Have the Courage to be a Leader

Leadership is a journey, not a destination.
It is a marathon, not a sprint.
It is a process, not an outcome.
~ John Donahoe, president of eBay

What is it that you are passionate enough about that you are willing to lead.  Our world and our communities need people who are courageous enough to lead.  I am not talking about running for a political office or becoming the President of the PTA.  Instead I am talking about leading something that you are passionate about.  Be a leader on a project for a local community organizations that helps provide for a need in your community.  Be a leader for your son or daughter by being involved in their activities, don't be the parent who drops them off and runs.  Be a leader for a group of people who have the hobby or interest, take the initiative to pick up the phone at get two or more of you together.

Why don't we take a leadership role more often?  Are we afraid that we might make a mistake or "fail".  It takes courage to lead, and you may not have a 100% success ratio.  It does not matter if it is perfect or not, because others will still appreciate your effort. Without your leadership they would not have had the opportunities you provided through your actions.  Leadership is about courage, the willingness to see a need and take action "towards" a goal.  That is right it is action "towards" a goal.  You may or may not complete the goal exactly like you envisioned it, but you will have taken action.  You will learn from your leadership position and be able to achieve even more the next time you lead.

Leadership is a process!  Do not limit sharing your leadership and passion by entering into it think it has to be done completely right the first time.  Perfectionism kills progress. Pick something you care about and make a difference today.

Book Review - The Lemonade War

The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow, this is a great book for youth to read about business. There are so many great lessons to be learned for this book. The Lemonade War is started because a brother and sister who have been very close, have some common misunderstandings about the other persons motives.

There are pertinent lessons about budgeting, profit margins, marketing & advertising, value added service, location and franchising. Really all of these issues are discussed with a kids perspective.

There is also a great bases for a discussion about business ethics. The motivations of the youth change as the book progresses and you see a progression through their motives, common to what you see in some business people. Things deteriorate until they get to the point that the ends justifies the means, and winning becomes so important that they will do anything for the win.

If you have kids and you want to have a great discussion about business - I highly recommend this book.

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Book Review - The Shark and the Goldfish by Jon Gordon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jon Gordon continues to deliver great guides to leading a life through unique stories that make his books a true pleasure to read. I think that his work on the The Shark and the Goldfish is simply amazing. Jon really condenses so many tested approaches to maintaining a positive attitude, event in difficult time, in such a short, quick read.

I really appreciate that Jon addresses "Abundance Theory". All the politicians and news media try to drive just the opposite into our heads every day. Jon also addresses the fact that there is "No Substitute for Hard Work", which I think that so many people have forgotten prior to the financial crisis last fall. That is what really got us into this mess was people trying to take shortcuts to riches.

My biggest take away from this book is to "Be Humble and Be Hungry."

Get a copy of this in your hands, I promise that you will devour it and be motivated to maintain a positive attitude on life.

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Be an Agent of Change

We all struggle with change.  I am guilty of being happy with the status quo.  While I enjoy analyzing a system or process and finding methods to improve it, to make it more effective, I am always reminding myself not to fall into the trap of saying  “If it is not broke, don’t fix it.”  As a leader in my organization I have a responsibility to make continual improvement in the processes and service that we deliver to our customer.  If I stop looking for ways to improve our company, our movement, then I am starting the process of decline.
 
In his book Tribes, Seth Godin shares an amazing analogy about making the choice about being a person who is happy with the status quo or being someone who wants to initiate change.  Seth shares:
 
A thermostat is far more valuable than a thermometer.
 
The thermometer reveals that something is broken.  The thermometer is an indicator, our canary in the coal mine.  Thermometer tell us when were spending too much or gaining market share or not answering the phone quickly enough.  Organizations are filled with human thermometers.  They can criticize or point out or just whine.
 
The thermostat, on the other hand, manages to change the environment in sync with the outside world.  Every organization needs at least one thermostat.  These are leaders who can create change in response to the outside world, and do it consistently over time.
 

WOW!  How great is that.

The world is filled with thermometers, you are probably thinking of a couple right now.  You know the people, the ones who are always judging and complaining about how things are without being willing to take action to make a difference.  Thermometers always find the problems but are unable to find a solution.
 
