Action Plans Accelerate Results

Collaboration is way more effective with a simple execution plan.  

Any time you have a team collaborating to achieve an outcome, an action plan is critical. It guides alignment on a unified approach and accelerates meaningful results. Depending on the size of the initiative, it can be a simple list or it can be a full blown project management system. One method does not “fit all”.  The best approach is the simplest tool for the scope of the work. 

Regardless of the tool, key components to include in the plan:

• Objective (why is this needed, how important is it)
• Goals and success metrics (what does winning look like)
• Defined scope to drive focus (what's in, what's out)
• Pilot (how can we achieve a quick win and accelerate learning)
• Key milestones with one clear owner (what are the big overarching critical pieces)
• Action items with clearly defined outcomes, due dates, and one owner (who does what by when)

Action Plan Best Practices:

• Design a team that has diverse perspectives, strong contributors, and is a manageable size (3-7 is optimal to enable speed and collaboration)
• Review the draft with your key stakeholders. Invite feedback and incorporate their ideas in to the plan.
• Load the document in a shared location that is easily accessible by all team members
• Establish standard status reporting processes and channels, including meeting cadences to drive progress and visibility across all impacted groups (working team, SteerCo, leadership updates, etc.)
• If an item is off track (red or yellow status), include the plan is to get it back to green
• Highlight progress of significant achievements and people that are making the difference 

Dancing with Change

Change is constant, whether we like it or not.  If we don't know how to to deal with change, it can slow us down, feel very difficult, become very expensive, and cause a lot of waste.

Our ability to manage change well directly influences our speed of growth, daily experience, success in achieving goals, and ability to make a valuable impact.

Here are keys to improve your ability to manage change.

Create a Change Map
True clarity on what specifically needs to change is critical.  We can achieve this by:

• Having a high level of awareness of current position
• Creating a clear vision of desired outcome (with a thoughtful, elevated outcome)
• Mapping a path from one point to the other
• Assertively chasing that path every day, being the force to make it happen
• Being flexible and adapting the path, as needed, to reach the outcome

By mapping this journey of growth, we paint a picture of the specific shift that needs to happen.  Priorities become clear and noise is eliminated.


Refresh Habits
Our daily habits are essential to driving important change.  People who consistently bring effort, energy, and attitude excel regardless of factors outside of their control.  Encouraged daily habits:

• Engaging in a mindset routine every morning feels motivating 
• Obsessing with being better than yesterday
• Living each day as if it's the only one
• Seeking to be coached and learning from disappointments
• Speaking words that are rooted in love and honoring them

When we demonstrate our ability to thrive with change, we encourage others to do the same.  This synergy is powerful momentum.


Influence Progress
Collaboration that leverages various perspectives while creating ownership at the same time is a great way to elevate results.  We have an opportunity to not only seize opportunities for change, but to lead others to do the same.

• For changes that are big - a clear, agreed upon action plan with a small, specialized group who is highly motivated is a great way to drive fast progress in a fun way.  Be sure to set a cadence of regular work sessions to speed progress and give the team time in between to elevate their work product.
• For changes that will be repeated - a simple guided process with forms that gather all necessary information,  create clear ownership over each step, and ensure checks and balances is a great way to drive quality and efficiency. 

Finding Your Unique Ability

While reading the book Traction, I was deeply intrigued by the idea of having "the right people in the right seats".  I wondered how you can ensure you're making these decisions based on data rather than ego.   Traction recommends the book Unique Ability.  I decided to give it a try to test the process and learn how objective it was.

The book provides three methods to find your Unique Ability:

1. Survey people you know (send an email to get a written reply to a single question)
2. Take the Kolbe A Assessment (determine your Mode of Operation or how you do things)
3. Take the StrengthsFinder Assessment (measure your natural talents)

I went through all of the above and had some very interesting results.  As I step back and look at the patterns overall, I find it that all methods came out with a simliar response.  There was a key pattern that emerged across all three.  

What's really interesting is that before I started all of this, I jotted down my thoughts on my Unique Ability.  The first few things I wrote were spot on.  So I already knew my answer before going through any of these exercises.  However, going through these practices was a lot of fun and, in the end, helped me to know my Unique Ability with clear precision.  

