Whether it’s a skater or skier or snowboarder or other, everyone who won a Gold Medal in Vancouver recently is a role model for us all. Practice, patience, persistence, and passion – the 4 P’s of Olympic Gold – are likely mantras for all these winners. Shaun White, in particular, is a true living example of exactly what every senior executive and business leader should be focused on creating in their organizations – not because he won gold on the half pipe, but because he won gold after winning gold on the half pipe!

That’s right.  Shaun White was standing at the top of his second and final run when the results came in, and he found out that he already won the gold medal without even completing his last run. In that very moment, he had a choice- walk down the mountain a victor with snowboard in hand or deliver what he came to deliver for the crowd. After a 2-minute pep talk with his coaches that seemed to last forever, he did exactly that. Deliver!

Shaun White was not just in it to win it. He was in it to bring it! Winning the gold almost seemed to be an unnecessary bonus for him as he stuck the landing on his final trick. Click on the following video to watch this incredible “double gold” performance.

Link to NBC Footage of Shaun White’s 2010 Olympic Performance

So what can we learn from Shaun White and all the other Olympic Gold Medalists this year?  The following 4 P’s of Olympic Gold are critical for anyone to be successful in fulfilling their dreams and achieving their objectives in today’s fiercely competitive business marketplace:

1. Patience – Gold medal performances don’t come overnight. Be patient and remain focused on your end goal.
2. Persistence – As a follow-up to #1, success requires long-term and unwavering commitment. Don’t give up even if you hit a few road bumps along the way.
3. Practice – Practice, practice, practice… Gold medals only come from taking risks, reaching beyond your comfort zone, and learning new skills over time.
4. Passion – And finally, passion! As Jim Collins writes in his best-seller Good To Great, you can achieve anything you set your mind to if you are passionate about it. Without passion, you are far more likely to throw in the towel on the 1^st 3 P’s before you achieve your objectives.

If you are interested in engaging in a powerful and stimulating conversation about how best to groom the next generation of Gold Medalists in your organization, join us and the OD in LA MeetUp group next Tuesday, March 23^rd at 6:30pm. Plus Delta’s President and CEO Samantha and Jeremy Lurey will be hosting a World Café forum to discuss this very subject with some of LA’s finest organizational consultants. Click here for more info.

Here is an excerpt of a recent discussion about the Best Recognition and Rewards Programs for the Post-Recession Economy:

[Jeremy Lurey]: A couple weeks ago, I facilitated a great session with a local NHRA (National Human Resources Association) chapter. The topic was Recognition and Rewards programs, and we used a World Cafe (see www.theworldcafe.com) format to bring everyone – and their richly diverse perspectives – into the room. During the World Cafe rounds, groups were asked the following 3 questions:

1. What are the top three MONETARY recognition and rewards approaches that you use in your company?
2. What are the top three NON-MONETARY recognition and rewards approaches that you use in your company?
3. What are the underlying assumptions of your recognition and rewards system, and does the absence of receiving a reward equate to PUNISHMENT?

Provided below are some of the key themes that emerged from the group. I’m curious if this is in line with your experiences or if you have other “best programs” you would recommend.

- MONETARY programs included spot bonuses, spot awards of all denominations, sales incentives, and structured commissions for sales people. Some of the best suggestions actually included having the program guidelines approved by management but then having the awards themselves appointed by others without management intervention.

- NON-MONETARY programs included everything from hand-written Thank You cards from senior leadership to deserving employees to more visible Employee of the Month/Year awards to more individualized service pins and other tokens of recognition, including honorary parking spots. Some of the best recommendations were actually based on assigning special project tasks (i.e., Tiger Team assignments) to people to recognize their abilities and unique contributions.

- Some of the final thoughts about PUNISHMENT may have been most interesting of all. A significant number of participants remarked on how many rewards were removed in 2009 due to the economy and how this simple act of cost-cutting was experienced by many as punishment. So the resounding recommendation of the group was to not implement something that may not be sustainable, because any improvements in organizational culture and performance that may have been gained initially surely would be lost – and then some! – as soon as those rewards were taken away.

[Future of OD Member]: This sound[s] like it would have been [a] fascinating meeting. I couldn’t agree more with the final comments. Once the bar has been set, anything that lowers the bar is experienced as either punishment or taking something away. We create the expectation of recognition when we initiate a recognition program. If we, for any reason, have to stop that program, we then fail to meet the expectations that we have created. This gives us a very fine line to walk, but it’s worth it if we can find our way.