Image yourself being a thermostat.  You are always aware of the environment you do business in. You see the ups and downs, the opportunities and the challenges.  What makes you unique is that you take action.  You turn on the heat to take corrective action or to initiate change.  You are making choices to take action that will result in improving the environment you do business in. 
 
When we are willing to be an agent or change in our organization, we succeed in reaching Peak Achievement Today.

Maintain Forward Focus – Lessons from Mountain Biking #2

Today’s post is my second post in a series on lessons learned from mountain biking. In an earlier post I discussed the need to focus on where you want to go, to pick the path and focus on the “line” that you want to travel. Remember not to focus on all the obstacles you do not want to hit because they are irrelevant, you are not going to go there. Once you have practiced this skill you are ready for the next aspect of focus which is maintaining a forward focus.

When I started mountain biking I found that my focus was on where my tire was going now. I looked over the front of my handle bars and down at the ground directly in front of my tire to choose my line and steer into the clear path. To become an even more successful rider I had to learn to truly have a forward focus.

In mountain biking this means that you move your focal point forward so that you are looking ahead on the trail, selecting the path that you will travel in the next 5 to 15 seconds depending on your speed. You then let your well conditioned brain take charge to guide your body to take the right movements to take you there. This forward focus allows you to prepare for the trail ahead, to change your gears as necessary and to take appropriate coarse corrections as needed.

Think about your typical day. Are you focused on the interruptions and “emergencies” that pop up every day of our life? Do you feel as if you never have time to do what it is that you really want to do in your business? If you are then you are most likely focusing on the few inches right in front of your tire.

The challenge there fore is to force your focus further away from that front edge of your tire. This is something that takes time to make a new habit. You gradually move that focus further away from where you are right now. You can first focus on where you want to be at the end of the day, then where do you want to be at the end of the week, month, and year and so on. You have to allow yourself the opportunity to view your course of action and allow your mind to take you where you are focusing.

When you are going down a mountain trails that is only as wide as your shoulders at 25 to 30 miles per hour you do not have any other option than to move your focal point forward, and to trust your training and conditioning to take you where you want to go. Life is frequently moving much faster than a mountain biker so we have to push our focus further out if we are going to achieve Peak Achievement Today.

Book Review - Tribes: We Need You to Lead US

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A very thought provoking books with great wisdom about taking leadership in groups and situations with leadership voids. I enjoyed many of the concepts and ideas related to the use of emerging technologies. There are groups of people with the same common interests that are now finding each other because of these new technologies, but do not know how to organize. This book has inspired me to take actions on several different action items to provide leadership to groups I work with and in. I am really glad that I read this book and think it is an important way to look at leadership in our society today.

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Take a “Time Out” Before You React

What do Joe Wilson, Serena Williams and Kayne West all have in common?  They have all made the mistake in the last week of not exercising one of the most powerful options we have as human beings.  We each possess the unique ability to choose how we react to the events that affect us every day in our lives.  Each of these three famous individuals have chosen to react to an event in their lives in a way that has embarrassed them, cost them personal respect in their respective arenas, and have acted in a way that has hurt others in doing so.

One of the most important lessons we can learn is to take control of the moment between an event that happens to us and when we react.  Our brains are powerful tools if we train them to pause and choose.  That is right; it all comes down to creating a moment of time, a pause in reacting, between the event and our reaction to it.  Once we create a moment of time to think about how we are going to react to a situation, we will almost always make a better decision than if we react right away.

Joe Wilson blamed his outburst calling President Obama a lire, on the power of “his emotions” getting the better of him.  Our emotions affect the choices we make and can sometime seem very powerful, but we still have to make a choice to stand up in a joint session of Congress and disrespect the President of the United States.  I believe that if Joe took one or two seconds to think about the choice he was making he would certainly have chosen not to have to apologize for his action, be the talk of every news network and to have a resolution passed in the same congress reprimanding his behavior.

So what can cause us average human beings the same kind of issues.  Well how about that email that you received today where the person writing the email was accusatory, shared bad information and best of all carbon copied it to their entire address book.  What is your first response?  Do you want to jump on your key board and tell them how things really are and point out how “stupid” they actually are?  You know if that email goes unanswered to that entire distribution list without a quick rebuttal from you everything in it is bound to come true.

