And by plan I don't mean have some idea in your head about your business or your career. I mean a REAL plan. A written plan ... that you work on frequently. People always ask me how to get started on their plan and it is really quite simple. I like to use what's called heuristic - or backward - planning that I learned in the military for my planning process. Basically, you start with your objective in mind then work back to where you are now.

This type of planning process can be distilled down into three basic steps:

1. Identify your overall objective.
2. Determine the intermediate milestones and supporting tasks to reach each milestone.
3. Measure your performance and adjust your plan.

Let's take a look at each of these three steps in the planning process.

Identify your overall objective. 
Hopefully, you've incorporated your PASSION (see my earlier column) into your overall objective.  That objective can be anything from getting a job in a new industry or at a specific new company to owning a major league sports team. Whatever it may be just make sure it is something you're passionate about and that it is defined. Once you've identified your overall objective, you can begin the processes of achieving it!

You need to be specific about defining the objective. What constitutes success? What would you consider to be a failure? What are all of the components of the objective that you want to achieve? Truly understanding the answers to all of these questions will help you develop your plan more effectively.

Determine intermediate milestones and supporting tasks to reach each milestone.
For any objective you identify, there will be many milestones. And for each milestone there will be many supporting tasks.  For instance, if your objective is to find a job in a new industry, say real estate, then you'd have many potential milestones that could include:  1) obtaining some level of formal or informal education about real estate, 2) developing an understanding of the different jobs available, 3) conducting a self-assessment and comparing that to what you've learned about the industry to determine which roles you'd be most suited, and 4) developing a structured network to assist you in finding, closing and excelling in your new job. These are just a few potential milestones, but based on your ultimate objective there can be many, many milestones and they need to be individually mapped out.  Many milestones can be worked on simultaneously.  For instance, you might get your formal education in real estate at the same time you increase the size of your network in the real estate industry.
 

For each of your milestones there are supporting tasks that must be accomplished. The supporting tasks are basically all of the actions you need to accomplish in order to reach your milestone. The more specific you are in identifying tasks and timing for them to be completed, the better you'll be able to track your progress. 

Measure your performance and adjust your plan
Tracking your progress is critical to success. You can't know how you're doing if you don't measure against your plan. The milestones act as measuring point where you can assess your development and gauge your progress. As part of the process of measuring your progress you may find some interesting occur. You may learn that there are new milestones that you need to put in place to reach your objective; some of the milestones you thought you needed to reach your objective may not really be necessary; or you may even find out that you need to adjust your overall objective. Adjusting your plan is all part of the process and will ultimately enable you to achieve your objectives.

On "The Apprentice" I took a lot of flak for being on the laptop a lot during the tasks.  One of the interesting aspects of the show is that the complexity of each task does not come through to the viewing audience. Before we filmed the show, I remember watching a couple of episodes of season one and remember thinking to myself that it looked pretty easy. Well, I'm here to tell you that it isn't! We are given very little time and money to accomplish some very significant tasks. That required meticulous planning. Not only did we have to account for every penny, we had to manage some very "strong" personalities.  By tracking our objective, milestones, and supporting tasks on the laptop, I was better able to lead my teammates and contribute to our ultimate success. So think about that ... we created a detailed written plan for one task on a reality show. Isn't your career, your business, your life more important than a task on a reality show? Of course it is.  Start building your plan!

PLANNING is one of the most critical leadership that will contribute to your ultimate success in business and in life.  Remember: identify your objective, set appropriate milestones and list their supporting tasks, and measure your performance so that you can adjust your plan as necessary.

TAKE COMMAND

Hi.

Are you really doing every day what you want to be doing? If the answer is yes, awesome!  You're on your way to self-actualizing.  Unfortunately, some people don't even know what they want.  It takes a lot of self-reflection and introspection to figure out what will make you jump out of bed every  morning because you're that excited.  What would make you feel that way?  FIGURE IT OUT!!!
 
The next step is getting to a place where you can be living your life doing what you love.  I know a lot of people out there are in positions they consider to be "dead-ends" or where they are just bidding their time.  I'm a realist, I understand that you have to pay the bills.  But don't waste that time "working for the man" thinking that is all you're doing.  Look at it as an opportunity...a great opportunity.  Someone else is paying you to figure out how to self-actualize, plan how to change the world. 

So, once you know where you want to go, start spending your time developing the skill sets, contacts, and knowledge that will help you achieve your goal.  A "job" that doesn't turn you on still enables those things to occur.  It feeds you while you learn, grow and plan your attack to happiness.  Realize that and start taking advantage of it!

