Where Do You Perform Well?
Think through your past life, your past successes, your past jobs and occupations, and identify what it is that you do well. Determining where you perform, or where you could perform, in a superior fashion, is one of the keys to channeling your life, your work and your energies into those areas where you can really make a difference for yourself and your company.
To be successful at any job or profession, you must develop a series of core competencies, or skills, that enable you to do your job well. But to rise to the top of your field, you must become outstanding in at least one area. In this sense, the “good” is the enemy of the “excellent.” Many people become 117
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good at what they do. They then become complacent and stop growing.
They compare themselves with people who are not as good as they are rather than comparing themselves with what they are truly capable of.
Look For Ways to Add Value
The reason for every job, and the role of every person, is to “add value.” The primary reason that you are on the payroll is to contribute value of some kind to your company. This value is then combined with the value that others contribute into the product or service that is sold to the customer or client. Your ability to contribute value determines your results, rewards and your success in your career.
Ask yourself, “Of all the things I do, where and how do I contribute the most value to my company?” If you analyze your work carefully, you will find that there are usually only three things you do that are responsible for 90%
or more of the value you contribute to your company.
To determine your three strongest skill areas, begin by asking yourself, “If I could only do one thing all day long, what one activity contributes the greatest value to my business?”
Once you have determined the answer to that question, you then ask, “If I could only do one more thing, what would it be?” You then ask the question one more time until you come to the third major activity.
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The whole purpose of organizing your life and setting priorities is so that you can spend more time on these three tasks. If you complete these tasks, and you do an excellent job on each one of them, you will make more of a contribution, and be of greater value to your company, than everything else you do put together. What are they?
The Secret of Success
Some years ago, I met one of the top insurance salesmen in the world. He sold more than one hundred million dollars of life insurance each year. He had a staff of 42 people. These people handled every single aspect of his business, from scheduling through to proposal preparation, administrative tasks, banking, advertising and promotion and client service. He focused on the one thing that he did better than almost anyone else in the world, which was face-to-face contact and interaction with prospective clients and customers.
He took two hours aside every day to study, practice and prepare his face-to-face meetings and interactions. He became one of the most knowledgeable experts in personal insurance and estate planning in the world. His unique talent was his ability to assess the needs of a client and to help that client to make the very best decisions in the areas of life insurance and estate planning for his unique situation. He delegated everything else.
Where Do You Excel?
Analyze yourself and ask these questions:
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1. “What is it that I do better than anyone else?”
2. “What is my competitive advantage?
3. What is my area of excellence?
4. What is my unique selling proposition?”
5. “Where could I be excellent?
6. Where should I be excellent?”
7. What skills do I need to develop to make a maximum contribution?
Asking and answering these questions is the key to personal effectiveness and high performance.
Commit to excellent performance. Make the decision today that you are going to join the top 10% of people in your field. Determine the most important skill that you can learn and develop, the one skill that will help you more than any other, to get into the top 10% in your profession. Write this skill down as a goal, set a deadline, make a plan and work on it every day.
Get Better At Your Key Tasks
One of the keys to setting priorities and good time management is to “get better and better doing more and more of the few things you do that make more of a difference than anything else.” The better you are at what you do, the more you will get done in a shorter period of time.
Set “mastery” as your goal in your career. You will only be truly successful, happy and paid what you are truly capable of earning when you develop 120
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mastery at what you do. Years of research have concluded that the achievement of mastery is possible for almost everyone, but it is not easy. It requires five to seven years of hard work in your field, including many hours of study and practice, to become one of the very best at what you do. And there are no shortcuts.
Invest Time in Your Future
When we discuss this at our seminars and workshops, many of the participants moan and roll their eyes. They have somehow gotten the idea that it is possible to jump to the head of the line in life without paying the price that others have paid. They are looking for a quick, easy way to move to the top without putting in the hundreds, and even thousands of hours of hard work that are necessary to get there.
Sometimes they say to me, “Five years is too long!” Then I tell them something that often changes their thinking completely, “The time is going to pass anyway.”
How old will you be five years from today? Answer – five years older. In other words, the time is going to pass anyway. The only question is, “Where are you going to be in your field at the end of five years?”
The good news is that if you set mastery in your field as your long-term career goal, and you work toward that goal every day, continually reading, listening and learning to upgrade your skills, you will inevitably reach the top of your field. If you are willing to make the sacrifices and pay the full 121
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price of success in advance, you will eventually reap the rewards. Nothing can stop you from getting to the top of your field except yourself, and you can only stop yourself by stopping.
Think In Terms of Priorities All Day Long
Apply the 80/20 Rule to every part of your business. Identify the most profitable products and services your company offers. Identify the top 20%
of customers who contribute the greatest value. Identify the 20% of people in your company who contribute the most value in terms of their work. What are the 20% of possible opportunities that can account for 80% of your sales in the years ahead? Keep viewing your business through an 80/20 lens. Be sure you are working on those activities that can make the greatest difference of all.
What products, services and competencies account for your company’s greatest successes? Why is it that your company has grown from where it started to where it is today? The key to achieving great successes in the future is to identify the reasons for your success in the present. This becomes your springboard to market superiority in the future.
In setting priorities, you must analyze your business clearly, and understand it completely. Determine the areas in which your company performs well.
Decide upon the company’s area of excellence, or area of competitive advantage. Where and how is your company, and your products and services, superior to your competition? In what areas are breakthroughs 122
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possible if you were to develop new products and services, or upgrade your existing products and services?
Analyze Your Company Priorities
Practice “Corporate Triage” on your company, and your products and services, on a regular basis. The concept of triage comes from World War I.
During the battles on the western front, there were so many wounded that the medical corps could not treat them all. There were not enough doctors and nurses. As a result, they began dividing the rooms into three groups. The first group was made up of the wounded soldiers who would die in any case, whether or not they got medical attention or not. They were put aside and made comfortable.
The second group was the group that would survive in any case, whether or not they got medical attention, because they had light wounds. These were put aside and treated quickly.