[Jeremy Lurey]: Thanks (Member). It really was a great meeting. Not often, we as professionals get a chance to focus on knowledge transfer and learning in this type of intimate group forum. And the ideas that came out of the discussion were powerful and tremendously rich. Everyone very much agreed with what you just described which is the basic tenet of “Don’t do it if you aren’t serious long-term” and “Fight to keep it once it’s already in place.”

So what are your thoughts about recognition and rewards for the post-recession economy? As you can see, we are blogging about a discussion that is now taking place online even though it originally formed from the ideas discussed in a separate in-person group. Help us continue the conversation here via this communication media by commenting below. Or better yet, take an excerpt of this blog post and start another discussion in yet another form. We welcome it!

Stuck in a rut? Still worried about the recession? Well, I hate to say it, but you know you’re doing it to yourself, right?

Self-fulfilling prophecies are very powerful. Now I’m not saying that the skies are always filled with warm sunshine and pretty rainbows. I am, however, saying that you can choose to see them that way if you want.

Does this all sound easy to say for a guy who was born and raised in Los Angeles where it’s “shorts weather” most of the time? Well it is, but not because of the physical weather around me. It all has to do with my perspective on how I choose to view the world. I’m not ignorant to the global financial crisis we all experienced in 2009. I’m not even in denial about how much hard work it’s going to take to dig ourselves out of the mess we’re all in. I just believe in myself and know at the bottom of my heart that I can achieve anything I set my mind to.

Two years ago, I decided I was on the downhill slide of being overweight and physically unfit. No argument about how I got that way – too much holiday cheer, not enough time at the gym, too many late nights working and definitely not enough sleep! For the better part of a year, I told myself, “It’s OK. It’s just a busy time at work.” But then I said, “This is ridiculous! I’m not even 40, and I refuse to spend the rest of my life like this…” Well, now I’m in the best shape of my life. Really! I weigh about 20 pounds less than 2 years ago, I ran a 5K for the first time of my life on Thanksgiving Day, and I’m now training to run 4 more races this year – including the coveted 10K “Mud Run” at Camp Pendleton in June.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t expect to be in the best shape of my life when I decided to focus on personal health. I didn’t even know that was possible. What I did know is that “trying to lose another 5 pounds” wasn’t the right approach for getting into shape. Instead, I focused on living a healthier and more fulfilled life by getting into shape. Being in the best shape of my life was just a welcome surprise that came as a result of focusing on the positive results of my near-term efforts.

Another key area of focus for me this past year has been sales. For those of you who are in sales, you probably recognize the name Chet Holmes and have read his book entitled the “Ultimate Sales Machine”. There are lots of people in this world who wish they were better salespeople or wish their customers would stop saying no to them. Both of those sentiments are true for me too. I just stopped letting them be my primary focus (dare I say the stories I told myself to justify my lack of sales in a down economy). Instead, I told myself that I was the “Ultimate Sales Machine” and focused my energy on making that happen – by reading great sales resources, by reinventing some of our consulting offerings, and by being more confident with my go-to-market strategy. Now I may not be the “Ultimate Sales Machine” based on Chet Holmes’ standards, but I sure feel better about myself and the results that I am producing these days than I did before I shifted my perspective.

And I could go on and on… Just about every facet of my life has a self-fulfilling prophecy – one that is motivating and inspiring and produces phenomenal results or one that doesn’t serve me very well at all. You must be confident in yourself and move from “I think I can” to “I KNOW I will”! Treat your desired results as if they are inevitable outcomes, and you will be much more likely to achieve what you want in life without exerting wasteful energy focusing on the things you don’t want to do.

So what are your self-fulfilling prophecies? And how are they working for you?

Entertainment.  It’s all around us.  The late night talk show wars between Jay, Conan, and Dave.  The new TV season is starting with American Idol and 24, and SuperBowl Weekend is just on the perceivable horizon.  I don’t know about you, but we live in exciting times!

Really?  Really?  What have we become?  Does Hollywood really dominate our attention so much as to dull our senses about what is going on in the world around us?  Have we become so numb to our world that we let “The Tonight Show” shenanigans take precedence over what happened in Haiti these past weeks?  Or to take precedence over what’s going on in our own homes with our spouse and children?