I say take a deep breath, wait an hour; wait till after lunch; you may even want to wait until tomorrow before formulating your response.  I learned in First Aid Merit Badge that unless the person is not breathing, their heart isn’t beating and they are not bleeding to death – you have time to evaluate the situation and make a good decision. By giving ourselves time to think it over, let our emotions settle down, maybe event seek the input of a mentor or trusted confidant (my wife always provides me with good perspective) we will make a better choice of how we react.

Serena was “in the moment” and ended up with three days of coverage of a 12 second obscenity filled tirade.  Who knows what Kayne West was thinking he was going to prove, but I am sure that he enjoyed being called out on (as he should have been) the season opener of the new Jay Leno show. The highest viewer ratings since the finale of America Idol, that's over 17 million people.

Take time to make your choice.  Time brings things into perspective, and if your can consciously work on taking time to think about your reactions your life will be fuller and you will be able to achieve at your own Peak Achievement levels.

Focus On Where You Want to Go

As an avid mountain biker I have learned that the most important skill is to focus on where you want to go, not on the rock that you want to avoid.  This is one of the reasons that I like mountain biking as much as I do.  When I am out on the trail I have to let go of all the other things that are going on in my life and focus on the here and now.  I can not be distracted because to avoid ending up with dented helmets and a broken collar bone I have to focus on the “line” or path that I want my bike to travel.

Sometimes the path you need your tire to take is just barely larger than tire it self, and when you are riding along at 20 miles per hour you really do not have a lot of time to think.  Once I learned to focus on the path I needed to travel I became a stronger mountain biker and found that I was much less likely to hits the rocks that I needed to avoid. The opposite is still true, every time that I focus on the obstacle that is in my way I hit it.  These are not usually glancing blows, but straight on collisions with the items that I new I needed to avoid.

This same theory is true in life.  I have found that I have to focus on the path that I want to travel and not on all the obstacles or hurdles that stand in between me and where I want to be.  Our minds are extremely powerful machines and when we focus on the goal or objective we want to achieve, our minds will work faster than we can think to help take us there.  Many of the obstacles we hit along the way could be avoided if we focused on the path we want to take, or at least their impact on our trajectory towards achievement could be minimized.

Now I still hit rocks when I ride my bike, and I usually have at lease one good crash a year. This is just like the project or goal that has challenges you need to overcome, they will always be there.  A strong focus will make sure that you get to the desired outcome with a minimum about of pain.

Book Review - Creating Magic

You Too Can Create Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney by Lee Cockerell

rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the best comprehensive business leadership books I have read in the last year. Lee Cockerell shares his experience as a leader at Disney on every topic from hiring, inspiring,training, leading with character and much more.

Most of us have probably visited a Disney resort in the past and remember some sort of magical moment we had on that trip. Now you can make the same type of "Magic" happen for your customers by using some of these tips and concepts shared directly from a true Disney leader.

This is one of those books that if you could truly implement a handful of the suggestions demonstrated here into your workplace you can lead your team to great results. This book is designed for leaders of people not just managers.


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Rituals Provide a Foundation for Success

Have you ever watched Tiger Woods golf, or a star baseball player step up to bat. You will notice that they both have a ritual they follow as they get ready to take that next shot, or swing at that next 90 mile per hour fast ball. They have trained their body to perform a series of events in preparation to make the next big play of their game.

What are the rituals in your life? Do you have strategies that lead you to have greater success in your everyday life? In Jon Gordon's book titled Energy Addict - 101 Physical, Mental & Spiritual Way to Energize Your Life he states:

"...rituals are the key to turning our goals into reality - or chaos into concrete action. Rituals help us create positive habits that will become our foundation in a crazy world."

I have been thinking about this concept for the last couple of days and feel that this is really an important statement. When I look back at my times of peak performance I realize that this performance was achieved because I had a commitment to a goal that developed rituals that I performed every day. We each performed a ritual this morning as we woke up and got ready to go to work. Think about it, you have a "routine" in the bathroom and you have your routine with the kids to get them out the door on time for school. Life is filled with rituals.

So ask yourself what are your rituals that you performed today?
Are these rituals leading you to your peak performance or are they holding you back?

It is critical that we match our rituals to our goals and work to strengthen the habits that will lead us to the level of achievement we want to have in life. If our rituals are not constructed to lead us towards what we want, we feel stress in our lives and an inner conflict. The great news of the day is that we can chose our rituals, we can change rituals that are not helping us achieve our goals and build or strengthen the rituals that will help us reach our Peak Achievement.

