{"id":4957,"date":"2010-09-10T07:00:22","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=4957"},"modified":"2010-12-04T10:44:20","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T17:44:20","slug":"common-sense-produces-uncommon-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=4957","title":{"rendered":"Common Sense Produces Uncommon Results"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Originally published on <\/em>CareerShorts.com<\/em><\/a> where Kimberly has been invited to contribute blogs periodically on global leadership and project management.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Did you know that there are 192 countries recognized by the United Nations<\/a> and a total of 233 listed on Wikipedia<\/a>?\u00a0 You may not even have heard of the smallest ones<\/a>, some of which have less than 1000 people.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to work with human beings from over 50 countries during my career.\u00a0 Although I\u2019ve discovered many fascinating differences among them, and many delightful common human traits worth celebrating, I\u2019ve also unfortunately found that we share a couple of fundamental tendencies that get in the way of our ability to achieve our goals:<\/p>\n

Unclear Goals<\/p>\n

Unclear Communication<\/p>\n

Unclear Priorities<\/p>\n

\n

Yup, in my experience, all over the world what many people consider \u201ccommon sense\u201d is not \u201ccommon practice\u201d.\u00a0 Based on the thousands of books that have been published about business leadership it may be tempting to assume that there is some complicated formula to achieving business success, but in many cases it\u2019s just this simple.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been traveling from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, to Japan almost every month for the past 4 years to deliver Global Leadership Development Programs<\/a> for high-potential leaders in organizations determined to profit by solving global problems profitably.\u00a0 Although some people might assume I\u2019m there to share sophisticated methodologies of entrepreneurial thinking and breakthrough business practices from the \u201cSilicon Valley\u201d, I\u2019m primarily helping my clients overcome these rather prosaic (and insidious!) causes of failure.\u00a0 More specifically:<\/p>\n

GOALS: We don\u2019t take the time to properly set and clarify goals, and when we do they tend to be far less ambitious than we\u2019re capable of.\u00a0 Instead of figuring out what we want to achieve, we fall prey to what\u2019s called \u201cthe rush to solution\u201d, full speed ahead, frequently in the wrong direction, or even in circles.\u00a0 Well, at least it passes the time.\u00a0 Consider, for example, that only 4% of people bother to write down their goals, even though it\u2019s been found that simply writing down a goal quadruples your chances of achieving it.\u00a0 Don\u2019t take my word for it \u2013 ask 10 of your friends if they write down their goals.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be lucky to find even one who does.<\/p>\n

COMMUNICATION: We don\u2019t communicate effectively, even among people who speak our same language and share our culture.\u00a0 Increasingly relying on email, we send even important messages to people sitting only a short distance away, knowing full well what scant care we use reading our own email.\u00a0 And global separation, common in many project teams, makes this problem even worse, as people hoping to avoid an awkward phone conversation in a language other than their native tongue, spend hours creating email.\u00a0 However, words alone carry only a fraction of the meaning in a typical face-to-face conversation, and no matter how much care they use to make their message clear, however, the interpretation of their meaning is in the hands of someone who is not a mind reader.\u00a0 Predictable misunderstandings result.\u00a0 A startling example of this was reported in \u201cDer Spiegel\u201d, and I found it reprinted in the Jan. 14, 2004 Salt Lake Tribune news.\u00a0 German and Swiss engineers, each building a bridge over the Rhine River from their country\u2019s side, when they met in the middle found that one side was 54 cm lower than the other, costing millions of Euros to correct.<\/p>\n

PRIORITIES: We fail to prioritize the \u201ccritical few\u201d above the \u201cimportant many\u201d issues vying for our attention.\u00a0 Spreading ourselves too thin across too many tasks, we end up working 10 hours to get 4 hours of work done due to the enormous cost of task-switching.\u00a0 And here\u2019s something that I\u2019ve found to be true for people in the corporate world globally \u2013 if they ask their boss to help them prioritize their major tasks the most likely response is \u201cThey\u2019re ALL important!\u201d\u00a0 Thanks a lot.\u00a0 What a tremendous help.\u00a0 Not!<\/p>\n

