CEO Success Report -
April 2004
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CEO Success Report
- April 2004
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Increasing the Effectiveness and Enhancing the Lives of CEOs
and business owners.
Contents of this issue...
.. Welcome - A few words from the publisher, Gary Lockwood
.. Thought-Starter - "Six Strategies for getting
BREAKTHROUGHS"
.. Guest article - "How to Be Ethical AND Profitable"
.. CEO Resources
.. Quotes to use in your staff meeting this month
.. Humor to lighten up the executive suite
.. Contact the publisher
.. Subscribe and unsubscribe instructions
See past issues of the CEO Success Report at:
http://www.CEOSuccess.com/archives
===================================================
WELCOME to this issue of the CEO Success Report!
===================================================
Hello again. I'm Gary Lockwood, President of CEO Success.
Welcome back once again to the CEO Success. I know you have
no shortage of material to read and I thank you for choosing to
read our newsletter.
We work hard to provide practical ideas, thought-provoking concepts
and useful information for you.
You (and over 1000 of your CEO peers), have honored me by
being a loyal subscriber. For that, I appreciate you.
In my fourteen years of coaching and training, I've observed how
successful business people "break through" existing boundaries
and move their business and their lives to a higher level. I have
identified six aspects of the enterprise where it's possible to
achieve these breakthroughs.
To get breakthroughs, CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs
and professionals must systematically examine and develop the
six integrated principles of success.
My Thought-Starter for today outlines and discusses each of
these Breakthrough Strategies.
May I ask a small favor? Please forward this issue to other CEOs
and company presidents who may be interested in receiving
these messages. Thank you.
And now for our guest article this month.
Competitive advantage or lack thereof is the key to ethical behavior
in sports, in business, and in life. Sometimes it is the perception
of one's own competitive advantage rather than the reality of it that
is the greatest determinant of that individual's behavior.
Our guest author this month, Mark Goulston, shares an interesting
view of ethics as it relates to competive advantage. Read more about
Mark at the end of his article.
I hope you enjoy receiving these articles and ideas to
help you sharpen your thinking about being an effective CEO.
My wish is that you use the ideas in the CEO Success Report to
get the results you really want. If you want some help in putting
them into practice, or if you have questions, email or call.
As you know, our specialty is Increasing the Effectiveness
and Enhancing the Lives of CEOs and business owners.
Enjoy this issue with my compliments.
Sincerely,
Gary Lockwood
CEO Success
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This month's THOUGHT-STARTER
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"Six Strategies for getting BREAKTHROUGHS in YOUR Business"
by Gary Lockwood
Wealth.... Quality of Life.... Satisfaction... Fun....
Are you?
* Getting all you want from your enterprise?
* Progressing in your professional practice as much as you desire?
* Satisfied that your job/career gives you everything you want?
"You don't drown by falling in the water;
you drown by staying there."
Edwin Louis Cole
Many of the CEOs, owners, entrepreneurs and professionals that
I coach have come to me because of that feeling that "there must
be more than this". Most are successful, yet have the feeling that
they are working harder and are less satisfied. Many were trying
to develop a balance between their personal and professional lives.
If you're having these feelings, join the club. A gap exists between
expectations and the reality of the workplace today. While business
people generally expect they will take more time off and worry less
about money as their business grows, they currently work long
hours, spend little time with family and suffer from dangerously
high levels of stress. These are the challenges of working in a
time of transition.
The bad news is there is a great gulf to bridge between reality and
expectations. The good news? There are ways both individuals and
corporations can change to improve both workplace quality and the
level of productivity.
What are the possibilities? How would you like to just leap over the
mundane, step-by-step progress you have been making? You do
not have to settle for incremental improvements. You CAN achieve
extraordinary breakthroughs in your business and personal life if
you know how.
Interestingly, YOU already have the answers for more success!
They are just locked away inside you. Unlock the creative power
inside you and focus it on turning your dreams into reality.
In my sixteen years of coaching and training, I've observed how
successful business people "break through" existing boundaries
and move their business and their lives to a higher level. I have
identified six aspects of the enterprise where it's possible to
achieve these breakthroughs.
To get breakthroughs, CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs
and professionals must systematically examine and develop the
six integrated principles of success.
These Breakthrough Strategies are:
Develop a compelling STRATEGIC VISION:
This is the process of surfacing and clarifying the areas of
significance to you and your business. You will establish
meaningful goals in each of these areas. This assures that you
stay focused on the outcomes you desire.
