 Scattered throughout some of the 28 different planning tools of PlanDoTrack and the Coaching Business builder is the question “what will wild success look like?”. I love asking this question to people I am coaching as it gets us to think about WHAT IS POSSIBLE, often without a lot of censure. There are several ways to reword this question:
The benefit of these questions is that it:
As you go about your planning for the next month or quarter, what can wild success look like for you around your most important goals? Best wishes, Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
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 In today’s Digitally Disrupted world, the skill set of discernment and focus are taking precedence. The ability to find “micro-pauses” where you can stop, assess and make decisions plays a critical role in productivity, teams and leadership. Here’s what I wrote bout the skill of discernment earlier this year here at the PlanDoTrack Blog in February: “Leveraging our time is as much about getting organized, as it is getting clear on what’s important. Against the backdrop of complexity, ongoing change and disruption, getting ruthless with our time management can be so important to many. As a business owner, or remote worker, this is especially true. We can’t get out time back. So, when we go down a rabbit hole (whether it’s doing too much research online, following a shiny red object or thinking we just need to learn “one more thing”), the costs can be tremendous. Not just in NOT getting things done, but in terms of our focus, our motivation and also our profit line! Discernment is about getting clear on what’s important and what’s not. It is about being clear of what’s going to provide impact now, later or never. As a remote worker or virtual business owner, we are quite control of our time. Our colleagues and/or superiors may be hundreds of miles away, or several time zones ahead. As remote workers, it’s not always about how we manage our time, but how we get our results. Those who feel the crunch in getting something over the finish line is usually only us (and those loved ones around us!). With this in mind, what is the cost of not being discerning around where your time goes, or how clear your projects are, or what is a more important priority than another? As we embark on new projects, or start a new week, it can be useful to be asking (ourselves, and our stakeholders):
What questions do you want to consider asking as you decide one priority to another?” How can discernment help you in your work and focus right now? Let us know! Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)  This week’s Weekly Planning Hack invites you to think about decluttering your digital landscape (or even starting afresh). Recently, decluttering has been a popular topic in everyday lifestyle arenas. From Marie Kondo’s philosophy of “Does it bring you joy?”, to Gretchen Rubin’s focus on “Outer Order, Inner Calm” (the same name as her newest book), we may also want to take a look at our digital landscape, where many of us spend a bulk of our time. Take a look at your digital landscape (which may include phones and computers, and tablets, and hard drives). Ask yourself:
Earlier this year I spent some time exploring this topic with a group of business owners. The topic of digital clutter was causing significant angst for several group members, impeding their ability to get work done. On a scale of 1-10, how important is this topic for you right now? What is the time window you are going to allocate to focus on it? When will you get it done? Best of luck! Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)   Week 31 Focus – Marketing Review Focus Question: What needs a tweak with your 5 P’s? Description Last week we started to take stock of where you are around dialogue and marketing of your work. Whether you are internal, or external, we are regularly marketing ourselves. Internally we may be focused on personal branding and/or creating and positioning a business case for our work. Externally, we want to offer the best item of value to our customers or clients. When we explore the topic of marketing and program/product design, we often talk about the Marketing Mix or the 5 P’s– Product, Placement, Promotion, People, and Price. Knowing our 5 P’s and reviewing it regularly ensures that we are on target with what our customers or stakeholders want. This week, as review, note what’s worked, and what hasn’t recently in the five different areas of the 5 P’s.  Activity Use associated worksheet to note what’s worked and what hasn’t around the 5 P’s around your product or service offering. Undertake a review of your metrics. This could include numbers of subscribers, engagement, posts, views, follows, comments etc. What do you notice? What’s working around your marketing right now? Consider the business which has come in, over last six months. What sources led to it? What is in the pipeline? What has shaped this? Do an audit on your content. Consider:
Connection to the Workbook and Planner Part of doing a marketing review is reviewing metrics and trends. Take a look back at your notes. What do you notice? You may want to:
Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here. Best wishes, Jennifer Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track  Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues. Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326 Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram   Week 29 Focus – LinkedIn Focus Question: What does your LinkedIn profile portray? Story LinkedIn is an important social media vehicle especially for those who are looking at working in organizations and corporations. Many HR professionals or leaders may go to LinkedIn to check out the resources. What are the things you want to include on LinkedIn? You might consider:
Activity Review and update your Linked In profile. What does it showcase? What needs updating?