My specialty in my consulting work is to enable people to achieve what seems<\/em> impossible, but is merely<\/em> difficult.\u00a0 (Many things seem impossible until your competitor does it, then it\u2019s just difficult!)\u00a0 The \u201csecret\u201d to being able to do this predictably and repeatedly is the discipline of making \u201ccommon sense\u201d my common practice.\u00a0 Although my top-selling book, Scrappy Project Management<\/a>, recommends 12 best practices for achieving outrageous success, you\u2019d do very well to implement these 3 practices in your own work and your life immediately as they are fairly simple:<\/p>\n

Set clear goals \u2013 every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year, every decade, and for your life overall, in writing.<\/p>\n

Communicate effectively \u2013 and this includes both listening as well as talking, with listening being the hands-down winner for the most important communication skill.\u00a0 When you do talk, make sure you\u2019re talking about your goals, purpose, vision and mission.<\/p>\n

Prioritize ruthlessly \u2013 because priorities drive decisions, most importantly how we allocate the scare resource of our time.\u00a0 If you have limitless resources \u2013 money, time, etc. \u2013 there\u2019s no need to prioritize.\u00a0 Know anyone like that?\u00a0 Me neither.\u00a0 So, we must prioritize.\u00a0 Remember, if everything is #1 then nothing is, and we may rob ourselves of the opportunity to achieve our goals by sacrificing what matters most for the benefit of what matters least.\u00a0 As we used to say at HP, where I worked for a decade:\u00a0 Prioritize.\u00a0 Focus.\u00a0 Win.<\/p>\n

Just because this is simple doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s easy, of course.\u00a0 But, if you just implement the first recommendation about writing down your goals, within a few weeks you\u2019re very likely to experience something extraordinary in your life.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing this rigorously for the past 15 years, and some of the outrageous results that have occurred are:<\/p>\n

– I started my own consulting business 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

– My consulting work, once strictly US-based, has become truly global.<\/p>\n

– I\u2019ve helped to start, run and grow around a dozen businesses.<\/p>\n

– I published not just one book, but have a whole series<\/a> I\u2019ve created with other authors.<\/p>\n

Now, you might think I\u2019m just really smart, or really lucky, or just really bold in some way.\u00a0 Not so.\u00a0 My dad\u2019s a welder, and I come from a middle class family, and I\u2019m the only person to have completed college in our family.\u00a0 I\u2019m fortunate in many ways, but I can assure you that I\u2019m a person of modest talent, but great discipline, especially when it comes to writing down my goals. \u00a0And I use my “Scrappy Project Management Checklist” (see image) to make sure I don’t forget to make common sense my common practice.<\/p>\n

Sure, I\u2019ve been lucky, but I\u2019ve worked really hard to be that \u201clucky\u201d.\u00a0 And you can, too.\u00a0 You can improve your chances of success by taking this simple step to achieving in your life what seems<\/em> impossible, but is merely<\/em> difficult, and will eventually become inevitable.\u00a0 Get busy writing!<\/p>\n

I\u2019d love to hear from you about your experiences at kimberly@wiefling.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Get Scrappy! – Kimberly<\/p>\n

\u00a92010 Kimberly M. Wiefling. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n

Want to get even scrappier? Check out all 5 “Scrappy Guides<\/a>“, including August’s\u00a0Scrappy Women in Business<\/a> by me and 11 gal pals, \u00a0Scrappy General Management<\/a> by Michael Horton, released in October, and\u00a0Scrappy Business Contingency Planning<\/a> by Michael Seese, released in November 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published on CareerShorts.com where Kimberly has been invited to contribute blogs periodically on global leadership and project management. Did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8,6],"tags":[33,64,156,1373,42,825],"class_list":["post-4957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-priorities-2","category-communications","tag-common-sense","tag-communication","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-priorities","tag-reddit"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}