Winning habit #1 – look at your business through a fresh lens
When you’re working in your business daily, it is easy to become blinkered. You start to see what you want to see, not what the reality is.
I call this ‘focus distortion‘.
It’s like at home when you’ve been away for a while, and when you return, you notice things you hadn’t seen before; the pile of books left in the hallway or old clothes in your wardrobe. You start questioning how long they’ve been there as you’ve failed to notice them. You decide to tidy away and create a new reality as you look at your world through a fresh lens.
Apply the same fresh lens to your business.
Returning to work after a holiday is a great time to do this. Imagine your first day back is your first day ever in the business. Challenge yourself to imagine you’re a new executive who has been newly appointed. With a fresh lens, challenge yourself to question everything, and I mean everything!
Ask quality WHY questions and review systems, processes and procedures. Is it adding value and helping us be a relevant, agile, resilient business? Is it adding value for the customer? Challenge the most expensive words in business, ‘That’s not how we do things’ or its sister statement, ‘We’ve never done it that way before’.
Walking through your business with a restless curiosity and fresh lens is a cathartic experience that will awaken your senses. Seeing things for the first time, even though it’s always been like that.
Winning habit #2 – question what is truly worthy of your time
You should focus on what you can only do to create the stretch and growth potential for your people and business. Yes, you’ll have oversight and a contributory role in other areas, but your primary focus should be on the high-value activities which allow you to realise the potential of your business and yourself.
On your return to the office, ask yourself; what is truly worthy of my time?
If you’re spending more time on tasks and activities, which you shouldn’t be, then now is the time to change this because if you don’t, nobody else will.
(For tips on how to utilise your time better, check out my blog; 7 tips on how to HALVE the number of meetings you have and HALVE the time they take)
Winning habit #3 – design your high-performing week
We all come back from a break away from the office with good intentions; managing our workload more effectively, being home earlier from work to put the children to bed, not travelling as much, and here comes the BUT. But before you know it, the first few days and weeks pass, and you are so busy catching up after your time off that your good intentions are out the window, and you’re back into your old ways of working.
One of your highest callings is to be conscious and deliberate in setting your high-performing weeks up for success.
How you…
…focus on the things that only you can do, the areas genuinely worthy of your time.
…master the skill of saying NO to unimportant things to say YES to the important things.
…create more time to work ON the business, not just the busy fool working IN the business.
…book quality thinking time in your diary, knowing the time you spend thinking will make the time spent doing more effective.
…are home for bath and storytime with your children or a meal with your loved one. Time and memories you will never get back.
Remember, in life, you make your choices, and then your choices make you.
Winning habit #4 – become your own performance coach
Successful leaders have an insatiable thirst for learning, showing up daily to be their best version. They spend their life being their own performance coach, ensuring they reach their true and maximum potential.
Maintaining relevance in the fast-moving arena of life is about living life with deliberate conscious intent as the architect of your destiny. It’s about learning and developing yourself. Perhaps most importantly, it is about having the attitude of action.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the mechanics of the working day, and before you know it, days, weeks or even months have passed since you spent time on you.
Invest time in yourself.
One of the six core human needs is growth – for emotional, intellectual or spiritual development. If you are not learning and bettering yourself daily, you are not growing.
