StrategicEnews 200706 email
Strategic eNews June 2007
In this issue ... • A DIFFERENT TAKE ON MOTIVATION • SIMPLIFYING COMPLEXITY • HAPPENINGS: UPCOMING TSC PRESENTATIONS
A Different Take On Motivation
Happenings
Identifying the sources of energy boosts and drains in your life.
“The Bigger Future™: Transform Your Life As An Entrepreneur” [details]
Motivational raw material. Most discussions about motivation center around how to get more motivated so you can experience greater success. Here, we’re going to turn that notion on its head and show how your current level of motivation actually provides the raw material for determining how to create better results.
• Denver, CO June 14, 2007 8:30 – 11:00 a.m. Paulette Sopoci
[Click to read the full article]
• Detroit, MI June 19, 2007 8:30 – 11:00 a.m. Paulette Sopoci
Simplifying Complexity
• Boston, MA June 29, 2007 8:30 – 11:00 a.m. Ross Slater
The biggest opportunity for entrepreneurs in the 21st century. By Dan Sullivan
[more dates and locations]
Geniuses at creating solutions. Through my work as a coach, I know hundreds of men and women who have an uncanny ability to see life through other people’s eyes, to walk through life in other people’s shoes. This makes them extraordinarily clear and focused in creating and implementing unique solutions. This innate talent continues to improve as each of these individuals establishes and cultivates new client relationships.
To reserve seats for these free events, please call us at 1.800.387.3206 or 416.531.7399, or email [email protected] with ALL of the following information: • your full name
This talent, I believe, represents the single most important skill any entrepreneur can have in the 21st century
[Click to read the full article]
• your full contact information (please include mailing address, telephone number, and fax number)
• the date and location of the event you’d like to attend • the names of all the people who will be attending with you
“Delegate everything except genius.”
• if you were referred to us, the name of that person or organization
— from The Quotable Dan Sullivan
• how you heard about us One of our team members will contact you to confirm your reservations.
About The Strategic Coach Inc. The Strategic Coach offers a range of programs and products to help you increase your income and your free time, while gaining simplicity, balance, focus, and confidence in all areas of your life. For more information, please contact us at: The Strategic Coach 33 Fraser Avenue, Suite 201 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6K 3J9 416.531.7399 or 1.800.387.3206 http://www.strategiccoach.com Comments about what you’d like to see in Strategic eNews? We’d love to hear from you: [email protected] If you’d like to recommend this newsletter to someone, direct them to www.strategiccoach.com, where they can sign up for the newsletter at the top of any page.
TM & © 2007. The Strategic Coach Inc.
Strategic eNews is an electronic publication from The Strategic Coach, a company whose programs and products help entrepreneurs achieve increased business success while enjoying greater personal freedom in all aspects of their lives. Each month, this newsletter delivers information about The Strategic Coach, along with concepts and tools that you can use to achieve your goals.
Strategic eNews June 2007
A Different Take On Motivation Identifying the sources of energy boosts and drains in your life.
Motivational raw material. Most discussions about motivation center around how to get more motivated so you can experience greater success. Here, we’re going to turn that notion on its head and show how your current level of motivation actually provides the raw material for determining how to create better results. For many, the word motivation conjures up visions of inspirational speakers whipping their audiences into a frenzy that leaves them feeling like they can take on Goliath, walk on fire, or change the world. Unfortunately, this effect tends to wear off since it’s rarely accompanied by any kind of ongoing follow-up to change people’s real habits or capabilities. Know thyself. The truth is that most people, especially successful entrepreneurs, are highly motivated by some things and less motivated by others. What we’re going to suggest here is that, rather than trying to get more motivated in general, it makes more sense to pay attention to what motivates you and try to do more of that. While this may seem simple and obvious, it’s not intuitive for most people. We’re trained by the world to believe we should get ourselves motivated to do all sorts of things we don’t like — that this is just a part of life, or what it takes to be successful. Because of this, we tend to rationalize or ignore our feelings when we’re not so excited about something. In doing so, we deprive ourselves of some very important information that could help us organize our lives more strategically. Supernovas and black holes. There are some situations in life in which you naturally experience a high level of motivation. You feel a swell of energy, excitement, drive, and all the other positives people point to when they’re talking about motivation.
