Top 5 Actions to Lead you to Success

by Bryon D Beilman

As 2013 comes to a close, you may stop and reflect on all the good things that happened to you and mentally make plans on what you want to do or achieve the following year.  It may also be a time to look at mistakes and how to avoid making them going forward.   This thought process really should be happening all the time instead of once per year, but somehow, as the year comes to and end, perhaps it is a time for a final reflection.    From a personal, business and culture development perspective, here are 5 things that can make your year a success.

1. Create and write down your goals.

There have been hundreds of studies about people who make goals vs those who don't as well as those who write their goals down vs those who do not.   The summary of it all is, those who make and write down goals are a lot more successful than those who do not.  Goals can change, but if you believe in what you want to achieve and you outline the path to get there, it is a lot easier to follow that path.

2. Focus on getting things done, not on working a lot or being busy

An area I have found very useful is to focus on getting things done vs being busy.  This sounds simple, and straight forward, but is it?  In IT services, we have found much greater success on focusing on getting things done instead of focusing on billable hours.  If you focus on automating, efficiently working and getting things done, then you will always have more than enough business to increase your billable hours and you end up working on what is important and valuable.

3. It's ok not to be perfect right away and focus on making small continuous improvements

Great products and services come from evolution not revolution.  Sometimes it seems like the first time you see a great product you think they got lucky and built it out of nothing  very quickly. In reality, you would most likely find that they focused on their goals, iterated, tested, learned from their mistakes and move forward. Google around for some of the technical presentations from fast moving successful IT software companies to find out how they are building cultures to move fast, iterate and don't be afraid to fail. You might be surprised how many there are.

4. Try to find and work with people who are better than you and step out of your comfort zone.

If you want to be a better runner, should you train with someone below you or someone who is faster and a more experience runner?  This analogy may seem obvious, but the same applies to business and is often not applied. Hire people who are better than you, associate yourself with people who are positive , perhaps a better speaker, biker, kernel engineer or whatever and work towards improving yourself.  You will be uncomfortable, but you will improve and it is a sure way to catapult your success.

5. KISS - Keep it simple stupid.

Complexity is the devil and it usually comes back to bite you. This is certainly a complex world, but experience has shown that things that are too complex end up being unreliable, unsupportable and many times not understandable. Making things simple is very hard to do, but working at it, refining it and making it work in a simple and elegant way will usually be the better solution.

Here's to a successful year!