Financial Communication

In our past we developed techniques for measuring the growth of companies. That was when our economy was certain. It was in a growth mode. Somewhere before the 3rd wave (Alvin Toffler) or the information age had turned our markets on their heads we were in the industrial age - where everything was increasing, interest rates were increasing steadily and that is when we created most of the financial metrics available today. Now that we are well within the eye of the storm of the in information age we are still using those same measures. That doesn’t make sense to me. I see us as a financial society effectively doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result – we are living the definition of insanity.

How long has it been that we can’t use the rule of 72? Yet we still hold out for the day when we can use that metric again. The truth of the matter is that our markets won’t stabilize into the same pattern again and we will never be able to use that rule. All the metrics we have created to control and compartmentalize our world are quickly becoming defunct without valid replacement. They are becoming extinct and we are behind in our replacement of them hurdling toward crisis. What is really going on is that no one is willing to admit is that we are not embracing the change we see in our economy.

We, as habit-forming beings, prefer to build on our previous knowledge rather than start anew. When we are looking and assessing analyzing our companies (for investment purposes or to assess financial health of the company we’re working with) we are using old technology – we are using structural thinking, we are using analytics that are no longer describing the same picture. Yet we as humans, even though we know this intuitively, we still do the same thing over and over again. We would rather excel at doing something we know than suck (a technical word) at doing something new. This is very apparent any time even a small transformation (either personal or organizational) needs to take place.

Financial metrics are very interesting. I understand not every one holds a fascination for numbers so I’ll break it down how I see it. Financial metrics or information is really a language in itself like the language English we speak to each other. Financial metrics are used by individuals outside an organization to assess what has taken place inside the organization during predermined periods of time. If you understand how to read the financial information it provides you with a picture (not a complete picture) of what has taken place during the year or period. This is past information or old information that in our habit to date we look at and predict the future. Thing is, the present is a better prediction of the future than the past. However we have no way of measuring the present – or do we?

Let’s look at a skill we all seem to take fore granted: Communication. If I were to only communicate to you using my words I would sound much like a computer. There would be no tone fluctuations, you wouldn’t see my hand gestures, or know if I were joking or arguing with you. This is what the communication is like using the current financial metrics. It only gives part of the picture. If we listen to the communication of the corporations we can get a better picture to figure out the future possibilities with respect to financial metrics.


Being a financial auditor for many years has taught me well about listening to a company and integrating the information. When I walk into a company I listen to everything it has to tell me. What are the people saying and who are they talking to? Are they tired, stressed, over worked, bored, etc. All these things will signal you what is the present situation in the organization and helps predict the future of the organization and can be seen as soon as walk into the organization.

For example, I walked into a company to just in time to hear one of it’s sales people say it could get a customer their merchandise 5 days after the order was placed. I already knew the company was a manufacturing company and could not produce the order within the 5-day window. This told me there was little communication between the production and sales department, which is a sign of poor leadership within the entire company. Right away I wondered how cash-strapped the company was due to leadership disorganization.

The first thing we learn in life is how to communicate. How to speak a base language and that forms our method of being able to interact with the world. With further growth and development we learn different dialects based on our experiences and the backgrounds we are exposed to. We all may be speaking the same language but we all speak different dialects of that language. In school we learn how to read and write but not to bridge the gaps between all our different dialects.

If we make the effort and become proficient in understanding the communication of human beings we can use this as a method of accurately measuring our organization’s present giving us a more complete picture of the future. We will be using dynamic measurements to measure dynamic forces.

Tracy Slotin
CEO and Grand Sandmaster
The Executive Sandbox® Change Consultants
www.ExecutiveSandbox.com

Communication – our words are more powerful than measure.

The importance of communication seems to be dismissed in our society. In school we learn how to read and write, but never on how to speak to one another or how to listen. We are assumed to have these habits engrained in our DNA – although if we did we would have all done the same, with respect to grades, in school.

