Red Bike Leader

rip the training wheels off your leadership

Posts Tagged ‘goals’

3 Month Pathfinder

by Ryan Russell | April 26th, 2010 | Posted in gtd, leadership, project management

Don’t let your big dreams or your ambitious project overwhelm you. Try some of these tricks to keep yourself moving toward your big goals.

Pick a milestone. Set your sights fully on a major accomplishment that you REALLY want to have come to fruition 3 months from now. Look at it as biting of a slice of the larger whole. Try to  put the more daunting mountain of a dream within your grasp by focusing on this piece.

Dump your brain. Get out everything that you can think that has to get done or that you want to get done on your project over the next 3 months. If you don’t like computers that much, get a pile of sticky notes and a fresh wall…. every time you think of an item or a to-do put it up there.

Walk backwards from your goal. What will have had to have happened in order for you to end up where you want to be? Do you have to raise money? Create a budget? Recruit a team? Find a needed resource?

Think in containers. Try to find 4-8 master categories. Ask yourself what some things have in common with each other. A few usual suspects  are: money, people, needs

Create stages. “Month 1, 2, 3″ — “Prep, Action, Wrap up” — “Beginning, Middle, End”. Use something that inspires, seems creatives, or helps you visualize the process. Take the to-dos and give them a stage so you know ‘when’ to get to each item in the proper order.

Start fast and easy! Everyone likes easy stuff. So, if it helps you get excited and see progress, ignore every other things I have said and start with those things. Another trick I like to do is outsourcing items that I hate doing or that slow me down… making reservations in among these things.

Take the necessary time. Most big plans fail for lack of time and planning. Make your goals reasonable. Block out a portion every work day to do the project of your dreams and desires. FOCUS!

Monday Starts Focused

by Ryan Russell | March 1st, 2010 | Posted in basics

Emails are stacked up and always coming in. Twitter & Facebook always have a fresh round of mindless dribble being spooned out by someone. CNN, FOX, and ESPN can easily keep you bouncing around to the latest articles & must read material. Plus, you haven’t even played a game, filled out a quiz, researched the deal of the day or caught up on the happenings of everyone’s weekend.

TURN IT ALL OFF if you wanna get somewhere with your life goals.

You have at least 5 or more tools to organize yourself for the week but you never quite gets there because of all of the distractions that keep popping up on my computer.

Start the week out with a bang. Take the first 30 minutes to outline your MUST DO LIST FOR TODAY and your GOALS FOR THE WEEK. Don’t even think about cruising the internet right now. And don’t check email until after 11am.

Get and stay focused.

Keep it out front

by Ryan Russell | January 12th, 2010 | Posted in basics, leadership

When I really want to lose weight I get on the scale every day. If I go for a training ride, I have the minimum distance I plan to cover set before butt hits the saddle and then watch the miles tick away on my bike computer as my legs churn. You just set some goals for the new year, so where are they? Do you check them ever day? Week? How often you measure your performance? What plan do you have in place to ensure your success?

Keep your goals in front of you.

Let the little things go

by Ryan Russell | January 9th, 2010 | Posted in basics, leadership

Irritants, disagreements, different perspectives, optional calls… how you handle these types of items shows a big difference between young leaders and more mature leaders. When I was young in leadership  I couldn’t let the little things go. Some of this was due to my personality, some of it was due to my maturity, or lack there of. In leadership you need to focus on the big wins, the mission, the overall objectives. You will know you are growing when you find yourself wasting less time and energy battling on minor issues, subtle nuances of how something can be executed and small interpersonal disagreements. Keep your sights and your leadership focused on the major goals.

Moving towards ‘it’

by Ryan Russell | December 9th, 2009 | Posted in motivation

Every leader wants to be doing ‘it’.

Problem = finding ‘it’, being passionate about ‘it’, being able to do ‘it’ right now, or being hired for ‘it’.

‘it’ can be allusive.

Sometimes ‘it’ is out there in the future a little bit further from where you are today. Don’t get discouraged. Just keep working towards ‘it’. Do things that build towards ‘it’. Make sure that your next career steps are taking you in the direction of ‘it’. Be reading and learning about ‘it’. Network with people who do ‘it’ or something along the lines of ‘it’ or are associated with ‘it’. Get a mentor that can help you prepare for ‘it’. Apply for internships that give you a taste of ‘it’. Don’t let go of your dreams about ‘it’. Don’t compromise and settle for something less than ‘it’. Take encouragement knowing that even the best leaders have periods in their lives when they aren’t doing ‘it’ right now, but that they have had transitionary seasons and jobs that moved them closer to ‘it’

Keep pursuing ‘it’… you can get to do ‘it’ if you don’t give up.

