The next critical step is to develop the success attitudes needed to help you realize your vision. Your attitudes play a critical role in your success. Your belief in yourself and your ability to achieve the results you desire will influence the way you deal with others. A negative attitude about yourself and your worth or about the worth of others will be like an anchor holding you back from success. A positive attitude becomes an internal motor that will drive you to accomplishment. Positive attitudes are synonymous with high self-esteem, and both are developed as a result of values and beliefs that recognize the worth of self and others. People who feel good about themselves produce better results.

Behavioral scientists have long realized that our behavior is linked closely with our attitudes and that if we want to improve behavior and outcomes, we have to improve the way we think. If you are to implement new ideas, new plans, and visions for excellence, you have to change attitudes and improve thinking. New thinking won’t work with old attitudes, and new results won’t work with old thinking.

The way you think, your attitudes, are a result of the events you have experienced thus far in your life and how you feel about those events and their outcomes. Your perceptions of yourself, of others, of your worth, and the worth of others are also a result of your past experiences.

The key to developing stronger success attitudes is twofold. First, recognize that your attitudes have been developed over time, and they can be changed or developed to be more conducive to your success and desired outcomes. You are 100% in control of developing your attitudes of success. Second, realize that any meaningful and lasting change must occur over a period of time and evolve from conscious, daily input of positive and growth-oriented ideas. Success attitudes result from repetitive and positive input over a period of time. Develop constant reminders, which will help you keep your vision and your strengths in clear focus. These reminders have the capability of exciting you when obstacles seem insurmountable, as well as helping you feel good about yourself when moments of self-doubt creep into your thinking.

One of the most common forms of successful attitude reinforcement is the regular use of affirmations. An affirmation is telling yourself in times of doubt that which you know to be true other times. More specifically, an affirmation is a positive statement, which describes the person that you want to become. The power of affirmations can best be understood when we realize that our mind doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined. Affirmations help you utilize this phenomenon to your advantage. By continuously imaging yourself succeeding or winning, your positive belief system is reinforced and you can become anything you choose!

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses and individuals achieve high levels of excellence and success. Learn how at www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

As Margaret Wheatly observed, “I believe that we have only just begun the process of inventing the new organizational forms that will inhabit the 21st century. To be responsible inventors and discoverers, we need the courage to let go of the old world, to relinquish most of what we have cherished, and to abandon our interpretations about what does and doesn’t work. We must learn to see the world anew.”

It is important to erase boundaries between different parts of the organization so that processes, production, and communication flow seamlessly and swiftly. People who are involved in the processes should also be involved in examining how they and the organization can get better and quicker. Improving quality and speed while reducing cost and complexities can create a significant competitive advantage. The objective is to eliminate as many non-value-added, time consuming steps in a process as possible through simplification, elimination, and concurrence. People must be focused on taking the frills out of core business processes in order to focus on the results rather than activities. “Most companies squander 10 to 20 percent of revenue in support of wasteful products or procedures … at Kodak, waste drained an estimated 1.6 billion to 3.2 billion … sharpen their pencils. Cut costs and shorten organizational cycles in everything.” ~ George Fisher, former Chairman and CEO of Eastman Kodak.

This process will quicken responsiveness, show major improvement to the bottom line, and it can be done fast. Competition leaves little choice. An organization must continuously do things better and faster or it will die. If you do the things that you’ve always done and expect different results, you are engaging in institutional insanity. If you want different results, you must do things differently, or you must do different things.

Far too many people make the mistake of believing that you just have to work harder. Remember the first rule of holes: “When you are in one—quit digging.” Sometimes success requires doing things in a dramatically different way or making radical changes.

There may be people who will resist change because it is different or new. Resistance to change is a common and universal malady. Therefore, understanding some of the barriers to change may help in creating and implementing successful growth strategies. Some common barriers to change and innovation are:

• Lack of data makes decision making difficult
• Personal goals conflict with professional goals
• Management behavior discourages implementation
• Employees don’t understand or really want to make the change
• Poor communication of vision, values, and mission
• Recognition and appraisals are inconsistent with attaining goals
• Unwillingness to develop new goals
• Lack of process or structure

Addressing resistance to change becomes a major focus and an integral part of a unified implementation strategy.

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses and individuals achieve high levels of excellence and success. Learn how by visiting our website or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

A powerful vision provides inspiration, challenge, and purpose. It gives meaning to your work and purpose to your business. Your business gives you a place where you can satisfy your need to achieve. Everyone’s life needs a purpose, something important to strive for. One way to add both meaning and context to your vision is to establish values. Clearly defined values simplify decision making. They also help ensure consistency as well as ethical and behavioral congruency.

