Are you ready to make this your company’s best year ever?  A friend of mine once told me: “To predict the future, you must create it.”  If you haven’t already, one of the best ways to get started is to first visualize what it is you want to achieve.

The first step is to create the perfect year in your mind.  Find a quiet time when you can let your thoughts flow uninterrupted, then picture exactly what you want to achieve over the next 12 months.  This technique is called visualization.  Once you have pictured the perfect year in your mind, put it on paper.  By doing so, you’ll be drafting your goals for 2011.

With clear goals in mind, you and your organization can develop a plan to create the future you have predicted.  Now, all you have to do is execute.  Simple, right?

Most companies have plans, but without effective leadership, many fail to achieve their goals and realize their long term potential.  Of course, there are different levels of effectiveness and multiple leadership styles.  But the one constant that I believe produces the best results is leadership that is principle centered.

Renowned trainer and consultant Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, describes principle centered leadership this way: 

• Succeeding in a world of change, competition, and information overload is challenging.  Fortunately, new technology and services emerge daily to assist individuals and organizations in meeting such challenges.
  

• Always before technology, however, comes leadership.  Leadership provides the insight to create products and services that meet changing circumstances and needs.  Leadership provides the critical advantage between those who succeed and those who do not.
  

• Principled Centered Leadership focuses on timeless principles, paradigms, and processes that have enabled effective people to achieve lasting and meaningful contributions.
   

• Principles are fundamental, timeless and self-evident natural laws that govern human effectiveness, growth and happiness.  Principles are related to the concept of true north.  Throughout history, the compass has been used to help navigators stay the course.  With the discovery of the compass came a sense of direction and security.  Navigators could count on the constancy of true north.  In the same manner, principles provide stability to a world of change.
  

• Just as explorers and navigators first aligned themselves with true north prior to beginning their journey, principle-centered leaders align their paradigms with principles prior to embarking on their leadership trek.  They then implement processes to effectively complete their journey.
  

• The more leaders align their paradigms with principles, the more effective they will be.  The Seven Habits are founded on such principles of effectiveness.

Your core principles along with your company’s vision, mission, and inter-related strategies, should be in writing and reviewed with every member of your team.  They will form the parameters within which your organization will operate and succeed.

May 2011 be your best year yet!!!
 

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Principle Centered Leadership, Covey Leadership Center, Inc. 1986-1996.