Far too much of our time is spent “think­ing” about what we wish would hap­pen.

Wasted think­ing is called a lot of things: day­dream­ing, play­ing rich uncle or build­ing cas­tles in the air. Regard­less, this kind of think­ing is not pro­duc­tive and it sucks the life out of us. We get lost in our own heads. We do this as indi­vid­u­als, but orga­ni­za­tions are just as guilty. Exec­u­tive shelves are lined with dusty strat­egy binders. Very lit­tle fails in the realm of brain­storm­ing, but far too often a brain­storm­ing ses­sion dis­si­pates into a fine mist when it comes time to imple­ment. The real heavy lift­ing comes when it is time to make things hap­pen (great title for a blog!). So whether indi­vid­ual or group thought is con­sid­ered, here are 5 tips to stop daydreaming.

1. If you’re not will­ing to make it hap­pen your­self, stop think­ing about it.
2. Real­ize hope is not a strat­egy and that you’re the only one that can cre­ate a new reality.
3. Make plans: if you want your day­dream to come true, then cre­ate a plan to make it happen.
4. Get out­side input. Talk to some­one who has done some­thing sim­i­lar for a san­ity check.
5. Hold your­self account­able, cre­ate mile­stone and dead­lines, and tell some­one about them.

If you are lead­ing an orga­ni­za­tion, here is a “bonus tip.” Spend as much time on how you will imple­ment as you have on cre­at­ing your strat­egy. This time will pay off in dra­matic dividends.

No one is going to come by Sat­ur­day and clean the garage for you. Your biggest com­peti­tor is unlikely to just quit. If you want it to hap­pen then go do it. Stop build­ing cas­tles in the sky.

We’ve all seen it hap­pen. The more peo­ple in the room the less gets done. It’s one rea­son why we hate meet­ings. The Ringel­mann Effect or Social Loaf­ing is the dynamic whereby the more peo­ple pulling on a rope the less each per­son pulls. Com­bined they cre­ate a greater pull than indi­vid­u­ally but no one per­son pulls as hard as if they were by them­selves. We habit­u­ally count on oth­ers to take the load. While I don’t really care why this hap­pens I think it’s worth­while to know how to min­i­mize the effect. Here’s a list of best prac­tices for killing Social Loafing.

1. Hold peo­ple account­able. If you know they can do some­thing, expect them to.
2. Give home­work, con­firm peo­ple know what is expected of them prior to a meeting.
3. Ask for sta­tus updates, don’t sur­prise peo­ple but require them to state their progress.
4. Force peo­ple to use straight talk, don’t tol­er­ate mubo-jumbo.
5. Focus on out­puts, out­comes and results. Inputs (hours, calls, vis­its) don’t matter.
6. Set clear expec­ta­tions, employ­ees can’t read your mind. Test them with good questions.
7. Reward employ­ees based on team out­comes not only indi­vid­ual or com­pany success.

Lead­er­ship will have to do a lit­tle more think­ing to uti­lize these con­cepts but the effort will be rewarded with dra­mat­i­cally improved team per­for­mance. Kill the loafers!

In my newslet­ter this month I pro­vided a free Come­back Score­card that you can use to gauge your poten­tial of rid­ing the come­back econ­omy. The four major areas I address in this score­card are;

1. Acquir­ing and Retain­ing Talent
2. Focused Action
3. Increas­ing Performance
4. Con­tin­ual Improvement

You’ll notice that all four of these areas can be improved with out big cap­i­tal invest­ments but ignor­ing or going astray in any one of them can be costly. You might say, “well we don’t have an issue there” and that might be very true but the point is that all four of these areas should be on your radar. You don’t cur­rently have a fire rag­ing through­out your facil­ity yet you have spent a lot of time and money pre­vent­ing a fire. My point? Pre­vent­ing a prob­lem can be just as or more impor­tant than solv­ing a prob­lem. For exam­ple, it’s hard to cre­ate the rep­u­ta­tion of a great com­pany to work for/buy from/ part­ner with but once you’ve lost cred­i­bil­ity it’s much harder to get it back. Just ask Toyota/Tiger/Obama etc..