In times of great change and ambiguity, how do you set meaningful
goals? And how do you keep your business moving forward and on
target? This is what strategic thinking is all about. For this break-
through strategy, identify the 8 or 10 key areas that are important
and essential for your business and your personal life - cash flow,
customers, employees, family, friends, spiritual growth, health
and so on. Write them down.
In each of these areas, develop a crystal clear vision of where you
are going with this. What's possible? What does it look like when
you're living up to your best expectations in each of these areas?
Describe as best you can, in writing, what it looks like and what it
feels like when you have reached the point in each of your key
result areas where you are happy with each. This represents a
picture of your future, as you prefer it to be.
These processes have been designed to take advantage of the way
your mind actually learns and the way entrepreneurs actually work.
With clear purpose and direction, your efforts will be laser-focused
on the results you want.
Take meaningful TACTICAL ACTION:
These processes ensure that your actions and decisions are
aligned with your values and vision. You will set critical milestones,
success yardsticks and key tracking indicators so you will achieve
your goals faster and easier.
To be goal directed, you need goals. Set aside a couple of hours
this week to contemplate your 3 or 4 or 5 major business goals
for the remainder of the year. Don't get hung up on the small stuff.
Look beyond today and this week and this month. Picture yourself
on December 31 reflecting on the significant accomplishments of
the year. What will have had to happen to make you happy with
your progress, professionally and personally?
Don't forget to include your personal goals in here. They may be
family related and growth related (preferably both). When your
monthly goals are in sync with your long-term goals, and your daily
activities are leading toward your monthly goals, you achieve "Goal
Congruence".
Enjoy an unparalleled QUALITY OF LIFE:
In our high-demand, knowledge-based economy, issues such as
free time, happiness, satisfaction and peace of mind are not just
nice-to-have. These things are crucial to your ability to operate an
enterprise at peak effectiveness.
The emergence of creativity, ideas, and information as our most
valuable resources, and the pervasiveness of the global, 24-hour
business world have changed our concept of "time equals money".
Now, it's "results equals money". And we all know that more time
at the office does not mean more results. In fact, it often means
fewer results and more mistakes.
What's the answer? The solution is to take time away from your
business. Free time makes you sharper. Free time provides the
rejuvenation you need to restore your confidence and sense of
well-being. You come back from time off with a new perspective,
a higher energy level, increased creativity, and often, a breakthrough
idea. Take one vacation a year, get one break-through. Take two
vacations, get two breakthroughs. Take three, get three.
Getting and keeping a superlative quality of life is best done
systematically, not just when convenient. By consciously attending
to the balance in your life, you can create a rich quality of life
most people only dream of ever having.
How to take advantage of LEVERAGING:
Here, you will regularly examine the results you get from the
investment of your time and money. Leverage to produce high-
impact results is attained through support people, automation,
outside specialists, smart delegation and shrewdly managed
priorities. Many entrepreneurs are still operating under the
mistaken belief that results are in direct proportion to how hard
they work.
This is why it's so important to make wise decisions about how you
invest time and energy. Why do you feel that there's more to do than
you can possibly do? Because there IS more to do than you can
possibly do. You must make choices. Often very difficult choices.
It is imperative that you are doing the right things, every bit as
much as doing things right. You've heard of the 80/20 rule
-- 20 percent of all activities will produce 80 percent of the
meaningful results.
What are your 20 percent? What are the handful of activities that
produce the results that you want, that will make a difference, that
will take you in the direction you wish to go?
Remember, you are rewarded only for results.
Building and strengthening your STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIPS:
Inevitably, the largest share of your income flows from a relatively
small number of key economic relationships, generally your top
clients and referral sources. Identify these special relationships
that require nurturing and create action plans around retention and
developing maximum potential from each.
Truly effective business people succeed because they are genuinely
curious and concerned about people in general - and customers in
particular. Their desire to understand the customer takes priority
over their desire to sell their products and services. The delightful
irony, of course, is that the very reason they are successful at
selling is because they have made their desire to sell a secondary
issue. The primary issue is the relationship they have with their
customer.
In too many cases, entrepreneurs focus on current transactions
rather than relationships that will sustain and grow the business
over the long run.
Committing to LEARNING AND CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT:
When you are proactive about learning and improving instead of
just letting it happen, you accelerate your capabilities, expand
insight and experience startling advances in your thinking.