It was a really fun journey and I highly recommend for you to give it a try!  Hearing feedback from others was most enjoyable and helpful.  I selected 5 of each type of person to give me a well-rounded view: family, coworkers, and friends.  Both assessments gave me good information.  If I had to recommend just one of the tests, I'd suggest StrengthsFinder.  It's a great tool that makes finding this information scalable and dependable.

My Unique Ability Results

Survey Results:  15 people replied with three main themes in the responses; in order

1. Ability to organize a lot of data into a unified, simple plan - and drive progress.
2. Determination to learn, deeply understand, apply, and teach.
3. Compassionate, positive energy.

Kolbe A Results:  My standard mode of operation, how I do things (8-6-3-3); in order

1. Strategize - Gather all the info to understand cause, determine practical approach, and prioritize
2. Maintain - Look for ways to fit the project into the existing system
3. Stabilize - Advocate for what needs to stay the same
4. Envision - Visualize how it could work, ideal solutions

StrengthsFinder 2.0 Results: My Natural Talent (easiest to develop into strengths); in order 

1. Achiever - Work hard, productive
2. Learner - Love process of learning, continuously improve
3. Focus - Prioritize, act, stay on track
4. Connectedness - See links between things
5. Relator - Enjoy close relationships

Reference: 

• Traction by Gino Wickman
• Unique Ability by Catherine Noumra and Julia Waller, based on the concept created by Dan Sullivan.

Training Creation Guidelines

Why Creating Training is Important

Any time that a process, template, or best practice has been created, it has come from a lot of hard work.  The lessons learned in the process are very valuable, especially when they are understood, live on, and continue to improve.  If there are others that can benefit from the knowledge, training is a great way to share the results and allow further opportunity to grow.

How People Learn

These tips will help provide a high level of learning transfer.

·        Video is the most effective method of training.  The average human can retain: 10% of text, 65% of images, and 95% of video.

·         Images are retrieved 60,000 times faster by the brain than text is.

·         By utilizing both audial and visual senses, help the lessons to stick more.  Each has its own channel to short term memory; double capacity by using both.

o   Show images with key words while conveying the information verbally.

o   Visual images must clearly, simply connect with words so they are not distracting.

o   Give a document that highlights the steps as a follow up option for reference later.

·       The way that people actually apply a lesson is by hooking it to prior knowledge.  This is best done through application of the lesson into an example.

·       Personalization makes the training more accepted by the user and leads toward better retention.   Gear the training toward the specific learner and using casual language (such as “you” instead of generic or overly professional words like “people).

·       People want to see a presenter’s image in the training that they can relate to.  They want to see eyes.  They want it to be conversational with them.  This provides a 47% improvement on test results.  Studies show we want women to teach us personal things and men to teach us technical things.

·         Scenarios are a highly recommended method of training.  They include relatable characters, a plot, a realistic decision, and consequences with feedback.  They challenge the learners to make realistic decisions.  Having an expert that shows step by step how they would solve a problem is ideal.

·       People relate to stories.  They help to engage the learner and confirm appropriate application of knowledge.

·       People learn much more by having smaller “chunks” of training for shorter periods rather than a two-hour training with a ton of content.

·      Make the training easy to access so that people can find what they need to find easily and are therefore more likely to utilize the content.

·      Alignment needs to happen repetitively – just like in a car – one training course doesn’t work for life. It’s a process of continuous adjustment (weekly, monthly) with adjustments as needed to stay on course. 

Passionate Performance

Highlights from the book by Lee J. Colan

Passionate performance is demonstrated by a strong, sustained intellectual and emotional attachment to one’s work.  It is made visible through enthusiasm and seeing results.  People choose to do more because they have fun.  This happens when a person’s intellectual and emotional needs are fulfilled.

Intellectual needs are fulfilled by engaging the mind and result in high performance.   There are 3 intellectual needs that need to be fulfilled.  When a person regularly experiences achievement, autonomy, and mastery, a self-reinforcing cycle of improvement, growth, and high performance is created.