We are deluged daily, not only with entertainment, world news of disasters, war, and economic turmoil, but we are “attacked” with e-mails (let’s start a contest to see who gets more than 500 e-mails a day!), and overwhelmed with requests for our time to attend meetings and teleconferences.  Where do we draw the line?  When do we start to get control over our lives and our time?  How do we start to manage our commitments and keep a focus on the important relationships in our lives to make a statement about what is important to us?  How do we dig out of everything that gets piled on top of us so that we can breathe fresh air and regain a sense of balance that will both sustain us and energize our efforts to lead more productive and fulfilling lives?  Is this all too much to ask?  Is it pure fantasy that we can actually achieve this?A little over 25 years ago, I had the fortunate opportunity to participate in a program that truly changed my life and that provided me with the foundational tools and experiences to launch a career in OD.  The program was called the HRD Intern program, and it was conducted by the brilliant staff of consultants at University Associates (UA).  The program was expertly designed and elegantly facilitated so that upon completion, I (and other participants) left with a much clearer sense of “self” and “purpose” that would enable us to more effectively operate as a catalyst for positive change in organizations.

Oh, getting my Masters degree in Counseling was a great foundation, too.  But the UA Intern program was not about “book” learning where theories and concepts were king.  The Intern program was about getting centered on who I was as a person.  It was about getting clear on my values….on what was important in my life, and on what I needed to do to be “on purpose” in all of my interactions with clients, colleagues, family, and friends.  It was about having access to, and learning from some of the great thought leaders in the field of OD including John Jones, Phyliss Cooke, Will Schutz, Warner Burke, Len Goodstein, Paul Hersey, and Bill Pfeiffer.

The Intern program was designed to enable an experience of personal growth, as each of us learned to struggle with our own idiosyncrasies, our own interpersonal needs and issues, our own values and beliefs, and our own weirdness.  But it also enabled us to integrate our very personal learning with our professional development.  We learned that if we are to be instruments of positive change in organizations that we must first learn to change ourselves and thus become more positive role models to those we are encouraging to change.

So what did I learn?  It’s difficult to capture in words, because so much of the learning took place on an experiential level.  And experiential learning is, by very nature, transformational as it causes learning to occur on not just a cognitive level, but on a physical and emotional level as well.  But if I were to capture a few key points about what I learned to be more “centered” and “on purpose”:

• I am “on purpose” when my thoughts, intentions, words, and actions are focused on jointly optimizing my client organization’s needs and objectives with those of the employees working there.  In other words, I use myself as an “instrument” or “catalyst” for positive change by applying my knowledge of people and organizations to design and implement new systems, processes, structures, and roles to help companies become more profitable and to help employees feel more fully engaged.

• Through various structured activities, personal growth group experiences, and intensive self-examination and assessment, I learned how to become more “centered” and “comfortable in my own skin”.  I learned more about who I was (values, beliefs, strengths, weaknesses, needs, drives, etc.) so that I could become a more effective human being in interpersonal and group situations where people look to me to offer helpful insights, counsel, and advice on how to improve leadership and organizational effectiveness.

Looking back on that period, I realize that it was my experience in the HRD Intern program, and my fortunate opportunity to work as an employee at UA for nearly four years, that caused me to shift my career focus from becoming a Counselor to a Consultant in OD.

If you are an OD professional, what foundational experiences led you to choose OD as your career of choice?  What are you doing, or what have you done, to develop yourself for a career in OD? For all professionals, how do you stay “centered” and “on purpose” amidst the onslaught of information overload and the demands of competing priorities?

As for me, I try to attend at least one major conference a year (Linkage and/or OD Network) to “recharge my batteries” and expose myself to new thinking.  And I try to do at least one “retreat” a year where I commune with nature and some good friends or family in the peaceful surroundings of the Sierra Nevada, but I confess that these things get harder to do amidst all of my other commitments.

So, back to my opening comments on entertainment…… I confess to be an addict to “24” and “American Idol”, and I have them set to “record” on my DVR.  (We all need our “guilty pleasures”.)  And I wish that I could apply some sweat and muscle to rebuilding Haiti, but since I can’t I will donate money so that others can.  But I do hit the “delete” button on more and more e-mails, and I am continually striving to keep my priorities clear and in focus.  (I need to make more time for my hobbies of playing guitar and photography for sure).  But I am curious to hear what you do to make (and keep) yourself the best “instrument of change” that you can in whatever you do.

