A Leadership Lesson: Two Guys With Guns
by Brent Filson

Raymond Chandler author of the famous Philip Marlowe detective stories advised writers suffering from writers’ block: “Whenever you get stuck, have two guys walk through the door with guns.”

Leadership has its own “leader’s block.” All leaders now and then get a good dose of it. You’re sailing along in your job getting the results you want when, for whatever reason or for no reason you can discern, you come to a screeching halt and can’t go any farther. You get stuck on getting the same results. You get stuck on motivating people. You’re stuck on motivating yourself.

Being stuck, take advice from Raymond Chandler: Have two guys walk through the door with guns!

continue reading "A Leadership Lesson: Two Guys With Guns"

Revealed in this article is a major obstacle you face for achieving effective time management.

Stop trying to prioritize by importance. That’s a major piece of advice from someone obsessed with time management. See time management systems.

In this article I will explain the problem of prioritizing by importance. Having just gone against the grain of traditional time management, you will have a glimmer of hope, and a dashing of skepticism. Hope because you know normal time management systems are a pain. And Skepticism because what I’m going to show you is not common.

continue reading "Major Problems With How To Prioritize"

this post has some excellent insights for those who want to become more effective in their leadership skills.

Take each one of these principles and consider how you can improve in each of these leadership qualities. What can you do today to make this part of your leadership style?

continue reading "25 Leadership Maxims"

Time-management
Many workers have given up setting New Year’s resolutions because they are convinced that such resolutions don’t work. This may reflect a larger problem – not knowing how to set and reach goals. Achieving personal goals is one of the most important things in life. Just because you may have encountered some failures doesn’t mean that you should stop setting concrete goals.

continue reading "Effective Goal Setting Techniques"

Think of personal time management… Is it really possible?

Effective time management involves many components that together create natural time management skill.

Effective time managers all do certain things that allow them to succeed. What are those ‘things’?

Many Chinese whispers exist in the industry and it took me literally years of research to win with stress management for personal time management.

My blog contains many personal thoughts surrounding personal time management. I can suggest you begin at time management.

Here are some general tips to get you thinking:

Know what you want to accomplish.

Organize your life around the things you want to accomplish.

Use reminders to keep you focused.

Use discipline, effort, and passion to keep you active on your projects.

I used to think time management skills were to be as close to robot like as possible.

But by 15 years old I discovered I’m ‘only human’. I realized I couldn’t have ‘absolute total control’. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

My Time Management Skill

I can now focus on what’s important, yet simultaneously remaining aware and sensitive to interruptions and new opportunities.

This weekend for example I must have spent 70% of my waking time as hard focused productive time. I’ve accomplished a lot in this one weekend.

But time management training usually fails to deliver the attitude and techniques that are necessary for personal requirements.

What does it mean to ‘manage time’?

We can’t take a clock and slice it up into well managed bite sized pieces, like we could a cake.

Managing time happens as a natural skill when you understand the rock and water analogy of a new time management paradigm.

Here’s a hint, do not schedule activities to time. And do not prioritize activities by so called ‘importance’.

Your time is the most precious commodity you have got. You can earn more money. You can buy more things. But your life, under today’s level of technology, will end at an average life expectancy of 75.

That’s no way to run a universe. But until life extension technologies are in commercial use, we are going to have to make the most of what little time we have got.

To successfully time manage you must start from that awareness. How much time you have in life.

From their your natural and honest skill of managing time will develop.

Then, to manage time, you can identify the big things you want to spend your time on, where your time goes currently, and put together a schedule of managed time.

See stress management for much more, and to find out exactly how I achieve success: stress management.

On my blog there are free time management videos and you can take a time management self-assessment quiz to uncover unnatural time management techniques may be stifling your time management success right now.

5 Reasons Why Every Network Marketer Should Know About funded proposal concept.

Many people are limiting their chances of
success in the Global Resorts Network Opportunity -
or any other opportunity for that matter - without even realizing it. Make sure you’re not one of them by discovering what will set
you apart from the rest.

