Category: Goals

Strategy or Tactic?

Is it possible to confuse strategy and tactics? Yes! I have encountered it numerous times in my career. Both strategy and tactics lead to the achievement of a goal, but they are different. Let’s look at an example.

Strategy: Become a world class manufacturing facility through reducing waste and developing the skills of the workforce.

Tactic: Implement lean tools to achieve the strategy.

Tactics need to shift to fit the situation, but the strategy is the overriding guide. On the surface this appears simple, but in practice is sometimes overlooked. In lean manufacturing, some groups may be so enamored with learning a lean tool that they believe implementation of the tool is the strategy. In some cases, they may even believe copying the tool exactly as they learned it is the only solution.

The lesson I learned from my Toyota trainer is that we should never copy a tool. We must first think, then learn, then implement a solution that fits our situation. Never copy without understanding. His favorite question was, “What is the purpose?”

Tactics change and shift depending on many factors. Strategy should be an anchor for the team. A vision that will keep people linked to a goal as they face their daily challenges.

Where have you become too attached to a tactic and need to revisit your strategy? Is your strategy driving your tactics or the reverse?

Time to Move On?

I recently observed a situation where a person was promoted into a new role, but was struggling because they were stuck in their old role. Not that they needed to fulfill their old role, but because they didn’t want to give it up.

I have had many working assignments over my career, each one presented new challenges, and opportunities. Some of my success has come from determining the skills I needed at the particular moment and focusing on being better at them.

I started my career in an assignment writing software even though my degree was Industrial Engineering. I eventually moved to an Industrial Engineering role, and I took my software development skills with me. However, within a year, those skills were no longer relevant to my success. I had to learn new skills.

That pattern repeated itself over the next 30 years. I learned skills, moved, adapted, and repeated. The adaptation is what can be difficult if you are not aware of the need to adapt.

When you transitioned into your current role, what skills became more important? What skills became less important? Have you adapted? Are you continuing your learning?

We build experience and skills over a life time. You don’t have to give up what you learned to move to a new role, but you probably will benefit from shifting your focus to the new skills needed for success.

Creating Positive Momentum

As my friend John Maxwell has written, “Momentum is a leader’s best friend”. Positive momentum makes everything easier. Negative momentum makes everything more difficult.

So when we are faced with slowing momentum or even negative momentum, we need to focus some energy to get things moving again. Here are some ideas that I use.

1. Find a small win. Take advantage of some small wins to get yourself moving in the right direction. It helps you pick up speed.

2. Review your bigger goal, and set interim milestones to achieve. Define a goal that you can achieve now, this week. Then set one for next week. Then the week after. Achieve those goals every week and you will find your momentum building towards the bigger goal.

3. Find new support or resources. If you are working within a team, swap some members with another team. Add talent or ideas to rejuvenate the team’s passion  by finding a new spark in additional team members or other types of support.

4. Increase your learning effort. Getting stuck can sometimes be triggered by not having enough knowledge, or by being reluctant to act on the knowledge you have. Which is affecting you? Figure it out and then move past this stumbling block.

5. Find and reflect on the positives. Momentum slows when your team is challenged and you feel like you are not making progress. Make it a regular habit to celebrate the achievements. It can be the fuel that keeps your team moving.

Momentum is your friend. When you can harness the energy, everything becomes easier.

Why Is Self-Discipline Difficult?

Success requires self-discipline. It is the method by which you convert your time into action on a regular basis. People who are great at self-discipline enjoy the results. People that are poor at self-discipline fail to consistently achieve. Because self-discipline is difficult, most of us fall in the middle.

Here are three methods to improve your level of self-discipline:

1. Set your priorities and goals. When I decide it is time to make improvements in my life, I typically review how I spend my time, and then I make adjustments with new goals. Often I try to adjust too many things. It is more effective to define just one or two priorities and then focus link it with the top change you want to make. Your more likely to stick with it.

2. Create systems and routines that provide daily focus on your goals. Discipline is all about practice. The habit you want to create is easier to maintain if you think of it not as a daily task, but as practice with the intent to improve every day. Stop just checking the box, and challenge yourself. Set up a system for tracking progress and also a system for rewards.

3. Find someone to hold you accountable. For me, the simple answer is find a coach. But that won’t always fit in a person’s budget. An accountability partner is anyone that can provide the motivation for you to follow through on your commitments. It could be a friend, a spouse, or a co-worker. You can also connect with someone with a similar interest or goal and challenge each other to continue.

Self-discipline is difficult because success takes time and we often lack the patience success requires. How can these three processes help you build the foundation for your future success?