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Andrew Cox's Articles Display Category|Title|Newest|Oldest Victors Do The Work, and Forget The Silver Bullets Victors know success comes from doing the work. And that belief is even more important in tough times. At a time when resources have to be carefully committed, and when the need to focus on getting the really important things done is crucial, the temptation to look for silver bullets is greater than ever. Use Goals To Stay In Play Never has there been a more critical time to remind ourselves to "Stay In Play." "Stay In Play" tells us just how important it is to press on, to take the next step, to develop the best possible solution, to make the next sales call, to play the next down, to serve the next serve, to stay in the game. Victor Or Victim - Your Choice Right now it's tough to not feel like a victim. So many events seem to be beyond our control, and so many consequences of the decisions of others appear to have cost so many so much. Others choose to be victors. Faced with the same events and circumstances and consequences and outcomes as victims, they will continue to swim upstream - possibly more slowly and with more effort, but still working their way toward their goals. Use SMART Goals To Get Through Tough Times The most effective thing any of us can do right now is to focus on our goals - define them, refine them to reflect changing realities, test them to see if they remain realistic and relevant, and act to achieve them. It's hard. The steady drumbeat of bad news - about the economy, about the elections, about man's inhumanity to man can really divert attention from the really important things. That's where SMART goals come in. SMART Goals Reduce Ambiguity and Increase Commitment Ambiguity is a fact of life in all organizations. In many cases it can be an advantage. But in most cases, the clearer the requirements, the better. Use SMART goals, keep them simple, and watch people respond with a high level of commitment to the enterprise. They can be, as in this case, the difference between success and failure. Make Sure Dreams Are Your Servant, and Not Your Master In effective goal setting, using dreams to establish ideal outcomes is a critical step in creating the vision and purpose that become the building block for goals. When used that way, dreams are your servant. But when the word dreams is mentioned, many people are turned off - to them dreams are a waste of time - a trip into fantasy. They feel dreams are not for the real world. They see dreams as taking away from action and accomplishment. How to Ensure Dissatisfaction Is A Key To Success In the important areas of our lives, dissatisfaction is a positive - a way to constantly improve. At the same time, dissatisfaction has its limitations. Applying dissatisfaction to many areas of life just leads to frustration and regret. When Is The Best Time To Change? When is the best time to change? It's when preparation and the opportunity to create interest and urgency come together around some incident or condition that can focus attention and effort. That's when real lasting change occurs. Use that answer to focus your own personal and organizational change efforts for maximum impact and value. Looking At Life Through Your Rear View Mirror Have you ever had the experience of suddenly being confronted, in your mind, with something you did in the past that you wish you hadn't, or that you regretted, and that "something" flashes up on your brain screen and sends a chill down your spine, or a flop to your stomach, or a tear to your eye - or a song to your heart? Valuing Individual Differences - Key To Team Success Leaders place a high value on being able to see things through different lenses. Successful problem solving teams and project teams value individual differences as the means of arriving at innovative ways to meeting their goals. The keys in valuing differences as key to team success involve two dimensions. Ten Steps To Empowerment Empowering people can take many forms. In most organizations, there are many actions that can be taken, without financial risk to the organization, to start empowering people. From the biggest for profit corporation to the smallest non - profit, there are empowering behaviors that can add tremendous amounts of energy and leverage. Here are ten behavior driven actions to take to empower people. Your Attitude Is Showing - Now What? Your attitude is showing - and it's not good. What to do about it? A story about an attitude needing adjustment - and about critical personal decisions. Become Thirty Percent More Effective In Selecting The Right People Success starts with the right people in the right jobs. Particularly in leadership positions. But if that's really the belief of most organizations, why is it that so many selections fail at their jobs - or - even worse, just hang on and take up space? It doesn't have to be that way. In fact, every organization striving to improve their selection batting average can become at least 30% more effective. Here's how: The Biggest Barrier To Building Relationships- One Way Conversations One - way conversations make it easy to come to the conclusion that the person doing the talking thinks they have more to say than the listener does. It may be a bad conclusion to draw, but it's a very human one. And in arriving at that conclusion, potential relationships slips away. Read on to see what to do about it. The More Trust, The More Time To Succeed Bill Oncken, in his book Managing Management Time, says that the more trust you have with your "universe " of people, the more time you have to do the things that lead to success. Trust is hard to earn. Once lost it's hard to regain. It's the most precious asset in any relationship - at any level - at any time. Read on to see how a successful Division President builds trust. Excellent Customer Service Starts With Excellent Employee Service Nothing sets the standard for excellent customer service more than