Out.

Henry Ford said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”  And in today’s business world that is very, very true.  You have to know how to work as part of a team.  That means leading as well as following. 

There is no way that you can be the “leader” all the time.  And in my experience the best leaders also know how to follow.  In a team environment there are certain times where it is ok to violently disagree (typically in the strategy and planning stages of any project), but there always comes a time to fall in line and focus on the team’s objective instead of your own. 

You might have seen this dynamic on The Apprentice.  Many of the contestants argue well past the planning phase of a task.  That is a huge mistake.  The team that stays effectively focused on the objective typically wins.  The one that starts in-fighting, or can’t get everyone on the team moving in the same direction, loses.  It is all about execution and that’s true for most businesses.  A poor plan well executed beats out a great plan executed poorly every time.  Remember that maxim when your team is performing a task – don’t be the one belly-aching about a decision that has already been made.  And if you’re the leader, make sure to give people the opportunity to be heard during the start of the process, but don’t allow a single “ME” thinker to disrupt your entire operation once the plan is in place.

The military did a great job of reinforcing the teamwork lessons I’d learned on the playing field growing up through high school and in college competing in basketball, baseball, soccer and football. Those lessons are critical to success:

• There is no “I” in TEAM. “ME” thinkers cannot lead and will ultimately hurt your performance – no matter how good they are as an individual.
• The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Meaning five people working together can do so much more than five people working separately.
• Even though you may not like someone on your team you’re going to have to learn how to work with them.

One particular instance of teamwork that made a huge personal impact on me occurred during Ranger School.  We were conducting a 12-mile forced march as the end of City Phase and I was very dehydrated.  It was my own fault.  I should have been drinking a lot more water.  But I didn’t.  And about three miles into the march, my legs cramped so badly that I couldn’t continue while also carrying the 80 lbs of weight of my rucksack.  My Ranger Buddy – the smallest team size at Ranger School is two people and your Ranger Buddy is supposed to always “watch your back” – actually took my rucksack and carried on the front of his body while still carrying his for over two miles!  I was able to consume enough water during that time and work out the cramps so that I could take my rucksack back from him.  His teamwork attitude enabled me to complete Ranger School! 

One of the greatest examples of teamwork and leadership I’ve ever seen was during the 1971 NFL season.  Roger Staubach (US Naval Academy’s best quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy as a junior) and the Dallas Cowboys had a 4-3 record in the middle of the season and ended up coming back to make it to the Super Bowl.  Even though Dallas didn’t win the big game, Roger was impressed with the turnaround and attributes it to teamwork.  When I interviewed Roger for my book, TAKE COMMAND, I asked him about how they accomplished such an incredible feat and he replied simply, “We were 4-2 in the middle of the season until we started putting team ahead of ‘Hey, what’s in it for me?’  If we hadn’t done that, there is no way we would have ever won ten games and made it to the Super Bowl.  We all put our priorities in perspective.  Some guys today, they just don’t get it.  They are very talented athletes, but their priorities are all about the personal…money, endorsements, fame.  People like this cannot be the dominating force in any company or organization.  They certainly aren’t the ones to lead the charge. Team players take control of any team.”

• Are you a team player?
• Do you know how to follow as well as lead?
• Can you follow a plan you don’t necessarily agree with or do you argue about it until the bitter end?
• Are you picked first or last for team projects?

The answers to these questions should tell you a lot about what type of team player you are. Are you satisfied? Do you want to be better? Work on your teamwork leadership principle and you’ll find that success is a whole lot closer!

TAKE COMMAND

Do what you're supposed to do, when you're supposed to do it!

Even though that concept seems pretty straightforward, a lot of people have a very difficult time with it.  As I've worked in the civilian world for the past decade, I've found that when I hire people with a strong duty concept, my teams and my companies are successful.

Do you have a strong duty concept?

Jim Kimsey served three combat tours as an Airborne Ranger and was recently inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame and was the founding CEO of AOL.  I interviewed Jim for TAKE COMMAND and he described one of the lessons that he took away from his time at West Point.  At West Point, as in the Army, there are really only three appropriate responses to any direct question:  "Yes Sir!," "No Sir!," or "No Excuse Sir!"  The "No Excuse Sir!" sank in while he was a company commander during his two tours in Vietnam.  Jim said, "If you lead your men into combat and some of your men get killed, that's going to be you personally explaining to a mother why their kid died.  There's no excuse for that.  And if you're the CEO of a large organization and have to lay off 3,000 people, there's no excuse for that either.  I believe that once you internalize the idea that you bear full responsibility for your actions, it pushes you to think ahead far enough to ensure that whatever you undertake will have a successful outcome.  Because the bottom line is that there is no excuse for not having a successful outcome."