Chunk Planning

by Ryan Russell | November 30th, 2009 | Posted in basics

Even the best planners and strategists can be overwhelmed by the entire picture, so don’t be disappointed when you are daunted by the thought of outlining the key steps to your next major goal.

Think in terms of chunks or key pieces.

  1. Open up a fresh document and type out what you believe are the key ingredients.
  2. Then, open another new document and put just 1 of those key ingredients at the top.
  3. I am a bullet point guy, so below I would start my bullets and then seek to list all of the items that must be done or met for this area to contribute to the bigger goal.
  4. Repeat step 3 for all of the areas.
  5. Get a 2nd and 3rd set of eyeballs on your initial brain dumpings… this is great because in just 60 minutes (or less) you can draw up some pretty comprehensive, logical and strategic steps towards accomplishing your big goal.

Pick you next goal and try it. It works.

Yo-yo leadership

by Ryan Russell | July 31st, 2009 | Posted in leadership

Nothing can be harder to hit that a constantly moving target… especially when you don’t realize it has already moved. 

Traction for a new individual and for a team takes time to develop. If you add to that the challenge by consistently or constantly setting sights on new goals, different goals, additional goals then what happens as a bi-product is a loss of traction, a loss of energy, a loss of motivation and certainly a loss interest.

So… keep the target (goals) in place long enough to allow people to get locked in on the goals, devise a strategic plan and pull the trigger on some reasonable actions. The first time you have people aiming to accomplish designated goals within your organization it will take a little longer to get there than the second time or the third time. Be patient. Wait. Go on vacation. Check back in a week or two. Start your new projects with other members from a different team.

Along the way you could coach, encourage, assist, give pointers, train on tools or skills OR trust leadership of the goals to someone else.

Resist the temptation to change directions or take on a volume of new initiatives. Give your people the sensation of victory. Allow them to ‘work it out’ for a bit. Big wins are built upon small wins. Small wins only come with practice and opportunity to succeed. Changing gears before achievement doesn’t afford any victories.

Resolutions for the unresolved

by Ryan Russell | January 4th, 2009 | Posted in Uncategorized

I hate resolutions. Seriously. When in the real world of things do you hear of resolutions that make a difference? 

Resolutions come at from desperate people in desperate times and aim to completely & radically alter things as they were before. Think about it. People resolve to lose 60 pounds, quite smoking cold turkey after 10+ years and never beat their children again. These are the things that resolutions are often made of. The problem with trying to go from a dead stop to a full sprint with no training is that you are going to hurt only yourself and you aren’t going to achieve your objective of winning the race. People don’t change over night and stick with it.

Resolutions aren’t in our nature AND they aren’t sustainable.

I propose that better than any new, annualized resolutions is a continued state of setting achievable, but stretching goals. Let me expand.

Dream of the future of where you would like to be in any area of your life. Come on… dream BIG!

Now, take a very honest & real assessment of where you are today. For every one of us the gap between our BIG dream and where we are today is probably quite daunting. So… here is how you can get there.

Think in terms of 4 month increments (Spring, Summer, Fall — winter doesn’t exist where i live; school semesters do though).

Say you really want to lose 60 pounds. IF your long term dream is to do that in a year I suggest giving it two… no one said EVERYTHING has to get done this year; you make the rules! So cut your goal for this year into half to 30 pounds. Divide it by 3 — you need to lose 10 pounds in 4 months. Sounds a little bit more realistic doesn’t it. Now figure out 2-4 factors that will reasonably contribute to you losing 10 pounds (and keeping them off) in the next 4 months. Could be cutting soda out, cardio exercise 3 times each week, no more snacks after 8pm, and fries only once a week. 

I am not here to give dieting tips. Here is what i am here for – GOALS

  • Take a big dream
  • Give it a reasonable amount of time to be accomplished
  • Divide it is to smaller segments of time
  • identify 2-4 key steps to accomplish in that small time segment.
  • Evaluate your goal along the way.
  • Dream about the long term outcome.
  • Keep your head up and your mind focuses.