Tony Galliano speaks on how personal change and personal achievement begins with you. In order to change, you have to want it.
Archive for the ‘Eliminate Distractions’ Category
Personal Change Begins with You!
Thursday, May 7th, 2009How to Eliminate Distractions From Your Life
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
Are You Falling Into Activity Traps?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009I am a perfectionist. I really am, but I’m working on overcoming this flaw. Yes, it’s a flaw. I used to have this need for everything to be perfect in my work, which led to disastrous results. The need for perfection cased missed deadlines and projects to be killed completely because perfection could not be attained.
Worse yet, my perfection led to my refusal to delegate unimportant tasks and responsibilities. Before I started my own company, I was more willing to delegate tasks and responsibilities, but as a business owner, it became evn more difficult. Now, my reputation is on the line. If I send out a product that isn’t perfect, it is a reflection on me.
Finally, I had to just let go and let things be less than perfect. When completing my book, 60 Second Strategist, I can’t count the dozens of times I went back and forth with my editor and cover design team. I had to control everything. Everything had to be perfect. Finally I had to let go and accept the fact that it wasn’t going to be perfect and there may be an error or two. That’s was second editions are for, right?
When I was designing my website, I was wasting time with my design tem several times per week. I had to give my input on every insignificant design change on the site instead of just letting “good enough be good enough!”
I share this with you for three reasons.
1. If you see any mistakes in anything I produce, this is my excuse to fall back on.
2. Even though I teach these concepts, it’s easy to fall back into old habits and get sucked in to traps of un-productivity
3. To show that, “I feel your pain,” and we all have similar struggles. If I was perfect, you wouldn’t want to learn from me, because I would preach an impossible standard.
What activity traps do you fall into?
Is Lack of Clarity Causing Confusion?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Recently, I talked about the need to cut non-value added activities out of your schedule. As a sales manager, every second of my time was extremely valuable.
My goal was to achieve the fastest growth in the southeastern United States and outperform the Nation in all seven product lines I promoted. That’s it. That was my goal. I really didn’t care about sales contests, motivation sessions, or any other tactical initiative unless it lead to my goal. After only six months in the territory, I achieved my goal. Incidentally, there was only one other manager who achieved this goal and he was a 30 year veteran sale manager.
Why did everyone else fail? I can tell you why. It had nothing to to with talent, drive, or managerial ability. They were distracted. Our manager was a highly incompetent person with no sense of direction or clue how to manage managers. This person was all over the place. We were give assignments that had no focus and no correlation to business growth. At the same time, we were responsible for our own sales numbers.
I remember one conversation with the manager who said, “I really need you to work harder and contribute more to our team. I need to feel like we are a team and you are making us whole. You really need to work on that.”
I said, “I don’t understand. I am a brand new sales manager. My performance is better than any other new sales manager. My numbers are through the roof and I am only staffed at 60%. What exactly do you want?”
The manager said, “Well, that’s for you to decide. I just need more from you. I need to build a team!”
Confused, I asked my managers manager what exactly was expected of me and he told me, “Just keep you numbers up and that’s all I care about.”
I asked my peers who were also dumbfounded. They spent their time trying to figure out some cryptic talk from an incompetent manager while I worked on growing my business. In the end, I knew I would be accountable for my sales numbers and not for my ability to pacify a lunatic.
When it came time for performance reviews, the only thing that mattered was performance, not manager pleasing. I refused to let anything or anyone (even my boss) stand in the way of my success. Keep in mind that bosses come and go. At the end of the day, you will have to stand by your performance and integrity, so keep that in mind as you are finding your focus.
Are You Drowning in Minutia?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Being a field sales manager was one of the most grueling, yet rewarding experiences of my corporate career. I remember hating these guys when I worked at corporate… I wondered why they got paid ridiculous sums of money, got nice company cards, huge expense accounts. Anyone could do what they do. So, I put my money where my mouth is and did it. I can tell you one thing, these guys earn 100% of their money and then some. If you paid a sales manager $250,000 a year where I was working, I would consider him underpaid.
Let’s talk about my day as a sales manager. I would get up at 4:30 AM and run 6-9 miles. I would return home to check email before leaving and usually be out the door by 6:30 to go ride in the field with a sales rep. We would make sales calls all day while my email inbox would pile up at home. After out last sales call, I would have to de-brief the rep and complete field travel reports. On a good day, I would be home by 7:00 PM and make dinner for my kids and tuck them in bed by 8:00 PM. Once the kids were in bed, I would log on to my computer and begin my office work. I’d have to answer hundreds of emails, fill out special forms, and complete multiple reports. My company was rated as having the highest administrative load for field sales managers in the entire industry… and it showed.
If there were no major emergencies, I would be done with my office work by about 1:00 AM. I would crash in bed and wake up at 4:30 the next day to do it all over again. This was a typical “at home day, but I also had two overnight trip per week and would have to fly out of state at least once a month for a sales meeting, training conference or other such nonsense.
What’s my point in all this? I quickly learned to be extremely efficient in everything I did. When you are working more than 90 hours a week, you don’t have time to waste time. You can’t let the little things distract you. You can’t waste time with mundane tasks that don’t add any value to your work.
What are you doing in your day that’s wasting time?
If you had to cut ten hours out of your work week, how would you do it?
Is it Time for Quiet Time?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Yesterday, we talked about running on Marco Island and creating a time and place for creativity away from the distractions of business.
This is nice from a personal perspective, but ar you setting aside this time in your business too? I mean, are you regularly blocking out time in your business day, with your business partners and colleagues to think strategically?