In today’s turbulent times, employees are discouraged by the continuing global economic crisis and broader world news, organizations are becoming completely consumed by draconian cost-cutting measures simply to stay afloat, and customers are still finding it difficult to make purchasing decisions. During this period of furious business change, now is the time for business leaders to take the offensive and renew their organizations.

STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION RENEWAL unlocks value in your business by optimizing organizational performance and protecting customer loyalty.  By engaging this process, business leaders align near-term business strategies necessitated by today’s unprecedented economic challenges with not only the desire but also the ability to prosper in the recovery.

Join us for an engaging session on January 28, 2010 at ASTD – Special Division (Organization Development)– where we explore the concepts and share practical tips for renewing your organization!  Learn how to change the game by using this opportunity to renew your business and create a ready platform for growth and innovation in the future.

In this session, we will:

•    Discuss today’s unprecedented economic challenges and our current context for change as the recovery sets in

•    Review the concepts of Strategic Organization Renewal – a proven approach for optimizing organizational performance and protecting customer loyalty

•    Develop specific strategies you can use to put this powerful approach into action and produce better business results before it’s too late.

For more information, click here.

All of us at Plus Delta Consulting have been reflecting on what we will do as we enter the New Year to improve performance in our organization – and with our client organizations. 2009 was a rocky year for many, and I for one am very glad to put it behind me. With that said, I’d be remiss if I simply said, “Thank God it’s over!” without doing any planning for 2010.

As we enter the New Year then, we’d like to recommend 5 simple steps for you to drastically improve performance in your organization. What steps have you taken or do you plan to take as you begin the New Year to produce better results? Please take a moment to comment below and share your own actions and ideas with us and all of our readers.  Until then, here’s our list!

1. Plan your future from the future:

If anything was possible for you and your organization in one year from now (or even 10), how would you have the future be? Suspend reality for just a moment, and don’t worry about being practical or even reasonable. Focus on defining your ideal future based on your most important values and longer-term business objectives. And don’t frame this as “fixing” something that already exists or working within your current constraints.

This is purely a process of creation. By the way, you need to enlist the support of your team and explicitly ask those around you what contribution they would like to make to the organization and the world around them – again given no constraints – to develop a shared vision for this ideal future. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish if you work together as a team to achieve this future from the future!

2. Conduct a “Quick Pulse” assessment of your organization:

Good health and wellness is critical to the success of any organization. If you want to produce better results, you need to determine what’s working well across your organization today as well as what opportunities exist to improve performance moving forward. This doesn’t have to take a long time. Just talk to some of your key managers and staff and ask them what they think. You can also administer an online survey to gather information quickly from a wider audience. Together, this process of listening to your people will help you understand their individual perspectives about organizational performance and quickly gauge what your organization needs to do differently in 2010. If you tie this information back to your company’s strategic objectives, you will have all the ingredients you need to create a recipe for success this year.

3. Talk to your people and become a mentor to them:

Do you have a forum in place today to tell your employees what they do well and what they aren’t doing so well just yet? Are you giving your direct reports the feedback they need to succeed? Feedback is a gift. At Plus Delta, we say “Feedback, Feed-forward”. If you don’t take the time to talk to your people, they won’t know what to continue doing nor will they know what to stop doing.

One simple activity is to conduct a quick goal-setting meeting with your employees in which you clarify what to Start, Stop and Continue doing in 2010 to be more effective. Match this against your more formal (or informal) performance review process, and you’ll be able to see where things are in alignment versus where they are not.

But remember, the process doesn’t stop here… Your employees need you to provide ongoing feedback and coaching throughout the year to stay on track. Being a mentor is not a one-time event, and creating sustainable results doesn’t happen after one sit-down together. Continue providing feedback to and mentoring your people on a regular and ongoing basis to produce long-lasting positive results.

4. Take a step back to examine how you’re managing performance from a company point of view

When we work with clients to help them improve performance management in their company, often their focus is on the question of “how do we raise the bar?” or “how do we have those ‘difficult’ conversations with poor performers?” or “how do we do a better job of defining and measuring goals, objectives, and key performance indicators?”.  But when we actually get into a conversation with them about what’s working and what’s not working, it turns out that their real issues are more related to managing organizational performance.  What we begin to hear are things like, “we have too many competing priorities” or “our project priorities continually shift, so we can’t help our employees prioritize what’s important from one week to the next” or “what are priorities for our group are not priorities for the other groups we work with.”

