WINNING AT WORK - A GUIDE TO GETTING THAT PROMOTION/PAY RISE

'There are no short-cuts to a place worth going' said Publilius, a Greek philosopher. In the same vein there is no substitute for hard-work. To succeed in life - achieve financial independence, have a caring and loving family and a company of good friends - you must succeed at work. As simple a guide as this is, your commitment to its every detail is the spark plug to gear up the engine.

YOUR THINKING; YOUR LIFE
Only when you make up your mind to move up the ladder in your career are you in contention. It doesn't mean you stand a chance but it's merely a first step in the right direction. Mind you, if you are satisfied with your work grade, pay and career status, please stop reading this now. Exchange your time for productivity as you know time is your currency of exchange. Making up your mind to be dissatisfied with you job position, pay and career status creates a knee-jerk reaction in your sub-conscious mind. It prepares you mentally (physically as well) at a sub-conscious level for the uphill task ahead. No man can truly achieve anything in life except he first accepts he can in his mind. Thus, opening up the doors of your mind opens up the doors of your life.

GET UP A LITTLE EARLIER; WORK HARDER; LEAVE A LITTLE LATER
Its a fact that everyone gets the same hours of time at the beginning of each day to trade with, how you trade yours defines your life. Highly successful individuals trade their time with caution and precision. They get up earlier than others, go over their to-do list for the day and memorise it. They get in to work earlier than others and are usually the last to leave. This should be your template, build on it. Never go through an ENTIRE day without a to-do list. Every minute spent in planning saves you an hour in execution and that's a fact. When you get up earlier than others you have time to improve on yourself by reading a book or listening to an audio programme at least 30 minutes. You get to work early enough to start-up at your work desk early. Even when you finish-up early with your task for the day, deliberately wait up at work a little later pretending to be at work. Then you get to notice your boss working late and in due course he notices you. As you stay late at work offer to help your boss with very simple and minuscule documentations, then you progressively work your way up the important tasks. Aside from getting noticed by your boss, you also are learning to do his job. Like Albert Einstein said, 'Chance favours the prepared mind.' Remember success occurs ONLY when preparation meets with opportunity.

WORK ALL THE TIME YOU WORK
All over the world employees have a habit of passing away time while at work. They spend half the morning getting warmed up, drinking coffee, chatting with co-workers, reading the paper, shuffling their business cards, surfing the internet, whatever to pass away time. THIS IS NOT FOR YOU. Of course they are sure to defend their actions, that is a natural human response to criticism. They will rationalise and justify their 'non-work' actions. They will convince themselves that they have to read the newspapers to be fully informed about trends in business, chat with co-workers and talk about business, especially how tough the business is, plan the first hour or two around a cup of coffee, after all, you have to stay sharp and alert they say. They kill most of the morning and suddenly realise the day is gone by and they had better start 'working'. When any one of them comes to you simply turn down both the urge and opportunity politely by excusing yourself saying 'excuse me, I have to get back to work.' Put your head down and work, don't drop-off your dry cleanings nor phone your friends. Avoid the trap of 'self denial'.

THE VISION
Isn't it amazing how many employees depend on a job at a corporation for their livelihood yet don't have a clue as to what the corporation's vision is? This cannot be you. You sleep, eat and drink the vision of your corporation. Knowing the vision is a sine qua non to getting that seat and position you covet at work. You have to demonstrate accurate knowledge and understanding of the vision and run with it.
Visualise the vision - See yourself running with the vision and aligning all you do at work to it.
Verbalise the vision - Say the vision aloud to yourself until it becomes a part of you. Memorise it and have it at the ready off-hand
Internalise the vision - Make it a part of you. Exude the vision in your walk and talk. You should think of work while not at work, if you don't you are in the wrong job.
Emotionalise the vision - Here is the seat of your drive and passion. Your emotion unlocks and makes available to you massive energy. Thus by being passionate about the vision you get the zest to drive and align all you do to the vision.

AVOID THE 'HERD MENTALITY'
There is a natural tendency to always parley around with one's peers and level mates at work. You natural feel comfortable amongst them and talk about why you don't like this aspect of the job and that attitude of the boss. You have to fight this natural urge and instead follow the 'leaders' - that group of individuals at work who seem to know all and have it all. This will do you much good as you will begin to learn and do what it is they do to get to that position you covet, thus, activating the law of cause and effect.

DO YOUR BOSS' JOB; LEARN THE BASICS
When not busy, become productive by looking over to your boss and offering to help with simple tasks. You then progressively help with the more important paper works, thus, gain a valuable insight into his job description. When he calls in sick or becomes dispensable you naturally become the right replacement amongst your peers.