A close correlation exists between motivation and our concept of Unique Ability® — something in life you’re naturally talented at, have a passion for, and can keep getting better at over your entire lifetime. If Unique Ability is your magnetic north, motivation is your compass-needle. Of course, your business and your life probably also contain some demotivating situations. A few common examples for many entrepreneurs are: • Having to follow instructions. • Performing repetitive tasks. • Implementing existing plans instead of being free to innovate new ones. • Working with people who aren’t future-focused or entrepreneurial in their thinking. Some situations make your motivation shine like the sun. However, others feel like they suck away all light and energy. If you’ve ever felt badly about letting something slide that you just couldn’t get up the energy to do, you know what we’re talking about. The thing to do is get rid of these energetic “black holes” and organize your life so that you can spend as much time as possible in situations where you feel motivated. Making this shift may take some time as you gradually delegate, eliminate, and streamline activities. The change, however, which we’ve seen thousands of entrepreneurs experience, is moving to behold. Those who follow their motivation seem to lighten tangibly: Rather than feeling like servants to their businesses, they come to regard their organizations as tools for developing themselves and their ideas — sources of freedom, not
obligation. By capitalizing on their unique strengths rather than trying to change themselves, they tap into their innate genius and produce remarkable results. Finding your Motivational Center. A “Motivational Center” is a filter that helps you recognize situations that expand or deplete your energy. Developing your own Motivational Center begins with a conscious act of paying attention to your inherent drive and passion. As you do this, try making a list of the things you observe, or go back in your memory and revisit past situations, seeking out your own personal “best” and “worst.” • What has to be present for you to feel motivated at work or in other parts of your life? • In what situations are you naturally “on”? When are you at your best? • What circumstances, relationships, and activities slow you down and sap your energy? You’ll notice as you talk to others that they may be pulled forward by a completely different set of motivations. This variation can be a great help in rearranging your life to make the most of your motivation. Over the next few weeks, think about what specific actions you can take to help you focus more on situations that motivate you. With a greater understanding of what situations and relationships energize you, you’ll be able to effectively seek out and create these experiences consistently.★ TM & © 2007. The Strategic Coach Inc.
Strategic eNews June 2007
Simplifying Complexity The biggest opportunity for entrepreneurs in the 21st century. By Dan Sullivan
Geniuses at creating solutions. Through my work as a coach, I know hundreds of men and women who have an uncanny ability to see life through other people’s eyes, to walk through life in other people’s shoes. This makes them extraordinarily clear and focused in creating and implementing unique solutions. This innate talent continues to improve as each of these individuals establishes and cultivates new client relationships. This talent, I believe, represents the single most important skill any entrepreneur can have in the 21st century. Too complex to comprehend. Over the past 30 years, microchip-based tools and systems have been applied to countless situations in all sectors of the global economy. And not only the economy — microtechnology, as we grow to understand its virtually unlimited applications, is now seen as a crucial factor for progress in all areas of scientific, political, cultural, and social development. Simultaneously, all these diverse applications worldwide have been integrated into vast and myriad communication networks too complex to comprehend, culminating in what has now become the Internet, with its billions of daily uses and users. We now live in a world where, every day, new opportunities for cooperation and competition emerge that were unimaginable 50 years ago.
thinking and actions. Because of this confusion about the present, they don’t know how to invest their time, energies, and resources to produce a better future. For many, it’s more difficult to have a sense of personal meaning that keeps getting stronger; it’s harder to have a sense of purpose that stays on track. • Isolation. Traditional forms of community based on mutually supportive relationships — extended families, small towns, neighborhoods, church membership, political parties, fraternal organizations, labor organizations, sports clubs — have weakened or disappeared from the lives of many people who live and work in modern settings. Even the most successful individuals often have few people they can confide in. There has been an increase in the number of temporary, transactional relationships in both personal and business spheres. People feel less commitment to long-term relationships, and they sense the same in others.
But this also means that we live in a world where large numbers of people are faced with three serious dangers:
• Powerlessness. Conventional education is increasingly unable to prepare people confidently and competently for an unpredictable future. Knowledge and skills that were relevant five years ago can be worthless today. People who were successful in one setting find that changing circumstances are rendering them less useful and valuable. Specialists with 30 years of successful experience find that they have become redundant. Many people find that they are falling farther behind in terms of the constantly changing knowledge and methods that are crucial for success.
• Confusion. The experience of endless change driven by technology confuses people in many different ways. They lose their sense of where the center of things is, and they aren’t clear on where to focus their
This is the bad news about the 21st century. The destructive side of change is never a pleasant experience. There’s certainly a lot of destruction already, with much more to come, making life scary, miserable, dan-
gerous, and even deadly for millions of individuals. This will be true for the entire century. Now the good news. There’s also good news caused by endless global change. It lies in the diverse creative opportunities that are born from the destruction of old, outdated forms that are no longer workable or valuable. An entirely new set of needs has arisen from this technological revolution, needs that require entirely different kinds of entrepreneurs.
