Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important projects which must be done in order to move our life, our career or our business forward. It’s all too easy to convince ourselves that being busy and being productive are one and the same. Big mistake!

The same holds true for being effective and being efficient. Doing something unimportant well does not make us effective. Requiring a lot of time to finish a project or complete a task doesn’t make the task more important.

Here’s the key question to ask yourself: Am I being productive and doing something important, or am I just being busy?

The two characteristics of Outperformers are: the ability to separate the urgent from the important, and second, the ability to focus their time and attention on those tasks that will complete important projects or produce the greatest results.

Stephen Covey, in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, reminds us of the importance of separating the urgent from the important. There’s a big difference between the two. While the urgent will always clamor for our attention, it will seldom produce meaningful results. Conversely, because the (really) important things in our life are seldom urgent, they tend to end up on the back burner.

One of the best ways I know of to focus on the important instead of the urgent is to apply the Pareto Principle – the 80/20 rule. Pareto says the majority of productivity will come from a few select actions or activities. We’ll also ramp up our productivity and get the most important things done by applying the 80/20 rule to our workday. Use 20 percent of each day – roughly 90 minutes for an eight-hour day – to work solely on our most important tasks or projects. And, it doesn’t even have to be 90 consecutive minutes. Three 30-minute segments will work nicely.

The stark reality is most of what we do on a daily basis has little impact, one way or another, in moving our most important projects forward. Unless we’re very selective in how we structure our day, the important will fall victim to the urgent. We’ll end up majoring on the minors, and what would otherwise be a productive day will be lost.

Being selective and doing less is the path to productivity. Identify those few critical tasks that contribute most to moving your career or your company forward. Schedule time during the day to work on those vital few tasks and don’t allow that time to be affected by trivial things. Hint: most email is trivial and meaningless. So are most phone calls and most office visits.

You have more control of your time than you give yourself credit for. Schedule your priorities. Ask yourself: if I could only accomplish one important thing today, what would it be? Once you make that important decision, schedule time to make it happen. The key to being more productive is doing less.

A friend and colleague of mine, Joel Strom of CKS Advisors LLC, has developed what he refers to as a “Strategic Value Acceleration Checklist” for business owners.

His SVA checklist includes such categories as: Finance, Strategy, Operations and the Market. Within each category are dozens of subcategories that need to be addressed in building the strategic value of a business.

As I studied the SVA checklist, I began to think of the importance of you and I creating our personal strategic value (PSV) checklist for becoming a person of value to those who love us and who work with us.

Some of the categories I think we should focus on when creating our PSVs are:

Trends – what kind of trends have we established over the last few years? A trend is defined as the general direction in which something (or someone) is developing or changing. Profit margins tend to trend upward or downward, for example, but what about you? What kind of trends are you experiencing?

I believe the only way to get the future we want is to create it. That being the case, we must take personal responsibility for the trends we’re experiencing. Don’t like the direction your life is taking right now? Then change the trend. Do what you need to do to change direction.

Controls and Measures – These are either the metrics (data) or the people in your life that help you know if you’re aligned and on track with what you want to accomplish. We all need to have some type of monitoring system in place. We especially need (real) friends or colleagues who have the courage to tell us what we may not want to hear and help us realign our thinking patterns or behaviors.

What controls and measures do you have in place to keep you “on track?”

Resources – We also need a stock or supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on in order to function effectively. It’s almost impossible to “go it alone” and be successful. I read somewhere once: “A self-made man is a classic example of unskilled labor.” We need resources in order to build our businesses, our lives and our value in the marketplace.

What resources do you have or use to increase your strategic value in the marketplace?

A Brand – Your strategic value will be established in no small measure by the brand you have in the marketplace or in the workplace. Your brand is the image or identity you’ve created in the minds of those you want to influence. Your brand establishes your value in the marketplace. It’s what you do or who you are that makes you unique. Your brand is what sets you apart.

The only way to get the brand you want is to create it. What are you doing to establish a brand people want to be associated with?

There are plenty of other categories we could identify that would impact our strategic value, but these are four that deserve our focused attention. We need to be aware of the trends our lives or businesses are taking – and adjust when necessary. We need to have the controls and measures in place to let us know when we’re leaning in the wrong direction.

We need to be able to marshal necessary resources when we need them and, lastly, we need to create and then guard our brand in the marketplace.

Understanding that failure is an important aspect of success is only helpful if we learn how to benefit from our mistakes.

Psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson offer an interesting approach to evaluating mistakes in their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) (Mariner Books 2008) Tavaris and Aronson suggest evaluating our actions as if they were performed by someone else.

The idea is to try and put ourselves in the position of being on the outside looking in. This allows us to put a little space between how were feeling about the mistake and how we respond.

In past articles I’ve suggested using the formula E+R=O. These three letters stand for Event + Response = Outcome. The idea is that it’s not the event that determines the outcome. Rather it’s our response to the event that determines how things end up affecting us.

Looking at our mistakes and occasional failures from a distance allows us to not get caught up in self-justification – something that’s all too easy to do, right?

Who, me?

Sometimes the way we hear criticism about our mistakes sparks a response that’s less that helpful. In order to learn from our mistakes we actually have to hear the criticism without taking it personally says author Tim Harford in his book Why Success Always Starts With Failure (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Easier said than done I know, but learning from our mistakes will serve us well on our journey to success and achievement.

When you’re in doubt about what you’re hearing it’s always a good idea to ask for clarification. You might ask the question: “How would you suggest I do this differently the next time?” It also helps if you’re sincere when you ask a question like this.

A Little Help From Our Friends

It turns out the Beatles were right. Failing better is often the result of getting by with a little help from our friends. Tim Harford says it’s critical to have people in our lives with a different point of view than we have.

Self-assessment will only take us so far. We need a trusted group of friends with good judgment who will cheer us on when we’re doing well and let us know when we didn’t make our best effort. These are people we trust and admire. People we know have to courage to face the brutal facts.

This sword cuts both ways. You’ve got to be willing to ask for honest feedback and to give honest feedback when it’s requested. Trusted friends are able to both give and take bad news when it’s delivered with candor and compassion.

Learning to fail better will serve you well. Good judgment often comes from bad experiences. The great lessons in life often come from our failures, not our successes. Too many of us don’t learn that lesson soon enough.

Research clearly shows making mistakes, admitting errors and learning from our failures actually enhance our creative skills, improve relationships and increase the learning curve for success and achievement.

Understanding that failure can pave the way for success actually gives us a leg up in the marketplace. When things are going well, we rarely delve into the causes for our success. We just pat ourselves on the back and keep going.

When things aren’t going so well, we have the opportunity to ask the hard questions: “What went wrong?” “Why didn’t this work?” Based on those answers, we can either make adjustments or change direction altogether.

Do you seek challenges and take risks, knowing that some degree of failure will be in the future? If you do, you have a growth mindset. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly – at first. We’re never as good at something the first time we try as when we are after several attempts, and after several failures. Outperformers stick with it – even when things aren’t going well.

Want to increase your creativity? Be willing to fail. Remember Thomas Edison’s 10,000 failed experiments before he invented the incandescent light bulb. Creative folks always have a high tolerance for mistakes and failure. Babies seem to grasp this concept at about the one-year mark. First they crawl, and they don’t even do that well – at first. Then they start to enlist the help of a leaning device; the next thing you know they’re walking and into everything.

Remember, fixing mistakes requires shaking things up rather than accepting the status quo. All those millions of people on the road to mediocrity aren’t interested in shaking things up. They’re more interested in not rocking the boat and they certainly don’t want to be accused of failing or making a mistake. What a shame.

Integrity is one of those words and one of those characteristics admired by everyone. The interesting thing is that one of the marks of a person of integrity is the willingness to say “I was wrong,” or “I screwed up.” Being able to admit when we’re wrong or when we’ve made a mistake are real signs of strength of character – for an individual or for an organization.

The bottom line is we’re all flawed. The sooner we face our own limitations and shortcomings, the more readily we’ll embrace the failings of others. One of the greatest gifts parents can give their children is to be willing to say “I was wrong,” or I made a mistake.”

Learn to fail better. It will serve you well in the marketplace and in the lives of the people you love and who love you back.

A common definition of management is getting things done through people. While I may take issue with this definition as the primary role of management, it’s certainly a significant part of the manager’s job.

The following is not an exhaustive list of management mistakes but it does touch the high points of those things which, if not addressed, will stifle productivity and organizational growth.

