Create a Vision for Your Company
A vision statement crystallizes what you want your company to look like in the future. It is a clear image of the end result. (Even though you may never really have an end)

Create a Vision for Yourself
Describe your future the way you would like it to be. Avoid slipping into the negative of what you think your future may really be. Allow yourself to dream big. Now write it down!

Set Personal and Professional Goals
Set goals that will take you closer to your vision statements. Start with only 4 or 5 goals for each personal and professional vision statement. Make sure each goal is necessary and sufficient. Also, each goal needs to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistically high, and Time bound. And again, write it down!

Have Fun
I have never heard anyone laying on their death bed saying: "I wish I would have worked more." Take time for yourself, family, and friends. Enjoy life!

Copyright protected. Author Sorrell Associates, LLC

As you look at why people and companies are successful, you quickly realize that they question everything.

- WHY? -

If you don't know why you are successful, and what helped you to get there, you may be doomed for failure. Great leaders know this fact and constantly question, challenge, test, and duplicate their successes.

Here are some tips to help you become more successful:

Conduct Customer Surveys and Group Meetings. Implement an annual or bi-annual survey of your customers and find out what they like, what they don't like, and what you can improve. Another effective way to illicit this information is to have meetings with your customers and brainstorm ways to improve. (Think about what Ford did with the Taurus. The vehicle was a direct result of consumer's suggestions). Pay close attention to the customers that are unhappy. Let them speak about what they would like to see improved. Then fix it. Whenever possible, allow employees and key personnel to be present.

Conduct an External Assessment of the Competition. Take a look at what they offer and what improvements they are making. Ask your staff:

• Who are our competitors?
• Are they better?
• Why are they better?
• Are we better?
• Do they have a bigger share of the market?
• Why?
• How can we improve to become better than our competitors?
• Who can put us out of business?

The best leaders are those who are not satisfied with complacency. Encourage everyone in your organization to keep informed in your industry and be prepared to make the necessary changes to get and stay on top.

Source: Gary Sorrell. ©All rights reserved worldwide. Sorrell Associates www.newsletterville.com.

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn."
─ Alvin Toffler, Futurist

Today, like never before... you must be open to change to be successful. You and your organization must constantly change and evolve to survive. You've heard it...we face more change in a year than our grandparents faced in a lifetime. For us that means Technology, Customers, Markets and Competitors.

HOWEVER; most people (even entrepreneurs) choose death over change. In Change or Die, Alan Deutschman asks, "What if you were given that choice? We're talking actual life and death now. Your own life and death. What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think, feel and act? If you didn't, your time would end soon - a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change mattered most?"

THE BAD NEWS: Although we all have the ability to change our behavior, we rarely do. Research shows odds of nine to one...when faced with the dire need to change, we won't. How many of you made, and stuck to, a New Year's resolution? We are 30 days into the New Year...how's it going? Will you make it through the month? The odds are not in your favor.

Insanity - doing the same thing and expecting different results. We KNOW we should change, but habits, attitudes and behaviors make us regular practitioners of insanity. What is the answer for businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals, wanting to create and maintain a competitive edge? John Kotter, recognized leadership expert says, "The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people." There you have it. To change your results, you must change your own and others' actions.

THE GOOD NEWS: Change is possible and the formula includes common ingredients. So what's the secret to significant, sustainable change? It's not tough to do, just tough to maintain.

Deutschman's Relationship, Repeat and Reframe model includes: Building relationships with someone or a group that believes in you and that you trust. Utilizing the new relationship(s) to learn, practice and master new success habits and skills. And, through the new relationships and repetition, beginning to look at things in ways that would have been foreign to you before.

To HAVE you must first BECOME. Rarely do people consider what they have to change about themselves to meet their goals. To have a six-figure income - become a person with skills and capabilities worth someone paying you that amount. For a great relationship with spouse and children - become someone they see as worthy of the relationship. To have a single digit golf handicap - become a golfer with the skills, discipline, and attitude required for that level of play.

If, when faced with death, only 10% of people will make sustainable change, how can organizations hope to make change stick? Too many people look for a fast fix. Change is a process, not an event. The best thing you can do is become someone who learns, unlearns and relearns...faster than your competition.

Reprint permission granted by author Allison Darling, President and Founder of Management Concepts, Inc. 913-649-4833 or allison@mgmtconcepts.biz.

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
- George Washington Carver

As a manager the important thing is not what happens when you are there, but what happens when you are not there.
- Anonymous

There is no use worrying about things over which you have no control, and if you have control, you can do something about them instead of worrying.
- Stanley C. Allyn

CCI's mission it to unleash passion and purpose in people and organizations. We accomplish this by engaging and developing successful leaders throughout an organization; teaching people to collaborate and work together effectively and by supporting the alignment and commitment to achieving both individual and shared goals in organizations.

We are a training, facilitation, speaking, and consulting organization.

Our goal is to bring out the very best in the people and organizations we work with. When people are passionate and on fire about their work everyone produces more. Let us show you how!

Collaborative Connections is proud to announce our association with CRK Interactive.

Today people are looking for fast and effective ways to learn on demand; when they want it. We are pleased to now offer several online 90 minute classes that keep people's skills up to date. Many of these online classes work inconjunction with assessements such as the DiSC Behavioral Style Profile or other assessments and several offer CEU Credits.

These programs are designed to engage learners and provide high impact training for employees available 24 hours a day. Classes are reasonably priced and can be used as a stand alone course or as part of a blended approach.

Online classes are available for:

1. Managers and Leaders
2. Teams
3. Sales Professionals
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For a list of available courses, course descriptions, courses that qualify for CEU's or to sample a course for free, please call us at: 303-380-2550 or email info@collaborativeconnections.com