Book Review - The No Complaining Rule

The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work by Jon Gordon

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Well I really liked reading this book after completing the "Energy Bus". I am definitely on board with both of these books and plan to implement them into my life, home and business. I think when Jon got to the end of the book he pulled the pieces together very nicely, and if you really study the plan it will direct you back to key sections in the book to remember and plan your own implementation.



Be sure to visit his web site as well. I think that the posters, discussion guides and other items that he provides are very helpful and make bringing these practices into the work place much easier.



If you don't like this book, remember that there is "No Complaining". :)


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Get're Done - Start with a master task list.

Lets talk about your task list.

• Is it helping you get the most important things done?
• Is it allowing you to work with integrity by helping your deliver on your promises?
• Are all your tasks available for you to review in one spot?
• When was the last time your wrote an item on your task list that you had already completed, just so that you could put a check mark next to the item.

Task lists play an important role in helping us remember the items that we need to complete at work, at home and for the family. I believe in maintaining a master task list for all my tasks and ideas. The master task list is a depository of the items that I want to do for all aspects of my life. Maintaining a master task list has many benefits:

Remember what you promised:
How many times have you been in a meeting and made a comment about something that your would do for someone. This casual statement is now an expectation for the person that you were with. They are counting on you to get that items done. Capturing these items on your list when you promise them to others helps you remember what you said you would do.

Sleep Easier:
Do you know someone who has a hard time going to sleep, because as they lay there in bed trying to relax, there brain is working overtime on what they need to get done. I know someone like this. Capturing a list of these items on a sleepless night onto a master task list is even better than counting sheep. Writing them down tells your mind that it is alright for it to relax about that task, you have it written down in a foul proof system that will remind you about the task tomorrow.

Capture Ideas:
A master task list is a great place to capture ideas that you have. Because you are not going to assign due dates to your master task list items, you can write down that ideas that your would like to figure out and try. I wonder how many good ideas have been lost because they were never recorded and went by the wayside.

Maintain Lists:
Within my master task list I often maintain other list of things that I want to record. For example you will always find a list of books that I want to read in my master task list. Maybe it is a list of items that you want to order from a vendor, but you want to make sure that you meet their minimum order. Keep your list handy so that you can refer to it the next time you want to place an order and make sure you do not miss anything.

Your master task list does not have to be perfectly organized, you will do that when you move the items to your daily task list. Remember that you can delete these items later if you feel that they are irrelevant or no longer apply. Just get all your ideas down onto your list.

Making Your Weekly/Daily Plan

The next step is probably to most important step you can take in reducing stress in your life. What we want to do next is to move those items that we have identified for each of our roles, as the most important items in our lives, to our daily task lists. How does this reduce your stress? Our minds are very powerful and if we have a single list of things that we have to get done or accomplish, our minds are going to try and work on all the items on that list all at once. We might not be thinking about all of them conciously, but in our subconcious, are minds are wearing themselves out trying to deal with all these items once.

Take the list of items that you identified, and assign them to a particular day. Make your self say "I am going to take care of this item on Tuesday.", or "This item can wait until Thursday, but I need it for the meeting on Friday," By placing the items into a daily plan you are allowing your subcouncious to say, "Alright, I do not have to worry about this item until Wednesday. " You are now able to focus on today's tasks more effectively and allow your full power to be focused on what is important today. You can relax because you know that on Wednesday, your planning tool will remind you that you need to take care of this other important item.

You can even go a step further. You can assign a particular task to an exact time in your calendar. For example let's say that you have an important proposal due later this week and you want to get the draft completed a few days early so you have plenty of time to review it. Make an appointment with your self to work on that task. Thats right, actually put it on your calendar as an appointment. If someone tries to schedule something at that time, you have the ability to say "I sorry that time will not work for me, I have an appointment. Can we find a time that will work for both of us." You have now protected the time that you are going to dedicate to that project.

There is an old saying that I say all the time, "How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time." By breaking down your roles into tasks and planning those tasks into your day you are breaking the larger project into achievable action items and planning your time to get the most important items done first so that you will have Peak Achievement Today.