Value is a word that describes what each of us searches for in many different places. We look for value in what we purchase. We look for value in what we do, and for value in our relationships. Most of us would like to believe that there would have been some value to our life and to our accomplishments. In today’s global and ever-changing business environment, values should play an important role in structuring, planning, and operating your business. Direction is provided in part by vision, which creates excitement, commitment, and purpose. Achievement and excitement must be tempered, however, by values lest people pursue goals without consideration for the ethics of other people. Values represent the core priorities in the organization’s culture including what drives individuals and how they truly act in an organization. Therefore, another key element of a successful planning process is the organization’s value statement. Throughout the life of the business, decisions must be made. Core values of the organization will lay the foundation and provide the framework for all decisions.

An organization’s values create a foundation for integrity and they define the important truths that guide your actions. They will serve as a guidepost for all those in the organization who through their individual efforts will collectively achieve the organizational goals. Values are principles or standards by which we do business and are to be non-negotiable. As you think about crystallizing your values, consider what you know to be right as well as how you want to be known by others.

If the primary function of your business is to attract and maintain customers in order to generate long-term profits or financial viability, then issues such as meeting client or customer expectations, delivering quality service, etc., must be included in the values statement. Your values should take into consideration the importance you place upon each stakeholder in your business. By definition, a stakeholder is anyone who has the power to exert influence on your organization. It may be an individual, a group, or another organization. For example, your stakeholders could include your customers, your employees and their families, your stockholders, the community, licensing and regulatory agencies, or suppliers.

Some examples of value statements are:

• Improving the quality of life through technology and innovation.
• The company exists to alleviate pain and disease.
• To be regarded by our customers as easy to deal with and as a provider of high-quality, reliable products and services.
• Our first concern is for our customer, our second concern is for our employees, our third concern is for our management, our fourth concern is for our community, and our fifth concern is for our stockholders.

There are many companies in the media over the last several years that clearly operated and made decisions with no values and we are all aware of how it impacted people’s lives. However, there are a lot of companies who have well defined values and make decisions with those values ever present. Go to http://www.chick-fil-a.com/#closedonsundays and learn why Chick-fil-A is closed on Sunday and why they believe it is part of their recipe for success. Check out http://www.tylenol.com/page2.jhtml?id=tylenol/news/subp_tylenol_recall_1.inc and learn why McNeil Consumer Healthcare initiated the recent voluntary recall of all their children and infant liquid products.

What value statement is your business defined by?

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in helping businesses and individuals achieve high levels of excellence and success. Learn how at www.resourceassociatescorp.com or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.

Much like a football team that is playing in the Super Bowl, having a game plan and the desire to win is important. Unfortunately, my Steelers will not have a chance to repeat this year. However, winning depends on execution. One of your primary roles as a leader is that of a coach. Coaches reinforce the results they believe people are capable of achieving.

One way to develop a winning team is to surround yourself with extraordinary people. Another is to surround yourself with ordinary people who through your leadership and coaching achieve extraordinary results. As Sam Walton once said “ … there’s absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary working people can do if they’re given the opportunity and the encouragement and the incentive to be their best.” As a coach, your role is helping people develop winning attitudes and improve their skills. A coach helps people see beyond the problems, the limitations, and the “known” to focus on solutions and opportunities which are sometimes found by venturing into the “unknown.” If you are to create a winning team, you must be good at coaching. You must be able to inspire extraordinary performance from ordinary people. Coaching is seeing new possibilities and providing the support and guidance to help people and organizations to achieve new heights.

Coaching, though highly individual, has three basic functions. The first function of a coach is getting to know every person as an individual. If you are to coach them to higher levels of performance, you need to know what their skills are, what their level of knowledge is, what their goals are, and what you can do to help them reach their goals.

The second function of a coach is developing people and challenging them towards higher levels of achievement. Create a detailed development plan for and with each individual with whom you are directly working. Set goals, both short and long-term. Develop action steps and target dates along the way. Focus on those critical few action steps that are essential for personal and organizational goal achievement.

The third function of a coach is creating an environment for motivation. A motivating environment helps people become excited about setting and reaching goals. Figure out what inspires people and use this knowledge to create an atmosphere that stimulates high levels of productivity and effective decision making. Get to know what issues are important to each individual, Encourage people to talk openly and discuss problems as well as opportunities. Challenge them to go beyond their comfort zone. Help them to have the confidence to stretch themselves.

Your goal as a coach is to make the most of your most valuable resource, your people, and to maximize the skills, abilities, and knowledge of each person in the organization. Inspiring people to higher levels of performance has a lot to do with spirit, creating excitement, commitment, and desire. It is coaching ordinary men and woman to extraordinary achievements.

Tammy A.S. Kohl is President of Resource Associates Corporation. For over 30 years, RAC has specialized in business and management consulting, strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching, and youth leadership. For more information visit http://www.resourceassociatescorp.com/ or contact RAC directly at 800.799.6227.