Wednesday, November 24, 2010

You Can Do It!

I had an interesting insight this past weekend. I was down in Arizona at an event for professional speakers as I will be a board member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers next year. This weekend workshop was hosted by the American equivalent of our Canadian association.

Brian Tracy, the creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books and an accomplished speaker, is on the American board and spoke briefly. He told us that in his experience the four most important words for people to hear are "You Can Do It."

Over the years as I have refined and enhanced the concepts and tools that I bring to my work they have typically become more challenging both to understand and to apply. For example, Scenario Exploration and System Dynamics are both challenging but certainly useful approaches when making decisions, especially for the future. Most people in my workshop struggle when they first try to apply these tools. Usually I acknowledge in the session that these are challenging tools. But I realized on the weekend that all too frequently I leave it at that, and don't include the encouragement that people may need to persevere with these approaches. Because although I recognize these tools are challenging, I think they are both necessary and achievable skills for people who want to make better decisions. In so many important areas of both work and society these days, good decision-making is hard work. But it is also certainly achievable for you.

The other difficulty I hear from people regarding thinking deeper is "I don't have time." But I believe it is worthwhile for everyone right up to a busy senior executive to carve out the time for deeper thinking.

So if you're one of those people who has been to a presentation I made or workshop I led, I want to give you this message now: You Can Do It. And if there is any way I can help you with that, please let me know.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Randy what good information. I did not register the quote from Brian Tracy but so glad you shared it.

I had dinner with girl friends on Wednesday evening and shared some of my speaking business future plans. These women are not speakers and just don't "get me" as our speaking colleagues do. What I so much wanted to hear, I now realize is "You can do it Mary."

Thanks for that AHA moment Randy.

Mary Redmond
NSA-Kansas City.