As a sales manager, when I rode with my reps, I would usually talk about the sales plan for the day over a cup of coffee at Starbucks. That was tactics.
Over lunch, we would clear the table and not talk about anything regarding the day’s business. We would talk about territory management, long term goals, key accounts and such. This was strategy.
When working in-house on the corporate side, I would always schedule one on one times with ALL of my partners, at least once a month. This was not only with my subordinates, but my manager, peers, key external partners, and customers.
Many managers schedule one on one time with their employees, but use it to handle daily business or the manager’s agenda. That is not what this time should be used for. The initiator of the meeting should control the agenda and the conversation needs to focus on long term strategy.
It’s time to put aside the daily fire drills and do a “gut check” about the direction of your business and team. Without ongoing conversations, there is no way to know whether or not everyone is on the same page or even knows that there is a page to be on.
Do you set aside time to work on your strategy?
Do you set aside time with your business partners to do so?
Where’s your Happy Place?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009As I discussed in my book, 60 Second Strategist, Marco Island Florida was the most beautiful place I have ever lived. It’s a small island off of the southwest tip of South Florida. It used to be a retirement community, so it’s really quiet and inhabited by lots of old money.
Every morning, I would get up and go for a job around the island. Not only was this a good way to deal with the stress of a 90 hour work week, it was a good way to gain clarity.
Now, I have done a lot of running in my life and have never found this “runners high” that so many people talk about it. I figure that if I haven’t achieved it after 33 miles, I’m just not meant to get it. One thing I have found is a real sense of clarity after about mile five or six.
Once I get in the groove of the run, the pain starts to go away and my mind can drift off to something other than running. The view of yachts, palm trees and gorgeous mansions around Marco Island provided the imagery of beauty and success I needed to drive my business.
I was away from the office, phone, computer and other such distractions, which allowed my mind to explore my personal and organizational goals from a high level and really insure my daily actions were leading to my long-term success.
Do you have a happy Place?
Do you go there every day?
If not. Find one. Many it’s not running or exercise. Maybe it’s art or crochet. You need an outlet to help your mind create.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about your creative reserve.
Can You Keep Stress in Perspective?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Can you keep stress in perspective and prevent emergencies from derailing long-term goals?
One of the most important parts of strategic planning from both a personal and organizational perspective is maintaining the ability to focus on your long-term mission and strategy without getting distracted from the stress of everyday emergencies and fire drills.
Back when I was in military school, I dreamed of becoming an Army Aviator. As you might expect, this is one of the most competitive fields in all of the armed forces. In order to even have a chance, I needed a solid, long-term strategy.
A major criterion for officer selection and placement of newly commissioned ROTC officers is the officers overall rank from the ROTC staff at the school the officer graduated from. The competitive, stack rank is based on a number of factors such as grade point average, performance in ROTC classes and demonstrated leadership ability.
The staff at my particular school places a very heavy weight on demonstrated leadership ability. The best way to demonstrate leadership ability was by proving one’s self in a high position of leadership within the corps of cadets within the military school itself. Where to buy pharmatex contraceptive sponge. The idea was, “Hey, if this kid can successfully lead 300 cadets, we can surely trust him to lead 30 soldiers.. or give him an Apache Gunship to fly.”
In my school, there was a military honor society. It was a very old, “semi-secret” society with a very rich tradition. I say “semi-secret” because everyone new about the society, but nobody really knew what they did or what it was all about. If you have seen the movie “Lords of Discipline,” it was something like “The 10″ secret society.
Each year, the school picked the new student chain of command based on leadership potential. Without fail, the entire top staff was selected from members of this secret society. Are you following where I am going with this? I knew that if I got in this society, I would get a top position which would give me the opportunity to display my leadership skills which would lead to a high ROTC rand which would hopefully lead to my assignment as an aviator.
I was accepted as a “pledge” in this society. Over a period of months, I was subjected to the cruelest and bizarre physical and mental hazing rituals you can imagine. They would sneak us out in the woods every night and put us through grueling exercises from 10:00 at night until 5:00 in the morning… EVERY NIGHT! At 5:00 am, we had to report for ROTC for PT (physical training) with the rest of the cadets. Immediately after that, we had morning formation, then breakfast (not optional), then class. The only time we had allotted for sleep was during class and on weekends.
Everyone in my pledge class was driven to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. The entire pledge class before us quit because they couldn’t handle it. After the first three weeks, two of my best friends dropped out and I considered joining them. I was on the brink of physical and mental collapse. My grades were suffering, many friendships were suffering due to my association with this group, and I had to endure public humiliation on a daily basis (If we ran into our “pledge-master” in town on a free weekend, he would make us do pushups in front of everyone, whether we be at McDonalds, or at the local shopping mall).
I won’t go into details about what they did to us in the woods each night. If you read my book, “60 Second Strategist,” you know some of the activities. Needless to say, I was almost completely broken down. The worst part was, I could quit at any time! This is where the importance of resilience comes in!
I had to dig down deep and consider my long term goals. I needed to think about the future and not my miserable present. Many times, as we crawled through the mud, out pledge-master would ask us, “What is pain?”
We would shout, “TEMPORARY!”
He would then ask, “What is pride?”
We would exclaim, “FOREVER!”
For long term success, you must often look beyond your current situation and push through the discomfort while keeping your eye on your future.
By the way, if you were curious on how it all turned out… I did not become an Army aviator. My eyes were too bad and I couldn’t pass the vision test. I ended up getting my new #1 choice which was as an infantry officer, for which I am very glad. The leadership and teamwork experience I gained from that profession guide me to this very day!
