Own your goals

Being overwhelmed may be the new normal, but taking on too many responsibilities may be watering down our overall impact.

Bring back your focus to what matters most. Work on the projects that are the real game-changers. Delegate the discretionary work and eliminate unnecessary meetings.

Running a thriving business means understanding how to organize your work by importance and knowing when to delegate.

• Find your sweet spot. When you consider taking on a project, see if it aligns with your purpose and the organization's broader goals. Ask yourself if you're the right person with the right skillset.
• Automate. As your company grows, use automation tools for low-level work. It also allows your employees to make more meaningful contributions.
• Set boundaries. Learn to say no to low-level tasks. Set your own limits about what you'll take on.

Every time you take a risk in your business, you face the possibility of failure.

Improv, a theatrical exercise where you improvise a scene with a group of people, essentially mirrors that experience. You have to get used to change fast.

If you work behind a closed door, this will be a great exercise for stepping outside your safety zone.

You might have a less productive week, but seeing your workplace from a different perspective will foster an open mind and encourage collaboration.

Creating motivation and making your team feel appreciated is a critical part of long-term productivity.

Encourage your team to keep gratitude journals - writing down a couple of sentences about what you are currently grateful for a couple of times a week. This practice improves productivity by increasing happiness.

If people can't focus on their work, they are less effective in areas like collaboration and learning, and they are less likely to be satisfied with their jobs.

Workplaces with a balance between individual focus and collaboration are more innovative, creative and encouraging.

1. Empathy. Give trusted co-workers the benefit of the doubt by assuming the good in them. It goes a long way toward instilling loyalty and trust in you from your team.
2. Awareness. Care deeply about the welfare of the team members. Don't view them only as cogs in a machine.
3. Building community. Build community where both employees and customers can thrive.
4. Persuasion. Rely on persuasion rather than coercion to create internal motivation required to complete the task effectively.
5. Conceptualization. Servant-leading entrepreneurs focus on the big picture and don't get overly distracted by daily operations and short-term goals.
6. Growth. Care passionately about the personal and professional growth of each member of the team.

The goal of an effective 1:1 is not an update from your direct report or for you to lay down some instructions. It's a conversation. It's a chance to hear about your direct reports' ideas for your product, their career goals, and possibly their opinion of their performance.

Keep a list of three potential topics ready for discussion. When they say they have nothing to discuss, you can jumpstart the conversation with one of your items.

Your most precious resource is your own time and energy. When you spend it on your team, it helps build healthy relationships.

Your job as a manager isn't to give advice or 'save the day.'' It's to empower your reports to find the answer themselves. If you want to understand what's going on, ask. Let her lead the conversation while you listen and probe.

1. Write goals that align with your values. If your career goals aren’t supporting your life goals, you are bound to have a miserable existence.
2. Set goals that you can control. Unless every aspect of the goal you set is under your control, you have very little likelihood of ever achieving it.
3. Think big. Set your sights higher than most might believe practicable.
4. Give yourself time. Start by visualizing where you want to end up in life, then the things you need to get there are pretty easy to plot out.
5. Plan for success. Do not ask “What if I fail?” but rather “What if I succeed?”
6. Manage your risks. Success will carry some measure of risk. Consider the risks and weigh them against the reward.

An intrapreneur can be defined as someone who thinks like an entrepreneur but brings their ideas to the company where they are employed instead of launching their own business. 

Instate a "no idea is a bad idea" policy, gather the support your employees need to try out their ideas and let them pitch decision-makers at your company.

This allows employees to spend 15 % of their paid work time daydreaming, doodling or experimenting with ideas that don’t necessarily have to do with their work at the company.

This kind of daydreaming is the genesis of invention and fosters passion for one’s work.

A business, like a fight, will push you beyond your comfort zone. You will eventually venture into unfamiliar territory.

Understand that it’s possible nothing will go your way, and you’ll have to take a vicious beating. But prepare for a fight and swing to win anyway.

Although MMA fighters are in a cage by themselves, a team of highly specialized professionals -- from massage therapists to sparring partners -- is essential for them to succeed in the ring.

In business, you need a team similar to an MMA outfit -- one comprised of people who can see things you can’t and make you strong where you are weak.

Writing down the 5 things you're most grateful for every day has tremendous power on the level of your overall happiness.

Writing down your goals and tracking the action steps that are being taken towards them is a great way to identify areas of growth so more can be done to maintain consistent progress, even on a bad day.

When thinking about social currency, understand that you have value.

You may not be able to pinpoint what is valuable about you. But everyone has value. You can be worth $1, or you can be worth $100. The decision is yours.

Your circle of influence can play a large role in building your social currency.

Before you can build strong connections, understand that connections don’t just happen by chance. Everything you say and do is going to impact your relationships with people, and no one will want to form any type of relationship with you if you don’t demonstrate some type of value (demonstrated by what you think and how consistent you are).