In the sea of corporate culture there is another focus and numbers focus – how to read financial data. What the numbers say is usually created from calculations that are sometimes compared to what is already known. Depending on how versed you are in reading these numbers (based on your background) will determine your ability to interpret their meaning.

When Microsoft builds its products, it uses existing knowledge of what products came before. Even though it is a new product it is built from the same form. As result we might see similar type errors in upgrading software. This was also the reason for the mass hysteria surrounding the Y2K concerns of computers shutting down our societies.

When we communicate there is typically and transmitter and a receiver. If the receiver has an experience base different than the transmitter the information sent by the transmitter will be altered and thus the communication may be foiled (IE: a miscommunication.)

It similar to the childhood game Broken Telephone. If I whisper a word into an individual’s ear – they have a certain experience of this word and they compare it to what the already know and then alter it. Then they whisper into another person’s ear that second person has a unique experience of the word and compares it to their unique experience and alters it and the process gets carried on through many different parties we will find at the end the word has changed and probably doesn’t sound anything like the original word.

Now think about your day-to-day interactions with the individuals around you. How many misunderstandings do you have in a day? How many times is a person interpreting your actions and words and not understanding what you are communicating? Probably with every conversation you have. The reason for this is because there are many things blocking you communication.

In the next little while we will be exploring these items through this blog. I would love to hear your examples as we go through unlocking your communication power.

Tracy Slotin
CEO and Grand Sandmaster
The Executive Sandbox® Change Consultants
www.ExecutveSandbox.com

Brain Health for Sustaining Change

It’s been a while (a whole week) – I’m off my game and starting again on my 2007 resolution to post a blog everyday. As my excuse I’ve been working on preparing the Emergenetics ® Seminar announcement for the Seminar on the 26th of February. I have been having a bit of trouble figuring out which format to send the email out with. But with that excuse, I am starting again on my 21 days of creating this habit of posting a blog everyday.

As with every posting I want to provide you with value, but I would like to also post the information for the upcoming seminar. Today, I want to give you some brain exercises – these are part of the many games and fun you would experience in the Emergenetics® seminar on February 26th.

If you want to be able to use your brain optimally for change you need to keep your brain healthy. To do this you need to exercise and feed your brain things it needs. What most people know about their bodies is that their bodies need water to live. But what most people are not aware of is that our nerves and neuropeptides (brain material) are made up of oils. We need this oil for proper nerve conduction. The way we get that oil is through the different types of foods we eat particularly fish. The problem is oil is 100% fat and we as North Americans have a bad relationship with fats. There are good fats (unsaturated) and bad fats (saturated). If we don’t have some fat in our diet we will experience forgetfulness, disruption of focus, and disturbed sleep to name a few symptoms.

Another item to consider for brain health is daily exercise. Exercising you body – physical activity - will help keep you brain fit but there are a number of other exercises you can do to exercise your brain:

Seek challenges and learning that stimulates different parts of the brain – items like crossword puzzles, Sudoku or others offer challenge. Welcome new ideas, new pursuits, new activities into your life – change your exercise routines, type of exercise, the way you get to work, etc. By changing different parts of your life it acts in a way of maintaining a healthy brain. Here are some additional brain exercises:

1. Cross-Crawls. With your right hand, touch your left ankle. Now with your left hand, touch your right ankle. This is most effectively done standing up, but works sitting down too. This exercise is thought o integrate the right and left hemispheres of your brain. And by clearing the potassium and sodium that builds up in your brain when you concentrate, it will help you read faster and comprehend more (1).

2. Crazy eights. Make big “eights” horizontally (like the infinity sign) in the air with your right hand. Without moving your head, follow your thumb with your eyes. Make the eights as big as your peripheral vision will allow. Now do the same thing with your left hand. This may help integrate both sides of your body (1).