excellent employee service. It's critical to measure the level of customer service. It's also critical to measure the level of employee service. There is a direct correlation between the two. Take the six elements of excellent employee service listed in this article and see where your organization stands. How To Increase ROI On People Development Investments How to ensure your critical people development investments are effective and carry a high ROI? Read on and ask yourself seven questions. The answers will help define the best way to go about developing the skills, expertise and abilities of your people while increasing your ROI on development investments. Nine Essentials Of Employee Termination It comes time to part company. At that point, the most critical part of the termination process takes place. It's the place where the people remaining evaluate how it was handled - it's critical because well handled terminations create positive emotions toward the organization, and poorly handled ones cause the organization to lose credibility in the eyes of its employees. Overcome The Wall Through Worthy Goals The Wall and worthy goals go together. Notice how the Wall only appears on the truly important, demanding, stretch goals? The goals that spell real progress, real success and real accomplishment? The Wall saves itself for the really important things. Turn Negative Expectations Into Positive Outcomes How often do we let negative expectations create negative results? If you're like me, it's more often than I like to admit. And yet, when I work to overcome negative expectations and project positive behavior, I am pleasantly surprised. Things end up better than I expected. What I've learned is to spend more time on positive behaviors, and less time trying to dwell on the reasons for negative expectations. Qualities Of Resourceful Leaders Resourceful leaders get more done with available resources than less resourceful managers. It results in outcomes that far exceed expectations. It What are the qualities resourceful leaders share - regardless of position within an organization? We asked our clients - here's what they identified as eight essentials for resourceful leaders. How To Increase Your Personal Energy Successful people have an energy about them. It's one of their most valuable resources. We asked many of the most successful people we know where they would put energy on the scale of requirements for success. All placed it in their top three. How do they get and maintain their high level of personal energy? Organizational Silos - How To Deal Effectively With Them I was driving through dairy country in Virginia, and the silos at every farm reminded me of a client I was working with at the time - a successful manufacturing company undergoing change. They had organizational silos - much tougher to deal with than the ones on the farm. But they do share certain characteristics. Eleven Ways Leaders Create Focus Focus is a key Personal Skill of leaders. The ability to bore into the most important things and stay attentive and focused on them, and continue that behavior as a means of solving problems, contacting prospects, writing a report, preparing a presentation, doing an analysis, maximizing the value of a meeting, is key to success. Focus maximizes time - it results in more being done in less time. Ten Ways To Ensure Your Goals Are Leading You To Success Success,energy, passion and commitment are created by success - success at accomplishing the goals we have set for ourselves, and the goals that others have set for or with us. Nothing is more powerful than accomplishment. At the same time, our goals can work against us. Read on about ten ways to make sure your goals work for your success. How To Create Survival Tools For Tough Times Tough times are a big part of what makes us successful, as survivors and leaders. Getting through them effectively and positively depends on how we treat that space. Our personal survival tools go a long way to getting us through tough times. Some may call them coping tools - they're much more than that. We're talking about tools to help us stay positive and focused and optimistic. Five Ways To Gain Self - Knowledge - Key To Success Accurate self knowledge is the key to successful relationships. Notice the use of accurate? Who you think you are and who others think you are is often very different. The closer our understanding of our own behaviors, attitudes and personal skills is to how others perceive us, the better our chances for success - in anything. Ten Key Questions - Renew Commitment Or Seek New Opportunities? So much is written about finding the right job, the right relationship, the right career. Little is written about how to know when to stay committed to the present course or seek new opportunities. Knowing when to move on - look for new opportunities, relationships, and challenges - is critical to success.Use the ten key question sets to make the best possible decision for you. Procrastination - The Tomorrow Effect On Your Success Nothing, nothing at all, will screw you up more than putting off until tomorrow the important things you know must be done today. Read on - now - to learn about the Tomorrow Effect on your success. Goal Setting - Six Steps To Keeping Focus We ask every leader we work with what they would do more of, better, or more often when they look back on their career, and the top answer is "Focus." When asked how they would do that, they answer that they would be even more goal oriented than they had been. In their opinion, goals create focus that creates accomplishment. Plenty For Everybody - Project Team Success Depends On It Project team success depends on a number of variables, but the one that shows up as most important involves the willingness of team members to collaborate. And collaboration requires a belief that there is plenty for everybody. And it's tough to spot as the reason a highly qualified, highly resourced, experienced, interdisciplinary team just did not click. Ten Ways To Make Time For The Important Things Making time for the important things in life is a real challenge. Have you ever ended the day with the feeling that you were as busy as you could possibly be, but didn't make any progress on the really important things? Have you been resentful of the time and energy you have to spend on meeting the demands of others? Here are ten ways you can make time for the really important things in your life. Lessons in Survival - A Critical Leadership Skill To survive - to hang in there - to keep your head while all around you others are losing theirs - to stay in play - is a critical skill of leaders. Let's face it - even the most astute, successful person will suffer setbacks, and surviving and overcoming those setbacks is the true measure of a leader. Read on for an example of survival and leadership. Eight Times When Good Enough Beats Perfect When does Good Enough beat Perfect? When Good Enough clears space for action and accomplishment - for moving forward. Perfect, on the other hand, almost always gets in the way of action and accomplishment - it keeps real progress from being made. Waiting for perfect is a sure recipe for failure. Here are eight times when "Good Enough" will beat perfect: Ten Ways Leaders Overcome Analysis Paralysis One of the biggest challenges leaders have is to ensure that preparation and analysis add real value and provide the framework for action. The biggest enemy to action is analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis is the graveyard of many organizations and careers. Here are ten ways leaders have ensured they and their organizations don't fall victim to analysis paralysis. How To Keep Top Candidates From Falling Through The Cracks Top people are scarce - just ask any organization how tough it is to attract the best, let alone select the best. At the same time, I'm willing to bet that more top people - the right people for the right jobs - slip through the cracks in the selection process than anyone could imagine or admit. Here are ten of the top, invisible ways those cracks occur. How To Increase Your Personal Value Your personal value is the most important value you can create. Unfortunately, 7 out of 10 people in the US underestimate their personal value. It's easy to do - without even knowing it. It shows up in invisible ways - in risks not taken, jobs not applied for, opportunities not identified, relationships that never occur. How To Gain Optimism Through Accomplishment Nothing creates a greater sense of optimism than accomplishment. And optimism is one of the core beliefs and attitudes of successful people. It's estimated that only 30 percent of our population are optimists, but that the majority of successful people are optimists. That estimate says that the better chance of accomplishment and success lies with the optimists. How Leaders Increase Their Personal Energy I recently posted an article titled " How Leaders Create The Energy Essential To Success." It dealt with ways leaders create energy in their organizations through their beliefs and behaviors. This article deals with how leaders sustain and increase their personal energy. How Leaders Create The Energy Essential To Success Leaders know high energy individuals, workgroups and organizations create success. How to create and sustain that high energy is the key challenge leaders face every day. The following behaviors and beliefs are keys that leaders we have worked with have found work to achieve consistent high energy with their people. Keeping It Simple Isn't Simple KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid - it sounds so --- simple. It's not. Read on to see how to make it happen, from an author who really knows how to"get tangled up in his underwear." Become More Effective - Keep It Simple It's goal time. I'm getting all tangled up in the complexity of goal setting and getting it right. Then it hit me - I needed to work on a goal that will help me be more effective - in every way. Read on the see what I mean. How To Choose Your Response - The 24 Hour Rule How often have you made a snap decision and lived to regret the outcome? Read on to acquire a behavior tool that can help you improve your decision making skill by choosing your response to any situation. Think Outside The Box - A key Question To Make It Happen Think outside the box - how to do that? My experience tells me to look to others, ask the key question "what do you think?" and then use collective thinking to form a solution no one person would be capable of coming up with. The most important belief in thinking outside the box is that the product of focused thought and collaboration and communication of a knowledgeable group is the best way to arrive at new and unique solutions. Create Focus - Eliminate Self Inflicted Distractions I was trying to focus on my 2008 goals; it's been tough going and my mind kept moving to all the other things I could/should be doing right now. And the idea for this blog came to me. A self inflicted distraction. I have a lot of them. Think Outside The Box - Cultivate Your Inner Voice Thinking outside the box comes in lots of different sizes - from the smallest to the really big, sweeping, high leverage things. And while the really big, important changes that occur get the most attention, and are the most sought after, the sum total of all the little changes and habits of thought that happen every day are what lead to the really big stuff. And that's where our inner voices play such a big role Think Outside The Box - Take The Time To Look Up Think outside the box. How do I do that? I suggest you take the time to look up A personal story to illustrate my point: How To Gain Respect There's a secret to gaining respect - one that I had the good fortune to learn early in my career - and from a most improbable source. The secret to getting respect is to give respect. Read on to see how that lesson was taught to me by a very special person. Career Suicide - Proclaim