Today we continue the journey to your personal greatness, prosperity, and success. If you succeed as an individual, your family will succeed. Successful families build successful communities. Together, we will change our communities and our nation. Let continue:
FUNDAMENTAL #3: Strategize
Successful companies and organizations don’t set New Year resolutions. They develop strategic plans that span 3-5 years. You too, need to develop a Personal Success Strategic Plan (PSSP) for your life. New Year Resolutions are shallow. A PSSP is very comprehensive. You need to develop a clear strategy that is aimed to move you from where you are today to where you desire to be in ten years (or at least December 2018).
In your pursuit of success, you need to use different strategies to achieve different goals. Strategy development involves identifying the few critical factors that must be implemented to give you maximum output in achieving your goals. It involves a critical analysis of where you currently are, what brought you there, where you want to be and the most practical and cost-effective route to get there.
For example, a young man interested in a beautiful young lady must develop a strategy to win her heart. The strategy might include inviting her out to lunch, sending her flowers with a card “From Your Admirer”, finding out her favorite music and sending her a CD; asking her out to watch a movie (Oops! We don’t have functioning movie theatres in Malawi). The young man in most likely going to be rejected if he simply rushes to pop the big question before tactfully winning her heart first (I hope you can see that strategy is not just a buzz term that is only limited to companies and organizations).
For each of your goals, there must be a clear strategy for its accomplishment. If you want to make $1, 000 for example, your strategy might involve finding needs in society that you can satisfy with a product or a service. You might have to wash 50 cars, charging $200 for each car wash. Your strategy will include: Marketing – develop tactics on how to let car owners know that you are offering car-wash services. You will then need to identify a strategic place that will be easily accessible to the car owners. The strategy will also include Execution – how to actually wash 200 cars.
Furthermore, your goal might be to attain a degree in four years. Your strategic actions will include: identifying the right university (hopefully, one that doesn’t constantly go on strike). You will also have to identify an accredited university that offers the courses you want to study. Then, you will need a strategy for raising the tuition fees.
To achieve great success in 2018, you will have to be strategic in your thoughts and actions. Use the Pareto principle to your advantage. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist who in 1895 developed the 20/80 principle. Simply put, you must identify the critical 20% actions that will give you 80% output. You must spend 80% of your time on the critical 20% actions. Be among the top 20% “vital few”, and not the “trivial many”, who constitute the bottom 80 percent.
ACTION: For each of the goals you have set, develop a strategy for its achievement. I encourage you to do this within the next 36 hours.
Thanks for reading–join me here.