Tracy Slotin
CEO and Grand Sandmaster
The Executive Sandbox ® Change Consultants
www.ExecutiveSandbox.com

(1) Geil Browning, Emergenetics: Tap into the New Science of Success (New York: Harper Collins, 2006)

Organizational Change – An Inquiry

What would happen to our change practices if we began all our work with the positive presumption that organizations, as centers of human relatedness, are alive with infinite constructive capacity? That the organizations themselves contain the answers of how to create change and what changes need to be made, are already contained within the organizational knowledge.

This question is the very basis of Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry looks at the strengths of organizations through methods of inquiry. Then leads the organization through a dream, design and achievement process to create sustained change.

Leading change is all about strengths. In most organizational change mechanisms, practitioners fix what’s wrong and let the strengths take care of themselves. In Appreciative Inquiry concentration is put on the strengths of the organization by engaging the positive potential of all employees toward transformation the company.

To get an idea of the power of Appreciative Inquiry answer for your self the following two questions and observe your response:

1. What are the problems associated with your organization?
2. What are your favorite experiences of working with the organization you work with?

Which question had you feel energized? Which took away your energy? Which question had you look forward to work and which one made you not want to go to work?

In Appreciative Inquiry we use questions that build energy around the future direction of the company. The positive is the focus of the inquiry. The very basis of the method has the organization solve its own issues and gain confidence about its own abilities to solve its own issues through recognizing the organization’s positive core.

This is one of the methods of communication The Executive Sandbox® employs in every change mechanism, every coaching session and every seminar. We choose to build up the companies and individuals we work with. Ever since I was trained in using this method I’ve had this continuous nagging question going through my mind – if Appreciative Inquiry is so powerful to empower massive organizations to create change, then what is our current speaking doing to other people? Could it be that our speaking to another keeps them from advancing, changing, and evolving in their lives? Could we be others stumbling blocks? In which case we all need to learn and practice Appreciative Inquiry.

Tell me your thoughts,

Tracy Slotin
CEO and Grand Sandmaster
The Executive Sandbox® Change Consultants
www.ExecutiveSandbox.com

Personal Change

Today while visiting a client we started to engage in a conversation about our collections of stuff we cannot bare to part with. The biggest problem was that the stuff we wanted to keep was small or we thought we might use again and did not want to throw it away. However, the extra stuff had created a situation where we are living on top of our stuff.

I remember many years ago when my paternal grandmother past away, my family went through her piles and collections. She even had a collection of used zippers and buttons she saved out of a lifetime of clothing she was finished wearing. I swore to myself I wouldn’t be the same. I would throw things out or give them away when the items weren’t useful anymore.

When one of my girlfriends passed away suddenly last year, I had another reminder of how too much stuff could be a problem. After two days of her family cleaning her suite I still couldn’t see how there was two bedrooms in her condo. There was so much stuff it was unbelievable. Still, I took some of her furniture into my small place making it even smaller.

I constantly wonder why we collect things in life. Why do we need things? Why does having things provide comfort? We certainly can’t take it with us in the end, so why have it to begin with?

Feng Shui suggests that if we remove old, used items from our space we are making room for other new items to appear in our lives. Often I’ve used this philosophy to figure out if a person was open to having others in their life. If your living space has only room for you, then how can you invite another into that space?

Every year around this time I get itchy for change. Especially when I’ve been looking at the same walls for a while. I have decided to get rid of the extra furniture and any extra clothing, paper, etc. I can part with.

The only I have as suggestions for getting rid of your excess stuff are the following: Have someone, a friend help you part with your stuff - going it alone will only have you do the minimum. Set up rules with that individual before hand so that your most prized possessions do not get thrown out but at the same time you do not hold onto everything you don’t need in your space. Get rid of all items that are on a someday course (someday I will read, someday I will finish this project, someday when...). Anything you are unsure of throwing out or giving away put in a designated place until you feel comfortable giving them away or throwing them out. I usually give items a maximum time limit of a year. If I do not touch it in a year I get rid of it. The main thing to know is, it’s hard to change and we get comfortable (develop habits of laziness) quite easily. The best way to do this type of change is like ripping off a band-aid – quickly!


Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO and Grand SandMaster
The Executive Sandbox ® Change Consultants
www.ExecutiveSandbox.com

Personal Change

As you can see from my own example of writing a blog entry everyday as my New Year’s resolution – I have fallen off the wagon. It really is difficult to create change due to the way our brains work. However, if you are determined (I am determined to develop this writing habit) to change your habits then eventually you will change.

Some of the reason why it is difficult to make change is due to our scheduling of the desired habit. Using myself as an example for this, typically we don’t make room in our life for the changes we want to make. If having a shower every morning is important to me, I always seem to have enough time. Yet, for writing, I don’t have a specific time that I write where others will not interrupt me. Beyond this, when someone interrupts me, whether it be by phone, email or being in my space I welcome them in instead of requesting them to rescheduling a conversation, a request, etc., at a different time. What this means is, I don’t like to tell them this time is not that great for me.

Many times we don’t schedule (i.e.: put in our schedule) our own time and keep those appointments. Our mothers taught us to take care of others before ourselves and as a result we don’t get to accomplish the things we desire. This might be the one thing that’s in the way of accomplishing a new habit – our habit of not keeping our promises to our selves.

Another thing that may keep us from our goal is fear or worry. Fear of success also comes under this heading. If we let our fears stop us in our path to our goals then we will only have the path of being fearful. We don’t get the goal. We only get the fear.

Fear is an inherited response. We’ve evolved with it. It is a reptilian response to unfamiliar stimulus that was used to keep us safe. If we continue to engage in it we develop a habit of listening to it. It becomes a learned behavior. Over the years I’ve come across a number of solutions to dealing with fear but the best one I came across recently.

We all have thinking preferences or parts of our brain we prefer to use. If we are using the right side of our brain to process information and we are getting worried or fearful we need to switch to processing on the left side of the brain. Sure that sounds easy, but what does that mean?

The two sides of our brain are responsible for different kinds of thought. Although their functions are normally integrated, they possess capacities and can operate independently. The right side of the brain processes asymmetrical thinking and its function is to work on intuitive, emotional, holistic, nonverbal, visual, spatial, and simultaneous comprehension tasks. The left side of the brain performs symmetric thinking and its function is to work on rational, logical, analytical, mathematical, verbal, linear, sequential ordering tasks.

Now, think about the tasks you perform everyday. What task are you performing when you are fearful? Next time you are fearful, switch to task that is using the other side of the brain. This will eliminate your fear and you will be able to fulfill your goal.

Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO and Grand SandMaster
The Executive Sandbox ® Change Consultants
www.ExecutiveSandbox.com

Planning – Starting With the End In Mind

At the beginning of our strategic planning process we create a company vision. The second step is to create goals that directly fall out of that vision. The third step is to set those goals to a timeline. These three items make up the organization’s strategic plan.

When setting goal to a timeline the most common way of creating the timeline is to first create the goal and the time frame in which the goal should ideally be reached. Then the planning group creates a timeline of all the people and resources they need to achieve the goal by the time limit. When they are thinking about creating the goal, the planning group are mostly concerned with the HOW of creating the goal. In doing this they start from the point of nothing and create the first step, then the second step, and so on until they think they will achieve the completed project.

The problem with this type of planning is that the planning process requires quite a bit of time to plan in this way. It also requires that all the people involved in the planning process to already have the expertise of creating the goal which many times is not the case. Because not everyone will have the skills at the time of the planning there is a strong possibility that there will be time overruns during the implementation process. Errors made in the actual plan will start to show up when adjusting the plan from perceived step to the actual steps needed to achieve the goal.