1. Achievement – Outcome: eliminate barriers to achievement and define crystal clear goals
2. Autonomy – Process: improve the process and establish broad, yet clear boundaries
3. Mastery – Specialty: fit person to position for highest, best use and create a learning environment

Emotional needs are fulfilled by engaging the heart and result in passion.  There are 3 emotional needs that need to be fulfilled.  When a person regularly experiences purpose, intimacy, and appreciation, they form strong relationships that result in amazing results.

1. Purpose – Cause: create a compelling purpose and focus on activities that directly support it 
2. Intimacy – Connection: maintain small teams to build strong relations and create team rituals
3. Appreciation – Recognition: find opportunities to express contributions and to be sincerely interested in each person

Implementation Ideas:

• Look for opportunities for your team to master key skills
• Define goals for each person (eliminate the primary barrier to achievement)
• Find a reason every day to recognize someone on your team
• Implement a structured selection process to ensure a good fit between each person and position
• Ask team what changes they can make to be certain we stay focused on our purpose

Conscious Capitalism

Key Highlights from the book by Mackey and Sisodia

1.     Free-enterprise capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress ever conceived.

1.1.   No human creation has had a greater positive impact on more people more rapidly than free-enterprise capitalism.

1.1.1. Afforded billions the opportunity to earn sustenance, improve quality of life, and find meaning by creating value for each other.  

1.1.2. Has lifted more people out of poverty than any other force in history, and has done so through voluntary exchange.  Hundreds of millions of poor people have been able to escape grinding poverty.

1.1.3. In 200 years, world’s population in extreme poverty from 85% to 16%.  Average income per capita has increased 1000% since 1800.

1.2.   Human creativity, partly individual but mostly collaborative and cumulative, is at the root of all economic progress.

1.2.1. The most important factors in free-enterprise capitalism’s success have been entrepreneurship and innovation, combined with freedom and dignity.

1.2.2. Entrepreneurs solve problems by creatively envisioning different ways the world could and should be.  They see new possibilities and enrich the lives of others by creating things that never existed before.

1.2.3. Capitalism is an extraordinarily powerful system for eliciting, harnessing, and multiplying ingenuity and industry to create value for others. 

1.3.   Profit maximization thinking (low-consciousness business) has created a terrible reputation for capitalism. 

1.3.1. Top executives at the helm of many major corporations have rigged the game to enrich themselves at the expense of the company and its stakeholders. 

1.3.2. Confidence in big business has declined steadily for the past 40 years, but is on the rebound.

1.3.3. The average level of engagement for American team members has remained at 30% or less for the past 10 years.

1.4.    Those who recognize and embrace the life-affirming power of free-enterprise capitalism must reclaim the intellectual and moral high ground.

1.4.1. Business is awakening to itself and becoming conscious.  It’s recognizing that it’s a force with enormous power and responsibility.  The Flynn effect shows that overall human analytical intelligence rises at an average rate of 4% every decade.  People are also far better educated worldwide, mostly due to greater access to higher education.  Many more of us are capable of comprehending and acting on greater complexity than ever before. 

1.4.2. People today care about different things and are more informed, educated, and connected than in the past, their expectations from businesses in their roles as customers, team members, suppliers, investors, and community members are rapidly changing.  It’s time for companies to evolve to keep pace.

1.4.3. Conscious firms outperformed in the stock market by a ratio of 10.5:1 over a 15-year period, delivering more than 1600% total returns when the market was up just 150% for the same period. 

2.     The Tenets of Conscious Capitalism

2.1.   Higher purpose and core values

2.1.1. Business has a much broader positive impact on the world when it’s based on a higher purpose that goes beyond generating profits and creating value for investors.

2.1.2. A compelling sense of higher purpose creates an extraordinary degree of engagement among all stakeholders and catalyzes creativity, innovation, and organizational commitment.  Once a person discovers their true purpose, the complexion of daily life and work changes.  They are able to draw on reservoirs of energy and inspiration that they didn’t know existed within.  Work becomes a fulfilling source of satisfaction and joy.

