The 7 Basic Reasons we aren’t happy (by Jeff Haden)

"The 7 Basic Reasons we aren’t happy" (summary of Jeff Haden’s Post on LinkedIn) Click Her for original:

1. We mistake joining for belonging:
• Pick a group you want to belong to and do the work necessary to earn their respect and trust.
2. We think we can achieve anything.
• What you achieve isn’t nearly as important as achieving something. Pick a goal you’re suited for and go after it.
3. We think professional success equals fulfillment.
• Work hard on business. Work just as hard on a few other things you can someday look back on with a different sense of pride; then, where personal fulfillment is concerned, you get to feel great now and later.
4. We’re afraid of what we really are.
• If you don’t like how you look, decide what you’re willing to do about it and start doing it. Just don't ever compare yourself to someone like her or him; your only goal is to be a better version of the current you.
5. We have no one to call at 3 a.m.
• Take off your armor and make some real friends. It’s easier than it sounds, because other people long to make real friends too. Don’t worry; they’ll like the real you. And you’ll like the real them.
6. We mistake structure for control.
• Decide what you really want to do and go after it. You'll feel a real sense of control because you really care.
7. We've stopped failing.
• Why? Failure isn't defeating; failure is motivating.
• Failure also provides a healthy dose of perspective, makes us more tolerant and patient, and makes us realize we're a lot like the people around us.

12 Steps to Goal Setting

Answer the following questions/steps and you will be well on your way to achieving  your goals.

Do this for every goal you have.  

• Be realistic.
• Limit the number of Active goals (write all goals down, classify what is now vs. someday maybe)
• Prioritize your goals.  Your Tasks will also prioritize accordingly.

Goal Setting:

1. Clearly Define the GOAL (What is your success statement?)
2. Why is this goal meaningful (Purpose)?
3. When will this be accomplished? Set a Deadline!
4. What are my action steps? - yes define them. List the everything that you need to do to make this goal a reality.
5. Who is involved? - Understand your resource requirements.  Who do you need to work with to accomplish your goals.
6. Who will hold me accountable? Share your goal with them, as well as the expectations and milestones.
7. How will I define Success?
8. What Tools Do I need? Define "things" you will need to accomplish this goal.  This goes along with the resources required.
9. When? Set a TimeLine
•   Start Date
•   How Many Hours of focus per week?
•   Add to my Time Budget
•   Under What circumstances beyond completion will I stop?
10. What Milestones?
•   Chart your progress (set your milestones and understand the time frames you expect to achieve them)
•   Weekly review
• Progress notes weekly
• Review your Action List and assess new and validity of old
11. How will I reward myself for completion?  This goes beyond your purpose, and applies some basic risk reward definitions.  If the goal is a big one, what is your reward?
12. What is One Step I can Take in The Next Five Days to initiate This Goal?

Ode to Zig Ziglar, We will miss you.

Zig Ziglar passed away Wednesday (11/28/12) and while there are many things you can think of regarding Zig Ziglar, when I hear and think about him the name first thing that comes to mind is impact! Mr. Zigler had a profound impact on my life. He introduced me to motivation and positive self esteem.  Many people are tweeting and posting quotes and memories of zig ziglar.  This Blog post is my "large Tweet" to share my favorite story from Zig that I heard at the very first seminar I attended of his.

Zig told a this story about motivation as he was leading into a very strong sermon if you will about how important is to stay motivated in your life and it doesn't really matter the source of the motivation but the outcome. I'll paraphrase as best I can...

So the story went something like this:

There was a wealthy oil man in Texas and he had a beautiful daughter.  His daughter was of an age that he felt it was appropriate for suitors to bid for her hand in marriage.  And the Oil Man was very protective of his daughter. He felt there really wasn't any one good enough to have her hand in marriage .  So he hosted very large party and invited the most eligible bachelors from all over .  And during this party people mingled while having a good time.  They were wondering what was the catch  for this party.  At the appropriate time the wealthy Oil Man brought everyone out to the pool.  It was a very long pool.  And the pool was full of Alligators.  

 All of the eligible bachelors were told to wait at one end of the pool and the Oil man with his daughter was at the other end.  He proceeded to make an announcement: "the first suitor willing and able to jump in the water and swim across this pool filled with alligators will have my daughter's hand in marriage.  And not only would you be getting my daughter's hand in marriage but you will be getting first rights to all of this ...  My estate and wealth. No sooner had he finished his sentence when he heard a splash.  He turned around quickly and was surprised to see a young man swimming as fast as he possibly could to get to the other end.  Almost as fast as he had heard the splash, he was looking at this wet and out of breath young man standing in front of him.  The oilman was surprised and shook the young man's hand. He then asked him what was his motivation for jumping into the pool full of alligators and swimming across?  Was it his daughter's hand was it the wealth?  Young man still out of breath responded , "I just want to know the who the of a gun is that pushed me in " 

I laugh to this day just thinking about the story.   Motivation comes from the most unlikely places.

Zig Ziglar your presence will be missed however your legacy goes on !

Stay Positive My Friend - your career depends upon it.

Be very careful about the things that you focus on. The human brain is an incredibly powerful engine with an auto compass. In fact whether you realize it or not, when you think about things your brain is listening... 

