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Writing your mission in terms of the important roles in your life gives you balance and harmony. It keeps each role clearly before you. You can review your roles frequently to make sure that you don’t get totally absorbed by one role to the exclusion of others that are equally or even more important in your life.
Roles and goals give structure and organized direction to your personal mission.
The important application at this point is to identify roles and long-term goals as they relate to your personal mission statement.
begin with the end in mind.
Many families are managed on the basis of crises, moods, quick fixes, and instant gratification—not on sound principles. Symptoms surface whenever stress and pressure mount: people become cynical, critical, or silent or they start yelling and overreacting. Children who observe these kinds of behavior grow up thinking the only way to solve problems is flight or fight. The core of any family is what is changeless, what is always going to be there—shared vision and values. By writing a family mission statement, you give expression to its true foundation.
By getting input from every family member, drafting a statement, getting feedback, revising it, and using wording from different family members, you get the family talking, communicating, on things that really matter deeply.
When I begin work with companies that have already developed some kind of mission statement, I ask them, “How many of the people here know that you have a mission statement? How many of you know what it contains? How many were involved in creating it? How many really buy into it and use it as your frame of reference in making decisions?”
Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.
APPLICATION SUGGESTIONS 1. Take the time to record the impressions you had in the funeral visualization at the beginning of this chapter. You may want to use the chart below to organize your thoughts. 2. Take a few moments and write down your roles as you now see them. Are you satisfied with that mirror image of your life? 3. Set up time to completely separate yourself from daily activities and to begin work on your personal mission statement. 4. Go through the chart in Appendix A showing different centers and circle all those you can identify with. Do they form a pattern for the behavior in
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The one factor that seemed to transcend all the rest embodies the essence of Habit 3—putting first things first.
Rather than focusing on things and time, fourth generation expectations focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results—in short, on maintaining the P/PC Balance.
They spend most of their time reacting to things that are urgent, assuming they are also important. But the reality is that the urgency of these matters is often based on the priorities and expectations of others.
Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent, but are important. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation—all those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren’t urgent.
I believe that if you were to ask what lies in Quadrant II and cultivate the proactivity to go after it, you would find the same results. Your effectiveness would increase dramatically. Your crises and problems would shrink to manageable proportions because you would be thinking ahead, working on the roots, doing the preventive things that keep situations from developing into crises in the first place. In time management jargon, this is called the Pareto Principle—80 percent of the results flow out of 20 percent of the activities.
“Sandra, that sounds like a wonderful project, a really worthy undertaking. I appreciate so much your inviting me to be a part of it. I feel honored by it. For a number of reasons, I won’t be participating myself, but I want you to know how much I appreciate your invitation.”
“If you want to get something done, give it to a busy man.”
A Quadrant II focus is a paradigm that grows out of a principle center.
form follows function.
A Quadrant II organizer will need to meet six important criteria. COHERENCE. Coherence suggests that there is harmony, unity, and integrity between your vision and mission, your roles and goals, your priorities and plans, and your desires and discipline.
FOCUS. You need a tool that encourages you, motivates you, actually helps you spend the time you need in Quadrant II, so that you’re dealing with prevention rather than prioritizing crises.
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
A “PEOPLE” DIMENSION. You also need a tool that deals with people, not just schedules. While you can think in terms of efficiency in dealing with time, a principle-centered person thinks in terms of effectiveness in dealing with people.
FLEXIBILITY. Your planning tool should be your servant, never your master. Since it has to work for you, it should be tailored to your style, your needs, your particular ways.
PORTABILITY. Your tool should also be portable, so that you can carry it with you most of the time.
Quadrant II organizing involves four key activities. IDENTIFYING ROLES.
1. Individual 1. Personal Development 2. Spouse/Parent 2. Spouse 3. Manager New Products 3. Parent 4. Manager Research 4. Real Estate Salesperson 5. Manager Staff Dev. 5. Community Service 6. Manager Administration 6. Symphony Board Member
SELECTING GOALS.
SCHEDULING.
DAILY ADAPTING.
you simply can’t think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.
If we delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness.
But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is.
GOFER DELEGATION
STEWARDSHIP DELEGATION
“My friend,” I said, “you can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.”