Common management miscues– to be avoided if at all possible:

1. Underestimating the value of administrative help or clerical support, forcing higher paid employees to use their time copying, stapling or collating is a waste of time and talent.
2. Forcing one person to do the jobs of two or more people. This might seem cost-effective but it will create anxiety and animosity.
3. Too slow to raise salaries/wages, even in tough times.
4. Not including the rank and file in making operational decisions that will affect their areas of responsibility. The best operational decisions are made with the input of the people doing the work.
5. Constantly changing direction. Employees want and need stability in the workplace. Change for most people is unsettling. Just changing for the sake of changing is worse.
6. Not explaining the “why” behind organizational strategies and objectives.
7. Showing favoritism, especially when it comes to training or promotions. Enough said.
8. Employees consider their cubicle or work area their home away from home. Give thought and seek input before moving someone.
9. Promoting – but not training. Promoting a hard worker is tempting but not training that person to manage is a lose/lose for the individual and the organization.
10.  Encouraging individuals and departments to compete against each other while at the same time preaching teamwork and cooperation.

Any one of these 10 management mistakes can, and often does, result in employee turnover. Interestingly, any of the 10 can be prevented through improved management practices. People skills are critical to effective management.

I recommend taking the same approach to life management. When it comes to managing a successful life, career or business – everything counts. In the marketing world it’s called “positioning.” The way you position yourself in the mind of those you live with, work with and do business with will determine your level of success.

There is no single way to position yourself in the eyes of those you want to have a positive impact on, but my friend Mark LeBlanc in his terrific little book “Growing Your Business,” has identified 10 of the most important:

1. Your appearance
2. The words you say
3. The tools you use
4. Your location
5. Your attitude
6. Your response time
7. The clothes you wear
8. The places you go
9. The people you connect with
10. The groups you belong to

It’s interesting to me that the first two indicators on Mark’s list involve the way we look and the words we say. There’s an old adage I use frequently that goes: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” I think this is particularly true for those of us who are entrepreneurs or who own small businesses.  In other words, everything counts!

What kind of impact do you want to have on the world around you? When people see you approaching or, when you’re having a conversation with someone, what kind of impression are you leaving? Does your appearance say I care about the way I look or suggest something else? Do the words you use show respect and sensitivity? Or do they paint you as disrespectful and uncaring towards the feelings of others?

Positioning ourselves for success means paying attention to the details. It’s the little things in life – and in business – that often have the greatest impact. Remember, how you do anything is how you do everything.

Outperformers understand that belief manifests itself in behavior. What you believe and how you think are critical to how you perform. Here are some examples of the mindset of an outperformer and how different that mindset is from almost everyone else on the planet.

Outperformers find answers. Others look for problems.

Outperformers are answer oriented. They understand life is filled with challenges. Each day offers the opportunity to face those challenges or to run from them. When you focus on finding answers, as opposed to focusing on the problem, your performance takes a significant turn for the better.

Real life answers to real life problems are what people want and what they need. I mentioned on a Facebook post not too long ago, no one wants to buy a quarter inch drill bit – what they want is a quarter inch hole. The drill bit is meets the need. The drill bit answers the question and solves the problem.

Outperformers have a plan. Others have an excuse.

While excuses are easier to develop than a plan, an Outperformer looks at what needs to be done and starts planning for a successful outcome. Often, the plan needs to contain just three elements: a vision for what needs to be done; a strategy for making it happen; and understanding the work needed to complete the project.

Outperformers make it happen. Others let it happen.

Outperformers are action oriented. They understand the concept of “If it’s to be – it’s up to me.” They don’t sit around waiting for something good or bad to happen. Outperformers are active and involved. Peter Drucker said: “They only way to get the future you want is to create it.”

To a true Outperformer, this is a commandment. Thou shall make things happen!

Outperformers see what could be. Others see what can’t.

Outperformers are visionaries. They see what others don’t, or they position themselves so they’re aware of what’s on the horizon. Outperformers are forward thinkers. They look beyond current circumstances or realities and see what could be. We live and work in the present but looking at what’s next or what might lie ahead is the mark of an Outperformer.

Outperformers say, “Let me do it.” Others say, “It’s not my job.”

Outperformers are accountable. They don’t worry about whose job it is or who should be taking responsibility. When they see something needs to be done, Outperformers roll up their sleeves and get after it. “It’s not my job” is not part of an Outperformer’s lexicon.

An Outperformer says, “I was wrong.” Others say, “It wasn’t my fault.”

Taking personal responsibility when things don’t turn out as planned is also the mark of an Outperformer – especially for the manager or leader. Those three simple words, “I was wrong,” will be the building blocks for strong and lasting relationships.

See the differences in the contrasting mindsets? Aside from one being positive and the other being negative, the Outperformer mindset is one of action and responsibility. It’s a mindset of not leaving one’s life, and the things of life, to chance. Outperformers are doers, not dreamers. As a result, Outperformers are valuable people to have around.

