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Between where you are today and any goal or objective that you want to accomplish, there is one major contain that must be overcome before you can achieve that major goal. Your job is to identify it clearly.
What is holding you back? What set the speed at which you achieve your goals? What determines how fast you move from where you are to where you want to go? Why are not you at your goal already?
These are some of the most important questions you will ever ask and answer on your way to achieving high level of personal productivity and effectiveness. Whatever you have to do, there is always a limiting factor that determine how quickly and well you get it done. Your job is to duty the task and identify the limiting factor of contain within it. You must then focus all of your energies on alleviating that shingle choke point.
In virtually every task, large or small, a single factor sets the speed at which you achieve the goal or complete the job. What is it? Concentrate your mental energies on that one key area. This can be the most productive use of your time and talents.
This constraint may be a person whose help or decision you need, resource that you require, a weakness in some part of the organization or something else. But the limiting factor is always there and it is always your job to find it.
For example the purpose of a business is to create and keep customer. By doing this in sufficient quantities, the company makes a profits and continues to grow and flourish.
Every business has a limiting factor or choke point that determines how quickly and well the company achieves this purpose. It may be the marketing, the level of sales or the sales force itself. It may be the costs of operation or the methods of production. It may be the level of cash flow or costs. The success of the company may be determined by the completion, the customer or the current marketplace. One of these factors, more than anything else, determines how quickly the company achieves its goal of growth and profitability. What is it?
The accurate identification of the limiting factor in any process and the focus on the factor can usually bring about more progress in a shorter period than any other single activity.
Your key contain can be something small and not particularly obvious. Sometimes you have to make a list of every step in a process and examine every activity to determine exactly what is holding you back. Sometimes a single negative perception or objection on the part of customer can be slowing done the entire sale process. Sometimes the absence of s single feature can be holding back the growth of sales o product or service line.
Look into your company honestly. Look within your boss, your coworkers and members of your staff to see if there is key weakness that is holding you or the company back, acting as brake on the achievement of your key goals.
Successful people always begin the analysis of constraints by asking the question. What is it in me that is holding me back? They accept complete responsibility of their lives and look to themselves for both the cause and cure of their problems.
In your won life, you must have the honesty of look deeply into yourself for the limiting factor or limiting skill that set the speed at which you achieve your personal goals. Keep asking, what sets the speed at which I get the results I want?
The definition of the constraint determines the strategy that you use to alleviate it. The failure to identify the correct constraint or the identification of the wrong constraints, can lead you off in the wrong direction. You can end up solving the wrong problem.
A major corporation, a client of mine, was experiencing declining sales. The corporation’s leaders concluded that the major constraint was the quality of the sales force and the sales management. They therefore spent an enormous amount of money reorganizing the management and retaining the salespeople.
They later found that the primary reason that sales were down was a mistake made by an accountant who had accidentally priced their products too high relative to their competition in the marketplace. Once the corporation revamped its pricing, its sales went back up and it returned to profitability.
Behind every constraint or choke point, once it is located and alleviated successfully, you will find another constraint or limiting factor. Whether you are trying to get to work on time in the morning or build a successful career, there are always limiting factors and bottlenecks that set the speed of your progress. Your job is to find them and to focus your energies on alleviating them as quickly as possible.
Starting off your day with the removal of a key bottleneck or constraint fills you with emerge and personal power. It propels you into following through and competing the job.