Using Roles to Make a Plan

Once you have established the roles that you have in your life you can use them to establish a monthly and weekly plan that will guide you to achieve the items that you put the most value on. At the beginning of each month, and on Monday mornings is sit down with my list of roles and walk through this process:

1. I review the list of ROLES and make sure that they are all still current and viable. I add or subtract roles based on the month or week.
2. I then go through each role and determine the key items that need to be done for each of these roles. As I do this I write down the key tasks that need to be done for each of these roles.
3. Not all roles are equal - achieving balance does not mean that each role has the same number of tasks that need to be completed. Some roles my have 7 key things that need to be done, and roles may even have only 2 or 3. (I sometimes maintain a role with 0 tasks for a particular week)
4. Make sure that you do not ignore roles that are important in your life, but do not "seem" urgent. One of the roles that I have on my planning list is "husband". I always try to think of one or two things that I could do for my bride that will let her know that she is important to me.
5. Place your list somewhere where you will look at it daily.

This does not need to take a lot of time. When you are first starting a process like this it may take you 30 -40 minutes. As you practice over time the time will decrease. I challenge you that if you take this time here, you will save hours throughout the week by eliminating distractions that come in day to day life.

I have been taking these steps every month and most weeks for the last 19 years. I can complete this process in about 15 minutes a week. I will be amazed at the volume of work I get done by Tuesday night, just because I sit down on Monday morning and identify the key priorities of the week.

On the next posting we will look at moving these items from your weekly plan, and getting them into your daily schedule.

The Gas Pump of Life

We have a choice between positive energy and negative energy. Positive energy is high octane fuel for the ride of your life while negative energy causes sludge to accumulate in your energy pipeline.

With high gas prices, I know that we are all used to going to the pump with the cheapest gas. Yes we could splurge and buy a tank of high octane gas for our car, but we pull up and fill up with good old regular gasoline. Our car survives on regular gas, it gets us from point a to point b, right.

This may work well for my car, but when it comes to my attitude I have to believe that I am worth the very best octane I can buy. (With a diesel car I understand high fuel cost :) ) My attitude is like that Lexus my friend owns, it requires high octane fuel or you void the warranty. If we can fill our life with positive energy, we will achieve more. We will find the extra spark to tackle a tough problem or to push that last bit to achieve the goal we set.

Sometimes we may need to add a fuel additive to our tank to clean out old deposits, but from now on, I AM BUYING THE HIGH OCTANE FUEL FOR LIFE.

Quote - Taking Action

" There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."

John F Kennedy
35th President of the United States

Book Review - Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

OK this book review is going to be a little bit out of place on our current topic, but I just finished this book this weekend. I have been working on it for a while and it is very thought provoking. For those that are following this blog, that also work for the Boy Scouts, I would not be surprised to find out that Bob M. is basing some of his current changes off this book. Bob's Blog sounds like it could have been a direct result of reading this book. Additionally the setup of the "Department of Innovation" and the new Innovation engine could have been direct results of reading this book. The key is that we need to take advantage of these new tools and do our part to make them a vibrant place for the development of new ideas. We need to seize this opportunity that is being presented to us by our top leadership and contribute our thoughts and ideas to help us all achieve Peak Achievement.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott

rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a very thought provoking book, and has many great observations and predictions of where we will be going in the future. My biggest challenge with this book is that I was hoping for a little bit more of a road map of how to implement the theory into the work place.

After listening to the book for a while, I started to get some ideas of ways to build collaboration within my own work space, but now I need to search out and learn how to use some of these technologies. The part near the end of the book about older people just needing to get out and experiment with social networks, blogs, you tube, wikis and other collaborative spots on the web is where I am going to get started.

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Identify Your Roles and Achieve Greater Ballance

One of the fundamental parts of my planning is the identification of the roles that I choose to serve and participate in. Life is not simple, we have many priorities that we have to juggle. Even at work, most of us have multiple projects or goals that we are having to work on at any one time. Throw on top of that all the things that you have to do at home, for family and your community involvement and you have a very complex life to plan.

In selecting your roles, you are identifying those areas of your life that you are going to make a priority now. Think about the key areas or goals you have in your life that are important to you and right them down.

For example I have a variety of different goals at roles at work. I am responsible for the team achievement of our sales goal, I am responsible for helping develop staff and I have a primary role in developing and implementing our communication plan to clients. Each and everyone of the work roles has something that I need to do each week to achieve the year end goal that I wish to achieve.

