You have heard it said that knowledge is power.
But only practical knowledge—that is, knowledge that can be applied to some purpose to achieve a result or benefit—is truly powerful. If knowledge was everything, all librarians would be rich, because they are surrounded with millions of words of knowledge.
The exercises in this chapter will help you identify the goals and problems to which you want to apply your creativity and knowledge.
The Quick List Method
The first exercise is to write, in thirty seconds or less, the answers to the following question: What are your three most important goals in life right now?
This is called the Quick List method. When you only have thirty seconds to write down your three most important goals in life, your real goals will pop out on the page, sometimes to your surprise.
When I give this exercise to my seminar attendees, more than 80 percent of the people in the audience will write down the same three goals: a financial goal, a family goal, and a health goal. This is as it should be. These areas turn out to be the three most important goals in the life of almost every person.
Once people have answered this question, I ask them to give themselves a grade of one to ten on how satisfied they are in each area. In whichever area they give themselves the lowest grade, that turns out to be the area of their lives where they are experiencing the most problems or unhappiness. Try it for yourself and see.
In our business seminars, we expand this exercise by asking business owners and executives to answer a series of Quick List questions that focus specifically on business, financial, sales, product, people, and competitive goals. Participants have thirty seconds to write down their answers to each of these questions. Their answers are quite revealing and often business-transforming.
The Brutal Questions
Leadership is the ability to solve problems. Success is the ability to solve problems. The only thing that stands between you and achieving all your goals are problems and obstacles of some kind. What are they? The next exercise is to focus on what Jim Collins calls “the brutal questions”—those questions that force you to focus on your problems.
You can start with this general question: What are our three most pressing problems today? You can then expand this question to embrace every important area of your business. You can ask:
1. What are our three biggest business problems today?
2. What are our three biggest financial problems today?
3. What are our three biggest sales problems today?
4. What are our three biggest competitive or market problems today?
5. What are our three biggest people problems today?
6. What are our three biggest product or service problems today?
7. What are the three most important steps we can take immediately to improve our business results?
Your ability to ask and accurately answer these questions, and then to implement solutions to the problems that you identify, is a critical determining factor in the success of your business.
The 80/20 rule seems to apply to both business and personal problems. In this case, it means that fully 80 percent of your problems, obstacles, difficulties, worries, and concerns are within yourself or your business. Only 20 percent are determined by external factors or people.
The starting point of the superior thinker is to identify the problem clearly and then ask, “What is it in me, or in my company, that is causing this problem?”
Identify Your Favorite Excuses
In business seminars we always ask, “How many people here would like to double their profitability?”
Everyone in the room raises their hand. We then ask, “Why aren’t your profits already twice as high as they are today?”
That’s when I point out that there are lots of companies in the same industry that are earning two times, five times, and ten times as much as they are. Many of these companies with higher earnings have not been in business as long as the people in the room. All of these companies face the same competitive environment as the business owners and executives taking my seminar. Why is it that they are earning so much more money than you are?
This exercise helps people to identify their favorite excuses for less-than-ideal financial performance. Why isn’t your business twice as big? What are your favorite excuses? What do you tell yourself, and others, to let yourself off the hook of higher performance?
What is it in you, or inside your company, that is holding you back?
Asking and answering these questions continually will stimulate your creativity, giving you ideas and insights that will allow you to solve any problem or overcome any obstacle that may be holding you back from achieving your business and personal goals.
Practice Idealization
Leaders have vision. Vision is the ability to imagine an ideal future state, and then to come back to the present and develop a plan to get from where you are today to where you would like to be at some time in the future.
If you could wave a magic wand and make your future business perfect in every respect, what would it look like? How would it be different from today? And most important, what would be the first step that you would have to take to get from where you are to where you want to go?
Decide today the first step that you are going to take, and then act immediately. Everything else will flow from that. The good news is that you can always see at least one step ahead. You may not be able to see the entire path to your future, but you can always see one step. And if you go as far as you can see, you will see far enough to go even further.
Idealization is a proven method of “peak performance thinking.” By projecting forward into the future and imagining a perfect state, and then by looking back to the present where you are today, you often gain a wonderful perspective and see all kinds of things that you can do, starting today, to begin to create that perfect business of the future.
The Magic Question
Here’s a fun exercise. Ask yourself: “What one great thing would you dare to attempt if you knew you could not fail?”
Imagine that you still have your magic wand. You could wave this magic wand and achieve any one goal in life. If this were possible for you, what one goal, if you achieved it, would have the greatest positive impact on your life?
Whatever your answer—and you always have an answer—write it down, make a plan, and begin to work on it every day. Take the first step. Do something. Do anything. But begin to work every day on this major goal, the one goal that can make all the difference in your life if you achieve it.
ACTION EXERCISES
1. Write down your three most important goals in life—business or personal. Write them down, right now.
2. Identify the one goal which, if you achieved it, would have the greatest positive impact on your life.