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Our Brave New World is No Place for Chickens

Our Brave New World is No Place for Chickens

With the current pessimism, media overkill and uncertainty about economic conditions, we are seeing more so-called leaders become reluctant to set revenue and/or profit or related performance goals with their subordinates. In the interest of fairness to their sales force, asking for 20 to 30% increase for 2009 may be unrealistic. So rather than determining what might be achieved with focused, committed execution, we're seeing people crawl into their shells by failing to ask for any commitment. The alternative is to sit back and hope for minimal erosion of the status quo. I referred to so-called leaders because in the absence of goals, leadership, by definition, doesn't exist.

I previously promoted the concept that attainability is a prerequisite for effective goal setting. So I concede that setting unattainable goals can to more harm than good. But should uncertainty be justification to putting any or all achievement measures on hold?

When people are aggressive, its time to be fearful. When people are fearful, its time to be aggressive.

Are you guilty of using uncertainty as an excuse to duck your responsibility as a leader? In an attempt to avoid being unfair to your people, might you be doing an injustice to both them and your organization?

To all of you goal reluctant, yet aspiring leaders, I suggest...

* Stop procrastinating and commit to something.
* Consider setting goals with shorter term target dates to reduce your level of uncertainty. Then revise your longer term projections as more facts are known.
* Use a collaborative approach to determining realistically high measures for the achievements that are attainable.
* Ask yourself: In your attempt to spare your people from ongoing accountability, who is really being served?
* Remember...

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. But it will be a long and frustrating journey."

In these times, our margin for error has shrunk to where long and frustrating journeys are more unaffordable than ever.





Our Brave New World is No Place for Chickens - To learn more about this author, visit Tom Lemanski's Website.

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Kim Castle
With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website

John Alexander
John has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center.
I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website

Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website


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Tom Lemanski
(Visit Tom's Website) Tom Lemanski is President of Vista Development, a strategic development firm in metropolitan Chicago Illinois. As a Business Catalyst and Executive Coach, Tom works with executives in growth orientated organizations to help them to overcome their internal obstacles to growth and achievement. He has recently launched a new site Executive Talent Assessments with new resources for making more informed hiring and promotion decisions.

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