IMPROVE YOURSELF AND LIVE; STOP AND DIE
You should buy books, videos and audio seminars on your job description. Read at least an hour daily. Turn your car into a mobile university. As Mahatma Ghandi said, 'Live as though you will die tomorrow; learn as though you will live forever.' When you stop improving your value, you start to depreciate and eventually go extinct. The world is in a state of constant flux and to keep abreast of this you need to constantly update and elevate your knowledge and databank in you field of interest and business sector. Not long ago a college student sent a thirty-nine point questionnaire to all the presidents of fortune 500 companies. Eighty three of these completed the questionnaires and sent it back, an extraordinary response from such a busy group of people. On inspection, the student found out what these business leaders considered to be the reason for their success, 'never stop learning and getting better' they wrote. It applies to you as well.

CHARISMA- YOUR WALK; YOUR TALK
Let charm be your companion at work. Exude panache and class in the way you dress, walk and talk at work. Work on your mien and etiquettes. Nothing takes the place of neat and tidy grooming, get your shoes waxed. Create a YOU brand. Make a fuss of these matters. As they say, it all boils down to the nitty-gritty. But remember there is a thin line between confidence and pride. See yourself as already in the position you covet, fill up your esteem then walk the walk and talk the talk.

WORK ON WEEKENDS
Don't get me wrong. I meant to say spend some weekends with your boss. Ask him if you could come over the weekend to say hi and play with his kids. Sounds funny but it works. Doing this once a while works your way into his heart and even his spouse's comment on how good, caring and warm you are go a long way. Remember every decision is made emotionally and justified logically. Never forget the 90-10 principle of decision making. Be smart about this!

YOUR SIGNATURE; YOUR LIFE
Let excellence be your unique selling point in all you do even when not at work. Never settle for less. Let every task you do at work reflect the unique essence of you. Work in such a way that your boss always want the task done by you and you alone. Let it be such that even in your absence, it will be obvious as to who did what documentation, proposal or what be it. Every minute detail counts.

After all is said and done, only what is done matters. Herbert Spencer said, 'The great aim of education is not knowledge but action. Take action!

SETTING AND ACHIEVING GOALS - GUARANTEED!

Your life only gets better when you get better. Our lives are shaped by a continuum of occurrences (whether planned or not). To living the ideal lifestyle you want, the cars, a healthy relationship, loving kids and all others you can think of, you must consciously work towards these and it requires setting goals.

A goal is defined as a set target or aim you want to achieve. The key to setting winning goals in the 21st century revolves around certain simple but effective factors. Every goal you set must have these factors inter-twined within them to stand a chance in this 21st century. Your goals must be SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound.

If the following simple steps to goal setting and action planning doesn’t work for you, nothing will.

CLARITY
Decide exactly what you want to achieve. Be specific in your goals. Clarity is pertinent in setting winning goals. The German Goethe once said ‘he that wishes to write in a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.’ Define clearly what you want, if your goal is to buy a house or car, you should be specific as to the brand of car, engine capacity etc. Is it an SUV or sport car? Is the house a duplex, semi-detached or simply a bungalow, is it in a quiet environ, choice part of town? If you want an increase in income, define clearly how much more you want to earn. Defining clearly your goal helps your mind to grasp the goal and channel the energy within towards achieving the goal.

WRITE
The next step would be to write down your goals. Writing down your goals sub-consciously drive your passion towards the actualisation of that goal and gets you excited with more impetus to see them achieved. Just like the great book said ‘write it down, make it plain on tablets, so he that see it may run with it.’

DEADLINE
Set a deadline for achieving your goals. As earlier mentioned, goals should be time-bound. Your sub-conscious mind loves deadlines. The sub-conscious mind requires a ‘push’ to activate all its powers and make it functioning optimally. Deadlines also get you excited as there is a sense of urgency to your goals. If the goal is a large goal, set sub-deadlines. If it is a five year goal, set sub-goals for each quarter of the year, then each month of the year. Henry Ford once said concerning goals ‘any goal, no matter how large, can be achieved if you break it down into enough small steps.’

LIST
You then begin to write down a list of everything you can think of possibly doing to achieve these goals. Add to this list continually as you come up with new steps of action you can take to achieve your goals until you have completed this list. The more individual steps you write down, the more excited you get at actually achieving these goals.


SEQUENCE AND PRIORITIZE
This stage of goal setting requires timing and meticulous organisation. You sequence and prioritize the contents of your list. Sequencing requires that you arrange the steps according to which comes first and which comes second, that is you determine which step has to be done first and which comes second and so on. Prioritizing requires that you arrange the steps according to which is most important on your list followed by the second most important step.
Once you have this list of steps organised by sequence and priority, you have a PLAN. A man with a plan to achieve his goals is half way down the finish line.

TAKE ACTION
The major divider between highly successful individuals and failures is action. Highly successful, top earning individuals take action towards achieving what goals they have set for themselves, while failures procrastinate, delaying action. Action is the primary reason some people fail and some succeed. Failures always come up with ‘genuine’ excuse to procrastinate and delay action until their desire, passion and zest is gone with the wind.

DISCIPLINE
The golden rule of this simple but succinct plan on goal setting is to do something daily that moves you towards your goal. Every day, you must discipline yourself to take on a task or activity that moves you towards achieving your goal. Do this seven days a week, 30 days a month and 365 days a year. As you do, they become to you as natural as breathing.