There is another way to plan and it takes only a fraction of the time; it is called planning with the end in mind. Planning in this way is a RESULTS focus plan rather than HOW focused plan. The way it works is this: Choose a goal and the date of achievement. Then for that date write down all RESULTS that you will have that will show you have achieved that goal. What would you HAVE as a result of achieving that goal?

The next step seems counter intuitive. Many people that I’ve done this exercise with have a great deal of problems shifting their mental models. For this type of planning you will need to trust the process. The second step is to choose the date half way between the achievement date and today’s date (If your final achievement date is in 20 years half would be 10 years from today.) and write down the RESULTS that you will have achieved by the halfway point of the RESULTS you wrote down from the final results list. What would you HAVE at the halfway point a result of achieving your final goal? Do not think about what you would have to do from today’s date to get to that halfway point.

The next step is to choose the date half way between the halfway point (or the quarter-point) and today’s date (If your halfway point is in 10 years the quarter-point would be 5 years from today.) and write down the RESULTS that you will have achieved by the quarter point of the RESULTS you wrote down from the halfway point results list. What would you HAVE at the quarter point as result of achieving your halfway goal? Do not think about what you would have to do from today’s date to get to that quarter-point.

Repeat this process until you come to know what RESULTS you will need to achieve tomorrow. Once you come to this point you will find that the method of how to achieve each step will fall out easily out of the RESULTS map you have created. This method allows you to not have the expertise but gives you the time frame in which you need to have the expertise to create the result. It allows a goal, no matter how large to appear completely achievable. I have had individuals create world peace, fix environmental problems, bring democracy to China, etc, and know how it was completely achievable by using this planning method.

Please try it and tell me how it works for you.

Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO
The Executive Sandbox® Change Consultants
www.ExecutiveSandbox.com

Vision Creation

I travel a great deal all over the United States and Canada providing seminars on business management. When I ask about corporate vision or even corporate mission I am always surprised with the responses I get. Very few (1 in 15, maybe even less) companies have a corporate vision or mission. Of those companies that have a vision or mission very few of the individuals in my seminars knew what they were and even fewer still were not a part of creating those important statements.

Out of all the seminar participants I have had this year and asked them about their corporate mission and vision only 2 said that their companies regularly meet about how their company was incorporating their mission and vision into their everyday work.

The reason for a vision is that it is the inception thought of your company. If your company is already in existence the reason for recreating your vision is for plotting a new course or direction. Most companies change their vision with the change of their CEO. If your company has changed CEOs many times your company may be suffering from change exhaustion.

Creating a vision is a way of having all individuals in your company on the same wavelength. It will help have your employees agree on how the company is to roll forward into the future and how it work together to obtain goals. Your vision involves each individual that works for your company so that they can express the vision.

When creating a mission you are creating the reason for why the company exists or what problem does the company solve. Not included in the mission is how individuals relate to carry out the inception thought or direction. This is included when creating the vision.

When creating a vision you might want to create a vision for your self, your team, your department as well as your whole company. Doing so may make all tasks easier to achieve.

When creating a vision you want to include everyone in your company. This might not seem feasible due to the size of your company or work group but I will break it down for you here. Creating a vision is a change mechanism and unless you get all individuals involved in the creation you cannot create buy-in which you need for implementation.

The first step in creating a vision is to brainstorm the qualities, values and/or virtues the company extols and emulates. In brainstorming it is imperative that the participants know there is no wrong contribution. If your company is too large to have face-to-face brainstorming sessions an email format can be used as well (IE: Send out an email to all employees asking for their input on what are the qualities, values and/or virtues the company extols and emulates.). Make sure to include instructions to obtain a minimum submission of 8 qualities, values and/or virtues. If there are groups that can not be reached – you will need a representative(s) of the missing group(s) that is(are) trusted by the missing group to contribute for them.

The next step would be to compile a complete list of the submissions and eliminate any duplicate values. Then send this list back out to all the contributors and have each contributor choose their top 6 from the list.

