By Mark Samuel, CEO, IMPAQ Corp.
When I was preparing to be a professional baseball player (that never happened), there was one command that I always remembered. “Keep Your Eye on the Ball,” which was used for anyone hitting the ball, fielding grounders, or catching a fly ball hit to the outfield.
Unfortunately, in business, we can still get ourselves in trouble by not keeping our eye on the ball – namely, our Purpose and Priorities for Achieving our Business Outcomes. We get distracted by the crisis of the day, the bright shiny object, or by our own ego needs that takes us off of our game as leaders driving business results.
3 Steps for Keeping Your Eye on the Ball
1. Your Ball in business is your Purpose – Your Desired Picture of Success
And, it has to matter to you and others you depend on in your business and family. It’s inspiring, valuable for the people you serve, and makes a positive difference for anyone involved with you in manifesting your Purpose.
Imagine yourself 1 to 3 years from now and having attended the success you envision for yourself.
- What would you be accomplishing that you aren’t accomplishing now?
- What would you be doing differently, that you aren’t doing today?
- How will you and others around you be showing up to sustain the accomplishments you want to achieve?
- In what areas have you grown as you look back to today from 1 to 3 years in the future?
2. What are the mostly likely distractions you will experience that could take your eye off the ball?
Everyone gets distracted…sometime deliberately to refresh ourselves and sometimes unplanned to wake us up and reinvent ourselves. Either way, it’s important to know and track when you lose focus.
- What kinds of problems will distract you from achieving your priority initiatives?
- What kinds of new priorities could show up that will fragment your focus?
- How will others get your attention to keep you (and them) from staying focused on the “bigger game” you want to be playing?
- What challenges have you experienced in keeping your attitude and emotional responses positive and focused?
3. Develop a Proactive Recovery Plan
It is a natural human experience to have setbacks, get distracted, and to get off course. The difference between the super successful and everyone else is that the super successful don’t expect perfection and get caught off-guard in crisis when their plan gets off track. Instead, they have a Recovery Plan to get themselves back on course with their Purpose as quickly as possible.
A Recovery Plan can be a conversation with a colleague, friend or confident. Sometimes, it can be a contingency plan. Other times, it’s taking a day off to refocus, re-energize and inspire yourself to step up your game to a new level.
For more information on how to guide your teams through the inevitable set-backs, check out the latest on my blog here.