Effective learning must be conscious vs. unconscious, active not
reactive. It must be something you seek, not just "let it happen".
If learning ability is not conscious, it can't be improved. It just
becomes "another habit" without effective application to the
circumstances in our business (and personal) lives. Most of us
already spend too much of our day "doing things."
How do you become a good learner, and subsequently, a good
change master? The answer is surprisingly simple. Become an
active, conscious learner on a daily basis by creating a diary or log
of your most important daily experiences.
Set aside time daily to consciously learn from your experiences.
You will discover a little-known secret that will put you on a course
to life-long, continuous learning and improvement.
Bottom line.... these Breakthrough Strategies provide a practical,
systematic way to achieve remarkable results. This approach, once
mastered, becomes a habit that enables you to continue your
program of extraordinary accomplishments over the remaining
course of your lifetime.
Here is how you get started. Pull out your appointment calendar
and start blocking out three or four hours each month where you
can be uninterrupted (if you can not do this, you are in trouble
already). Use this quiet time to think seriously about your
personal and professional life. Use the Breakthrough Strategies
as your guide.
In each planning session, focus on one or two of the Breakthrough
Strategies, articulate the desired end results, map the possibilities,
and create an action plan for the coming three-month period. Refer
to this action plan as you plan your time each day or each week.
What can you expect to get out of using these Strategies? The
benefits you experience from using the Breakthrough Strategies
will depend on the specific nature of your goals.
The most common results include:
* Significant increase in income
* A goal achievement process that works
* A more satisfying lifestyle and workstyle
* Elimination of non-productive activities in favor of value-adding
activities that propel you toward your goals
* A more predictable future
* Peace of mind and increased confidence in your ability to
accomplish your goals even faster and easier.
If you would like more on this topic, get the BizSuccess Strategy
Book.
The BizSuccess Strategy Book will help YOU grow your business,
make more money and have more fun. Click to
http://www.bizsuccess.com/strategybook.htm
for details
C Copyright 2001-2004 BizSuccess All rights reserved. No duplication
About the Author...
Gary Lockwood is Increasing the Effectiveness and Enhancing the
Lives of CEOs, business owners and professionals.
Email: mailto:Gary@CEOSuccess.com
Web: http://www.CEOSuccess.com
==================================
Guest Article
==================================
How to Be Ethical AND Profitable ... or ...
Why Tiger Woods Doesn't Cheat
by Mark Goulston
Q: Why doesn't Tiger Woods cheat?
A: He doesn't have to.
Why doesn't he have to? Because he has a huge competitive advantage
over every other golfer!
What's a competitive advantage? There are three things going on when
you're playing against Tiger (and the same was true of Jack Nicklaus
thirty years ago): 1) You know Tiger can beat you; 2) Tiger knows he
can beat you; 3) Tiger knows that you know he can beat you. That is a
competitive advantage.
Tiger built his competitive advantage by:
Having the guidance of firm, loving and dedicated parents;
Honoring their sacrifice for and commitment to him by giving his best
to golf;
Respecting and meeting the demands and challenges of the game of golf
by mastering the fundamentals and mechanics enabling him to execute
every conceivable shot from every conceivable ball location;
Eliminating the flaws in his swing, game plan and mental
concentration so he doesn't have to compensate by cutting a corner or
using a gimmick that lesser players may turn to.
Competitive advantage or lack thereof is the key to ethical behavior
in sports, in business, and in life. Sometimes it is the perception
of one's own competitive advantage rather than the reality of it that
is the greatest determinant of that individual's behavior. For
example, it is a foregone conclusion that Bill Gates would have been
very successful had he been ethical throughout his career. But having
not recognized, realized or in essence perceived his inherent
successful abilities early in his career, Bill Gates, Entrepreneur,
may have been tempted to "stack the deck" in his favor to guarantee
winning. Now with giant successes in the can, respect and esteem from
non-ethically challenged pals such as Warren Buffett, and innocent
trust from his young children causing him to "want to be a better man,
" Bill Gates, The Sequel, is aspiring to become the ethical elder
statesman of technology.
Ethical behavior is directly proportionate to competitive advantage.
The greater the competitive advantage, the easier it is to be honest.
The greater the competitive disadvantage (compounded by unrelenting
pressure to meet unrealistic expectations), the greater the
temptation to stray or lie. In golf this translates into taking an
ungiven gimme putt, moving your ball to a better lie in the woods, or
just lying about your score. In business, it becomes manipulating
numbers to meet earnings projections, expensing personal expenses,
and/or misleading customers, shareholders, or employees.