2.1.3. The way forward for humankind is to liberate the heroic spirit of business and our collective entrepreneurial creativity so we can be free to solve the many daunting challenges we face.  There are billions of people whose basic needs are not being adequately met.  We need to see these as opportunities, unlock the natural human creative spirit to address these challenges in a way that will allow us to flourish.  

2.2.   Stakeholder integration

2.2.1. All entities that impact or impacted by the business are important, connected, and interdependent.  The business must seek to optimize value creation for all of them. People must be honored first before treating them according to the role they are playing.   

2.2.2. The purpose of every business ultimately revolves around creating value for customers.  Businesses have to serve their customers by educating them to want what’s good for them, steering them toward better choices over time, and at the same time, giving them freedom to choose. 

2.2.3. In addition to creating social, cultural, intellectual, physical, ecological, emotional, and spiritual value for all stakeholders, conscious businesses also excel at delivering exceptional financial performance over the long-term.  Conscious businesses win, but in a way that is far richer and more multi-faceted than the traditional winning.  All boats rise versus zero-sum. 

2.3.   Conscious leadership

2.3.1. Conscious leaders are motivated primarily by service to the firm’s higher purpose and creating value for all stakeholders. 

2.3.2. In addition to high levels of analytical, emotional, and spiritual intelligence, leaders of conscious businesses have a finely developed systems intelligence that understands the relationships between all of the interdependent stakeholders.  Their fundamentally more sophisticated and complex way of thinking about business transcends the limitations of the analytical mind that focuses on differences, conflicts, and trade-offs.

2.3.3. The leaders of conscious businesses care about service to others because that is ultimately what leads to fulfillment and value creation.  The right actions taken for the right reasons lead to good outcomes over time.  Focus on things we can control, actions and reactions.

2.4.   Conscious culture and management

2.4.1. Conscious businesses use an approach to management that is consistent with their culture and is based on decentralization, empowerment, and collaboration. 

2.4.2. Conscious management seeks to focus creative energies in the most effective way by creating a virtuous cycle of reinforcing organizational practices.  This amplifies the organization’s ability to innovate continually and create multiple kinds of value for all stakeholders.

2.4.3. Businesses should lead the way in raising consciousness in the world.  The larger the company, the greater the footprint, and therefore its responsibility to the world.  

My Favorite Trick for Feeling Truly Fulfilled: Planning Outcomes

The habit that helps ensure my personal fulfillment over all others is a 90 day pivot review.  Every quarter, I carve some time out to take a fresh look at what my priorities are and set new goals accordingly.  Sometimes these goals are changing or elevating my approach on a goal I've been actively pursuing.  Sometimes they are completely new ideas.  By reviewing this regularly, I improve my ability not only to plan, but to elevate what I'm planning for.

When I step out of this Outcome Planning Session, I feel reinvigorated and ready to drive forward.  This 30 minute practice renews my motivation by alinging my focus with my planned actions.  It also prioritizes important reflection on my prior goals versus actual accomplishments.  I love to look back see the results of my intentions versus what really happened.  I learn so much when flipping through the pages and seeing my progress.

The template that I use is from my Daily Notebook and is pictured here.  The Notebook helps create daily balance, focus, and enjoyment.  When partnered with quarterly outcome planning and weekly organization sessions, it brings a much higher level of self-growth and fulfillment.

Other Favorites:

• My Favorite Organization Trick
• My Favorite Life Hack
• My Favorite Time Management Trick
• My Favorite Daily Mindset Practice

My Favorite Organization Trick: A Clean Inbox

I use action plans and my daily notebook as key components to integrate long-term goals into my calendar.

However, it is my inbox that helps organize all the details so that when it's time to knock things out, I can grab groups of information in work packages, advance quickly, and follow up impeccably.

My email inbox is the key factor in my delivery.  I have a method that works best for me and have spelled it all out here.  When my inbox is cleaned up, I feel a great sense of clarity and readiness.

Other Favorites:

• My Favorite Life Hack
• My Favorite Time Management Trick
• My Favorite Trick for Feeling Truly Fulfilled
• My Favorite Daily Mindset Practice

Lean Startup

My favorite highlights from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Develop an innovative product that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition all at the same time.   