In addition to my roles at work, I am also a father, husband, soccer coach (for part of the year), a homeowner and I am involved in the community. Each of these are as important to me as my work and I have to make sure that I plan the needs of these roles into my week. If you only set up the roles that you have at work, and ignore the personal roles that are important to you, you are creating stress in your life. I believe that this is what "workaholics" do, they are only able to focus on work items and never learn the skill of life planning.

Take some time and think about the roles you want to have in your life. What things are important to you, and require your attention to maintain in a positive way. What goals are you wanting to achieve. Write down a list of roles, then we will look at the use of roles in planning your life for Peak Achievement!

Book Review - The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family

The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life by Patrick Lencioni

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I thought that this was an excellent book on how to strengthen your family and business with a similar type approach. As business leaders we need to strengthen our families as well to be able to reach our full potential. This book does a great job of taking a business consulting approach and applying it to ones family.

Most interesting to me from this book is the discussion of core values. I have fallen into the trap of having a long list of "Core Values". I like the way Lencioni describes values into 4 categories of values.

I also like the concept of the Rallying Cry, and can think back to times when I have provided a clear singular goal to a team and that was the focus. Our best results were in times like these. Along with this I appreciate the recognition of Defining Objectives and Standard Objectives under the Rallying Cry.

Great book, I highly recommend it. It is a very quick read.


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Can you take action on your "To Do List"

After yesterdays post about planning and the types of planing I received an email about an important part of any of these four planning steps from Sue. Sue is a very well organized, get it done lady who manages a very bust schedule. It does not surprise me at all that Sue is a planner and that she prescribes to the habit when planning.

Most people (myself included) have a tendency of making "to do lists" that are not lists of action items, but are really lists of small projects. For instance, "Steve's birthday" is not an action item. "Buy gift for Steve, bake cake, pick up card, and invite .... for dinner on Steve's birthday" are action items. When making lists of things I want to accomplish this month, (your grid of 4) I list projects. Then, for my weekly and daily lists, I make sure the items are individual action items and NOT projects. Projects- even if they are very small with only a couple of action items, (like the birthday) are much easier to skip on a daily basis because they cannot be acted upon without further breaking down."

Determining an actionable next step is vital to having a plan that will work for you, and this was going to be the subject for one of my posts. So lets tackle it now.

The key words here are actionable next step. An actionable next step is the task that can stand alone and has it's own start and finish. It is something that you can go out, get done and mark it off your list. Sue gives a great example of this in her email, but lets look at another example.

In the Boy Scouts we want to make sure that every kid has the opportunity to join a quality Scouting program, so we are frequently working on starting new units. Many times I will see the following action item on a weekly or daily plan:

Start new unit at Franklin Elementary School

This is important but it is not the actionable next step. By having this on the weekly or daily plan it does not provide specific direction to what exactly needs to happen. This item probably has 30 or more actionable next steps that need to happen. So the challenge is this - drill down into non-actionable items on your task list, to find your real tasks that need to be done. By identifying the specific actionable next steps, you can plan an appropriate number of these steps in a logical order into your plan. You will be taking the right action each day that will lead to the completion of the larger project, and you will have a lot more fun marking off each item that you have completed towards the larger goal.

What are some actionable next steps for starting this unit? If this were going to be on my to do list I would start with some of these.

• Set appointment to meet with school principal
• Meet with school principal to discuss Scouting
• Select date for recruiting night
• Order flyers and invitations for recruiting night
• Deliver flyers and invitations for recruiting night to school
• Make arrangements for in-school presentation to kids
• Order in-school stickers.
• Hang posters at school
  

This is just a start but it gives you the idea. Remember that you do not have to get all these items done today or even this week. Just make sure that you have captured the actionable steps that need to be taken and begin working them into your schedule.

Too many times we do not break the item down far enough for us to take action, the result is inaction and nothing gets done. Why is this? I think that this happens in part because we do not want our to do list to "get to big". We feel that if we write down everything that we have to do, the list will be overwhelming, not to mention that it will take us a lot longer to write all that down.

I encourage everyone to think about what is the actionable next step I can take as you are doing your planning. Take joy in knowing that you have the plan in place. Take joy in marking off each item as you complete it. Most importantly, take joy that you are reaching your Peak Achievement through strong planning.