Have you broken yours yet?

February 8th is often remarked as being the date that most people admit to having broken their New Year’s resolutions…

Now, while I’m sure this doesn’t apply to most of the business leaders and businesses we work with (?) I thought it worth commenting on for this article in case you wanted to know more…

While 2020 was a tough year for many people it was also a year of great change for all of us. As a coach I always say there are two sides to every coin…And with great change comes … opportunity.

To take advantage of any opportunity we have to be ‘ready’.

As the saying, (sometimes) attributed to the great Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca goes

“Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity”.

The difference between lucky and unlucky people is all in our perspective. Those who are prepared and have their ‘eyes open’ are best able to spot opportunity and maximise the benefits. They are ‘the lucky ones’.

Is that you?

At this point people often have many questions, such as “How do we prepare ourselves?”; “How do we get ready?”; “How do we open our eyes to opportunity?”

One of the ‘great’* modules in one of the courses we run is entitled “Developing a strategy for your Business”. We’ll not go into the details of this module here but the key to success is in the start of the title ‘Developing a strategy for…’

If you take away the name of your business and add your own name, I wonder what comes up for you?

Resolutions are simply ‘goals’ and we all know that goals without PLANS (or STRATEGIES) are just dreams…

So, the key to achieving your resolutions lies in two areas and one of those is in the planning.

Looking ahead to the end of 2021 may seem far off with all that’s happening for us right now, but this is key if you want to make a change. You need to focus on what you want to achieve and then work ‘backwards’ to identify the key ROCKS that you 'need' to complete to get you there. The term ROCKS comes from Stephen Covey in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. These are the key tasks that you must put in your plan to ensure you will be successful. This is one of the concepts we use with clients in our Scaling Up workshops. (You can find the date of the next one here https://www.igniumconsult.com/scalingup-workshop-18032021/

To help you understand the ROCKS concept take a few minutes now to look at this video and make a note of the key learnings and take aways for you (yes, it’s old but the principles still apply)

https://resources.franklincovey.com/the-8th-habit/big-rocks-stephen-r-covey

Yes, it’s as simple as that!

Once you’ve watched the video, and to help you with your personal planning, take time to answer these three questions for yourself:

1. Where do you want to be personally in your professional and personal life by this time 12 months from now? Describe that vision for your life in as much detail as you can to bring it alive.
2. What are the three to five key ROCKS that you must/want to put in your plan to ensure you achieve that goal?
3. What will be the benefit to you and your business when you achieve this goal?

(We wrote this as a blog article for a client leadership programme and thought it might be of benefit to others at this time.)

For more information contact us or drop me an email direct [email protected]