1.     Vision – Build an ideal model of disruption based on customer archetypes

1.1.    Start - Enter the build phase as quickly as possible with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This approach minimizes effort and development time required.

1.2.    Define – Humanize the customer.  Develop a customer archetype that is used daily in prioritizing decisions to ensure they are aligned with customers’ needs.

1.3.    Learn - No matter how efficiently you build something no one really wants, you are going to fail.  Validated Learning is the only type of learning that is valuable in a startup.  Learn what customers want based on empirical data from real customers.  Productivity is measured in terms of how much validated learning we are getting for our efforts.

1.4.    Experiment – Build a sustainable business around teams that perform quick experiments to provide key learning and progress the vision. Explore the value hypothesis (does this product and/or service deliver value to customers) and growth hypothesis (how will customers discover it).  Setup culture and systems so that teams can innovate at the rate of the experimentation system. 

2.     Steer – Launch an MVP to establish a baseline

2.1.    Leap – Identify tremendous opportunity and plan a strategic approach based on a well-informed strategy.  Analyze products, techniques, and the right questions to ask. 

2.2.    Test – Test all assumptions as quickly as possible.  Engage early adopters to provide valuable feedback.  Conduct A/B tests to create true results rather than a need to sell what you have.  Any feature, process, or effort that does not contribute directly to learning should be removed from MVP.

2.3.    Measure – Rigorously measure each step of the way; quickly confront the hard truths that are revealed.  Utilize learning milestones to allow accurate and objective assessments (build model, launch MVP, iterate to get closer to ideal).  Focus on actionable and assessible measurements that are auditable.

2.4.    Pivot (or Persevere) – Getting to pivots faster is the goal during growth periods.  Having the tools and agility to find a better path is key.

3.     Accelerate – Tune the engine to get closer to the ideal

3.1.    Batch – Reduce work in progress by converting to pull methods and reducing batch size.  Figure out what needs to be learned, then work backwards to see what product will work as an experiment to get that learning.  Small batches are processed faster and ensure that issues are identified quickly. 

3.2.    Grow – New customers come from the actions of past customers.  Sources of sustainable growth power feedback loops that become engines of growth. 

3.3.    Adapt – Adaptive processes force you to slow down and invest in preventing the kinds of problems that are currently wasting time.  As these preventative efforts pay off, you naturally speed up again.

3.4.    Innovate – Create an innovation sandbox.  Nurture disruptive innovation by creating small cross-functional teams that can rapidly experiment without requiring a lot of approvals, innovate in the open, and have a personal stake in the outcome.   

Highlights: Organizational Physics

My favorite highlights from Organizational Physics by Lex Sisney.

An organization is a complex adaptive system with a finite amount of energy.  How an organization manages its available energy is what ultimately determines its failure or success. 

The laws of organizational physics show that success is a function of two things:  integration over entropy. 

·        Integration indicates the amount of new energy made available to the organization from the environment. 

·        Entropy indicates the amount of energy required to manage the “mass” (maintaining the organization, making decisions, and getting the work done).  Everything naturally falls apart over time.  Energy flows here first.  If too much energy is lost, the organization slows down and fails. 

Key Steps to System Energy Management:

1.       Build and manage powerhouse teams

2.       Choose the right strategy

3.       Execute fast

Leveraging Forces:

Every individual expresses their own unique combination of the four forces that operate within us: Producing, Stabilizing, Innovating, and Unifying.  Each of us has all four forces present in some form, but usually one or two come to us most naturally.  When one force is particularly strong, one or more of the other forces will be relatively weak.  When we operate from our genius zone, we experience high energy gains, feel deep engagement, high personal satisfaction, and elevated productivity.

Getting people in the right roles is key for the benefit of the individual as well as the organization.  Designing the overall structure in a system that leverages these natural forces to create overall balance maximizes the benefit to the whole. 

1.       There’s an inherent conflict between autonomy and the need for control.  Enable sales to sell without restriction (to speed growth) and centralize functions which control systemic risk (to protect the system). Make the most of these energies with a structure that harnesses both of them. 