If you’re one of the large band help you truly succeed you’re probably familiar with what happens when you
try and recruit someone. They will either say yes and you’ve got
a new member on your team, or they say no and that’s that.

It’s small wonder that so many people get disillusioned with
network marketing and give up on it altogether – but that
doesn’t mean it should happen to you. The key to recruiting
Global Resorts Network distributors is to approach them in the
right way, and that way isn’t always the same as the experts
teach you.

It’s great listening to the success stories and to your up-line - Global Resorts Network Mentor, but these people tend to have
plenty of money to spend on advertising and pay per click methods that might not work for you. There is a learning curve to negotiate in getting Global Resorts Network distributors and if you follow your sponsor’s advice you can sometimes end up trying to start halfway up that curve.

That’s why you need to think about using funded proposals. Not
everyone is keen to share the secret of these but once you know
how they work you will see there is more than one way of
succeeding by attracting Global Resorts Network distributors.
You also want to be sure that you are investing money in finding
and helping prospects, not wasting it on people who aren’t
interested in your specific opportunity.

Here are five reasons why you should try it now.

1. You’ll bring in more sales. If that online squeeze page
you’re pushing doesn’t interest your prospect, that doesn’t have
to be the end of the matter. Promote a generic product that will
help them in any network marketing business they might join.
Give out a free report that will help them, and then promote an
e-book they will have to pay for which goes into more depth.
Even if you don’t recruit them into your opportunity you can
still make money.

2. It maximizes your chances of recruiting new Global Resorts
Network distributors. Offering a free report in exchange for
their email address means you maintain contact with that person.
They may not join straightaway, but in a few months time it
could be just what they’re looking for. And in the meantime you
might sell them something else on network marketing in general.

3. Funded proposals appeal to all network marketers. This means
you can earn from more than just Global Resorts Network
distributors. A funded proposal means you will be appealing to
everyone who is interested in network marketing – meaning you’ve
opened up a huge opportunity to make more money for yourself.

4. You can brand yourself as an expert. If people see you as
someone who knows how to build a business with other help you truly succeed ow them what you know by using the
funded proposal method to pique their interest! Tell them about
network marketing in general and then show them joining with
other Global Resorts Network distributors can make them more
money.

5. It gives you great value for money promotion. You are
appealing to the largest group of people in network marketing –
namely all of them! With a funded proposal you can build a huge
mailing list and sell them products to do with network marketing
for months and years to come, even if they don’t sign up to join
the other Global Resorts Network distributors.

In short it’s a double whammy – you are giving yourself two
chances of succeeding with network marketing. You can still
recruit people for your Global Resorts Network Mentor, but you
can also sell them reports and e-books related to the subject in
general. Just think of the possibilities – you could even tell
them about the provider you use to organize your email lists and
send them through your affiliate link when they want to use that
same service to build their own network marketing business.

It’s undoubtedly the best path to success, so make sure you
follow it.

This is the entrepreneurs Age. Entrepreneurship has grown into an increasingly core part of our domestic US economy. Today, small employers who employ less than 500 employees currently produce a little over 50% of the total non-farm gross domestic product and employ more than 50% of the total number of employees. No single business sector claims such a significant share of the economy.

This entrepreneurial sector of our economy also produces a majority of our patents, trademarks, and other intellectual innovations that drive growth throughout our economy. Just a little over fifeteen years ago, entrepreneurship changed the way our society today functions. The internet was just a remote academic or military blip. Yet young entrepreneurs like a UIUC computer program named Marc Andressen revolutionized the world wide web with the development of the Netscape browser. Similar people like Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, David Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo fame, and Pierre Omidyar of Ebay fame, entrepreneurs all - changed the face and culture of our society today.

