“Live life as if you were an exclamation point, not a question mark!” – Larry Winget

It’s time to crank it up. I’m going to help you make things happen with skill. For the month of August, I’m going to focus on 30 Days of Getting Results the Agile Way.

“If you have to be right, you’re doing it wrong.” — Dr. Rick Kirschner

When it comes to people skills, Dr. Rick Kirschner (Dr.K) sets the bar. He’s co-author of the best-selling book, Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst , and for three decades he’s helped advance the field of personal and organizational development.

I don’t know if you’ve read Conversations with God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1) , but it’s *interesting.*

My three take aways are:

“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” — Walt Disney

Whether you are a “one-man band” or a large organization, your customers are why you are in business. By having clarity on the customer segments, the customer needs, and the potential profitability of each segment, you can choose more effective segments to serve for a more sustainable business.

“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.” – Bruce Lee

How do you make sense of what’s driving a manager or the people around you that you work with everyday? If you understand what’s driving people, you can better understand the behaviors, blend your behaviors, and anticipate situations.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

One of the best way I know to reduce fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) is to improve your anticipation skills.

One of the ways I improve my ability to see ahead is to build a map of key trends. This helps me make sense of changes I see as well as find the best path forward. Rather than give you a bunch of theory, I’ll just show you can example of how I build my trends map each year. Here is an example of my key trends map for 2010 …

“ They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Carl W. Buechner

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Eduard Ezeanu. Eduard blogs at People Skills Decoded and is a communication’s coach with an attitude-based approach. Here’s Eduard on his top 10 lessons learned in improving communication.

“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.” — Aristotle

Now there’s a fine question to start you day with, isn’t it? Take heart, this post just might let your inner-kid out to play and make your day more meaningful, in whatever you do.

“Change is inevitable, growth is intentional.” — Glenda Cloud

The field you’re in can slow you down or it can speed up your career success.

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” — Winston Churchill

To predict explosive change before it occurs, you need to be able to distinguish a “spider” from a “starfish.” A starfish can replicate and spread a fluid set of ideas, beliefs, values, and norms. This is the hidden power behind things like Wikipedia, craigslist, Skype, and even the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous.

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand

Here’s a little recipe that will help change your game. We’re all creatures of habit and it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. How do you break out of a thought pattern or change how you see things?