2.       Functions focused on effectiveness should never report to functions based on efficiency.

3.       Functions focused on long-range developments should never report to those that drive daily results.

The 6 Laws of Organizational Physics

1.       An organization is a complex adaptive system.  It must be viewed as a complete system to gain insights into how it functions in its totality.

2.       An organization is subject to the first law of thermodynamics: there is a finite amount of energy.  If an organization has a high level of integration between its capabilities and the opportunities in the environment, the organization can receive an abundance of new energy and be successful.  If there’s no integration between them, then there’s no new energy created, and it will soon perish.

3.       An organization is subject to the conditions of its environment.  The driving principle of evolution shows that it’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survive, but those that are best adapted to their environment.  Because the environment is always changing, the organization must always be adapting.  Successful adaption requires constant realignment among the organizations capabilities to execute, its markets or customers, and its products.  This is the basis of its strategy. 

4.       An organization is subject to the laws of motion.  How an organization manages its mass determines the speed of its execution. 

5.       An organization must shape and respond to its environment and do so as a whole system, including its parts and sub-parts.  An organization has patterns or forces that exist all throughout it, from the smallest tasks and behaviors to the largest enterprise.  These forces can be mapped many ways.

6.       An organization is subject to the second law of thermodynamics.  Everything falls apart over time due to entropy (disorder or disintegration).  An organization’s available energy first flows to manage and counter the disintegrating force of entropy.  If entropy is high, then it costs the system a higher amount of its available energy to maintain itself and get work done.  If a business has a great market opportunity but suffers from high internal friction, politicking, and fighting, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to get any work done and the business can’t capture the external opportunity as a result.

Reference:

·        Organizational Physics book by Lex Sisney

·        http://organizationalphysics.com/2011/11/09/the-four-styles-of-management/

A Well-Organized Inbox

Most of us get hundreds of emails per day across multiple email addresses. It is hard not to lose messages in the shuffle. How can you stay on top of so much information without missing key details? Believe it or not, you can not only keep your inbox organized, but you can also actually use it as a key tool to help you stay on top of critical to do’s. 

 It is not as difficult or time consuming as it may seem. It requires a simple technique to quickly filter the information and organize it in categories so that what you need is where you can easily find it when you want it.

How to Best Organize Your Inbox

When you utilize this method, your email becomes a tool for prioritization as well as a useful database of information you need.

Empty it Out

First, you must commit to only keep items that require action in your inbox. If you that have 15,000 old emails sitting in your inbox, this can sound like the last thing on Earth you want to do. Hear me out. Start with taking all those old emails and putting them into a folder called “Archive”. Move EVERYTHING into that folder. There you go. You have got a clean inbox.

Sort Incoming Items

For all new incoming emails, the first time you read through them, quickly determine what where they need to go. The goal is to move each email on the first touch:

If no action is needed, read through it, and archive it or delete it.

• If you never need to see the message again, click delete. If you have emails that you repeatedly get from a source that do not provide value, unsubscribe or mark as spam. It will give you peace of mind.
• For everything that you may want to refer to at some future point in time, move it to your Archive folder. Make sure to make this folder a favorite so it’s very easy to put emails into quickly.

If action is needed, keep it in your inbox.

• For any item that requires action, give it a category. Categories are helpful so that you can quickly navigate the list of emails you have pending. Staring at these few remaining emails will prompt you to act.
• On your calendar, carve out a period of time for each category to focus and progress on these items as a batch.
• Determine the maximum number of messages you are willing to keep. I recommend keeping the minimum possible; no more than 25-50. If you have more than that, delegate or let go of the least meaningful pending items.

That's It! Helpful Tricks:

• Follow Up. If you send an email out that you want to make sure you get a response on, BCC yourself and keep it in your inbox.
• Templates. If you send emails repeatedly now and again create a “Templates” folder and save a copy there. From time to time you make improvements.
• Posts. Try using the posts feature to leave yourself quick little notes in your inbox where you will see them. I LOVE them! They are great because they are easy to find, you can edit them, and they stay right in your inbox for action until you are done with them.
• Employees. If you have employees you manage, you can create a folder with each person’s name to keep track of assignments. Keep a copy of the request and any useful information that you'll want to see when I review her work. This will remind you of all the things you have asked that person to do that you want to make sure you see progress on. Prior to your weekly meetings, scan it to see if there is anything in there you want to talk about.

