Want to subscribe? Click here to send us your email address. We'll notify you when the newsletter is published each month!

Letter From The Editor

Dear Friends,

The holidays are upon us and more and more, people are getting twisted up and stressed about the holidays. Some are worried about house guests, others are concerned with finding just the right gift, and others are just downright worn out and don’t know how they are going to “fit” it all in!

It seems that the desire to live up to the image of the perfectly roasted turkey on the perfectly set table, with perfectly dressed and mannered people sitting all around has driven many of us to the point of dreading the holidays. Yet, we all know that the image we strive to live up to is really something that has been manufactured by Hollywood and advertisers. No one can possibly be that perfect!!!!

So there you have it, your hint for getting through the holidays… give up believing that you, or the people around you, have to be perfect in order to have a warm, loving, and meaningful time with your loved ones!

Laugh when the smoke detector goes off, of course after any flames are extinguished; humor your relative who can’t resist asking when you are going to get married… or when you are going to have kids… or why Janie can’t sit still; let your son or daughter dress themselves, even if their top and pants don’t match; and simply open your heart to the craziness that the holidays often bring and cherish it for what it is… the opportunity to get connected with your loved ones and friends no matter how challenging it may be!

My best to you and yours for a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Clay S. Nelson

4 Critical Steps for Your Strategic Planning Session

It is that time of year when planning for 2007 is in full gear, or at least it should be! While this activity may seem routine, there are critical steps one should taken when planning a strategic planning session. Yes, I said, planning for your planning session!

The most productive and focused meetings any one of us can be part of is a meeting that is well thought out and your strategic planning session is no exception.

The 4 critical steps you should take to make your strategic planning session as productive as possible are:

1. Be clear about what you want the session to produce and what you want the group to own when they leave the planning session.
2. Make sure to do some ground work prior to the meeting, making sure that the group has some sort of creative alignment or agreement with regard to the direction of the session.
3. Mentally prepare the session participants before they ever walk in the door. Provide them with an agenda and even “clear” participants by encouraging them to say what is on their mind. (So often when we go into a meeting we are still thinking about the meeting we just left. Therefore, making sure the participants are really there, will make for a much more productive and successful outcome.)
4. Have a specified leader for the session. Someone has to be in charge – the session isn’t necessarily a democracy, and in order to be effective and efficient, the meeting has to have a leader who holds the participants accountable for staying in the game and for getting to the end that everybody agrees they should get to. That leader may be you or it could even be an outside facilitator.

When you keep the team on track and flowing in the same direction, the payoff is great! Not only do you get to an end point, but you can create ownership by your team not only in the direction of the company, but of how they are going to get there. In the end, this ownership of the plan by each team member is what will ultimately see the plan through to completion. The perils of not keeping your strategic planning session on track are…

The Key to Great Communication

Any time you have two or more human beings working together, communication is likely to be an issue. The key to helping teams work through any communication issue is their using the art of full and complete communication. It isn’t a difficult system to put into place; it is simply an acknowledgement by the entire team that they are ultimately responsible for what the person they are communicating with is left understanding.

When team members communicate with the understanding that they are responsible for what the team walks away with, then they can take steps to confirm that what they have communicated is understood! And it is simple to do!

The speaker in any communication simply has to check in with the person/people they are speaking with to make sure that what was said is what they understood.

• You do that by asking them, in a humble, first person way, what they got out of the communication.
• Say: “I’ve had experiences where someone told me to do something [to have something ready, to be somewhere at a specific time, etc.] and what I thought I heard wasn’t what was said. What I prepared was completely wrong, and I don’t want that to happen to you. So, please give me back what I said so that I know you understand what I am asking for.”

We are all human, and frequently we misunderstand what has been said to us. So why not communicate in such a way that acknowledges our humanity? This “system” works for husbands/wives, parents/kids, bosses/employees. It works any place that two human beings are communicating!

Want to subscribe? Click here to send us your email address. We'll notify you when the newsletter is published each month!