It's Never Too Late to Re-start

You may be just one strike away!

For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again. ­– A Proverb

 It is never easy nor fun to face failure. To fail is to fall short of a target you set for yourself. If you are like me you have had a fair share of this definition in your life experience. The funny thing about failure is that the memory tends to stick on your mind with some attributes of permanence.

          The underlying concept behind all my writings is that you are a success the moment you set out on the right path for you. If you are on your right path then you can no longer be referred to as a failure even when you fail to hit your mark. This is so because failing becomes to you an event and not a feature of your person any more.

In your success journey it is important to keep trying and not stop even when it seems you are at the end of your game. You should develop the attitude that says to daunting situations, “I will rise again!” It was Todd Stocker that said, “A sunrise is God’s way of saying, “Let’s start again.” Isn’t that so true?

       {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

When you have a vision – a picture of where you are headed in life – clearly defined goals, and plans road-mapping you to success, the fires of hope gets ignited within you and even when drowned by the flood waters of life you can be assured that hope will fiercely emerge in a splendid way again and again.

My encouragement to your troubled heart today is to hang in there waiting for the assured emergence of hope because as long as you can see the sun rise you are alive and, “There is hope only for the living. As they say, “It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion.””

Corporate Visions: How to Recruit the "Right Guys"

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. ­– Jesus (The Christ)

 You may have followed the articles on corporate visions so far and have the thought: “How do I get the right people to share my vision with?” Well it is easy (easy for me to write but not so easy for you or me to accomplish).

Getting the right people to share your vision with is of utmost importance, as it may mean the survival or otherwise of the vision. Some people have shared their visions with folks and it served as the effective death of the vision.

This is so because some followers choose to remain passive and inactive, depending on the leader to initiate, run, and accomplish the vision. Some others are only concerned about themselves and want to show-off personal ability at the expense of the vision. Still others gracefully follow the leader and make the flow of energy beautiful, while, others are strong enough to go the extra mile and ensure the success of the vision, even at times that seem the leader is losing step.

You want to get only the graceful and strong co-visionaries to work with, that is, if your vision will look like what your heart has envisioned. To ensure you get only the best, choose someone;

1.     Who is willing to follow

2.     Who is able to learn

3.     With personal dreams and aspirations

4.     Whose visions align with the ultimate vision

5.     Who is courageous to face inner fears

6.     Willing to launch into the unknown

7.     Who clearly understands what your vision is

8.     Who is willing to move on from his or her past – positive or negative

9.     Who is willing to be completely committed

10.            Who does not place “security” above the vision

11.            Who is able to make quick decisions

12.            Willing to sacrifice self-aggrandizement for a bigger vision

13.            Who quickly accepts and accommodates change

14.            Who is able to identify potential

     {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

These are the qualities of someone who will fit into your vision. The person with these qualities will be an effective building block for the wall of corporate vision.

Corporate Vision: Begin With Your Vision

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. ­– Jesus (The Christ)

If you want to develop corporate vision you must first have a vision! This may seem simplistic, or at best, obvious, but, many desire to build corporate vision on the foundation of no vision at all. They are the blind leading the blind. We have a lot of such all around us.

Vision is to see ahead. It means to capture a picture that others do not initially have. Vision goes beyond physical sight to mental sight. It was Helen Keller who said, “The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.” Without first having a deeply and thoroughly engrained vision you cannot get any sensible folks to share it with you. In a prior article, The Blind Man inFront, I noted that it was impossible to lead without seeing clearly where you are headed.

When you decide to build corporate vision you are offering to be a guide to the folks you are working with. You must be willing to guide them through every stage of the vision. To guide means to show the way to others. It means to intentionally influence the growth and development of others. You become a pilot, and mentor, and chaperone to your people.

In addition, your vision must be people-focused. Folks want to know how the fulfillment of your vision will lead to their fulfilling theirs. No one wants to remain stagnated and so in the event that your vision does nothing to add to them they will join the next bus away from you and your self-centered vision. A people-focused vision goes hand-in-hand with a visionary who is willing to teach the nitty-gritties of every aspect of the vision.

Finally, you must have clearly understood and believed in your vision to build a corporate one. Many seek the help of others in a vision they have not clearly understood and believed in themselves. They want others to do the work for them and so they fail again and again in developing corporate vision.

     {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

When you have given the right place for these areas you stand a far better chance of getting folks to buy into your vision and in turn developing a corporate vision.

Corporate Visions

And God said, “Let US make man in our image, after our likeness.” ­– God

Fact: Dreams come true. That dreams come true isn’t a statement that needs all-night research to prove any longer. Many folks have dreamed and seen their dreams come to pass. Others that did not live to see it happen left it deeply engrained in the hearts of many that people watched out to see it happen.

Fact: Big dreams are BIGGER than their dreamers. A careful analysis of big dreams will show you that they usually are bigger than their carriers – the dreamers. This is so because big dreams aren’t self-centered or myopic. They carry as many people – sometimes systems or whole nations’ ideologies – under their umbrella.  The dreamer is simply a part of the dream and not the whole.

