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01.31.17

LeadershipNow 140: January 2017 Compilation

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twitter Here are a selection of tweets from January 2017 that you might have missed:
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Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:03 AM
| Comments (0) | LeadershipNow 140

01.09.17

Shoe Dog: How to Succeed in Business with a Little Luck

Shoe Dog

PHIL KNIGHT'S memoir about creating Nike, Shoe Dog, covers the time from his “Crazy Idea” to going public in 1980. It is a down-to-earth account of the sacrifices and struggles, failures and successes of what it takes to succeed in business.

Any would-be entrepreneur would do well to read it before venturing out on their own.

Knight says that the act alone is the destination. “Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where ‘there’ is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.” And that’s different from “giving up” as he explains: “Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop.”

He admits to the stress of it all. “The years of stress were taking their toll. When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly. At just the moment when I needed to be my sharpest, I was approaching burnout.” In the end he gives credit to hard work and luck. It’s not uncommon to see the IQ of successful entrepreneurs rise at least 50 points as they become experts on nearly every topic. But quite candidly, Knight writes:

Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jñāna, or Dharma. Or spirit. Or God.

Put it this way. The harder you work, the better your Tao. And since no one has ever adequately defined Tao, I now to go regularly to mass. I would tell them: Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.

Shoe Dog is an amazing story of how he made that luck happen.

The now ubiquitous list of 10 Nike Principles was written in 1977 by the former Nike director of marketing Rob Strasser. Retired Nike historian Scott R, had this to say about the memo:

A day in 1977 when Strasser was purportedly in a fit of pique that employees were losing sight of the company’s values. He stormed into his office and pounded out on his typewriter what became a list of 10 bullet points that he felt were the central core of who/what Nike was. He slammed the sheet of paper on the copying machine, made dozens of duplicates and then taped them on office doors and put them on cubicle desks all over the building.

Nike Principles

NIKE PRINCIPLES

  1. Our business is change.
  2. We're on offense. All the time.
  3. Perfect results count -- not a perfect process.
    Break the rules; fight the law.
  4. This is as much about battle as about business.
  5. Assume nothing.
    Make sure people keep their promises.
    Push yourselves, push others.
    Stretch the possible.
  6. Live off the land.
  7. Your job isn't done until the job is done.
  8. Dangers:
    Bureaucracy
    Personal ambition
    Energy takers vs energy givers
    Knowing our weaknesses
    Don't get too many things on the platter
  9. It won't be pretty.
  10. If we do the right things we will make money damn near automatic

2016 best book pick

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12 Lessons for Entrepreneurs Dear Founder



Posted by Michael McKinney at 08:03 AM
| Comments (0) | Entrepreneurship , General Business

01.04.17

Ditch Lofty Outcome Goals and “Hit the Glove!”

Ditch Lofty Outcome Goals

WHEN IT COMES TO KEEPING New Year’s Resolutions, the stats aren’t good. Surveys show that while some 40 percent of us make them, only 8 percent of us keep them. We may feel exhilarated when we set a big goal, but that soon gives way to anxiety. While we all want to get better, lofty goals don’t always help.

There is a way to set goals and achieve them. It comes from Rick Peterson, the former Major League Baseball pitching coach (of Moneyball fame), who guided the New York Mets and the Oakland A’s to great success. He did it by getting his pitchers to scale back their goals from lofty to bite-sized, from outcome to process. His mantra, “Hit the glove,” was not only powerful and effective, it translates well beyond professional baseball.

At the beginning of spring training, Rick would ask his pitchers, “What’s your goal?” Most had the kind of long-term, outcome goals you find on the back of a baseball card — winning a certain number of games or pitching a certain number of innings.

The problem with focusing on great big goals is that you’re distracted into focusing on factors outside your control. Winning a ball game involves more than just the pitcher’s performance — it hinges on how many runs his team scores, how well his team fields, how well the opposing hitters handle good pitches, and even the umpire’s calls. When we don’t hit that big outcome goal we get demoralized, creating doubt and anxiety can hurt our performance.

Instead, Rick refocused his pitchers on short-term, bite-sized process goals. He told them they were professional glove hitters with one simple goal: Hit the catcher’s glove as often as possible — with the right pitch.

If a player focuses on hitting that glove, he can’t focus on the pressure of a loftier outcome goal. He has to concentrate on hitting that glove. He’s not distracted by things outside his control. Hitting the glove on a high percentage of pitches is also the most probable path to achieving larger, outcome-oriented individual and team goals.

How It Translates

We can all learn to refocus on hitting that glove. I’ve been in sales for decades. At the start of every year, salespeople’s anxieties peak. Whatever numbers they produced last year, they no longer matter. The scoreboard’s back to zero. Time to prove yourself all over again.

Many sales organizations try to motivate their sales forces with talk of raising the bar and hitting even bigger numbers. But that lofty-goal approach can trigger fear and worry instead. Just like pitchers, salespeople know there are parts of the sales game beyond our control. And it’s easy to lose focus amidst the cornucopia of daily distractions.

After I heard Rick’s mantra, “Hit the glove!” I thought of what that meant in terms of my day-to-day sales. I settled on high-quality interactions with customers and prospects, meaning one that advances a sale and/or our relationship. By focusing on having daily, high-quality interactions with customers, I would make great progress toward putting a dent in my quota.

Thinking about how many high-quality interactions I should have each day, I set the initial target at two. Before you laugh and ask what I was going to do after lunch, consider the math. Two high-quality interactions per day are 10 per week, and 40 per month. Assuming one month of vacation, that’s 440 per year — far more than I was averaging.

As soon as I started focusing on my new simple, short-term, bite-sized process goal — two high-quality interactions with customers each day — I began thinking about my day differently. I began prioritizing those two high-quality interactions with customers above everything else. As I considered how to invest my time, I regularly asked myself, “Is this helping me hit the glove?

As a result, my focus improved remarkably. I wasted less time. I didn’t give my quota a second thought. My numbers took off, and I finished the year more than 25 percent ahead of my previous year’s performance. Focusing on that one small change brought about big results. So ask yourself: What’s your version of hitting the glove?

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Leading Forum
This post is by Judd Hoekstra. He is a leadership and human performance author, consultant, and speaker. He serves as a Vice President at The Ken Blanchard Companies, a premier leadership training and coaching company. He is also a coauthor of the bestselling Leading at a Higher Level as well as Who Killed Change? He received his bachelor's from Cornell University, where he played hockey and baseball. He also graduated from the Advanced Business Management Program at Kellogg School of Management. For more information, go to www.juddhoekstra.com.

Rick Peterson has coached some of baseball’s best pitchers in the past twenty years, including Cy Young Award winners and Hall of Famers.
Crunch Time
He was the Oakland Athletics’ pitching coach during the famed Moneyball era and has served as a coach with the New York Mets, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Milwaukee Brewers. He is currently director of pitching development with the Baltimore Orioles. He holds a combined degree in psychology and art. He and Judd Hoekstra are the authors of Crunch Time: How To Be Your Best When It Matters Most. For more information, go to www.rickpetersoncoaching.com.

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Newtons First Law New Years Get Better



Posted by Michael McKinney at 09:24 AM
| Comments (0) | Personal Development

01.01.17

First Look: Leadership Books for January 2017

Here's a look at some of the best leadership books to be released in January.

  Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age by Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig
  The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters by Emily Esfahani Smith
  Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change by Frank Sesno
  Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies by Paul J. Zak
  Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos by Heidi K. Gardner

Humility Power of Meaning Ask More Trust Factor Smart Collaboration

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"You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through."
— Retired Marine General James Mattis


Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:24 AM
| Comments (0) | Books



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