and want to make sure they have ALL the information before they make a decision. The problem is you will NEVER have all the information and often if you deliberate too long you can miss valuable opportunities.
Never Decision-makers are ones who because decision-making is so hard don’t ever make a decision. Of course, the fallacy in that is that not making a decision IS a decision and one that almost ALWAYS leads to disaster.

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.
-John Maxwell

The good news is that there are ways to make better decisions and make them faster and easier. It will never be easy, but it can be easier. And it starts with applying three keys.

KNOW YOUR CORE VALUES – here’s a tip: if they aren’t written down somewhere, you don’t really know your core values. You want to have them written down where you can refer to them again and again. This is the foundation of what you stand for.
FOCUS ON YOUR PURPOSE OR INTENT – Either as an individual or as an organization. When you look at the options of a decision, you will examine each as to how they match up to BOTH your core values and your intent or purpose. If they don’t match up to both, it is probably not the right option for you.
SEEK WISE COUNSEL – Line up beforehand people whose opinions you trust and will allow you time to ask them questions and will ask you questions in return. They will give you perspective and help you consider options. THE DECISION IS STILL YOURS TO MAKE, but wise counsel can help guide you to making better decisions.