The 21st century offers unlimited opportunity, freedom, and usefulness for the right kind of entrepreneurs — those who can resolve the complexity in others’ lives.
The business of transforming complexity. People need to feel that they’re not alone with complexity. They need to feel that they are being taken care of, that other people are looking out for them, that other people care. They want to have a sense of direction, and they can’t provide this for themselves. They want to feel confident, but they don’t know how to do this on their own. They want to feel capable, but they need others to provide them with capabilities. They simply can’t deal with all the complexity of the world straight on. Bureaucracies and traditional communities are no longer providing a buffer between people and the complexity around them. The principal role of entrepreneurs in this century, then, will be to create the financial and psychological opportunities that motivate large numbers of individuals to keep raising their capacity to work with complexity throughout their lives. Complexity is raw material. My own analysis from coaching entrepreneurs over the past three decades tells me that complexity is not only something to be viewed positively, but is the single most important resource for creating new value in all marketplaces in the 21st century.
Of all the capabilities entrepreneurs can acquire, the ability to simplify complexity is the most important one. They will transform all aspects of their working and personal lives to use and increase this capability. “Transformation” is the sector of the global economy where the greatest opportunities are emerging, and where the highest prices can be charged. Very few people at present have identified this reality and the opportunities that go with it. With this in mind, anyone who wants to be successful in both personal and professional life from this point forward needs to have simplifying complexity as his or her central focus. The strategy is, first, to look for complexity in one’s life and simplify it. Then, using the direction, confidence, and capability that come from doing this, the next strategy is to look for complexity in other people’s lives and transform it into simplicity. Entrepreneurs with this ability will be able to help their clientele escape from the dependencies of the old industrial society. They will enable clientele to free themselves from anxiety and make the crossover to the personal and professional realities of life in this new century. I believe this represents the greatest skill and the greatest opportunity for entrepreneurs over the next hundred years. ★ Adapted from the upcoming book, The Advisor Century™, to be released summer 2007.
Want to simplify your complexity? Complexity is one of the biggest issues entrepreneurs face in a growing business. Simplifying complexity is what The Strategic Coach® Program is all about. To find out more and to learn about upcoming workshop opportunities, please call 416.531.7399 or 1.800.387.3206. For information on workshops within the U.K., please call 01625 545 600 or 0800 389 3206. TM & © 2007. The Strategic Coach Inc.
In this issue ... • A DIFFERENT TAKE ON MOTIVATION • SIMPLIFYING COMPLEXITY • HAPPENINGS: UPCOMING TSC PRESENTATIONS
A Different Take On Motivation
Happenings
Identifying the sources of energy boosts and drains in your life.
“The Bigger Future™: Transform Your Life As An Entrepreneur” [details]
Motivational raw material. Most discussions about motivation center around how to get more motivated so you can experience greater success. Here, we’re going to turn that notion on its head and show how your current level of motivation actually provides the raw material for determining how to create better results.
• Denver, CO June 14, 2007 8:30 – 11:00 a.m. Paulette Sopoci
[Click to read the full article]
• Detroit, MI June 19, 2007 8:30 – 11:00 a.m. Paulette Sopoci
Simplifying Complexity
• Boston, MA June 29, 2007 8:30 – 11:00 a.m. Ross Slater
The biggest opportunity for entrepreneurs in the 21st century. By Dan Sullivan
[more dates and locations]
Geniuses at creating solutions. Through my work as a coach, I know hundreds of men and women who have an uncanny ability to see life through other people’s eyes, to walk through life in other people’s shoes. This makes them extraordinarily clear and focused in creating and implementing unique solutions. This innate talent continues to improve as each of these individuals establishes and cultivates new client relationships.
To reserve seats for these free events, please call us at 1.800.387.3206 or 416.531.7399, or email [email protected] with ALL of the following information: • your full name
This talent, I believe, represents the single most important skill any entrepreneur can have in the 21st century
[Click to read the full article]
• your full contact information (please include mailing address, telephone number, and fax number)
• the date and location of the event you’d like to attend • the names of all the people who will be attending with you
“Delegate everything except genius.”
• if you were referred to us, the name of that person or organization
— from The Quotable Dan Sullivan
• how you heard about us One of our team members will contact you to confirm your reservations.
About The Strategic Coach Inc. The Strategic Coach offers a range of programs and products to help you increase your income and your free time, while gaining simplicity, balance, focus, and confidence in all areas of your life. For more information, please contact us at: The Strategic Coach 33 Fraser Avenue, Suite 201 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6K 3J9 416.531.7399 or 1.800.387.3206 http://www.strategiccoach.com Comments about what you’d like to see in Strategic eNews? We’d love to hear from you: [email protected] If you’d like to recommend this newsletter to someone, direct them to www.strategiccoach.com, where they can sign up for the newsletter at the top of any page.