These are symptoms that the management processes for managing organizational performance are either not in place or not working effectively.  By management processes, I mean the mechanisms (i.e., meetings, forums, etc.) for the management team to meet to:  a) establish a “project portfolio management plan” of critical projects over the next 90, 180 days and beyond; b) regularly revisit that plan in light of constantly shifting priorities, marketplace dynamics, competitor plans, customer demands, etc. c) to re-prioritize projects, redistribute resources, and refine objectives and milestones; and d) re-communicate the outcomes of those meetings to employees so that their work activities are consistently prioritized, coordinated, and integrated.  While it may take some effort (and time) to establish and carry out these management processes, the overall savings of time and money on the organization through improved coordination of effort will bring a significant return on investment.

5. Evaluate your organizational strategy for using social and collaborative media:

It is essential for you – and your organization – to leverage new media for increased collaboration, networking, knowledge sharing, and improved productivity.  Whether it’s updating your LinkedIn profile, starting a new blog on a question or idea you have, or leveraging Facebook to promote your company brand, these tools can keep you connected with everyone around you.

Prior to launching a social media campaign, joining the relevant social networks, and becoming more interactive in the realm of new media, you have to determine your longer-term strategy, establish goals, and create a plan. Why are you doing this? Is it to keep your friends and family informed about what you are doing? Would you like to draw customers to your company? Are you looking to improve collaboration among members of a virtual team?  There is tremendous pressure to jump right into this game with both feet, but this arena has its own set of norms and rules and there are long-term implications for deciding to use these new media channels.

Interactivity with one’s key customers and/or encouraging internal collaborative efforts in your organization can be both rewarding and highly effective in all types of companies and communities. Understanding and establishing a set of common practices and policies on how you and your employees should use these tools is critical to the success of any such efforts though, so think first. If necessary, consult an expert to guide you before getting started.

The holidays are a fun but often stressful time.  And for many it is a practically hard year.  So whether you are doing well or struggling, why not take some time to give back?  Not sure what to do?  Here are twelve things to get you started.  And don’t do it just this time of year – make giving back part of your New Year’s Resolution too!

1. Donate money to a charitable cause – so many good organizations have seen a huge drop in donations this year, so help them out.
2. If you can’t donate money, donate your time.  Volunteer to stuff envelops or answer phones – any little bit counts.
3. Giving back doesn’t have to be outside the home.  Our loved ones sometimes may feel neglected while you’re out shopping or planning.  So give your kids a hug and tell them how much you love them.
4. Along that same line, tell your spouse how much you appreciate them this holiday season and throughout the year.
5. Donate your professional services.  If you’re in OD – give pro-bono services to your local charity.  The work you do will be very helpful long-term.
6. Serve food at your local soup kitchen – more people are homeless now than ever, so help to make their lives a bit easier.
7. Another group suffering during these hard times are pets.  Many pets are now also homeless and living in shelters because their owners couldn’t care for them anymore.  This is very hard on a pet.  So donate your time to some good homeless pet organizations like the ASPCA or Best Friends.  And remember – pets are more than dogs and cats.  There are many homeless horses and farm animals too.
8. Help a friend in need – this can take the form of running errands for a stressed friend to offering to buy Christmas presents for a friend’s children if your friend is cash-strapped.
9. Give back by bringing joy to a hospital or retirement home.  Bring a good joke book or funny movie and spread some holiday laughter.
10. Thank your parents!
11. Send an overseas greeting card to our troops.  You can do this by going to Any Soldier and following the instructions.  Your kind words would mean a lot to someone in harm’s way.
12. Clean out your closets! Your ‘old’ clothes, games, and household accessories are very helpful to people that don’t have much.  If you are a working professional than really clean out your used business attire.  Those items are in high demand.

There are many other things that you can do to show your family, friends, and community you care.  So get creative and start giving back!

Plus Delta was just selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Business consulting category by the Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA). The SBCA program recognizes the top 5% of small businesses throughout the country, and this year’s program consisted of 5 million nominees in 2500 cities all across the US. Plus Delta is thrilled to receive this award – even more so than the Inc 5000 award which was based purely on revenue growth over a 3-year period – because it’s a true testament of all our satisfied clients who provided the positive consumer feedback required for us to win the award. For that very reason, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our clients who allow us to improve performance and implement positive changes in their organizations. Without you, we would not be here, let alone receive such accolades as this!

