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 Tactical plans are meant to be short term: created quickly, executed boldly, then superseded by the next tactical plan based on the new situation.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 →]

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 →]

The situation in Haiti is appalling.

It is virtually impossible to break away from the news, it is on the television, the front page of the newspapers, on the radio, in the Twitter stream I follow. The images, the sounds, the stories…it is overwhelming.

But before the earthquake in Haiti struck, what occupied our collective attention? Was it the swindle or terror attempt du jour? The war, or scandal, or the crotch-bomber or whatever the crisis of the moment, imagined or real? I don’t remember, there were so many. It is important to know what’s happening, but what is the potential effect of that constant bombardment of bad news?

And most importantly, in what way does this bad news help me to live better, right here right now?   [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 →]

No, no – it’s not what you think! This is a real question, and an important one to consider!

Cory Doctorow (blog), in his novel “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom“, imagines a world where money is obsolete, replaced by a personal reputation-based currency called the “Whuffie“.

Tara Hunt translates this idea into real life in her book “The Whuffie Factor“: we are already entering an age where our “relationship capital” is just as important (or maybe more important?) than our financial capital. The more people respect you, trust you, and like you, the more they want to interact with you.

Tara suggests five principles to increase your Whuffie:   [Read more →]

If you say “yes”, is it a lifelong contract?

The situation you’re in when you said “yes” may change.  The commitment may not turn out to be what was promised. Things may not be happening as expected.

The key is to check your “happiness meter”.  Are you enjoying yourself in the commitment? You may be working hard, even struggling, but you still find meaning in the commitment, something worthwhile for you. Then by all means, stay committed. But if the commitment has lost its meaning, give yourself permission to rethink the situation. [Read more →]

I had a great interview this morning with Denis-François Gravel, an authority on how to use presentation technologies to improve your ability to communicate.

In preparing for this conversation, recorded for my French-language podcast “Radio Passion au Profit“, we had a whole list of topics. But we ended up going deep into one issue: Does PowerPoint kill or enhance our ability to communicate? [Read more →]

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

I received an interesting blog post by Michael Port about the incident during a retreat led by James Ray last October in Sedona that resulted in three deaths and several injuries. Today (January 8) is the 90-day anniversary of this tragedy.

Michael decries the silence of the personal development profession about this tragic incident. He starts his article:

“The tragic death of three people attending a “spiritual retreat” with James Arthur Ray has made me so angry that I’m having trouble finding words to express myself. But I’m going to try because, to me, silence is acceptance—and there has been a deafening level of silence from other “teachers” in the spiritual-help “community.” Though, I am not in the “spiritual-help” business, I do write business-help books, and am close enough to, and sometimes, much to my annoyance, associated with James Ray’s corner of the self-help market, that I’m embarrassed and ashamed that I haven’t spoken up earlier about these teachers and their tactics. What happened in Sedona on Oct 8, 2009 was unacceptable. This is not the first time a narcissistic sociopath with a god-complex has lead people to their deaths and unfortunately it won’t be the last time.”

The post continues with a condemnation of James Ray’s tactics:

“From all accounts, James Arthur Ray’s tactics at this retreat and elsewhere, are coercive and manipulative, designed to strip followers of their power, and might I add, money. (…) Not only was Ray presenting himself as a spiritual guru promising spiritual enlightenment, but also as a business advisor offering profound economic improvement in business. According to an article on cbsnews.com, “The self-stylized success guru says people are ready for his wisdom if “You simply (and deeply) want to make more money and become more successful” and “want to double, triple, and even multiply by ten the size of your business.” “

I notice, especially among coaches, that we try to promise bold transformations in material wealth, by using “spiritual” words.  Obviously, if this kind of marketing talk works for the big guns in the industry, it should work for us, right? [Read more →]