Compared to large firms, small business produce approximately 14 times as many patents per employee. That is an significant differentiation in the intellectual and innovation output of small business. Yet small business only employ 39% of the total high-tech workers.

Twenty years ago the economy needed to produce 21 million new jobs in order to keep up with the growing population. In fact, it created over 23 million new jobs - driving unemployment to all time lows compared to the century past.

Yet with all of its strategic importance, entrepreneurs is just beginning to be recognized within the academic community.

Professors like Professor Greg Watson are studying the effect and role of entrepreneurs as an essential component of any business degree. It is estimated that approximately 61% of the colleges and universities within the United States have added or are considering adding an entrepreneurship related course to their curriculum.

It is essential that the modern business leader understand the role entrepreneurship within the economy, their industry, and their business. The academic community today is increasingly embracing the professional professor who has real experience starting new businesses, raising capital and equity to finance new startups, and hands on managerial experience launching new startups. These professionals consult on new product development, serve on boards of venture capital funds and venture capital businesses, and bring a practical real world understanding of entrepreneurship in a fast paced moving economy. This extensive experience brings a new level of excellence in their teaching of business principles, concepts, and metrics.

These entrepreneurs professors are embracing a new championship of the Entrepreneurial spirit as an essential component of modern business training.

Around midnight students across the country become record setting authors by finishing essays, and study groups for tests in unheard of time. This unnerving process often leads to below average results. Many people wonder why this is happening. The answer is poor time management. A few pointers on how to avoid such a scenario follow. Before you read more, be sure to give yourself a few minutes of time in case you’re cramming for something right now, you don’t want to miss something important.

Make lists early and often to become experts at time management. Lists that will be available to you for reference can be recorded anywhere. Studies prove the more one makes lists the more apt they are at logically completing tasks. Further, lists can provide people with a realistic look at their workloads. Often people will put more on their plate then they can chew. Sometimes it takes a list of all the foods on the plate for the stomach to get the picture.

Achieving Objectives Made Easy

Over at Motivation Junction, we came across a video post today using a quote by General George Patton to illuminate a triage concept for executing on strategy. Now whatever you opinion of Patton, it’s undeniable that he was a competitor, a winner, and a motivator par excellence. The man could deliver a speech that makes modern-day, Tom Peters type motivational fare look like a depressed Big Bird talking to an empty room at the local rotary club.

Feeling less than motivated and looking for some small business motivation to jump start your company or just yourself? If you’re reading this particular blog, chances are you could definitely use a swift kick in the motivational posterior. Or even if you’re on the right track, it never hurts to call in some encouraging reinforcement.

Says Patton, “A good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan executed in the future.”

In business, as in war, it pays to act sooner rather than later. You can concept a perfect strategy for months, and you can refine your roadmap document until it gleams with the sheen of yellow brick. But meanwhile… Your competitors are driving against you like a German blitzkrieg. Time is of the essence in any business, no matter what the competitiveness level. If you tale too much time fretting over every last detail of your plan, your competition is going to step into the breach and act, leaving you under threat of becoming irrelevant.

This same analogy applies to hospital triage. Sure: It’d be great to have a world class orthopedic surgeon set a broken limb on the battlefield. But with hundreds injured, a fast-working army doctor, prioritizing his time to help the greatest number is clearly the best option.

The moral of the story? You must ruthlessly prioritize your action items and execute on them as soon as possible! Or perhaps even sooner. We hope this helps give you some business motivation

This article defines what effective leadership is all about. The illustration of the leadership wheel has a lot of value for those trying to develop their leadership skills.

While interviewing the legendary Jack Nicklaus, a reporter once remarked, “Jack, you have had a spectacular career. Your name is synonymous with the game of golf. You really know your way around the course. What is your secret?” Nicklaus replied, “The holes are numbered!”