Wow!  That's pretty powerful.  Think about it.  You, whether you're the CEO, a team leader or the member of a 2,000 person team, have the responsibility to ensure a successful outcome in any situation.  Anything less than that is a failure of duty.  To yourself and to those around you.

Of course, it isn't always that easy, is it?  Sometimes, especially in large organizations, you can be in a tough situation.  Pete Dawkins, Heisman Trophy winner at West Point, Rhodes Scholar, retired Army Brigadier General and now the Vice Chair of Citigroup's Private Banking, said during our interview, "one of the tyrannies of large organizations is that it often doesn't matter how good the overall organization is, if your immediate boss is a loser, your world is at best frustrating, and potentially a dead end.  In formal organizations, it's a tough call to tell the boss something he doesn't want to hear.  There's a lot of talk about ‘speaking up,' yet most people know when you tell the boss what he is proposing is wrong, there's a good chance you won't change his mind.  Furthermore, you may get fired, or more likely, find-years later-that doing so disadvantaged you down the line.  The fact is, it takes courage to speak up, and it's risky.  It's a very personal choice.  It really comes down to, ‘How do we want to live our lives?'"

As a leader, how do you answer these questions?

1. Does your team or company operate independently or do they rely on your guidance for every move they make?
2. Has anyone ever told you that you are a "micro-manager?"
3. Do you ensure that your teams are cross-train your personnel so that they know how to do more than one job?
4. Have you empowered your personnel to make decisions and follow through?

As a team-member, how do you answer these questions?

1. Is your supervisor frequently telling you what to do?
2. Do you seek out additional and greater responsibilities?
3. Are you learning more than just your specific job?
4. Do others feel comfortable coming to you for help with their responsibilities? 
5. Are you comfortable telling your boss that you don't agree with something?

You'll start to get an idea of how much of a duty concept you've developed as you think about the answers to the questions above.

Do you think that the senior management at companies like WorldCom and Enron had a strong duty concept when they were "cookin' the books" and then trying to duck responsibility when they got caught?  I don't.

Frequently individual employees and co-workers will ask me a question with a convoluted set of circumstances that seemingly confuses the main issues.  I look him or her in the eye and ask, "What's the right thing to do?"  Almost every time, when pushed on for the right answer, they can make the decision on their own.  Don't be that person.  Stop waiting for someone else to tell you what to do.  Be active and do the right thing.  This applies to both your work and your personal life. 

JUST DO IT!

I was fortunate to be asked to keynote the launch of DECA's Entrepreneurship Academy Challenge event in Dallas, Texas last weekend.  This program is great.  Thousands of college students come together and learn about entrepreneurship and also compete in teams for some prize money and recognition.  Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is one of the sponsors and they are also a great supporter of entrepreneurs.

In addition to the aspiring entrepreneurial college students many of their INSPIRING professors were also there donating their time doing everything from running sessions to tabulating votes for the competition.  I met one of those professors, Jeff Cornwall, Chair of Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.  He invited me to check out his blog, The Entrepreneurial Mind and I found it quite interesting!  His latest entry, The Highway to Success, reminded me of my chapter on Perseverance in TAKE COMMAND.

After identifying a lot of the protective mechanisms out there softening us up (like lying politicians, shielding parents, etc.), he points out that most success actually springs from failures.  He writes: 

We seem to have forgotten that failure, in fact, builds character. And it is the fear of failure that inhibits creativity and keeps us from learning...

You will fail. Failure is a prerequisite for success.

Awesome!  Don't be afraid of it.  Embrace it, learn from it, and then go after whatever you want!

TAKE COMMAND

Love this one by Dale Wimbrow circa 1934...

When you get what you want in your struggle for self and the world makes you king for a day, Just go to the mirror and look at yourself and see what that man has to say

for it isn't your Father, Mother, or Wife whose judgment upon you must pass... The fellow's verdict that counts most in your life is the one starring back from the glass.

Some people might say your a straight shootin' chum and call you a wonderful guy but the man in the mirror says your only a bum if you can't look him straight in the eye

he's the fellow to please never mind all the rest for he's with you clear to the end and you've passed your most dangerous difficult test if the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years and get pats on your back as you pass but your final reward will be heart ache and tears if you've cheated the man in the glass....

So...  Be passionate about what you're doing, be impeccable, and in all things maintain your integrity!

TAKE COMMAND!