So just as your thinking about successfully completing the job or project you are currently on, when you think negatively about a job or project , your mind and body Are adjusting their course to achieve those thoughts. Athletes have long known the impact of positive visualization.  See yourself completing or winning the race, Never see yourself failing, or allowing obstacles to prevent you from succeeding.  See yourself overcoming those obstacles to achieve your goals.  If you allow the negative thoughts to creep in, your brain will start to take you in a different direction, which will most likely be away from your successful completion of your goals.  

So in the words of the most interesting Man in the world ... "Stay positive my friend" !

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Headline(while saving time)

In our efforts of connecting with people we usually do not take advantage of pre-planning.  What does that mean??? well, as an example, I used to have my headline in my LinkedIn profie that just showed my ... well... title.  What I realized was that the headline is a key component for what shows up in searches.  So if I have a potential customer, employer, partner ... you name it.. what ever I am using LinkedIn for garnering relationships... My headline is what will show up in their search categories... Well along with my experience.  So here is a post that will help you show up in searches that are  relevant to the people that want to connect to you (whether they know it or not) ... Don't forget, this headline is your 30 Second Elevator pitch that someone that you want to connect with is reading.

At the bottom I will include a Template that you can paste into Notepad to develop your Headline Description.

First things first:
1.  Determine what "keywords" you want to focus on.  These should be short descriptive phrases or words that the person, company, partner etc... will be typing in when they enter a search term in LinkedIn.  For me I am looking to connect with folks that are similar in industry or potentially needing my or my companies skill sets... So I wrote down the following keywords:

Data Center, Strategy, Consolidations, Migrations, Integrations, Project Management Office, PMO, Process Management, Time Management, Marketing, Project management, Program Management ...

Well, as you can see, I have way more characters than are allowed in the 120 that LinkedIn allows.  So I need to narrow down to the specific ones that I want to focus on.


I created this template that you can copy and paste into Notepad to play with. ** note, do not put carraige returns in the text. It will stop the title at the carraige return.

LinkedIn Profile Desc:

         1         2         3         4         5         6         7         8         9        10        11        12
123456789012345678901234567980123465789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also figured I might want several versions depending on what Search terms I want to focus on or times of year when certain terms are hotter (or not) than others.

Normal:
V.P.Data Center Services-Passion for Data Center Consolidation & Migrations/PMO Process/Time Mgmt/Marketing&Program Mgmt

Service oriented Sharepoint:
V.P.Data Center Services-SharePoint Enthusiast/Microsoft Expert/Office Pro/Passion for Data Center Consolidations


Focus on Data Center Migrations:
V.P.Data Center Services-I.T. Strategy/Data Center Migrations/Consolidations/Integrations/Virtualization/ Move Methods


After you wordsmith them you can view your profile and see if it makes sense:

The key to remember is when people put in search terms.. the content of this area helps to put your profile first...

The next thing to do is test your results.. It might take awhile for them to be indexed so you can give it some time. I personally don't know how LinkedIn's indexing works... So you can play it by ear.

And see if you show up in the first page of results... 

Do the same test for each of the KeyWords you focused on....  Note, I blurred the results as those folks have not stated they want their information shown outside of LinkedIn. (at least not to me)...

Hope this helps you connect with the people you want to connect with on LinkedIn.

For more information regarding KnowledgeCentrix Data Center Offerings Click here.

Transitions

Our lives and our pursuit of happiness can take us on a wonderful life journey, which for me is now ready to help a different company grow and take their next step. I have taken the next step in my career and as of 9/24/12 , I have joined KnowledgeCentrix as their new Vice President, Data Center Services.  

For those of you that don't know KnowledgeCentrix, It is a full-service information systems consulting firm specializing in providing Managed and Professional Services to businesses needing help to support their I.T. organization.  Although they offer Cloud based services, they are not in the clouds, but their vision, and technical savvy certainly are.  As a quick example, these are some services that KnowledgeCentrix offers that you might have an immediate benefit from:

1. Cloud based (public or private) App hosting.  We have 3 physical data center locations offering you robust co-location options.
2. Onsite / Offsite Backup / DR recovery
3. SharePoint Hosted solutions with consulting for creating automated work flows.
4. Many others... Get in touch with me to learn more 

My time with PlanNet has been an incredible experience offering me wonderful projects to implement and great clients to work with, such as Toyota, Ingram Micro, Broadcom , Reliance Steel,  Herbalife, and the list goes on.  

My knowledge gain as well as input to each companies successful projects has lead me to this point of taking this next step.  I will be continuing to work with PlanNet as a partner on open projects.  

For those that are interested, please follow me on twitter @GardnerDarrell, or connect with me on linkedIn, If you haven't already done so.  I will still be giving back to the online community via my hosted linkedIn groups, twitter and still plan to continue speaking on similar subjects regarding Time Management, Data Center management, project / program management, and cloud initiatives.　　

Here is to your continued success,
Darrell Gardner

Speaking at HostingCon 2012 - Time Management for IT Organizations

Proud to announce, I will be speaking at HostingCon 2012 in Boston, MA on July 18th.  The venue for HostingCon is about the hosted services industry.  Click on the image to follow.  My topic is below...

Time Management for IT Organizations

Is your time system moving you closer to or further from your goals? How important is time management? Time is money after all, isn’t it? At the onset of a project, most managers set out their goals and objectives along a timeline. Once goals are set, the question then becomes what systems do you have in place to achieve them? With the proper focus, organizations can improve their use of time and be more efficient. I'll look at Collaborative Tools and Methods to work together as a team and make your organization more effective.