If only leadership were so easy. (Given the sad state of my game, I’m the last person who should use “easy” and “golf” in the same sentence!) Of course, there are no handily numbered steps that we can follow in developing our leadership. But after decades of studying leadership–of writing and speaking about it, trying to practice it, and coaching thousands of managers in it–I am convinced that there are timeless leadership principles which we can all use to be more effective in our personal and professional lives.

In the late 1990s, I published my fourth leadership book, Growing the Distance: Timeless Principles for Personal, Career and Family Success, now approaching 100,000 copies in print. The response to the book and its leadership principles was so strong that I continued to develop them. That led to my newest–just published–companion book, The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success.

A recent search on Amazon.com revealed that there are over 10,000 leadership books in print! There are as many different interpretations of “leadership” as there are people using the term. The result is a confusing multitude of leadership grids, charts, formulas, jargon, fads, and buzzwords, with new ones popping up every week. An occupational hazard of this business is that we chase after what’s new rather than what works. We look for fashionable rather than enduring principles.

Most of my audiences are very experienced middle to senior managers in medium to large organizations who don’t need to be educated or informed as much as they need to reminded, inspired, reinforced, or shown different ways of applying familiar leadership principles.

Historians, anthropologists and scholars of classic literature tell us that there are really quite a small number of recurring stories in the entire history of humanity. Our books and movies provide us with endless variations on the basic stories of the human condition, and the same themes keep showing up in the stories of people and cultures thousands of years or miles apart. Enduring leadership principles are just as timeless. They aren’t new. It is the timelessness of these principles that prove their value.

Leadership needs management to fly

Both management and leadership are needed to make teams and organizations successful. In building our speaking, consulting, and training businesses, we also need a good balance of both management and leadership. Trying to decide which is most important is like trying to decide whether the right or left wing is more important to an airplane’s flight. I’ll take both, please!

A classic problem often comes up among entrepreneurial start-up companies with strong vision, passion and energy (leadership), and good technological or technical skills: their poor management discipline or lack of systems and processes lead to errors, poor service quality, and frustration for customers and people in the organization. In building our businesses, we need to couple our passion and creative spirit with disciplined processes and business management.

The leadership wheel

The most common weakness, however, is lack of leadership. Growing our leadership is a dynamic process. It begins at the centre of our being and develops in multiple directions. I use the “hub and spokes” model to depict the timeless leadership principles. (Both Growing the Distance and The Leader’s Digest are built around it.)

Each part of the wheel corresponds to an area of leadership. At the hub of the wheel, we have the vision, values and purpose on which leaders effectively focus themselves and their teams or organizations (Focus and Context). Leaders also take initiative and do what needs to be done rather then waiting for someone else to do something (Responsibility for Choices). Leaders are authentic and lead by visible example, fostering openness and continuous feedback (Authenticity). Leaders are passionate and build strong commitment through involvement and ownership (Passion and Commitment). Leaders lead with heart and rouse team or organizational spirit (Spirit and Meaning). Leaders help people grow through strong coaching and continuous development (Growing and Developing). Finally, leaders energize people by building strong teams, inspiring and serving (Mobilizing and Energizing).

The leadership wheel model provides a metaphor for situations we face at personal, team or organizational levels. For example, just as a wheel’s weight-bearing ability depends upon the strength of its hub, so does the strength of our hub determine the weight of the performance and change issues that we are able to carry.

The wheel also represents the circular nature of leadership: there is no beginning or end. All the supporting leadership principles around the outside of the Leadership Wheel are interdependent and interconnected. If we, our team or our organization develop these leadership skills, the wheel is well rounded. If we are deficient in one or more of these skills, the ride might be a little bumpy.

A key part of our continuous leadership quest is finding the approaches that fit our individual values, personality and style. No one leadership size fits all. It is like trying to find a path in a field of newly fallen snow. Once we walk across the field, we have discovered our path.
By Jim Clemmer

Excerpted from Jim’s bestseller, The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. Jim Clemmer is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal growth. His web site is www.clemmer.net/articles.