Photo by Nicholas T
Are you a goal person or a river person?  Goal people layout a roadmap of goals and set out to achieve them.  River people, on the other hand, go with the flow.  They live for the moment and don’t worry too much about the future.  Neither is good or bad, or right or wrong.  They’re just different approaches for the journey of life.
In the book,Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW! , Stephen M. Shapiro writes about goal people and river people.
Key …

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer
If your business doesn’t have productivity objectives, it doesn’t have direction.  If your business doesn’t have productivity measurements, it doesn’t have control. 
I think the meta-point is, assuming both businesses produce effective results, the more efficient one wins in the long run.  That’s consistent with my experience.  I think another important point here is that if you focus on your productivity, you can usually find a …

How do you get competitive groups to work with each other? How do you improve cross-group collaboration? Superordinate goals. In Social Psychology: Theories, Research, and Applications, Robert S. Feldman writes about how superordinate goals were effective in uniting competitive groups.
Two Groups in the Same Camp
Feldman writes:
“One of the best examples of how group goals can influence group formation comes from a now-classic field study held in a boy’s summer camp named Robber’s Cave (Sherif, 1966). Two groups of missle-class 11- and 12-year-olds – none of whom knew that he was …

“Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build.” — Robert Collier quotes
What if you could step into your future, experience your success, and look back on how you got there? What if you could do a dry run or walkthrough of your future accomplishments and actually feel your results?
In Brilliant Nlp: What the Most Successful People Know, Say & Do, David Molden and Pat Hutchinson write about a simple but effective technique from their Neuro …

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” — Jimmy Dean
The acronym PRIEST provides a framework for evaluating outcomes.   Outcomes is another way to say goals or “results” but with more precision.   It’s a way to walk through what you want to accomplish and map out your results with precision and detail.  The better you can visualize, talk about, and feel your success, the more you stack the deck in your favor.
In Brilliant Nlp: What the Most Successful People …

Goal setting is a powerful tool for personal development. In Your Road Map for Success: You Can Get There from Here, John C. Maxwell writes:
“Retail department store founder J.C. Penny declared, “Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal and I will give you a stock clerk.” Penny recognized the power and importance of goals. While you work on them, they work on you. And what you get by reaching your goals …

Photo by Vanessa Pike-Russell
What if you spend your years climbing the corporate ladder, only to find that your ladder was up against the wrong wall? What if money can’t buy what you’re really looking for? What if there’s a simpler or more effective way to get what you want? In Work from the Inside Out: Seven Steps to Loving What You Do, Nancy O’Hara writes about an approach to help you figure out what you really want.
Key Take Aways
I had several take aways from this particular approach:

Frame out work goals, …

How can you learn whatever you want from any of your favorite heroes? By modeling what they think, feel, and do.   I’m a fan of “model the best.”  Whenever I focus on something, I try to find examples of the best of the best.  To model from them, I try to figure out what their mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors were that helped them achieve their success.  I look for both the strategies and the tactics.
In Think and Grow Rich, Napolean Hill writes about emulating the great.
Key Take Aways
There are a …

Your mission, vision and values are the foundation for your company’s success. It’s how you communicate your unique value, set goals and priorities, and create a compelling future. It’s ultimately your gauge for success (are you accomplishing your mission and moving towards your vision?)  In A Simple Statement: A Guide to Nonprofit Arts Management and Leadership, Jamie Grady writes about vision, mission, and values.
Creating Your Mission and Vision
The key steps to creating your mission and vision are:

Identify the values of the organization. You find these by observing how employees spend …