Two strategies for personal success

The following is a exerpt from a transcript of one of my OTM Plan for Personal Success Workshops which have now been delivered to over 5,700 people. This one was provided to an audience at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia. You can find out about the live program here.

In this section I offer two clear strategies for helping to create personal success. The first involves the power of questions, and the second involves gaining experience, even if you have to go into a poor company culture.

...Others among you have expressed concerns that, "You know I’ve already had a fair degree of success in my life but what if that stops? What if my success doesn’t continue?"

Now your plan can help address this; the plan can help you continue your journey of success. Some of you expressed the issue: ‘I’m just not sure: what do I want?’ even with things like career, even when you’re graduating after you’ve done your degree, something like up to 90% of students still aren’t sure if this is the right path for them – you know, that’s okay!

About 10% of people are really, really clear: ‘Yes! This is what I’m going to do’ or ‘this is the career path I’m going down to’ – the other 90% is still not sure.

The thing with your plan is that it’s okay to explore questions because guess what - if you’ve got questions, there is one thing you know therefore that you want: you want to know the answer to your own questions – yeah – if you think about your future!

So your question gives you focus. Some people think that because they don’t have the answers, they won’t even bother doing anything. I say: ‘let’s focus on the questions and let’s go exploring.’

And humans are amazing explorers right? When you’re exploring and you go down a dead-end – you go along this path and then when you turn, it’s a dead end! Is that bad? What do you reckon – is it bad?

It’s not, is it? Because you’re exploring; if you’re looking for the one right answer and you go down a path and it’s a dead end, how is that for you? It’s like the end of the world, isn’t it?

An exploring mindset through exploring questions is really, really powerful for your plans. Some of you are concerned: ‘Will I be in an organisation that’s worthy of my commitment?’

The work and research I’ve done over time is that the more clear you are for yourself with your own vision, the better a position you’re in to choose a company – and I use those words deliberately – for you to choose a company or organisation or even your own part with your own company that’s worthy of your commitment because you’re better off when you see the signs and the consistency between how they interact with you.

You have more power than you realise in this process; it’s not just them picking you.

It’s also about you choosing them.

Now I’ll talk about strategies later on – sometimes you might deliberately choose to go into a culture that’s not right for you because at the end of the day, you just need to get some experience - you might put some specific timeframes on how long you’ll stay there so that that culture that does not negatively infect you.

That might be a deliberate strategy because you might say to yourself, “Okay in this industry I just need experience and the only way I’m going to get to work in the culture that I desire is to gain enough experience over time so that I progress far enough to influence it (the culture) – that’s when I’m going to be able to make real change for cultures in this particular industry but I’ve got to start off and get experience.

So you might consciously choose to work for an organisation that isn’t worthy of your commitment – but only for a period of time. All the while you are looking for opportunities to move to another culture while also being a high performer for the organisation that is currently employing you – even though it might have a poor culture.

This might be an example of a strategy that you’ll consider – your personal plan can help you by providing clarity and focus that your personal vision provides. By the way, Australian government research in hand with the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry collectively which represent 95% of Australia’s employers says that employers want people who are clear about their personal vision.

So even doing this plan today helps set yourself up to be able to convey to an employer, “I know where I’m going and I want to go with you because I want to help you go where you’re going because we’re going to help each other!” – that’s what the research says.

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