TM & © 2007. The Strategic Coach Inc.
Strategic eNews is an electronic publication from The Strategic Coach, a company whose programs and products help entrepreneurs achieve increased business success while enjoying greater personal freedom in all aspects of their lives. Each month, this newsletter delivers information about The Strategic Coach, along with concepts and tools that you can use to achieve your goals.
Strategic eNews June 2007
A Different Take On Motivation Identifying the sources of energy boosts and drains in your life.
Motivational raw material. Most discussions about motivation center around how to get more motivated so you can experience greater success. Here, we’re going to turn that notion on its head and show how your current level of motivation actually provides the raw material for determining how to create better results. For many, the word motivation conjures up visions of inspirational speakers whipping their audiences into a frenzy that leaves them feeling like they can take on Goliath, walk on fire, or change the world. Unfortunately, this effect tends to wear off since it’s rarely accompanied by any kind of ongoing follow-up to change people’s real habits or capabilities. Know thyself. The truth is that most people, especially successful entrepreneurs, are highly motivated by some things and less motivated by others. What we’re going to suggest here is that, rather than trying to get more motivated in general, it makes more sense to pay attention to what motivates you and try to do more of that. While this may seem simple and obvious, it’s not intuitive for most people. We’re trained by the world to believe we should get ourselves motivated to do all sorts of things we don’t like — that this is just a part of life, or what it takes to be successful. Because of this, we tend to rationalize or ignore our feelings when we’re not so excited about something. In doing so, we deprive ourselves of some very important information that could help us organize our lives more strategically. Supernovas and black holes. There are some situations in life in which you naturally experience a high level of motivation. You feel a swell of energy, excitement, drive, and all the other positives people point to when they’re talking about motivation.
A close correlation exists between motivation and our concept of Unique Ability® — something in life you’re naturally talented at, have a passion for, and can keep getting better at over your entire lifetime. If Unique Ability is your magnetic north, motivation is your compass-needle. Of course, your business and your life probably also contain some demotivating situations. A few common examples for many entrepreneurs are: • Having to follow instructions. • Performing repetitive tasks. • Implementing existing plans instead of being free to innovate new ones. • Working with people who aren’t future-focused or entrepreneurial in their thinking. Some situations make your motivation shine like the sun. However, others feel like they suck away all light and energy. If you’ve ever felt badly about letting something slide that you just couldn’t get up the energy to do, you know what we’re talking about. The thing to do is get rid of these energetic “black holes” and organize your life so that you can spend as much time as possible in situations where you feel motivated. Making this shift may take some time as you gradually delegate, eliminate, and streamline activities. The change, however, which we’ve seen thousands of entrepreneurs experience, is moving to behold. Those who follow their motivation seem to lighten tangibly: Rather than feeling like servants to their businesses, they come to regard their organizations as tools for developing themselves and their ideas — sources of freedom, not
obligation. By capitalizing on their unique strengths rather than trying to change themselves, they tap into their innate genius and produce remarkable results. Finding your Motivational Center. A “Motivational Center” is a filter that helps you recognize situations that expand or deplete your energy. Developing your own Motivational Center begins with a conscious act of paying attention to your inherent drive and passion. As you do this, try making a list of the things you observe, or go back in your memory and revisit past situations, seeking out your own personal “best” and “worst.” • What has to be present for you to feel motivated at work or in other parts of your life? • In what situations are you naturally “on”? When are you at your best? • What circumstances, relationships, and activities slow you down and sap your energy? You’ll notice as you talk to others that they may be pulled forward by a completely different set of motivations. This variation can be a great help in rearranging your life to make the most of your motivation. Over the next few weeks, think about what specific actions you can take to help you focus more on situations that motivate you. With a greater understanding of what situations and relationships energize you, you’ll be able to effectively seek out and create these experiences consistently.★ TM & © 2007. The Strategic Coach Inc.