 Connection to the Workbook and Planner Use any of the content scheduling tools to plan for and track your LinkedIn focus. Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here. Best wishes, Jennifer Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track  Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues. Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326 Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram   Week 26 Focus – Mid-point Check In Focus Question: What have you achieved so far this year? Description Wow! Here we are in week 26, mid-point of the 52 weeks, and of the year. This week you are encouraged to block off time to take stock of your achievements. First, review your annual plan. You may want to include some information around these questions:
Research/Story Creating intentional pause points is an important part of any coaching and learning process. Being able to stop and reflect is also critical for business success. While we can keep on doing, are we doing the right things which have impact? What is working and what is not? This is the premise of the Virtual Retreats I host throughout the year in the PlanDoTrack series, as well as the month end reflection and monthly planning hacks. Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here. Best wishes, Jennifer Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track.  Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues. Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326 Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram   Week 25 Focus – Building Connection & Community While Strengthening Your Personal Brand on Social Media Focus Question: What does building connection and community mean for you? Why is this important? Description Connection and community are yearned for by many operating in the virtual and small business space. What are the ways you want to build stronger connection with others, and create more community? This week’s focus is on using social media as an avenue to build more connection and community. As a virtual business it’s likely that many of your days are spent operating solo, bouncing in and out of virtual calls with people who might be hours, and time zones, away from you. Isolation is often seen as a downside to virtual work. Virtual and remote professionals may be more proactive in exploring various avenues for creating community and connection. In building community consider these questions:
Six Questions
Activity Review or create your strategy around social media. What’s the purpose? What are you doing to do, WHEN? What can you do to magnify your message? Consider how you can magnify and repurpose. What can you share different spins on the same item across platforms? For example, if you have written an article on something, could you pull out a couple of quotes to make it a tweet, or serve as a quote graphic? Could that same article become the seeds of a presentation? Review visibility tips. Consider what your strengths are and what your key message is.  Connection to the Workbook and Planner The Monthly and Daily Trackers in the planner section of the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack can be used to track how much time you are spending on promotion, the different channels, as well as what impact you are getting. Use the Content Planner to make a plan you can execute on. Check out the Don’t Just Do it Once! Tool in the content section so you can think about magnifying your message. Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here. Best wishes, Jennifer Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track  Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)  One of the areas many solopreneurs, individual contributors, leaders and teams find themselves involved with is project management. If this is an area of interest for you, be sure to check out the March 2019 call on Project Management foundations. One of the tools I quickly touched on was the Traffic Light. As a former project manager, this was an essential tool for keeping many of the projects I managed rolling. The spotlight is often a visual signal for project status reports, or project status meetings, giving us the thumbs up as to how things are going. Here’s what I’ve written about the Stoplight as it relates to time management in Teams365 #553. Project status meetings are critical in project management, providing an opportunity to check in on where the project and all its components are at, as well as seeing what needs attention. The red light, yellow light and green light status updates gives us a snapshot of what's not online, what needs attention and what's going well. Project Status meetings are also an opportunity to invest in some team development including a focus on: 1. What roles are we playing? 2. What are the different perspectives around the project from each one of our locations? What's similar with these perspectives? What's different? 3. Who needs different type of support than they are getting? 4. Who else, or what else, do we need on the team in order to be successful? 5. What do we need to celebrate in terms of our achievements so far? What other questions would you want to include at your next project status meeting? Whether it’s tweaking your project status meetings to make them more of a regular occurrence, or adopting the spotlight approach, what are the things you want to focus on? Enjoy the conversations! Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)   Week 20 Marketing - A Different Perspective Focus Question: What’s another way to approach marketing to get unstuck or breathe new life into your efforts? Description The Evil Twin - Marketing Marketing is often seen as a “necessary evil” or To-Do in any business. To make it a little more fun, it can be useful to consider an alternative perspective, twin or personality to take on. Perhaps you have always wanted to be a diva. What would it be like to step into that personality as you approach marketing? One of the most important activities which coaches can undertake is that of the Sweet Spot Exercise. While I did not publish this in the Coaching Business Builder, you will find it in the digital chapter on marketing in the From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching book (do check it out at https:/www.from12many.com/downloads.html - use code 4411 to access the Marketing Chapter on Group and Team Coaching). The sweet spot gets you to consider three questions:
Some other questions to provoke new perspectives around marketing are: If you were to look at this activity rather than a time sucker, what could it look like as an enabler? If you see it as a community builder, what else might it offer? Thinking about things from an alternative perspective can be useful in terms of focus and application and breathing new life into areas you might have gotten stuck around. Over the new few weeks we’ll be exploring several of the different vehicles and approaches. Much of this will return back to these strategic questions of what are you good at, and what do your clients want. Activity Work through the questions posed around marketing – what do you notice about your 5 Ps? Connection to the Workbook and Planner Section 3 of both books covers nine different promotional strategies you might want to employ. Always remember that your clients will dictate what approaches are going to be most relevant and impactful. Take some time this week working through the 5 Ps of your business, and activities you can undertake to further clarify the 5 Ps. Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here. Best wishes, Jennifer Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track  Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues. Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326 Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram  We operate as part of a larger web. As Buddha wrote: “As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of the net is an independent isolated thing he is mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series of interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes.”
Even as solopreneurs or someone working remote we are a bigger part of a web. Being clear on how we connect and interrelate can help us be more focused and intentional in our messaging, marketing and communication. This week take some time to draw out your web of relationships.
Have a great Wednesday! Jennifer Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week! Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013) |
AuthorJennifer Britton is the blogger behind the popular Teams365 blog, a daily,blog for team leaders and members since 2014. Her latest publication is the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. Pick up a copy at Amazon. Pick Up a Copy
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