See it. Plan it. Do it!: A simple 3-step methodology for accomplishing your personal and business goals.

Step 1 – See it.

Start by asking for what you want. More importantly, ask yourself, what is your greatest aspiration? When encountered with any change effort, we are initially inclined to look for “what’s wrong.” Visualize a successful change effort. Create a vision that provides a purpose and forms a mental picture encompassing all the senses. Describe how it looks, smells, feels, sounds, and tastes. Your vision should provide direction, motivate action, and align individual interests. Help others understand your vision by communicating with repetitive targeted communication. Remove barriers and empower others to act on your vision. Lead by example and as Gandhi once said, ”Be the change you want in the world.”

Step 2 – Plan it.

Next, design a plan to succeed. Look to past successes to build confidence and eliminate complacency. Henry Ford said it best, “Whether you think that you can or you can’t, you’re usually right.” Eliminate negativity from thought patterns and ignite an internal sense of urgency energizing the change effort. Describe a successful implementation step by step. Plan on overcoming intermediate obstacles and use these current successes to propel the change. As your vision begins to materialize through these intermediate successes, others will begin to follow. Recruit new found believers and develop a team of people to implement the change.

Step 3 – Do it!

Finally, execute with a passion. Harold Thurman said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” Provide support through leadership. Assist the change effort by helping others see the big picture in task accomplishment. Create new habits that will sustain the change effort and materialize your vision.

Machiavelli once asked, “Is it far better to be loved or feared?” According to Machiavelli, fear is absolutely necessary to lead, command, and collaborate with an organization. He wrote, “for a prince who leads his own army, it is imperative for him to observe cruelty because that is the only way he can command his soldiers’ absolute respect.”

As organizations confront the challenges of globalization and rapidly changing technology, coercive methods of leadership in order to lead, command, and collaborate are no longer applicable. Organizations are evolving to become learning organizations. Learning organizations convert data to knowledge. Then, knowledge is shared with teams of people, in multiple locations, all over the world. As organizations embrace learning, they must also learn to teach. For learning and teaching go hand-in-hand.

Teams of people must now learn to use knowledge and share that knowledge with others within the organization all over the world. There is no room for fear in a learning organization. Organizations in this era require love, kindness, and compassion to establish trust and positively impact all stakeholders.

Lead with love

Leadership is an act of love. Love toward suppliers, customers, shareholders, creditors, government, society, environment, management, and employees. Love toward stakeholders implies a deep level of respect that cannot be characterized as disingenuous. Leading with love is awareness that you have the power to influence others and an example to follow.

Command with kindness

Leading is a great obligation. Commanding people requires the acknowledgment of an ethical obligation towards stakeholders. Commanding with kindness is an expression of gratitude in the form of consideration and respect. How you lead your team will determine how your team will lead others.

Collaborate with compassion

Collaboration with people in teams requires a deeper understanding of culture. Recognizing the culture or the rituals, norms and values, and underlying assumptions or beliefs represented through organizational culture, nationality, and ethnicity is key to leading groups. Compassion is necessary to accept and embrace differences and develop teams around a common goal. Collaborating with compassion is about respecting all team members and drawing out each unique perspective to add value to the overall goal.

Benefits

As we learn to Lead with love, Command with kindness, and Collaborate with compassion we will teach others to trust, protocol for the treatment of people, and positively impact stakeholders. Without trust, you cannot create or sustain life-long relationships. Trust will lead to respect. And respect will lead to leadership.

Within the organization many benefits will be achieved. As we let go of our competitive tendencies, sharing will reduce redundancy, improve problem solving, and increase the feedback loop of information. Access to knowledge through sharing reduces redundancy and improves problem solving. Using proven solutions and converting this information to case studies teaches a methodology for problem solving. It also creates a feedback loop. Once the problem solving methodology is learned new perspectives and insights update previous knowledge.

Leading people is a great obligation. People are the core of all organizations. As organizations evolve to become learning organizations, we must use a new method of leadership, which develops trust, respect, gratitude for all stakeholders and teaches how to lead. Love, kindness, and compassion is key to lead, command, and collaborate. So I ask you now, “Is it far better to be loved or feared?”

The Calling of the First Disciples

¹One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, ²he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. ³He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

⁴When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

⁵Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

⁶When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. ⁷So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

⁸When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” ⁹For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, ¹⁰and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” ¹¹So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

Have you answered your calling?

To yourself, family, friends, community, world, and God?

Answering your calling doesn’t have to mean joining the Red Cross; although a worthy cause. It can start at home with yourself.

What would you like to change in order to improve your life and thereby the life of others. Want to improve your health through diet and exercise? Want to create or sustain life-long relationships by connecting? Want to donate your resources to a worthy local cause such as the Boys and Girls Club or similar organization by volunteering or donating money? Want to help the people suffering in Haiti by physically going? Want to be the light to world by becoming a disciple?

Answering your calling can be a daunting task. All you have to do is answer that inner voice. Answer you calling today!

Love Is the Greatest

¹ If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. ³ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

⁸ Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! ⁹ Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! ¹⁰ But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. ¹² Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

¹³ Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—

and the greatest of these is love.

I must be perfect.
Everything I do should go easily and without effort.
It’s safer to do nothing than to take a risk and fail.
I should have no limitations.
If it’s not done right, it’s not worth doing at all.
I must avoid being challenged.
If I do well this time, I must always do well.
Following someone else’s rules means that I’m giving in and I’m not in control.
I can’t afford to let go of anything or anyone.
If I show my real self, people won’t like me.
There is a right answer, and I’ll wait until I find it.

“Procrastination is a battle for more than just control, it is a battle for self-worth and self-respect.”