CROSSFIRE
Want To Succeed?
Learn These Three Easy
Steps
By Herman Githinji
I
t's always amazing how we all want to
succeed and yet we don’t understand
success journey and what it takes.
To succeed we need to understand how
success comes, or how it’s earned.
It’s paradoxical that we always want the
very best for ourselves, but at the same
time, we don’t want to really work hard
to achieve that very best. While human
beings are motivated by maximizing
pleasure and minimizing pain, it’s also,
natural that we should pursue what we
feel is a success to us.
There are three key elements or ingredients
of success. One, we must be able to set
stretching goals, or objectives, based on
what we really desire for ourselves in life.
Most times, we start putting an effort
while we are not sure of what we exactly
want from that effort.
In Africa, for example, most people work
hard to get money or to be rich, but
when you ask them what they want to
do with the money, they have no clue. So
sometimes we just put a lot of effort into
doing something for the satisfaction of
‘doing’ and not for the enjoyment of the
results.
Sometimes we also work very hard
without knowing the exact outcomes. We
know we will get something out of our
efforts, but what and how much, we don't
know. So, it's very important first to know
what you want to pursue and why you
want to pursue it. We also want to pursue
goals that set us apart. Setting stretching
and fulfilling goals, is, therefore, one of
the most important steps towards success.
The second element of success that we need
to explore is understanding the connection
between effort and performance. Every
performance has underlying activities
that drive it. There's no performance that
happens on its own, it must be driven. And
performance is driven by doing the right
activities that will make progress towards
the desired goal. So, after setting our goals
we must ask ourselves what these activities
are, and list them.
It is imperative to list activities that drive
that performance positively and those that
may drive that performance negatively.
It’s paradoxical that we always want the
very best for ourselves, but at the same
time, we don’t want to really work hard to
achieve that very best. While human beings
are motivated by maximizing pleasure and
minimizing pain, it’s also, natural that we
should pursue what we feel is a success to us.
04 MAL31/19 ISSUE
Your activities ledger will therefore
have, on one hand, activities that propel
us towards achieving our goals, and on
the other, activities that will slow down
performance or progression towards set
goals. Activities that slow down progress
towards goals are things you should stop
doing or behaviours you should drop.
After we write these performance driving
activities down, the next step is to
prioritize them. There are many ways to
skin a cat, and for sure there are many ways
towards achieving one objective. While all
of them are important, there are some that
could be more impactful or applicable,
than others, based on our situation. There
are two prioritizing tools you may use.
The first one is 80/20 Pareto rule which
simply states that in every performance, of
all pertinent activities, only about 20% of
them will deliver 80% of the results.
Another key tool of prioritizing is the
principle of “the one thing”. The one
thing philosophy has that, in every list of
activities that drive performance, there is
“one thing” that when done very well, will
make all other activities become useless or
make them much easier to do. When we
identify that one thing, then we put all our
efforts and resources in first achieving it.
Through these 2 prioritizing tools, we pick
the most effective activities that drive each
performance.
The third step towards achieving success
is the most difficult one. It’s where the
rubber meets the road. Setting goals and
prioritizing performance drivers are easy