You and I will have no choice but to develop ourselves more effectively and work much smarter on our core purposes and priorities in 2012. That’s a no-brainer.

You will have a choice, however, in how you go about that critical, future-proofing work. That can be a killer – especially when you are already working at – or close to – maximum capacity, and probably putting in well over a standard shift…..  Day in day out.

You will have many choices on how you will do this meaningful work within your already crowded schedule and the increasing demands that will be placed upon you next year. Here’s a simple split for you….

Are you going to put more effort into deliberately building upon your strengths or are you going to level-up your weaknesses?

Let me strongly suggest the former strategy to you.

The results you are responsible for delivering next year will be more visible, more scrutinised and more questioned than in the past.

Arguably, your boss, your own team, customers or suppliers are less concerned about your physical, emotional and intellectual well-being than they are about how you bring your energy, resilience and creativity to bear on what they expect from you.

You are going to be responsible for your own development. No one is going to push you into a class, some people may encourage or guide you but no one is going to do it for you. It makes sense therefor, to pump your energy into leveraging what you are already doing well – something that already motivates or interests you – something that you can rely upon to improve your results.

Here are a few quick pointers for you.

  1. Reposition your learning as the rocket fuel that will propel your performance during 2012 and beyond.
  2. Take time now (yes, I know year-end is upon us with all it’s attendant pressures) to do a radical reappraisal of your strengths, then set about creating valuable contributions out of those strengths to, ultimately build on the best of you.
  3. If you have not come across Marcus Buckingham  before I suggest you check him out, grab one of his books – His ‘Now, Discover Your Strengths’ book is a good place to start because you also get a code to take the online ‘StrengthsFinder’  self assessment tool.

Now, making this happen when you will be busier than ever on your day-job is going to require 2 things from you – whether you will be doing this for yourself or driving it for your team. You are going to need:

  1. To develop a fuller, richer picture of what ‘Purpose’ looks like – beyond hard numbers – for you and your people, and then create a compelling strategy to help you achieve it, when everything else will be pulling you back to the events of the day.
  2. To develop increased productive capacity within your schedules to actually do this work with ease, rather than trying to fit it in when you can. If you think that an extra 53 minutes extra capacity per person per day would help you, just get in touch or call me now on 0044 (0)1428 607763

You might find this quick overview of Marcus Buckingham’s ‘First break all the rules’ book useful. I think it is one of the best SlideShares on the subject on the web.

Enjoy!

First Break All The Rules

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That’s it for now, let me know if you have any thoughts you wish to share here in the comments section or – of course – by email  ot through my Book Me or Contact me forms.