High level performance and meaningful results come from staying focused on the task at hand.  Try this.  Set a timer at twenty-five minutes, select one important task or project, and work only on that task until the timer signals your time is up.

If you didn’t finish, take a short break, reset your timer to twenty-five minutes and repeat the process.  I think you’ll  be amazed at how much you can accomplish by focusing on a single task for a relatively short period of time.

The key is to eliminate distractions.  Clear your desk, turn off the email alarm, don’t take calls, don’t entertain visitors.  Just FOCUS on that one task for twenty-five short minutes and prepared to be amazed at what you can accomplish.

My recommendation is to put yourself in that first group. If you believe, as I do, that the only way to get the future you want is to create it, then you’ll need to position yourself in such a way that your success comes as much from who you are as what you do.

Position: the location where someone or something should be; the correct place.

Positioning yourself for success starts by seeing yourself as a success. When you see yourself as you want others to see you, you have a clear target to shoot for. Your attitude, your demeanor, the way you dress, the way you treat others, all impact your ability to succeed. It’s about both character and reputation. Seeing yourself as a successful person isn’t about trying to fool people into believing you’re something you’re not. It’s about developing the qualities and characteristics of a successful person.

Examine the characteristics of a few successful people you know personally. Emulate the positive – avoid the negative – and yes, there will be both.

You position yourself as a success by the way you serve. We live in a “what’s in it for me” world. Successful people are more focused on serving than on being served. What does your family need from you? How about your friends? What about your customers? Here’s a hint, they need to know you’re looking out for their best interests, not your own.

I met a woman the other day who worked for a bank. She said her job was to pamper her customers. When I asked what that meant, she said basically it meant meeting their needs. Whether running an errand or running interference, her job was to help her clients succeed. Successful people help other people succeed.

Here’s a great question. What do you do that adds remarkable, measurable and distinctive value to the world you want to impact? If the only way to get the future you want is to create it, and if you’re serious about positioning yourself for success, you need to be able to answer that question.

Positioning yourself for success starts with seeing yourself as a successful person. It means you care about how you look, you care about how you talk, you want to make sure your actions help – not hurt – the people you live and work with.

Positioning yourself for success is about developing a great reputation based on character. You do what you say you’ll do when you promised to do it. When that happens, you create a reputation for being honest and reliable, which shows you’re a person with integrity.

Successful people are servants. They’re always looking out for the needs of others and figuring out ways to meet them.

Let’s face it, we’re all in the people business. It doesn’t really matter what we do – in fact, it doesn’t really matter how old we are – the ability to communicate effectively and to build and develop relationships will be the barometer of our success and our happiness.

For the manager/leader, having a bag of magic dust on hand at all times is critical. What I’ve found interesting is the skills needed to be a good communicator and the skills needed to build relationships are pretty much the same. Let me give a few examples.

At least fifty percent of being a good communicator is being a good listener. Being a good listener is important because, whether we like it or not, folks are much more interested in their own well-being than in yours. It’s the old “what’s in for me” syndrome.

As a species, we’re very self-centered and self-focused. Good communicators don’t fight that reality; instead they use it to make sure they listen – with empathy – and try to respond accordingly. Stephen Covey, in his best-selling book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” states it this way: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Another excellent technique for effectively communicating is to maintain eye contact. There’s nothing more annoying than to try and carry on a conversation with someone who won’t look you in the eye or, worse yet, keeps glancing away at something or someone else.

Treat the person you’re speaking with as though he or she, at that moment, is the only other person in the world. You prove your interest and engagement in the conversation by maintaining eye contact throughout the conversation.

A few other techniques that improve communication – and build relationships – are:

To nod, smile and use other gestures that show your engagement in the conversation.

If you’re not sure you understand what’s being said, ask questions or seek further clarification. You might want to wait until the point is made, though. No one likes being interrupted in the middle of a sentence or while expressing a point.

Lastly, paraphrase what you think you heard, so the person you’re speaking with can be sure you understand.

So, I think you see there’s really no magic to effectively communicating and building a strong, trusting relationship. Be a great listener, maintain eye contact, nod and smile or use gestures showing you’re engaged in the conversation. When appropriate, ask clarifying questions and paraphrase what was said, just to put a bow on the conversation.

By following these simple guidelines, you can improve your communication skills greatly, promote better understanding in your relationships, and enhance the quality of two lives; yours and the person you’re speaking with.