When ethics are breached, public outcry causes a President and
Congress to rapidly pass a Sarbanes-Oxley Act; when terrorists blow
up skyscrapers with jetliners killing thousands and terrorizing
millions, it triggers taking extreme measures to beef up airport
security; when career criminals blatantly ignore the law, we pass a
three strikes law hoping it will make a difference; and when, most
tragically, children shoot other children, we replace the smiling
greetings by teachers with metal detectors.
It is short-sighted to confuse the deterrents of regulatory
legislation, airport security, three strikes laws or metal detectors
with definitive solutions to these problems. Nevertheless short-term
though they may be, these deterrents are necessary first reactions to
such events. On the surface, they demonstrate power to help counter
feelings of powerlessness and outrage. More importantly they bind
anxiety, fear and terror and prevent them from mushrooming into panic.
By themselves, such remedies are doomed to fail in the long run.
Metal detectors, three strikes, anti-terror measures and
Sarbanes-Oxley (plus additional regulatory measures) will only
briefly deter the criminal behavior they are directed at. Longer
lasting solutions require solving the underlying problems. The have
not impoverished people abroad who turn to terrorism, the have not
young and old adults in our country who turn to crime, the have not
children who violently retaliate against their schools and school
mates, and the have not companies pressured to meet unrealistic
expectations all need to be given and taught to use rather than
destroy resources to help them compete successfully in each of their
worlds.
People and peoples of the world who can't find a way to get ahead,
find a way to get even.
About the Author...
Mark Goulston, M.D. is an emotional intelligence expert and Senior V.
P. of Emotional Intelligence at Sherwood Partners and author of Get
Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior (published by
Perigee Books). Contact Mark: mgoulston@shrwood.com
=============================================
RESOURCES for CEOs
=============================================
The BizSuccess Strategy Book
http://www.StrategyBook.com
** Are you doing the RIGHT THINGS at the RIGHT
TIME? **
Why are some people successful in their business AND they don't
work all the hours you work? How do they do it?
---> The BizSuccess Strategy Book reveals the secrets
The BizSuccess Strategy Book will help YOU grow your business,
make more money and have more fun.
Click to http://www.StrategyBook.com
for details
=====================================================
QUOTES to use in your staff meeting this month
=====================================================
"Taxation WITH representation ain't so hot either."
Gerald Barzan
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
different results."
Albert Einstein
"Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on
him, and to let him know that you trust him."
Booker T. Washington
"Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never
miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you."
"Cheers"
"Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done
by children."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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HUMOR to lighten up
the executive suite
=====================================================
The following came from an anonymous mother in Austin, Texas.
Things I've learned from my children (honest & no kidding):
1. A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house
4 inches deep.
2. If you spray hairspray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller
blades, they can ignite.
3. A 3-year old's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded
restaurant.
4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong
enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear and
a
Supermancape.
It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to
spread
paint on all four walls of a 20x20 ft. room.
5. You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When
using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a
few
times
before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long
way.
6. The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit
by a ceiling fan.
7. When you hear the toilet flush and the words "uh oh," it's
already
too late.
8. Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
9. A six-year old can start a fire with a flint rock even though a
36-year old man says they can only do it in the movies.
10. Certain Leggos will pass through the digestive tract of a
3-year-old.
11. Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.
12. Super glue is forever.
13. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still
can't walk on water.
14. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
15. VCR's do not eject PB&J sandwiches even though TV commercials show
they do.
16. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
17. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
18. You probably do not want to know what that odor is
19. Always look in the oven before you turn it on. Plastic toys do not
like ovens.
20. The fire department in Austin, TX has a 5-minute response time.
21. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms
dizzy.
22. It will, however, make cats dizzy.
23. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
24. The mind of a 6-year old is wonderful.
***excerpts from: http://www.joker.org/ ***
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CONTACT CEO Success
=================================
Gary Lockwood is the publisher of the CEO Success Report.
Email: mailto:Gary@CEOSuccess.com
Office: (909) 739-7444 Fax: (909) 494-4314
Postal: 6837 Raspberry Court, Corona, CA 92880
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Your Comments, please?
========================================
I appreciate feedback, corrections, and comments about the
CEO Success Report. Please send your thoughts to:
Gary@CEOSuccess.com mailto:Gary@CEOSuccess.com
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