Dr. Steven H. Cady is a Graduate Faculty member in the Organization Development Program at Bowling Green State University. He also researches, writes about, and consults to individuals and organizations about passion. Beyond that, Steve is an inspiration to me because he lives a life of passion and in doing so brings out the best in me whenever we are together – and more often than not, when we are thousands of miles apart!

Steve’s passion is helping others live their “first best alternatives in life.” We all make choices in life – everything from taking the job that simply pays the bills to finding the courage to tell that special someone in our lives that we love him/her. I recently participated in one of Steve’s passion workshops, and afterwards I asked him to explain his model with me. Please click on the link above to watch this exclusive interview with Steve and find out how you too can live your life of passion.

Listed below are the Six Ways to a Passionate Soul:

1. Know your Calling
2. Claim your Calling
3. See the Possibilities
4. Seize the Moment
5. Suffer (or really Don’t Suffer because you see your trials and tribulations as gifts)
6. Find your Center

According to Steve, passionate souls know their calling and claim it by committing to live their first best alternative in life. They also see the possibilities for supporting themselves in living their calling and seize the moment by staying focused and doing something about it. Then, passionate souls embrace their suffering because it helps shape who they are, and they are able to find the center of being too obsessed or depressed over it.

Passionate souls never compromise in their pursuit of living their calling because they recognize that they are a gift for those around them. Life is a journey, and as I learned from a childhood coach many years ago “What I had, I gave. What I kept was lost forever!” You only live this life once, so are you going to live your first best alternative or not?

When the recession set in late last year, I said to myself, “Oh, we’ll be fine. We have several major client engagements under way, and our clients aren’t pulling the plug on us yet.” Then in January, we signed a contract for another significant organizational change management effort, so I asked myself, “What’s everyone else doing wrong? We’re fine!” That’s when our largest clients reduced our level of support and in some cases didn’t even renew our contracts demonstrating to me exactly what this recession was all about. And that’s when I realized just why this was being called the worst global economic crisis since the invention of the telephone almost 140 years ago.

So what does this mean as we quickly approach year-end? NOTHING! It just means I spent a lot of time (and still do) listening to CNBC business updates and that we learned to run our business more efficiently this year getting more done with less. Those can always be beneficial exercises though. What would hurt us would be continuing to believe that we are stuck in a recession and can’t do anything about it. Well guess what… THE RECESSION IS OVER!

After conducting some informal market research the past few months, we developed the following Top 10 List of reasons why the recession is really over:

10. In May, Forbes states that indicators point to a fast-approaching end to the recession (May ’09)

9. Newsweek announces the “Great Recession” is over after home sales rise for 3 straight months – a 1^st since 2004 (Aug ’09)

8. Leading economist Alan Beaulieu of Institute for Trend Research says that we are at the beginning of an economic up-cycle (Sept ’09)

7. Partner at a leading advertising agency reports that his client – a major discount retailer – hasn’t spent this much money on Advertising in years (Sept ’09)

6. Associated Press captures senior economist saying the recession is over even though there will be no tangible evidence of the recovery until the middle of next year (Sept ’09)

5. Washington Post reports that the economy actually grew by 3.5% this summer (Oct ’09)

4. Corporate attorney at one of the world’s largest law firms says, “We’ve never been busier.” And that’s not just the bankruptcy guys! (Oct ’09)

3. CEO of a national consulting firm also says he’s seeing signs that clients are buying consulting services again – and consulting is typically the 1^st to go and last to come back from a down economy… (Oct ’09)

2. CNBC reports that, while unemployment has risen over 10%, companies are hiring a greater number of temporary workers (Nov ’09)

And the #1 reason why the recession is really over…

1. Because I said so! Do you need a better reason than that?

If you believe in self-fulfilling prophecies like I do, you better pull your head out of the recession NOW or you will undoubtedly experience many more bleak and dreary days on the horizon… It’s time to realize that the recession will be over just as soon as you say it’s over, so do something decisive and step into the recovery. For specific suggestions on what to do, check out this article we wrote earlier in the year to help business leaders renew their organizations and produce better business results – Strategic Organization Renewal^sm: Producing Better Business Results TODAY While Renewing Your Organization for Tomorrow