The Importance of Maintaining Energy and Clarity of Focus for Long-Term Sustainability from Within

As a leader, you have to effectively manage the sustainability of your organization. Some symptoms of lack of sustainability come about through what you hear people say. When people start saying things like, “It’s not fun like it used to be,” or “The market is different now.” Those type of statements come from an indication of a lack of sustainability of the energy within your organization.

Good leaders know how to manage that, and they do a very effective job of managing the energy level and the sustainability within their organization.

I want to give you some pointers about what you can do for yourself and what you can do for your organization in being an effective leader as it would relate to sustainability and energy within your organization.

Always be proactive on a weekly basis about your own energy level. There is a reason I created the Next Level Achievement System for personal management and growth. The reason for that is; a system of personal management generates clarity. When you’re clear, you can be focused. Without clarity, there is no focus. When you lose focus, you lose the energy.

The first thing you have to look at is yourself! You have to manage yourself first. Your sustainability and your energy level is the key to the organization’s sustainability and energy level.

There are a few things that you do to manage yourself personally as it would relate to sustainability and your own personal energy level.

One is being able to stay clear, remain clear about where you are and what you’re doing. Clarity. Clarity is the key to just about everything. It’s the beginning key to momentum. It’s the workshop for focus and energy. It starts with clarity. A lot of people say, “I have got to focus. I have got to focus. I have got to focus.” You can’t focus if you’re not clear. You have to be clear about where you are and what you’re going to do. The only way to do that is to have a system of proactive management in place.

If you think about it, it you will never instinctively drive toward clarity. The last time you fell off the wagon, you were instinctively thinking about all the stuff that was not working correctly.  Pause for a moment and think about that statement.  Is that right?

Typically, that’s exactly what happens. I get on a call with someone and they start telling me all these problems in their organization. I’m thinking, “It’s you. It’s you. It’s you. Can’t you see? It’s you. It’s you.”

Always look to yourself first. When you start hearing these things from your organization, it’s not them. It’s you.

• Always look to yourself first. Ask yourself, “Am I clear about where I am? Am I clear about where I’m going?
• Am I on a system of personal management where every day I’m proactively planning tomorrow before it begins?
• Am I proactively planning next month before it begins?
• Am I setting my SMART (Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic with a Target date) goals?
• Am I managing the high-payoff activities on a weekly basis?
• Do I know my effectiveness scores for last week?”

That proactive system of management always generates clarity. Without that, you’re drifting in the wind.

“You only have two choices in life or business. Grow or decline.” When you stop growing, you immediately start declining. That’s the way it goes. I know what we think, “I’m just coasting.” No, you can’t coast. There is no in between. Grow or decline. Those are your two choices today and every day for the rest of your life.

Clarity is something that … It’s not like it hits you upside the head. You have to really work at being clear. The way you work at being clear is you focus on yourself first, not the outside circumstances. Yourself first by focusing on, “What are my goals? What are my plans? How do I stay on track?”

The Next Level Achievement System is perfectly designed for that. Every week you know how effective you were last week.  You’re also clear about what you’re doing. These are your high-payoff activities.  Always remember: It’s not how much you do; it’s the effectiveness of what you do that truly counts.

The first thing you look at, at driving sustainability and energy within your organization is yourself. When you start hearing these things within your organization, “It’s just not like it used to be. Our marketplace has changed.” You start hearing that stuff, you don’t look at outside aspects. You look at yourself first! You get clear about where you really are. You drive that clarity by having a system of personal management.

Until next time,

David Byrd