Your inbox could be a tool that empowers you to be unstoppable. When partnered with timeboxes, you have a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

The Beauty in Diversity - Reflected through Spiral Dynamics

Spiral Dynamics is a framework that makes patterns visible.  It is an integral approach to thinking about the complexities of human existence by bringing order to the apparent chaos of human affairs.  It represents the emerging flow of human thinking and value systems that continuously change in the process of life.  It shows how people think about things, not what they think about.

This framework organizes information in a way that makes it easier to see the value of our differences. The spiral shows how waves of consciousness emerge and flow through individuals and groups.  Each level represents a system of core values or collective intelligences, applicable to both individuals and entire cultures.  They detail human development and growth in adaptation to challenges.  Each new level includes and transcends all previous ones.  No level is inherently better or worse than another.  They do become more expansive since each builds on all that came before it.  People are not locked into one single level.  Several can coexist, though one is usually dominant.

Each level has an important role in life and all are needed.  Each has a healthy and unhealthy expression...  The opportunity lies in moving people to the healthy expression in their role, not to become all the same. 

• Warm colors exhibit a focus on the external world and mastering it. 
• Cool colors focus on the inner world and coming to peace within it.  
• As individuals, most of us are mixtures of both as the spiral winds between the individual "I" and the collective "we".  

We are like pieces of a puzzle... each one equally as important and valuable. When we align with these factors, we leverage the value of our differences rather than fight against them.  We increase our ability to thoughfully design our efforts by engaging a person that perfectly fits a particular need and empowering them with the best tools and systems, setting them up for success and increasing our ability to impact the whole.

Hierarchal Outlines

Organizing information by hierarchy creates a high level of clarity by grouping items in a strategic way.  When used in an outline format, hierarchy can facilitate alignment and simplify complex systems.  Hierarchal outlines form a naming and numbering convention that standardizes communication and enables teams to be closely aligned with simple organization. 

·                        Hierarchy – a system of organization in which information is grouped and ranked according to relative importance.

·                        Hierarchal Outline – a list arranged to show hierarchal relationships (also a type of a tree structure).  It is used to present the main points of a topic, often before a full document is written.  This allows for alignment on the key points before digging into details extensively.

Benefits of Hierarchal Outlines:

1.      Alignment

1.1.    Provides clarity between levels of information to easily understand organization and value from a big picture.

1.2.    Ensures alignment at a high level before digging into details.

1.3.    Creates a common understanding and approach amongst team members.

2.      Organization

2.1.    Easily and quickly identifies holes and areas of excess.

2.2.    Provides a thoughtful presentation of the key components.

2.3.    Creates a standardized organization of information with common naming and numbering, which helps to simplify process documents including templates, best practices, etc.

3.      Clarity

3.1.    Allows for easy scanning and locating information that is important to the reader.

3.2.    Breaks information into smaller more manageable sections.

3.3.    Facilitates a deeper level of focus on areas that need to be further developed. 

Outline Format with Hierarchy:

1.       Primary level - category

1.1.    Secondary level – sub-topic

1.1.1. Tertiary level – details

*This “decimal outline” style of numbering is highly preferred so that any point can easily be referred to by number and it is easily understood how every item at every level relates to the whole.

How to organize information into a hierarchal outline:

1.       Start jotting down items that need to be organized.  If you already know some level of organization, start sorting them.  If not, just get it noted first and sort later.

2.       Identify the main “buckets”– what groups the information can be categorized into at the highest level.  List them in a logical order.   Be open to changing the buckets and the order during this exercise.

3.       Organize the sub-categories that support the primary categories under those in logical order.

4.       Add any details under the sub-categories.

5.       Review that information is written as concisely as possible.  Clean up and rework.

6.       Have someone review your work and give you feedback to inspire further refinement.