Many years ago you started a business and the time you put into it, added up faster than you care to admit.  The clients came and enjoyed your business.  They purchased items, they even may have joined your organization and all seems to be going great. Then suddenly something happens:  A CHANGE.

Thinking about the vision of a turtle on a fencepost, this appears to be an issue with many businesses today. They have closed their eyes to the environment around them and have additionally decided to not get involved with a decision or a pathway of a certain direction, hence the sitting on the fencepost.


Do you invest time daily to look around, start each day with a look forward for new ideas, and an analysis of yesterday activities to access the good and the bad that occurred in the past.

Looking at three things consistently will ensure that we are moving in the right direction:

1. Culture/Vision do you know the vision and the culture of your business. Do you access your movements every day to assure that your decisions are vision sound?
2. History: look to the past often.  If you visit the past daily then you are keeping track on a daily basis and that time is spent wisely and effectively.  When we wait too long to access the past, it becomes an overwhelming task and one that we will resist doing.
3. Future:  do you daily take time to look ahead and see if the pathway ahead is leading you in the direction that you want to take.  Is your map out and are you accessing the plan to allow you to move your business in the direction that you are wishing to go

The turtle may have been raised to the top of the fencepost, but to stay there it will require a constant vigilance of the surroundings to stay on top of that post and hence stay on top of your world.

As we enter into 2010, we need to take time to set our written goals.

We have all read the story of the Harvard Study in 1979, whereas they accessed who had written goals and who did not.

Please read thru the article below to review:

So, Why Do 3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the Other 97% Combined ?

The answer is a simple question: “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that :

• 84% had no specific goals at all
  
• 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper
  
• 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them
  

In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class.  You can guess the results:

• The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.
  
• Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.
  

(Source:  from the book What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack)