3-Step Formula to Success (It’s Simpler Than You Think)

By Kevin Eikenberry, co-founder of the Remote Leadership Institute.

Today, I am going to share with you the secret to success. It’s a simple, but powerful, three-step formula that any team, regardless industry, role, type (e.g., remote, virtual, hybrid or co-located), or size can use to dramatically improve its performance, productivity and overall results. Here it is:

1. Decide
2. Do
3. Keep Doing

You can use this simple formula for your own goals, but it becomes an even more powerful tool when you use it to lead your employees. As you aim to finish this last several weeks of 2017, it can be an instrument to help you push through and hit your goals before the New Year. This is how that would look in action:

• Help employees decide what actions are most important for them to complete right now. That could include their own priorities or align with team-wide or organization-wide goals. This isn’t always easy for people, so you will need to help them cut through the noise and focus on what is most important to focus on today.

Example: What is more important as you wrap up the year? Finishing strong in 2018 or ramping up for 2018? For either, what three actions should each employee focus on to help make that happen?

• Provide support, training and resources for people to do the more important actions. That might also mean helping people park or eliminate other tasks that keep them from doing what is important.

Example: Hitting a goal in the next six weeks takes hyper-focus. Ask employees what they need to do the job and what they need to eliminate so that they can put all their energy into their top priorities. Park long-term projects or temporarily cease doing tasks that don’t have a direct impact on the goals. You can always come back to those tasks next year.

• Reward people to stay the course and keep doing the most important actions.

Example: When people are making progress, and especially when they hit a milestone or goal, make a big deal out of it. This time of year is stressful, so give them an extra day off to manage their hectic holiday schedules or dole out gift cards they can use for shopping. The more you reward and praise, the more they will be motivated to keep up the good work.

Those activities can help you be a dramatically more effective leader and help you produce significantly better organizational outcomes. They could also mean the difference between whether you deem 2017 a success or not!