Yourself A Victim There is no quicker way to career suicide than to proclaim yourself a victim. No one likes victims – people are attracted to problem solvers and people in the know – they are repelled by self proclaimed victims. A true story to describe my point: Perseverance and Commitment - Never Give Up Never give up. I just finished a terrific book - The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In it was a quote that struck me - it has to do with perseverance and commitment and dreams, and how you will know if you are pressing forward, or giving up. A Leadership Tool To Encourage Thinking Outside The Box Thinking outside the box is a critical Personal Skill - one that will make the difference between success or failure. The real critical leadership skill is accessing the thinking of others to help see what possibilities lie outsidethe box – outside the individual world of thoughts and beliefs and biases. Try this tool to get the "out of box" thinking flowing with your “universe” of people. Eight Bad Assumptions We All Make and How To Remedy Them These eight assumptions have the potential to get us in trouble - big trouble. They destroy clarity, create distrust, and stand in the way of organizational success and personal success. These assumptions are the ones we make based on our own behaviors, attitudes, and skills. Creating Goals - Dealing With Reality - The Power of Keeping Track Keeping track – creating goals - dealing with reality – creates clarity and keeps me honest to myself. It keeps me accountable for my behavior - for my own choices. I find when I keep track, good things happen - probably because I am dealing with reality, and not with that enemy of clarity - selective memory. A New Hire, An Aquarium and Overcoming The Status Quo What does an aquarium have to do with the status quo and a new hire? More than you think. Read on and see how an experience in ignoring the rules of good aquarium management resulted in a lesson that has much broader application. Act In Today - Nine Steps To Make It Happen Act in today - take these nine steps to achieve that worthy goal - that day when accomplishment and achievement are reached - when the overhang of things waiting to be done is manageable, and guilt and remorse are replaced with optimism and confidence. That sure sounds good - and it can happen - starting today. Act In Today - Nine Rationalizations That Stand In The Way Acting in today takes hard work. It's the only way to succeed. And yet,for many people, the attraction of tomorrow is so great. But tomorrow thinking is a trap. And self talk is one of the biggest traps to tomorrow thinking – and failure. What follows are some of the most popular rationalizations of tomorrow persons. Leaders Know High Expectations Lead To High Performance Leaders know high expectations lead to high performance. Leaders know that the more people believe in themselves, and their leaders believe in them, the more they will accomplish - at all levels. The Two Dimensions Of Thinking Outside The Box Thinking outside the box is a skill highly prized by all kinds of organizations. The phrase “think outside the box “ creates this vision of cutting edge thinking that leads to innovation. It's a skill that provides real opportunities in both the Internal and External Dimensions. It's a skill that can create enormous competitive advantage – personally and organizationally. It's not for everyone – in fact – it's a top ten percent skill. Leaders Provide Advice Critical To Success - Part Four Certain beliefs, convictions and statements keep being repeated in our conversations and seminars and feedback sessions with both managers and leaders. Here is Part Four, dealing with advice critical to success in the areas of Leadership and Hiring and Selection. Leaders Provide Advice Critical To Success - Part Three Certain advice, in the form of beliefs, statements and cinvictions, keep being brought up by leaders in our seminars and feedback sessions.What follows is Part Three of our series dealing with beliefs that are critical to personal and organizational success in the areas of Change, Choice, Behavior Self Responsibility and Accountability · Success Depends On Our Self Talk What we tell ourselves about ourselves – our self talk, will create success – or not. Our success depends so much on the messages we constantly send ourselves. We can be our best friends – or we can be our own worst enemies. Leaders Manage Goals To Ensure More Is Not Less Leaders manage goals to know when more becomes less. Leaders know there is a place where further effort, energy, knowledge, people resources and money don't really add additional value. In fact, more of anything after a certain point may be stealing from other requirements. Leaders know time, money and effort, by themselves, are really inefficient measures - results are what count. Observation - A Critical Leadership Skill Leaders know observation skills are critically important to success - in any dimension. They work hard to develop their own, and to identify and develop the skill in their people. Leaders Provide Advice On How To Succeed - Part 2 Leaders provide advice on how to succeed. Certain beliefs and advice keep being repeated in our conversations and seminars and feedback sessions with leaders What follows is Part Two in our series dealing with the issues that are critical to success. Share them with your own universe of people and be amazed at how effective they can be as a tool to begin discussions Focus On Possibilities To Achieve Success Focus on creating possibilities - it's the way to achieve personal success and organizational success. That conclusion came to me the other day - a day I fooled myself into believing was highly productive. I had been busy - worked hard - got a lot done. But I didn't feel like I had really accomplished very much. I had organized, managed, read, prepared and drafted a whole lot of stuff - but something was missing. Leaders Provide Advice On Achieving Success - Part 