Our Greatest Source of Security

The only real source of security any of us have in this time of change and downsizing and merging and new business models and all the other stuff we see, read and hear – is what? The only real security any of us have comes from our own accomplishments. Top performers - the people who will prosper even in the toughest of times - believe that. For others it's a frightening thought – or a frustrating thought – or just plain not true.

Victims will ask “How can it be true if I work in a situation where I'm not recognized for what I do? “ “How can it be true if I work in a situation where nothing ever changes?” “How can it be true if I really don’t want to change? “

Well it is true – regardless of personal circumstances, and to ignore that fact is to put the future in jeopardy.

Let’s take the case of two new graduates, both hired at the same business, both given similar assignments.

Graduate A goes to work every day, does his job as it's assigned to him, meets the requirements of his job, gets married and starts a family. After work our graduate spends time golfing with his old buddies, socializing with his college friends, watching TV – and generally enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Graduate B goes to work every day, does the work he is assigned, meets the requirements of his job, and asks his boss if there are any things he can do to prepare himself for future assignments. He gets married, starts a family, He's also a golfer, and gets to know some other golfers that work for the same business, as well as some of the customers and suppliers for the the company. He playa golf weekly with these people, and socializes with his old friends and his wife’s friends on a regular basis. He takes his bosses advice, and takes company sponsored courses that provide him with knowledge in areas that he did not study in college. He sets goals at work and shares them with his boss – and negotiates them so they support the bosses requirements. When a goal is met, he shares that milestone with the people that contributed to it, and with his boss.

After two years, the business is sold, and the new owner, a multinational organization, moves the business to a new location, and terminates all the existing employees, including our two graduates.

Who do you bet on to come out of this setback in better shape? I'll bet on Graduate B, who, in venturing out of his comfort zone for knowledge, contacts, and accomplishments, put himself way ahead in the race to succeed – and to have security through his own accomplishments.

Accomplishments are available for everyone, but they need to be sought after – and the most important individual quality anyone can have is the ability and capacity to seek out and embrace change. Top performers don’t wait for change to be imposed – too often imposed change is change arising out of crisis.

A story from my own experience to illustrate that point: A company had a large immigrant workforce – from a number of different countries and cultures - and all were struggling with the language requirements of the work they were doing. They worked for a large aerospace company, and their jobs had high value – good pay, good benefits and excellent working conditions. The inability to communicate in English was a major stumbling block to getting ahead, or even surviving. The company offered English Second Language programs to all who were interested – even setting up classes on a split between company paid time and personal time. It was a voluntary program – and only 15% of the people who were eligible and who needed to improve their English skills signed up. And of the 15% who signed up, only 20% of that group successfully completed the course and gained a better competence in English. Two years later that company consolidated operations in another state during a downturn in the economy – and terminated all the existing employees. For the top few who had taken advantage of the English Second Language classes, new jobs were found in no time – many of them found new jobs before the business shut down. For the others who had passed up the opportunity to gain a critical skill, new jobs came at a slow pace.

So when do you start this process of acquiring accomplishments as the means to providing security in your life? The answer is – today! Regardless of where you currently find yourself in your life, now is the time to start – or to continue – or to change the direction of where you are going. And the single most important thing you can do today is to set your own goals and then act to see them come true – and then make new goals – and then act to see them come true. And then make new goals, and then make them come true. When you do that you create your own life of expectations – and not simply allow whatever happens to force change.

Taking the route of seeking personal accomplishment as the way to security puts you in the top 10% of all people.. When you do that you give yourself a tremendous competitive advantage in this time of change.

And if you've had a record of accomplishment in the past, now is not the time to rest on your laurels. Recent accomplishments have a higher value than older ones, and with the pace of change, what happened five years ago – or even a year ago – may have lost some value in the marketplace. It's like Satchel Paige, the famous baseball pitcher from the old Negro Leagues used to say “ Don't look back, they might be gaining on you.”

And don't dwell on lost opportunities for accomplishment – I guarantee there are opportunities available right now. If there is a bright side to today's economy and change, it's that identifying positive change and going for it is more important than it has been for some time. Take advantage of that fact to grow personally and professionally and avoid the status quo.