Fact: Big dreams need teams. For significant dreams to come true you need a collection of people. A team must be built around the vision. Individual vision isn’t enough, you need corporate vision. Sometimes we want to run all alone so that we can be the only person praised but praise isn’t enough to outweigh the numerous advantages of corporate vision. Corporate vision does a lot:

1. Diversifies the initial idea and open up a world of possibilities that weren’t thought of.

2. Makes financial resources less difficult to access.

3. Makes mental resources readily available.

4. Ensures that many smaller dreams come to pass.

5.   Makes the process of actualization fun.

6.   Releases the potential of a lot of people.

7.   Fosters unity.

8.   Challenges people to grow and develop mentally.

9.    Reduces the stress that would have been on one person.

10.Makes room for expertise and skill development.

11.Builds up leaders and leadership.

12.Multiplies the speed at which goals are achieved.

13.Diminishes the probability of failure.

    {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

You would agree that developing corporate vision is important to your goals. I would, in the next few articles, focus on how to develop corporate vision for each goal you set.

Accessing the Power of Meditation

I have better understanding and deeper insight than all my teachers for I meditate on your words. ­– A Psalm

 I have often wondered at folks that seem to have all the right answers and right ideas at the right time. When such people speak you hear comments like, “How did that come to you,” and “I never thought of it that way.” Have you met such people?

For me the problem has not been that I never have such “perfect” ideas at the perfect time but that such ideas come too far apart from each other. If you would produce such energy you would want to produce it as frequently as the need arises.

The difference between regular folks and people that produce such results oftentimes comes to one thing – meditation. To meditate means to give deeper contemplative thought to a thing. It means to sit on the information available for you over an issue until deeper light pops up from inside you. Folks that practice meditative reasoning on the issues that face them produce far better results than those that respond as the external need demands.

To develop meditation, you need to give room for the following:

1.     Focus. You must learn to drop all else and give room to settling the issue at hand.

2.     Discipline. It takes a lot of discipline to live a meditative life. You will rebel against yourself more-often-than-not and so must learn to control yourself.

3.     Patience. The “powerful” idea may not come as fast as you thought it will. You must be patient enough to give it the time it demands.

4.     Off-beat thinking. Some ideas that would come to you would not make immediate sense. Your mind must be fluid enough to accept that fact and not discard “stupid” ideas that come to you.

5.     Calm spirit. The best environment for my meditation is a quiet one with worship music in the background. As I write this piece I have this environment set. It opens up my heart to deeper thoughts. You must find your best environment.

6.     Education. It is difficult to get a free flow of ideas into an empty mind. You must have learned something prior to your need for meditation. I prescribe Intentional Education to get you going.

    {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

If you have these settled you can get set for a surge of ideas you never thought will come to you.

How to Set Simple, Direct, and Exciting Goals

A year from now you may wish you had started today. ­– Karen Lamb

I have been thinking through complex goal setting teachings and considering how to make goal setting simple to understand and follow through. An idea came to my mind consistent with the “S.M.A.R.T” (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time bound) principle. In this we have four quadrants with labels:

	UNREALISTIC	REALISTIC
POORLY DEFINED	Quadrant A	Quadrant B
CLEARLY DEFINED	Quadrant C	Quadrant D

Quadrant A: Poorly defined and Unrealistic

Quadrant B: Poorly defined but Realistic

Quadrant C: Clearly defined but Unrealistic

Quadrant D: Clearly defined and Realistic

Of all these you only want to find your goals in Quadrant D. It is the only quadrant that provides your mind with the impetus to pursue and achieve your goals, not only because it believes it can, but also because it clearly understands what needs to be done.

Here is an example of all the quadrants with an akara seller that had just attended a seminar on goal setting and wants to get right into it. This is how her goals may look like and the quadrants they will fall into:

·  I will be a millionaire: this is a Quadrant A goal. It is poorly defined and unrealistic putting into view her present profession. She will not achieve this goal. This type of goal isn’t beyond wishing and has the least hope of coming to pass.

·  I will become a millionaire in ten years’ time: this is a Quadrant B goal. Everybody knows that you can start wherever you may be and become a millionaire in a decade but what she failed to do it tell us how this will happen in a decade. It is poorly defined so she will abandon it,

·    I will expand my business and make sufficient profits to become a millionaire this year: this is a Quadrant C goal. Clearly defined but unrealistic. Although the picture of how it may be achieved is clear, the profits from her present profession will take her decades of unfailing savings to hit N1,000,000.00. This goal will not happen.

·     I will become a millionaire in ten years by first expanding my business, saving a percentage of my profits and investing in wholesale and distribution of grains: this is a Quadrant D goal. With planning, focus and discipline she stands a good chance of earning her first million before the decade runs out.

           {To order for my new book, Do it Like Kids, click here}

Examine each goal you have and sincerely allocate its right quadrant. Having done this, is it still a goal or merely something you wish you could achieve?