Again, a new list of 8-10 of the top values chosen should be compiled from the top chosen qualities, values and/or virtues. With this new list create one to two sentences that encapsulate the ideas presented and send this out to the contributors to adjust and ensure it encompasses the language that the contributors use.

Finally, send the statement out to the contributors as a final document for them to agree to and sign.

By involving everyone in the company you create a vision that encapsulates the ideas of the entire group. The further involvement and contribution into something larger than one individual creates a sense of pride and attachment, which increases buy-in. By having each person work with the wording of the vision it allows each person to ensure their language, their dialect of language is included in the vision making them an instrumental part of vision and creates further buy-in. The final signing creates the agreement.

Once you have a vision that works for all in your company then you can start the strategic planning process.

Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO
The Executive Sandbox ® Change Consultants
http://www.ExecutiveSandbox.com

“If you wish to arrive at a place you do not know, you must take a path you do not know.” –T.S. Elliot

Culture in change

During any change mechanism there are two main phases:

• Conception and planning
• Implementation.

One of the most ignored factors during organizational change is organizational culture. Culture plays a huge role in any change mechanism and if it is not looked at it could be the stopping block of your change mechanism. In most instances strategic change initiatives are mandated and employees are rarely if ever asked for input or to approve the changes during the conception and planning phase. In fact most changes are made without the asking the very people that will have to implement the change or will be directly affected by the change. To make matters worse, the change might be generated by outside consultants who know less about the organization than the individuals that work in the very trenches of the organization creating a learned helplessness and/or resistance response.

When we start to dissect an organizations culture we have to start our study at the smallest possible link, which is our communication. We all need to be speaking the same language. If I start this journey with the word culture there is a problem inherent with the word itself. The word culture does not have a finite meaning. It is a morph word and takes on meaning depending on the words that surround it. Similarly, our corporate cultures take their meaning from the individuals (the influences) that create that culture. If we do not define it, both in definition and for our corporate purposes, how can we ever expect to change it, engage it or even interact with this nebulous form?

For the purpose of this blog I will define the word culture as a group of assumptions of how the world should and does operate that a group of people share that determines their thoughts, perceptions, feelings and behavior. It is a set of measurable, directional, and distinguishable conversations and actions that form the written and unwritten rules of behavior governing how individuals interact – in your organization(1). These rules directly influence how work is accomplished and how fast or slow any change mechanism is going to be incorporated into an organization if at all.

In some instances the change mechanism is completely in line with the corporate culture and it takes little effort to create the change. An example of this would be for a Starbuck’s barista to learn how to make a new beverage. The problem with the organizations culture comes up when the change initiative stray too far from the way things are usually done within the organization. An organization’s culture will allow, dictate the timing, or completely halt the implementation of any change mechanism.

If corporate culture is nebulous, how does one measure it? Ken Matejka and Al Murphy (2) suggest having participants of the culture come up with adjectives that characterize the current work culture in the organization. To start to uncover corporate culture point the focus at things like attire, conversations, house keeping, language used, offices, expectations about what works and what doesn’t work, procedures, rituals and traditions, signs and workspace. Make sure any unwritten ground rules are included like, being a team player means being at all the corporate outings.

Embracing the existing organizational culture and incorporating input from that culture may seem to be the slower route but it will allow for reflection and insights to develop and build commitment to give the implementation a chance of going smoothly. Attaching a sense of urgency to the change mechanism will increase the chances of disrupting the organizational culture causing further delay in the change initiative.

A reminder must be made that when we choose to take on any change we are dealing with human brains. As soon as we introduce a must comply or forced scenario we will receive a two-year old-like brain rebellion. This is one of the most common reasons change initiatives fail. Having employees help create the change initiatives will help create commitment for the change and have the change be closer to the existing organizational structure creating a quicker and easier change implementation.

Change is always about connecting on a human level. Spending the time to understand the culture will help the change occur.

Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO
The Executive Sandbox ® Change Consultants
http://www.executivesandbox.com

(1) Stephen W. Hobbs and Darsell Karringten Cultural Transition: exploring Transition-based Organization Through TRACE(c) (Calgary, AB: The International Institute for Cultural Transition 2001).

(2) Making Change Happen On Time, On Target, On Budget (Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing 2005).

New Year’s Resolutions - The Ultimate Personal Change Mechanism

Every year around this time we as humans have this ritual of setting New Year’s Resolutions. It’s like a system we have set in place where everyone around us asks how we are going to change in our lives this year. It is reported by many fitness institutions that the resolution crowd joins the fitness crazy every January with barely 1% sticking to their original resolution.

Why is it so hard for us to change our patterns? Why when we have the best intentions of betterment do we fail? There is a very good reason for the possibility failure to be closely linked with our new resolution for change. When we look at any change whether personal or corporate we must first look at the smallest common denominator – in either case we need to look at how we process information or how our brains work.

When we challenge ourselves with a resolution we are not only asking ourselves to develop a new habit but also to stop indulging in another well established habit we have developed against the very resolution we are trying to start.

Our brains like to create automatic processes. Every time we perform an activity we create a neural connection. The more times we repeat or practice the activity the greater number of neural connections we create in our brain. When we first learn a task like driving a car, we have to pay attention to many different inputs such as looking at three mirrors, shoulder checks, peddle usage, etc. This information is stored in our short term-memory. As this task is practiced it transfers into our long-term memory and becomes an automatic process where we can insert the keys into the ignition and not remember the drive to work.

It is said by some brain researchers it takes 21 days in a row of performing a task before that task becomes habit. Likewise, it takes 21 days in a row of not performing a task to break a habit. For example: if I want to stop biting my nails I need to not bite my nails for 21 days in a row. If I breakdown and bite my nails on the 12th day then I need to start my count to 21 from the beginning. Many times a habit we want to break may persist beyond the 21 days it takes to break it. This is a result of the foundation created by the habit. With my nail-biting habit, if I’ve been biting my nails for 10 years, I’ve developed 10 years of connections in my brain. It will take me 21 days to break the habit but an additional 10 years in which I am at risk of re-establishing that habit with only a couple instances of biting my nails.

If you fail in your attempts to fulfill your new year’s habit – don’t despair – get right back on that horse and start counting your 21 days. Know that change is difficult and may require a couple attempts – it is tenacity that will help build that good habit you are working on. Here are some additional tips to help you succeed:

• Create a crystal clear picture of your target goal (how you feel when you achieve it, how it smells, tastes, etc.) to ensure that you develop your own sense of urgency to create the change you desire. This will help you with your commitment to your goal.
• Create a cheering team or a group that you report your progress to – they might even agree to be your resolution partner.
• Brainstorm fun and creative ways you can incorporate your resolution into your life for at least the next 21 days. The more creative you can be the easier it will be you to incorporate it and the more you’ll look forward to achieving your goal.
• Map out milestones and rewards for meeting those milestones (Make sure your milestones are clear e.g. loose 5 pounds by the end of month 1) and share these with your cheering team.
• Make sure every milestone is celebrated.
• If you do not meet your targets, figure out what has prevented you from reaching those goals. Analyze and chart your results (expectations vs. actual outcomes, times performed task etc.) Make these large, visual and hang them in a public place where others can see your progress too.

For myself, for this year, my habit or resolution I am taking on is blogging every single day starting with this blog entry. I have created the habit of writing in my life but not exposing my writing to others – or publishing my writing to the open public. I encourage you to make your resolutions as public as possible to have as many pulls as you can to achieve your goals.

In this blog I hope you will find useful insights and articles. Further, I would be delighted to hear your comments or feedback.

Tracy Slotin, MBA
CEO & Grand Sandmaster
The Executive Sandbox® Change Consultants

© Copyright The Executive Sandbox ® Inc., 2006