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Epic Ending Anyone?

4/25/2014

The Epic End

In recompense for discovering the six ways to be successful. Our Everyman, Joe, became successful.

He trumped each obstacle in his path in an intimidating environment from bosses, coworkers, meetings, and presentations.

He overcame his internal fear, opening his mind to teamwork, accepting others points of view. Building on each lesson to grow and become better than he was.

Starting out small by not letting the world intimidate him anymore, he changed the way he did things to get great work done easily and effectively, adapting himself to each new scenario as it came.

Adapting himself by opening his mind to others, helping him build his teamwork and eventually his leadership skills. And leveraging his growing confidence, he snuffed out his fear of public speaking.

With the downfall of his fear of public speaking, nothing stood in his way. He made great presentations, closed accounts, and quickly was given more and more responsibility.

This continued and continued for a year until he became the flagship employee for the company and was first in line for promotion. With the foundation he set a year ago, he was quickly able to achieve his goals. No longer stuck in the 3 year rut. No longer the pass-over for promotion. No longer the docile Joe who let people and things walk over him.

He was Joe. The Champion. Our Everyman.

Did you enjoy our story of Joe?

Then let me know and I will do another segment on another Everyday hero.

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Finale anyone?

4/17/2014

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6. Do not be intimidated.

The foremost and final hindrance that had always kept Joe down was being intimidated by others. Comprised of bosses, coworkers, friends, acquaintances, and anyone else who had the will to lay into Joe would intimidate him into not pursuing things he wanted, to let things go if they got too hard, or into doing things that were detrimental to his life.

You must still have so many questions about how and when Joe our everyman changed to take his first steps in becoming the Champion.

How did Joe flabbergast the naysayers? How did he learn to not to be intimidated, and conquer his company?

First Act: A DUD.

Joe found himself at a crossroads. He could not understand why he was intimidated by others, work, and other factors in his life. He just knew he could not help himself when it came time to make decisions, and would let others control him.

These scenes had happened multiple times in his life. From his youth, when he let his parents choose a degree for him without researching the competiveness of it and asking if that’s what he really wanted. Happened in his relationships where he would let his girlfriends decide for him on clothes and style. At work, letting bosses discourage him from trying to work for promotion and letting them pass him up each year. Letting life slight him without noticing.

It wasn't until, he looked at his life holistically did he understand what was going on.

Taking a look at himself.

His Life.

And where it was going… did he understand.

Joe's Epiphany.

Finally realizing he had been working in the same company doing the same things for the last 3 years. With average performance reviews, being passed over for promotion by management, and no real accomplishments. Letting others control him. Letting life intimidate him.

He finally understood.

He was a dud.

Second Act: Re-Ignition

How did Joe reignite? How did he come back from the rut that he allowed his life to fall into?

What Joe did was simple.

He purely accepted some simple truths.

He accepted that he had let life intimidate him.

He accepted that he let life take a hold of him and let it lead him in any way it blows.

Knowing these truths. He fought back.

He did not let others to intimidate him any longer. He built up the fortitude of his will and leveraged his position to ensure he would never be intimidated again.

He accomplished this by 1. Getting work done effectively and at a high quality, 2. Collaborating with cross-functional groups on major projects and making technical compromises, 3. Presenting to customers, company executives, and everyone else, 4. Seeing the world in others’ points of view, and
5. Being able to adapt to your environment.

Not letting life intimidate him, he took his first steps in fulfilling all other 5 lessons. Allowing him the audacity to become the champion of his company.

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What don't you know about The LIVING...

4/10/2014

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Disclaimer:
If you don’t know, I see everything as living. The only difference between the animate and inanimate is the spectrum of experience. The inanimate experiences nothing, while animals experience reactions to stimuli and instincts, and humans experience stimuli and go one step further to interpret it. Because of this, I give you the LIVING DOCUMENT and how it can help you succeed.

THE LIVING DOCUMENT

The Living Document is a document that grows and evolves over time. With each new experience the document is updated to counterbalance new situations. Now a Living Document can grow from nothing in 3 different ways. One is to source your mind and create it out of your own experiences. This goes as far as creative writing to expert advice writing. Two, is to research and build it from your understanding of others experiences and can include citing books or Google searches. This includes research papers and other research-based texts. Third is to collaborate with others and grow dynamically from multiple sources rather than from only one. This includes peer reviewed journals, crowd-sourcing, and Google docs with multiple authors.