Strategic eNews June 2007
Simplifying Complexity The biggest opportunity for entrepreneurs in the 21st century. By Dan Sullivan
Geniuses at creating solutions. Through my work as a coach, I know hundreds of men and women who have an uncanny ability to see life through other people’s eyes, to walk through life in other people’s shoes. This makes them extraordinarily clear and focused in creating and implementing unique solutions. This innate talent continues to improve as each of these individuals establishes and cultivates new client relationships. This talent, I believe, represents the single most important skill any entrepreneur can have in the 21st century. Too complex to comprehend. Over the past 30 years, microchip-based tools and systems have been applied to countless situations in all sectors of the global economy. And not only the economy — microtechnology, as we grow to understand its virtually unlimited applications, is now seen as a crucial factor for progress in all areas of scientific, political, cultural, and social development. Simultaneously, all these diverse applications worldwide have been integrated into vast and myriad communication networks too complex to comprehend, culminating in what has now become the Internet, with its billions of daily uses and users. We now live in a world where, every day, new opportunities for cooperation and competition emerge that were unimaginable 50 years ago.
thinking and actions. Because of this confusion about the present, they don’t know how to invest their time, energies, and resources to produce a better future. For many, it’s more difficult to have a sense of personal meaning that keeps getting stronger; it’s harder to have a sense of purpose that stays on track. • Isolation. Traditional forms of community based on mutually supportive relationships — extended families, small towns, neighborhoods, church membership, political parties, fraternal organizations, labor organizations, sports clubs — have weakened or disappeared from the lives of many people who live and work in modern settings. Even the most successful individuals often have few people they can confide in. There has been an increase in the number of temporary, transactional relationships in both personal and business spheres. People feel less commitment to long-term relationships, and they sense the same in others.
But this also means that we live in a world where large numbers of people are faced with three serious dangers:
• Powerlessness. Conventional education is increasingly unable to prepare people confidently and competently for an unpredictable future. Knowledge and skills that were relevant five years ago can be worthless today. People who were successful in one setting find that changing circumstances are rendering them less useful and valuable. Specialists with 30 years of successful experience find that they have become redundant. Many people find that they are falling farther behind in terms of the constantly changing knowledge and methods that are crucial for success.
• Confusion. The experience of endless change driven by technology confuses people in many different ways. They lose their sense of where the center of things is, and they aren’t clear on where to focus their
This is the bad news about the 21st century. The destructive side of change is never a pleasant experience. There’s certainly a lot of destruction already, with much more to come, making life scary, miserable, dan-
gerous, and even deadly for millions of individuals. This will be true for the entire century. Now the good news. There’s also good news caused by endless global change. It lies in the diverse creative opportunities that are born from the destruction of old, outdated forms that are no longer workable or valuable. An entirely new set of needs has arisen from this technological revolution, needs that require entirely different kinds of entrepreneurs.
The 21st century offers unlimited opportunity, freedom, and usefulness for the right kind of entrepreneurs — those who can resolve the complexity in others’ lives.
The business of transforming complexity. People need to feel that they’re not alone with complexity. They need to feel that they are being taken care of, that other people are looking out for them, that other people care. They want to have a sense of direction, and they can’t provide this for themselves. They want to feel confident, but they don’t know how to do this on their own. They want to feel capable, but they need others to provide them with capabilities. They simply can’t deal with all the complexity of the world straight on. Bureaucracies and traditional communities are no longer providing a buffer between people and the complexity around them. The principal role of entrepreneurs in this century, then, will be to create the financial and psychological opportunities that motivate large numbers of individuals to keep raising their capacity to work with complexity throughout their lives. Complexity is raw material. My own analysis from coaching entrepreneurs over the past three decades tells me that complexity is not only something to be viewed positively, but is the single most important resource for creating new value in all marketplaces in the 21st century.
Of all the capabilities entrepreneurs can acquire, the ability to simplify complexity is the most important one. They will transform all aspects of their working and personal lives to use and increase this capability. “Transformation” is the sector of the global economy where the greatest opportunities are emerging, and where the highest prices can be charged. Very few people at present have identified this reality and the opportunities that go with it. With this in mind, anyone who wants to be successful in both personal and professional life from this point forward needs to have simplifying complexity as his or her central focus. The strategy is, first, to look for complexity in one’s life and simplify it. Then, using the direction, confidence, and capability that come from doing this, the next strategy is to look for complexity in other people’s lives and transform it into simplicity. Entrepreneurs with this ability will be able to help their clientele escape from the dependencies of the old industrial society. They will enable clientele to free themselves from anxiety and make the crossover to the personal and professional realities of life in this new century. I believe this represents the greatest skill and the greatest opportunity for entrepreneurs over the next hundred years. ★ Adapted from the upcoming book, The Advisor Century™, to be released summer 2007.
Want to simplify your complexity? Complexity is one of the biggest issues entrepreneurs face in a growing business. Simplifying complexity is what The Strategic Coach® Program is all about. To find out more and to learn about upcoming workshop opportunities, please call 416.531.7399 or 1.800.387.3206. For information on workshops within the U.K., please call 01625 545 600 or 0800 389 3206. TM & © 2007. The Strategic Coach Inc.
