What is your challenge today? This week? Next month?
How can you resolve it? By when?
What do you need to accomplish this?
These were several questions I wrote down in the final session of the CEC program I was completing a couple of weeks ago. These are really good questions and are ones that we should maybe be asking every day.
Last week I wrote about the discipline of generating your daily agenda or to-do list the night before., about the discipline needed to make that happen and then to actually follow through on what you have written down. This week I want to add one more dimension to that discussion. What is your biggest challenge for today and did you actually write that down on your list?
This is a really good question to ask yourself as it will often open the door to seeing things that may be hidden from your view as you go through the motions of your work. If you seriously ask that question at the beginning of the week for example, it forces you to look beyond your basic “things-to-do” and to looking at issues that maybe coming your way.
I post these blogs on a Friday afternoon so if you are reading this as I post it this is a great time to stop, take note of what your plans are for the coming week and ask; “what is my challenge this coming week?” Write it down. Then ask the additional questions, take time to think about them and write them down and your answers, “How can I resolve it? By when?” & “What do I need to accomplish this, who can help me, what resources do I need?”
What if you can’t “see” any challenges for the coming day, week, and month? The chances are that there are challenges that you will be facing, not necessarily big hairy ones, they could be small but still a challenges, most likely hidden from your view. Try asking yourself this question that comes from Susan Scott’s book, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time (Penguin, 2004), it is; “What would it be if you did know?” The question is inspired by the Zen koan “When you can do nothing, what can you do?”
So I leave you with this question, what is your challenge this week, month and how can you resolve it?
