Archive for January, 2010
The Power of 5: Core Values – Inspire Unity and Create Focus
Define Your Values
This process can be used for a company, a team or an individual (or even a family).
1. Gather your team and determine the five (5) words that best describe how you will behave with each other, customers, and key business partners.
Determining a team’s core values may seem simple, but it’s not easy. Why? Because we are complex human beings, who have unique backgrounds and experiences. These differences are incredibly valuable and by working together we can identify and prioritize the values that reflect what is most important to you, your team or your company.
By involving your team they will help every member:
- Understand the “why?” behind the final outcome
- Buy-in faster and fully support the final decisions
- Hold each other accountable
- Begin to engage by “thinking” and saying “I can make a difference by…”
2. Define what each of values means. This is a productive team building exercise. Select a core group of team members to write a short definition for each of the values. Keep it shot and easy to remember.
Need Help?
Need help facilitating a “Power of 5 Values” session. Aha! Leadership will help your team unite and determine their values in only 90 minutes! It’s a powerful team-building exercise!
- “I watched you bring 18 people (that never, ever agree on anything) together and actually accomplish this goal in such a short period of time. We all left motivated, high-fiving and on the same page. Absolutely amazing!”
- “By including everyone in the decision making process makes everyone feel responsible for passing on the feelings and attitudes.”
- “I saw for the first time that when inspired we can all be productive and constructive.”
- “Since we worked together, I completely understand why and how these values were created.”
- “My Aha was the realization that although we are all different, we can come together and agree.”
- “My Aha was realizing that we are all able to work as a team to come up with our company values.”
- “Thank you for including me. For the first time in a long time. I feel important.”
Next week, we will see how various Michigan Companies bring their values to life.
Use the “Power of 5” to Turbo Charge Your Year!
The number one question I get from leaders is: “How do I ‘make’ my people accountable?”
The answer: Set SMART Goals.
Year after year, we make New Year’s resolutions with the best intentions. According to experts, nearly 97 percent of us fail to turn these intentions into results. I believe the same mindset holds true for leaders. Year after year, we intend to set goals for our business and suddenly January 5th is here and we have a critical fire to put out…
What do the 3% of us do differently? Why do they always seem to achieve more year after year.
The answer: They set SMART goals for themselves and their teams.
Dan Mulhern, Michigan’s First Gentleman recently conducted a survey of 365 leaders and found:
- Only 19% believed in annual goal setting and do it religiously.
- Nearly 80% believe goal setting has value but sometimes or seldom do it.
- Only 30% of the leader’s surveyed plan to write down goals for 2010.
- Only 40% say it is essential to have periodic review of goals.
Goal setting isn’t easy but it’s essential to driving results. As leaders we must push ourselves and our teams by setting SMART goals. This is the key to driving accountability!
Why is this important? If you don’t invest the time to clearly define what you want the team to achieve, then how in the world do you expect your team to invest the effort required to achieve it?
Bottom line: It’s impossible to achieve results when you don’t write down clear goals and it’s impossible to hold yourself and others accountable to vague visions.
Hummm… maybe that’s precisely why we don’t do it…?
5 Easy Steps to Setting Goals
1. Make a list of all of the things that you feel are critical to accomplish this year.
2. Circle the “Power 5” – Using the 80/20 rule, identify those things that will drive 80% of the results for your business.
Don’t focus on the same old goals that you choose every year. Take some time, think about it and identify the 5 activities that will drive the highest impact for your organization in 2010.
3. Create SMART goals using the “Power 5” activities that you identified above.
Define what it means to win. Be specific.
Answer two key questions:
How will you know when this is accomplished?
How will I measure this?
4. Break the “Power 5” into tasks and assign an owner and due date to each task.
5. Communicate the “Power 5” to your team and schedule a monthly accountability session to review progress.
Links to Aha! Leadership Resources:
Company Cascading Goals Worksheet
Action Plan Worksheet for tracking large goals
Department Goal Summary Worksheet
“Nothing can stop a man with the right mental attitude of achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help a man with the wrong mental attitude.” Thomas Jefferson
“The thing always happens that you really believe in and the thing you really believe in always happens.” Frank Lloyd Wright
