Friday, March 26, 2010

Success - The Art of Aligning Priorities

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with a group of professionals about the importance of aligning career, personal and family priorities around a goal that you want to achieve.

The problem of balancing competing priorities is very relevant in today’s society and in efforts to minimize complexity we tend to prioritize 1 or 2 priorities often forgetting that the key to achieve Multidimensional Success is to find proper alignment across priorities in each important aspect of our lives.

But how can we be successful when we need to balance so many different priorities at the same?

We all define SUCCESS in different ways because we have different ways to Connect Our Dots.

As I was trying to explain my definition of success and how I use the Priority Wheel to align my priorities to what is important to me at this point of my career and my life, I realize that SUCCESS is a result of finding alignment across your priorities.

The goal is not always to achieve a perfect balance or to maximize one dimension (e.g. career) but to align and calibrate according to significant life events.

Every time we move to a new life stage we need to calibrate the Priority Wheel and the relationship between the priorities and apply the Five Lessons of Leadership to keep these priorities in alignment.

Lesson 1- Define Success on Your Own Terms: Achieving your dreams begins with a definition of what success and happiness mean for you.

Lesson 2- Don't Wait Too Long for What You Want

Lesson 3- Find the Right Partner

Lesson 4- Play Multiple Roles

Lesson 5- Don’t Give Up during Bad Time