Consider two teams, both playing the same game of baseball. With one team, when the ball is hit, some players run towards the ball and others stand around and watch, sometimes not even thinking about the game.

Now look at the other team: when the ball is hit, every player reacts in a disciplined manner and his teammates know what the other is going to do. Depending on the situation, the pitcher may cover home plate, infielders set up for a double play, and outfielders prepare to back up their teammates.

Which team is going to deliver the most wins?

In any kind of business, what keeps you in business is whether or not you deliver the goods to your clients. You need to deliver quality results in a consistent manner. The good news is that to deliver quality results, you do not need tons of people or the most expensive tools: it's all about the quality of your systems.

What is a "system"? It is a set of activities, methods, practices, tools and transformations that you use to create a specific deliverable result. An effective set of systems brings together people, tools and methods into an integrated whole. The quality of your end result is determined by the quality of the systems used to produce it. Systems provide a measurable way to improve your ability to execute.

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What does the word "tactical" mean to you? It might conjure up images of heavily armed soldiers storming a building, a swarm of tanks overrunning enemy defenses, a squadron of aircraft dueling it out over the English channel. Tactics rhymes with execution, punch, getting things done.

Are you thinking tactically enough to win?

Most entrepreneurs have a big-picture idea of what they want, recorded in a business plan or vision document or a simple list of goals. But then the document stays in a drawer or on the hard drive as they stumble into reactive mode, day after day, and not accomplishing what they initially said they wanted.

Planning requires two levels of thinking: strategic and tactical. Strategic planning is vision-focused, the "who am I", "what do I want to create" and "why is this important to me".  Strategic is longer term, one, three, five, ten years out. Strategic planning is important, because it gives a context and a purpose for action.

Tactical planning is goal-focused, the "how", the detailed actions needed to move the yardstick forward toward the big vision.

Where the strategic plan can be done in the abstract, because it deals with possibilities and assumptions, the tactical plan is how we dance with reality, respond to the actual situation on the ground, execute to create results. Tactical plans are meant to be short term: created quickly, executed boldly, then superseded by the next tactical plan based on the new situation. Rapid execution of a succession of tactical plans moves you step by step towards realizing the overall strategic plan.

For the entrepreneur, thinking tactically means creating a daily, execution-focused, tactical plan. [Read more →]

I've just attended the Gamechangers Roundtable call today on "Creating a Game-Changing Culture" with Jonathan Fields, Chris Guillebeau, Pam Slim and Reese Spykerman, moderated by Elizabeth Marshall.

The core of the discussion was about Branding, what it means and how to create a brand that expresses your own personality and quirkiness... because that is what will attract the right people to you.

To give you a sense of what was discussed, here are the notes I tweeted during the call (bottom of the list = start of the call): [Read more →]

Why is it so tempting to procrastinate when faced with an otherwise simple task? Even if you have the skills, knowledge, experience, resources and even a great motivation to accomplish the task, there is something that can sabotage your best intentions, and before you know it, there goes another blown promise or missed deadline...

The culprit lies within the deepest recesses of our brain, in a primitive organ - the amygdala. This "lizard brain" is the centre of our basic emotions: fear, anger and sexual desire.

If fear exists is because it the amygdala senses a threat to our survival. Since the beginning of evolution, our natural fear reflex helped us to either avoid or react to the often fatal dangers we faced.  But does this visceral reaction still serve us well in our modern environment?

[Read more →]

Is your business project running off the rails, or turning into a "Death March": a daily slog with no hope of any outcome?

If your project or your business is heading towards disaster, what can you do to get it back on track? In this discussion, Coach Davender Gupta will show you a simple process to take control of the situation and steer it back onto the path to progress.

Join Sharon Sayler as she interviews me about a simple five-step process to get you back on track, during her BlogTalkRadio podcast "Beyond Lip Service" this Tuesday at 1pm East / 10 am Pacific at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/BeyondLipService

Air Date: Tuesday Feb 2 2010, 1pm East/10am Pacific
Direct Link: http://bit.ly/9TzGvt

[Read more →]

Do you have a task that you've been procrastinating on, one that gets bigger every day even though you're trying to ignore it? I usually have a couple of those on my list. These are tasks that I'm dreading for one reason or another: tediousness, refusal to face the truth, fear, shame...

The more I try to push these tasks to the future, the bigger they get, to the point that just resisting them is sapping my energy and blocking my ability to spot and respond to other opportunities.

So it's time to do something about it.   [Read more →]

Are you overwhelmed by everything that screams for your attention?

Join me and my guest, office productivity coach Athenee Mastrangelo, as we discuss how some simple steps can organize your workspace, get you out of the "Crazy-Busy" mindset, and help you get more done.

This is the inaugural episode of "From Passion To Profit Radio"!

Show time: Monday, January 11, 2010, 6PM-6:30PM (Eastern)
Location: Listen live or download the podcast at
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/frompassiontoprofit

"From Passion To Profit Radio" presents people with interesting stories, ideas, tools and techniques to help you power your Vision from Passion to Profit. Each episode is hosted by Coach Davender Gupta.

For more information about Athenee, visit her website at
http://www.actionchaos.com

For more information about Coach Davender, check out his blog at http://www.frompassiontoprofit.com and his main site
http://www.coachdavender.com

To access this and other episodes of "From Passion To Profit Radio", visit
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/frompassiontoprofit

So it's a New Year, but how are you going to make this different then the old one? Here are three ideas to help you make this year your best ever!

For more information:

Link to this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBAMjY2vHto

My YouTube channel (includes my videos and other "favorites"):
http://www.youtube.com/coachdavender

Lately I've been accused of being a pessimist. In project meetings and with clients, I'm becoming the "what if" guy, pointing out obstacles and difficulties, bringing up the need for all kinds of expenses, pouring cold water on dreams of how big the profits will be and expectations of how potential customers will respond to the offer. Which doesn't always make me the most popular guy in the discussion.

Entrepreneurs are necessarily optimistic. We need to be, it allows us to see the possibilities around us and act on them.

But the trap appears when we "fall in love" with the idea. Optimism then gives way to an emotional attachment to the idea, a state of "irrational exuberance" which can blind you to dangers that are otherwise obvious to someone who is not as emotionally invested in the project.

This is why I like Edward DeBono's Six Thinking Hats approach to thinking. The six hats are a creativity tool to help look at a situation from different perspectives. When you wear a specific colour hat, it gives you permission to think in a certain style: [Read more →]

My New Year's Eve was quiet, as usual (I don't like big celebrations). I ended up flipping through YouTube and randomly found the movie "Groundhog Day" starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. I've seen this flick several times before, but there was something that made me watch it with another perspective.

If you're not familiar with the movie, it's about the obnoxious Pittsburgh TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) who is assigned to cover the Groundhog Day festivities in small-town Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He grudgingly does his on-air spot and sets off on the return trip to Pittsburgh but has to turn back because of a snowstorm. Forced to stay in the small town for another night, he wakes up the next morning realizing to his horror that he has to relive Groundhog Day again, and again the next day and the day after that. Stuck in this time loop, he realizes that he is powerless to change the situation and sinks into a depression until something clicks and he decides to start living positively. Even that doesn't break the time loop, until...well, you'll have to see the movie to find out how it ends.

There was one point in the movie where I was sure that once Phil Connors "got the girl" then he would snap out of the time loop, but I realized it was only half-way through the movie. Then it came to me: this movie was calling me to snap out of my own "Groundhog Year". [Read more →]