Succeed - The Success Pathway

Success means so many different things. Every person has their own idea of what success looks like.

I like to think of success as something that can be sustained. If you reach the mountain top, that's great...but not if it is only a one time thing. While we cannot always live at the peak, we can visit it more often. How can we experience more success more often? By focusing on a success pathway.

Success Pathway

Success is an outcome. To reach that outcome, especially on a regular basis, you need a success pathway. What is that? It is an intentional focus on what is important to generate that success and a set of practices that ensure you will attain the success you desire. Example: There are times I struggle with "blinky shiny syndrome". I see all the possibilities, the new opportunities, the cool new things I can explore. This is great for innovation, not so good for staying focused on my success pathway.

Let's break down the success pathway into its key components:

• Goals - we need to have goals to let us know our progress and when we have reached success. Using the SMART goal framework, we can set realistic goals that stretch us, but have real impact.
• Plan - goals without a plan are just a wish. Be thoughtful about your plan. Identify what is truly important to achieve those goals and build them into your plan.
• Equip - what do we need to learn, develop, or enhance to reach success?
• Practices - what practices will you put in place to keep you moving forward on the success pathway?
• From our Cultivating Accountability course and eBook, there is an equation that will accelerate your journey on the success pathway:
  • Expectations + Understanding + Equipping + Measures/metrics + Consequences = Accountability 

Success Through Other People

When your success depends on other people being successful, congratulations, you are a leader! In reality, our success almost always depends on other people. What is the secret to getting other people to be successful? It starts with connection and trust building. Whether these other people are internal or external customers, building connection and trust leads to greater influence. Influence is critical to engaging people around a purpose or effort and getting the results desired.

How do we do this? How do we get other people to follow the success pathway? Here is what I have found to be a very effective method:

• Assess - assess the situation, people, and available resources to gain clarity on the current reality.
• Equip - prepare through learning, development, and resourcing.
• Align - this is getting all heads in the game. Using the Accountability Equation, align every person for optimal results. Invest the time and resources to do this, it will have massive ROI!
• Succeed - success is the outcome of the good work you have done. More importantly, following these methods, it will become sustainable success.

Succeed

However you define success, having a success pathway can turn goals into reality. An interesting benefit of this approach is that by doing this, you have created a "liberating structure". Liberating structures are frameworks that free up time, energy, and focus for other priorities. In today's world, we can all use more of those three things!

Copyright © 2022 EQFIT® - Author: Steven Goodner All rights reserved. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [email protected]