Written by Andy Cox, President

Cox Consulting Group, 4049 E Vista Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85032 Ph: 602-795-4100; E Mail: acox@coxconsultgroup.com; Website: www.coxconsultgroup.com; Blog http://multiplysuccess.blogspot.com

Copyright © 2009 All Rights Reserved

Ten Steps To Empowerment

Jack and Suzy Welch answer a question relating to empowerment in their back page column in the Business Week August 25, 2008 issue. That particular definition deals with empowering leaders and emerging leaders in companies to take risk as a means of accomplishment- using Google as a model.


Empowering people can take many forms. In most organizations, there are many actions that can be taken, without financial risk to the organization, to start empowering people.


From the biggest for profit corporation to the smallest non - profit, there are empowering behaviors that can add tremendous amounts of energy and leverage.


Here are ten behavior driven actions to take to empower people.


1 - Create the opportunity for trust. Trust comes from results. Results come from a combination of opportunities and actions. That climate can be established at every level. The quicker trustworthy people are identified, the better. Same goes for the untrustworthy.


2 - Provide recognition for contribution. Many managers rationalize not doing this by saying the person was just doing their job. Question: Since when is delivering a product, error free, on time and to a customer spec just " doing their job?" Or giving up a weekend and a family picnic to recover a schedule? Or working double shifts to correct an error on a time sensitive assembly for a customer? Or flying to a jobsite in a foreign country with 4 hours notice to deal with an angry customer? Recognition for a job well done is empowering at every level.


3 - Minimize the rules. Structure is important, no doubt about it. But in most organizations, the rules are either not clear, ignored or out of date. Procedures provide guidance - and discretion - and they empower people by providing a pathway to accomplishment. Why waste time and opportunity constantly reinventing the how - do - we - do - this wheel?


4 - Develop meaningful goals and involve the people who can contribute to the process. This can be messy - it's so much easier to just write down what is to be done. But involvement empowers people, and provides so much valuable input to setting goals. And in most cases, the goals will be more aggressive than if the boss had just written them down. Empowered people work harder and smarter.


5 - Recognize results. This is different than recognizing contribution, but just as valuable. When a goal is met, empower the people involved to go out and do more by recognizing the goal accomplishment.


6 - Develop boundaries for action that allow for some risk. Risk averse organizations don't like to hear that "some level of risk" talk, and for good reason. No one wants to be bagged and tagged by a rogue bond trader, an unethical lawyer, an dishonest accountant, an overly aggressive sales person. But creating boundaries based on the worst possible scenario so limits individual initiative that empowerment can't survive, let alone flourish.


7 - Use opportunity as a reward for accomplishment. This should be done anyway, but it's amazing how many organizations and people don't view opportunity as a reward, but as a jeopardy. Pessimists have their place in every organization - they provide valuable control points and healthy skepticism. But the future belongs to the optimists - the seekers of opportunity.

8 - Ask people what they think. And then listen to their responses. I've written before about the most feared words in business - " What do you think?" To the command and control managers, those words sound like they're giving up their God given right to lead. The truth is those words empower their opportunity to lead. And they empower their people. If the managers can't see that, it's time for a change.


9 - Don't let the bums wear you down. How often have people's sharp edges been described as " just needing a little rounding off'"? But too much rounding off results in a blunt instrument. Every manager and leader has had multiple experiences within their" universe" of people that has the potential to reduce their own effectiveness - to make them a blunt instrument. Poor managers, bad or non existent role models and mentors, dishonest and double dealing peers, bad situations - all have the potential to wear a person down. That's why having positive and optimistic ideals and expectations are so important and empowering. They guard against letting the inevitable negative incidents become the driver of behavior.

10 - Seek out and encourage differences. There is no learning without conflict. Empowerment comes from differing points of view - and respect for those points of view. It's often tempting to brush off the dissenting opinion or observation or suggestion, but providing the opportunity for inclusion of differences results in more empowerment - and more effective decision making.

