Discover Passion Driven by Action

"My strength is what I believe makes me go. I have not been blessed by many other attributes but my perseverance and strength make things happen. Never give up... insist on what you need.."  --Anonymous

The first person to insist upon is ourselves. Could you use a detailed plan for pulling yourself and your team out of boredom or frustration and inspiring them with passion? Recently, Aviso has decided that part of what we can bring to our partners and clients is just that. We found it in the Perfect Quadrant Framework. Then we created a way to help clients build it into their own mindset and companies. Here it is, in abbreviated form:

  1. Hell: This is an area where you don’t really have much skill and you have no love for the work.
  2. Trap: This is an area where you have a lot of skill and experience, but you no longer have any  passion for the work.
  3. Emerging Heaven: You have yet to develop your skills here, but you love the work and wish you could spend a ton of time doing it.
  4. Heaven: This is where your skills and your passion meet. This is where your work is brilliant. You rarely get hungry or tired because you’re so charged up by what you’re doing.

In the last blog I wrote about how you and your team can rekindle its passion and figure out who has a passion for what and if there are key activities or products in your personal lives in in company activities where skills or passion are exceptionally high or missing altogether.

Our natural inclination when looking at information is to find patterns. As you begin to plot the quadrants, you will immediately begin to see patterns, ask questions, and more importantly, to make decisions and act on them--to personfiy action.

Discover passion driven by action - S.W.O.T

Look at the broader picture through a S.W.O.T Analysis—an assessment of strengths, weaknesses, external opportunities, and threats.  This requires both depth and breadth of knowledge about what is happening in and beyond your immediate space and into the broader spectrum of your personal or work world.

Append the mindset of not being able to achieve your own success with the suffix, "unless."

     "I cannot afford masters training unless ..."         "I will remain this same stuck person, unless.."

Seriously think through how to balance the quadrants by removing or changing activities, services, or products that put you in hell or make you and your team feel trapped. Possibly fill gaps with partners or address processes that need attention. Brainstorm the personal and business skills and activities that represented your life over the past year.

It’s scary. Big change is hard for us on the most primal neurological level. What we have is working, perhaps it’s just limping along but at least it’s going. What will happen if you don’t change?

Kaizen--"Good Change"

The term Kaizen--"Good Change", comes from Japanese manufacturing philosophy. It refers to continuous improvement involving everyone. It literally translates into good change.  Taking account of the past helps us to plan better for the future.  Start with a simple list and begin to apply Kaizen.

  • Don’t be afraid to get too detailed as the more granular the better so that you can begin to identify where your passions exist and what needs to change.
  • Build an accountability framework through Kaizen

A good friend said to me, "there is no better way to motivate than to have a deadline.” And it's true. Take it from your brain through your hand and onto a tangible system. Get it on the calendar. The best calendar will allow you to assign yourself, and others, milestones and tasks and keep track of and share information easily. You are not alone in this endeavor.

  1. Make a List - From your perfect quadrant brainstorm, draft a strategic high level list of things-to-do.  
  2. Add Detail - Take each high level line item and fill in the details to getting things done. Those are the step-by-step plans you need to move your activity or skill to another quadrant.
  3. Create a Calendar - Basecamp, Zoho Projects, or Central Desktop are great options.  Your calendar should support tasks that have an alert mechanism that will let you know you need to be doing something.

Stay on track and Scrum like a pro
A scrum is a short, targeted stand-up meeting that takes no more 15 minutes.  In a typical scrum a scrum master asks each team member 3 questions:
1)    What have you done?
2)    What are you planning to do today?
3)    What’s in your way?

Set your scrum daily or weekly but stay on schedule.

While you’re doing each of these exercises, remember your point. Passion is the best fuel for any endeavor. You probably have rivers of untapped passion in your organization. Isn’t it a good time to tap them?