The beauty of the Living Document is its ability to evolve and stay current. With each new experience you gain a new gold nugget of knowledge that lets you do it that much better the next time. Incorporating this document into your life even allows you to have a reference guide. And even instills it into your memory by creating it, and even more so if you use it to teach others. If written well enough, the document can quickly be turned into an Infoproduct or blog post that you can share with your customers or community as great content. It might even make you a buck or two in the process.

But how do you make such a document?

First you start with the different ways to collect data to incorporate into your document. One is through field work and the other through the lab.

Field work is done in external environments with little research and occurs as you accomplish day-to-day tasks. In field work, you notice common problems that occur daily such as bottlenecks in processes and flaws in systems, methods, and formulas. In field work, you take notes on what is working effectively and not effectively. These notes are taken back to the lab/office and used to update the Living Document with the new tidbits of valuable information.

Field Work

·         Before – have an outline of what you’re going to accomplish and a few of the steps involved.

o   Allows you have an idea of what needs to happen and leaves room for improvisation if necessary

·         During – take notes of what actually happens, noting what works and what doesn’t.

o   Use note-cards, laptops, or any other means to remember

·         After – Review your outline of what was supposed to happen with what actually happened and find the missteps and triumphs in-between.

o   Helps identify where issues are in the chain of your processes and systems

Lab Work is done in an internal environment and is research intensive. It is not the by-product of daily tasks, but is the daily task itself. This can involve interviews with industry experts, reading books, journals, and other periodicals, and in actuality can be considered anything that has been sourced from field work. From this, it is experimented upon to find the cause and affects with the different variables.

Lab Work

·         Before – Beforehand, organize the materials you are going to research and the format you need to put them in

o   This helps you categorize where to put useful information you want to reference and write about as you come upon it in your research

·         During – take notes on what you read, watch, and hear, summarizing parts in your own words

o   Standardize the information in your mind, mapping out the concept from start to finish to help grow your living document.

o   Research in pockets to maximize your efficiency, as staring at the same information for 4 hours straight is susceptible to the law of diminishing returns.

·         After – Edit the information to ensure only the most important information is gleaned from your research.

o   Find gaps in your knowledge and your living document to discover what you need to learn next to help evolve and adapt it further.

In the END

Thus Field work and Lab work are hopelessly intertwined to help you build your living document. Field work is amorphous and you never truly know what experiences, variables, or results you might get. The Lab work is structured and it puts variables together away from other variables to find how they work together and a part.

Utilize them together to evolve your living document to the benefit of yourself and others.

For a detailed example of THE LIVING DOCUMENT then fill out the form below:

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Are you the Champion of your Company?

4/3/2014

3 Comments

5. Being able to adapt to your environment.

Our Everyman, Joe, sometimes had issues with management. He wasn't keen to being coached or having constructive criticism. He couldn't easily adapt himself to different managers and their management styles. Making him inflexible to rapidly changing situation requirements, and causing tension between himself and management.

How did Joe learn go with the flow? To act when needed? And take criticism as a way to grow?

Joe started small. He took a look at himself in the mirror and tried to figure out what was causing him trouble. While, he looked, he thought to all the times that he had ignored his old manager’s advice and critiques. Not letting them coach him even though they had tried. Not improving in their eyes as well as his.

He thought of the new manager they brought in and the trouble he was having with her laissez-faire style. He thought how directionless he felt.

Realizing he was very inflexible and irritable with his old manger’s coaching and lost without it under the new management. This rigidity, he realized was the cause of his problems. It was his habitual behavior and attitude toward critiques and management that was causing him to be passed over each year during promotion time.

Stepping away from the mirror with his new epiphany in mind, he brought himself to change, to change his habits that made him inflexible.

He changed his behavior and attitude through constraining his old habits by finding out what they were through an Actions Audit and replacing them with new habits through Habit Maximization. Knowing why and what caused his habits was useful in identifying if they were good for his career and goals. Once knowing them, he knew just how to diminish them with new, and more productive habits to be successful.

Now Joe took criticism in stride because it was just a new angle to see himself and grow from to perfect his skills. With new management, it was a new opportunity to learn and be coached or left to his own devices. He became able to adapt to the situations and those around him. Adapting to good new to take advantage as well as bad news to ensure he minimized his losses to come back the next day.

Interested in more... then check out the rest of Joe's Adventure.

Tell us about how you have had to adapt and overcome in your work or business.

3 Comments

Epic Ending Anyone?

Finale anyone?

What don't you know about The LIVING...

Living Document Sample

Are you the Champion of your Company?

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