Thursday, August 27, 2009

Route in Life

Do you also intent to follow the simplest, direct or easiest route in Life?
Right you are....
Going from A to B in life is like a risk management game.
As the captain of your Body&Mind-Ship (BMS) heading for a New Land at Port Novaya Zemlya, you'll have three starting issues:

Three starting issues
  1. Define your target (B): Know where you want to go in life
  2. Define your starting point (A): Know Where an Who you are in life
  3. Define your Route: Know How you want to go from A to B

In terms of risk management there are two main targets:

Main Risk Management Targets
  1. Long term Target
    Reach your final target (Novvaya Zemlya)
  2. Short term Target
    Avoid short time risks, tackle problems along the way (avoid ice floes)

So, what kind of approach is right for reaching your goal?
  • If you concentrate too much in life on your 'final goal' or you want to achieve your goals too fast or too direct, you'll certainly hit a short term problem, like an ice floe, and end up crashed as a hero or a martyr.
  • If you concentrate too much on the short term problems in your life, you'll loose sight on your final goal and certainly fail to reach Novaya Zemlya.

The solution of this paradox is (of course) to concentrate on the short term goals as well as keep an eye on the long term goal at the same time.

The optimal route?
But what is the best strategy for finding the optimal route in life?
Take a look at the next map to find out the best strategy for this ship.




Strategy I: Don't think, go to your target in a straight line
The most logical route from A to B would of course be a straight line. However following this line as a blind man would certainly lead to failure.

Strategy II: Keep as much is possible to the straight line
As BMS captain might look like the 'best strategy' solution. This is how we often directly respond in life when we do not succeed in getting what we want the way we planned it.
Often this route is 2 to 3 times longer than the 'straight line route' and does not always guarantee that you reach your goal in the labyrinth of life.
As mostly in life , the best advice is....

Strategy III: Get help and plan!
As BMS captain with the right attitude and perseverance to succeed, you consult your friends and foes and draw yourself the best possible satellite map, so that you'll be able to oversee the 'seascape' of your life, with all relevant problems, like ice foes ahead.
Often this optimal ice route is 1.5 times longer than the 'straight line route', but it guarantees the highest success rate.



But what to do if you have no information at all? That's when thinking and mathematics come in, or it gets time for an alternative approach before you freeze in reaching for Novvaya Zemlya....

Moving targets

I once asked one of my business unit managers with regard to an important project, if he was still on course and how things were going.

He answered friendly:

My ship's on course......
But the port moves !



Sometimes, when you are totally focused on achieving your predefined goals, when you're right on schedule and your project looks perfect...... You can be sure your project will fail. Why? Because while working on your project the environment changes, so you need somebody in your project that constantly checks the defined project targets against the changing environment.

So always, while working keep your head up!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Success

We all want to be successful. But what is success?

Success could perhaps be defined as achieving the Result you want by using your core Qualities at the right Time given the right Circumstances (place,people,weather, atmosphere).

In formula: R = Q x T x C

Another way of looking at success has been defined by Hevizi:


It’s not WHAT you know.
It is not WHO you know.
It is not HOW you deliver.
It is ALL of it.


In the new world of tough competition for positions, careers and recognition it is important to remind ourselves that it takes 3 to be successful and compete.

We can look at this as the following formula:

SUCCESS = IQ * EQ * XQ

Success explained
A more sophisticated, humorous yet interesting approach of success has been defined by Alain de Botton in the next TED video. Alain examines our ideas of success and failure:
Is what you define as success really your personal defined success or perhaps the unconscious copied succes definition of somebody else?

He points out that believing in winners and loosers is a narrow and wrong way of defining the world. On top of this, he gives randomness a place in the definition of success and stresses that there can be no success without loss....




Wrapped up, success could be defined as being satisfied and happy with your choices, actions, gains and losses.....

So never give up, discover the secrets of success and enjoy it!

Youtube Success Links:
Quest for success
Success by Deepak Chopra