1 After working with many leaders certain beliefs, statements and convictions keep being repeated in our conversations and seminars and feedback sessions. This is the first in a series of articles providing advice from leaders we have known on achieving personal and organizational success. Hiring The Right People - Keys To Increased Success The most effective action you can take to improve success in hiring the right people for the right jobs, particularly for leaders and emerging leaders, is to evaluate your own selection process. Find out how your organization appears from the viewpoint of candidates - you'll be amazed at what you find. Five Steps To Achieve Personal Success - Today Here are five actions can you take - today - at no cost other than changing your own behavior, that can lead to greater personal success. Leadership Through Goal Setting - vs - Brute Force management Setting goals as the way to create priorities is what leaders do to maintain direction and focus. Unfortunately, many managers take a tremendous amount of potential leverage out of their organizations by not prioritizing. Many do it by using the Brute Force style of management. Success Depends On Knowing There's Plenty For Everybody - Believe It Success depends on believing there is plenty for everybody. There really is “more” than we could possibly imagine – of everything – if we look for it. But it's almost impossible to look for “it” if we are busy envying or feeling jealous about someone else's good fortune – their getting some of that “plenty.” Goals, Opportunities For Success and Paying Our Dues What are the paths that come together to provide opportunities for success? How will we know when they come together? Will we be ready to recognize opportunity and act to succeed? What can we do to prepare for those opportunities? What does paying our dues really mean? The Biggest Challenge To Change - The Status Quo The Biggest Challenge To Change - The Status Quo Creating change, accepting change, making change work, being rewarded by change - all are resisted by that condition called the Status Quo. And most of the time we don't even realize it. Keys To Success In New Jobs The Five Keys - plus a Bonus Key, can help you become more successful, quicker, in a new job. The Keys are from many successful leaders. Their experiences in new jobs - and as the boss of new jobs, can help you bridge those critical first few months and add to your success. Hire The Right People - 10 Recommendations On Using Assessments Assessments are powerful tools to use in selecting the right people for the right jobs. And the higher up in the organization the more critical assessments can be to successful selection. Here are 10 Recommendations to help you decide how to most effectively use these tools. Ten Steps To Hiring The Right Person For The Right Job Hiring the right persoin for the right job is one of the biggest challenges and opportunities any organization faces. Here are Ten Steps to take to improve success in hiring and selection. 12 Ways Leaders Tell Their People They Are Important Leaders know their actions speak more loudly than any words they may say.. Learn 12 Way successful leaders use their behavior as the means of communicating the importance of their people. These powerful behaviors can make the difference between a mediocre manager and a true leader Managing Goals - Leaders Know How To Trim The Tree Too many goals, too little time. Leaders know what to do about that all too common condition. Learn what trimming a tree and goal review have in common. Increase Success In Selecting People Experts and successful leaders all share a little known fact about human behavior, and use it in evaluating people. They know that every one of us believes other people will act, react, understand and judge as we would - given the same circumstances. Successfully Managing Change Every successful change process follows the same Four Stages, and within those Four Stages certain conditions will maximize the possibility of success. Successfully manage change in your enterprise by planning for the Four Stages and creating the conditions critical to success. Project Teams - How to Ensure Their Success Project Teams - How To Ensure Their Success By Andrew Cox To maximize the contribution of project teams, five Essentials need to be in place. The good news is that the essentials to team success don't require the expenditure of large amounts of capital or expense money, and don't require new brick and mortar. A Powerful Change Skill - Acceptance Acceptance is one of those things we rarely think about as a Personal Skill or a Change Skill, but it can make a huge difference in our success in change situations - in all parts of our life. Here's a story to illustrate my point: Personal Importance - Your Success Depends On It Personal Importance is critical to your succes. How often have qualified, competent people missed out because of their own feelings of not being important - of not being worthy or able to perform? Read this article to see where you are in this critical belief, and what you can do to improve how you feel about yourself and what you do in life. Tools For Change - Targeted Surveys When faced with change of any kind, the use of Targeted Surveys can communicate the issue to the organization, involve the people impacted by the issue in feedback and design, and assure information is gained from all the people, not just the vocal 10% that may not represent the thinking of the enterprise. Here are the 9 To Do's of effective Targeted Surveys. Successful Leadership - Beware The Silver Bullets Successful leaders know the Silver Bullet approach to management - sometimes called the Program of the Month approach, just doesn't work. Read an example of Silver Bullet thinking, the downside of Silver Bullets,and 9 questions to ask yourself about changes, initiatives or programs to ensure they meet your organization's long term needs.	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