Your business plan – if you have one — is black and white.

If you follow your plan step-by-step, you’ll be successful.  That sounds amazingly simple, just like they teach in business schools.  Sounds like a plan you want to follow.

WRONG!  It doesn’t work.

Business schools teach plans, case studies, a perfect strategy, which combined give you a solution to solve any problem.

Reality is different.

It is different because plans are more than paragraphs on paper.  There is something you cannot put on paper.  

You have to deal with people. 

That makes black and white plans gray.  The simple becomes complex when you throw people into the mix.

Strategy problems become leadership problems.

Almost all business problems are really leadership problems.

Almost any plan will succeed if you are leading effectively.  You can’t be a dictator and just yell, “follow the plan.”

It’s possible that your plan isn’t all that important. 

What’s important is your mission.

For you to stand in front of your people and shout, “Mission accomplished,” your people need to know your mission and be committed to accomplishing it.

Everyone around you needs to know what your mission is and why you’re doing what you are doing. 

What are your intentions?

• Explain your intentions so they understand them.
• Explain their roles, so they understand them.
• Recognize them for the work they do, because you appreciate them for doing it.

They’ll understand your mission and your attitude because you’re living it.

Any plan will work when you lead.

That sounds so simple that it sounds ridiculous.  But that’s the truth behind most business breakthroughs.

Want to fix your business plan?

Start leading.  The better the leader is, the better the business plan will be.

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A woman in California woke up one morning several years ago and discovered that her husband had disappeared with all her money. Having never worked a day in her life, after losing her home and everything her first husband had worked his entire life to accumulate, and in her late 70’s, she was forced to find work.

It would have been easy for her to go on welfare and live out her life without dignity or self-respect. Who would have blamed her? But instead, she decided to do something about it.

Not satisfied with what the police were doing, she launched her own investigation, tracked down her husband and brought him to trial, not only for stealing her money, but for murdering her aunt and stealing her money too. He now lives in prison.

This spunky woman has a brand new career. She has a business helping people with similar circumstances to hers conduct their own investigations and right some of the wrongs done to them.

That woman is a lightning bolt.

A man in Washington, D.C., was fired from his successful job as a nightclub singer and was replaced by a Kareoke machine. Without any notice, he was left with no way to pay his bills.

But, he launched a brand new career as a writer and a motivational speaker.

In 1999, Willie Jolley was selected as Speaker of the Year by Toastmasters International. His book title says it all: A Setback Is A Setup For A Comeback.

Whenever anybody tells him they just lost their job, Willie Jolley says, “That’s good. Now you have the opportunity to do what you really like to do.

Willie Jolley is a lightning bolt.

What is the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt?

When that woman discovered her husband had run off with her money, she was a lightning bug.

But, when that woman sat in a courtroom and heard the jury convict her thieving husband of larceny and murder, she was a lightning bolt.

When Willie Jolley walked into that Washington, D.C. nightclub to sing one night, and left five minutes later jobless, he was a lightning bug. But, when Willie Jolley walked to the front of a crowded room and received the 1999 Speaker of The Year award from Toastmasters International, he was lightning bolt.

The man and woman I’ve just told you about came face-to-face with two things: their self-image and their self-esteem.

Every day, you and I look face-to-face at our self-image and our self-esteem.

Who you are now.

Our self-image is the way we are now. It’s the person we are, worts and all.

Who you CAN be!

Our self-esteem is another thing, a more powerful thing. Self-esteem is how much we like ourselves, which gives us the ability to visualize ourselves the way we CAN be.

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