Inventory your own behavior against these ten steps. Then act to implement the steps that make sense for your situation and the situation of the people around you. Increased empowerment will be the product of those actions.

Written by Andy Cox, President

Cox Consulting Group, 4049 E Vista Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85032 Ph: 602-795-4100; Fax: 602-795-4800; E Mail: acox@coxconsultgroup.com; Website: http://www.coxconsultgroup.com/; Blog: http://multiplysuccess.blogspot.com/

Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved

Overcome The Wall Through Goals

See if this sounds familiar.

It's halfway through the year. Time for a goal review. No surprises - in good shape on some, and hitting the Wall on the tough one or two. Unfortunately, those one or two always include really important stuff. They're goals that have to be met. And yet, every time a certain point is reached this Wall gets in the way. It's a Wall you can't see, it's built of things like fear of failure, fear of unworthiness, fear of lack of ability, fear of fear, lack of resources and commitment - things that keep accomplishment from occurring.

The Wall and worthy goals go together. Sometimes it's so tempting to set easy - to - reach standards of performance. But setting goals that don't demand stretch means accepting the status quo - the great demon of progress and success.

Notice how the Wall only appears on the truly important, demanding, stretch goals? The goals that spell real progress, real success and real accomplishment? The Wall saves itself for the really important things.

Talk to any championship athlete in any endurance sport about the Wall. Some describe it's effect as being hit by a fist, others describe it as an irresistible force - hard to define, but even harder to move through. Every athlete has experienced it - the top ones have somehow fought through. And at the end of their challenge they are changed people - they have a sense of their capabilities that they did not have before. They have used their goal to go from hope to belief to a level of personal confidence they never knew existed.

Talk to a Navy SEAL who has endured their training and succeeded in graduating, and you will talk to a person who has found new limits to their physical and mental endurance. And they know they can go longer and further with less than they had ever imagined. They know their mental toughness made the difference - even the best conditioned will fail without the ability to keep their heads down and take one more step. One more step toward their goal.

Few of us will have the opportunity to experience what the world class athlete and the Navy SEAL experience - on a physical level. But we all have the opportunity to experience the Wall and overcome it on the mental level - the level the athlete and the SEAL agree is the most important for success.

Back to the Wall keeping you from your important goal.

Banging your head against the Wall doesn't work - it only feels good when you stop. Trying to visualize what it will feel like when you get through it gives good feelings, but feeling have never carried the day. Avoiding the Wall with activity and little"goals" and stuff that isn't that important helps for a little while, until you wake up at 3 AM and realize all that sound and fury really didn't mean much. Telling yourself that the Wall isn't really that important and turning your back on it doesn't help - all you're left with is an empty feeling of failure - of being less worthy and less able. Going around it and avoiding the challenge leaves the same feeling. And the longer you do these things the bigger the Wall becomes.

The athlete and the SEAL will both tell you that on their journeys there came times when they just wanted to lie down and quit. But they didn't. They took one more step. The same thing with your worthy, tough, goal. One more step may not seem like much but by the time you've reached the stage where one more step is important you've already come most of the way. Since you can't see over the Wall, you don't know how much longer your journey will be. So you have to remain convinced of the value and contribution of the goal - it's what sustains effort in the worst of times.

So take one more step - with the end in mind. And then another. Focus on the truly important and don't question your ability and worthiness - that's a destructive habit of thought. Recommit to the important stuff. And watch the Wall move, or crumble, or slowly reduce in size. Walls don't just disappear - just like bright flashes of inspiration rarely occur that save the day. The hard work of one more step overcomes the Wall.

And on the other side of the Wall you will find your own success - and transformation - and change. The reward of hard work and accomplishment provides the energy for continued success.

Review your goals today. Make sure you have a goal worthy of the Wall. Then persist. Be changed and grow by overcoming your Wall. You will be in the top ten percent when you do. I guarantee it.

Written by Andy Cox, President

Cox Consulting Group 4049 E Vista Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85032 Ph: 602-795-4100; Fax: 602-795-4800; E Mail: acox@coxconsultgroup.com; Website: www.coxconsultgroup.com; Blog: http://multiplysuccess.blogspot.com

Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved