Tuesday’s Tips — Your Next Steps

Well, are you unsure about what next steps to take, what the next actions to do would be to accomplish your great success? The next thing, you just don't know what the next steps are. Well, I've got some ideas for you on that. Hi there, my name is Bill Gallagher. I'm the Scaling coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We do episodes with tips and interviews and stories and lessons and things like that every week, several times a week now. And we've done hundreds and hundreds of them. So there's something that we've got that addresses almost anything that you might be dealing with if you're trying to grow your business and develop as a leader. We talk about people, strategy, execution, cash, and the leadership required to grow and develop your company and survive, even enjoy the process? You'll find all that and more@scalingcoach.com or wherever you get your podcast, online, video, et cetera, content. So go to scalingcoach.com or wherever you found this one and you'll find more like it. So listen, I'm working with a leader a few years ago now named Linda. And Linda's working in a large finance firm and things weren't going well and she wasn't sure the next steps and what actions to take and she felt blocked and so on, like we often feel. But she did have something in mind, like for the future, she could see a different thing that inspired her longer term, like out there. She just wasn't sure how to get from here to there. So the thing that we began to do with her in this case was to rewrite her life and her story. So we now had kind of the ending. It was time to actually develop the character. But initially in my conversation with Linda, she just could imagine herself as more or the same, like expanded versions of who she'd always been. So we started to think about that end state and we started to realize there were elements and aspects that now it was time to rise up within her, let those things out. Well, like many of us, she decided she was a particular way and that that was largely what she needed to be and rely on. Except we're not limited like that. We are extraordinary human beings of infinite possibility, only a piece of which we're likely to realize in our lifetime, but so much more available there at any time. It's time for creativity and courage and boldness to come out. So the key is to start to rewrite the rest of the story if you have some inspiration ending in mind. Now we want write the rest of the steps out and Imagine our character, what skills, what qualities can we bring out in ourselves in the next period? This idea of starting with the end in mind and planning backwards comes from Stephen Covey. Start with the end in mind and then plan backwards from there. Future based planning back to the present circumstances. But also the ideas of Marshall Goldsmith, who teaches us that the things that got us to this point won't get us to where we really want to be in life. So all of that has been about survival, has been about getting you to this point and there's something required. Now the next steps will come from a different kind of person. So we want to imagine our story and rewrite our character and let something new and fresh and creative and fun show up. So that's the idea. Anyway. It worked wonders for Linda. She imagined she noticed how she'd been in her life and how she thought of herself and how she was with her mom and her whole upbringing and her career and that kind of thing. And then she began to develop herself in new ways. Her career took off for the next bit. The business grew. She grew as a human being and had a lot more fun over the next year. So results and fun and more time. All of that coming together from reimagining and recreating yourself and your future. That gives rise to a very easy insight about where you need to go next. I hope that's been helpful. I hope it makes a difference for you. I hope you'll come back and listen like it. Subscribe to get these things every week and follow with us and go find all of them and more at scalingcoach. Com. Thanks again. Keep scaling up.