Tag: focus

One Word, One Phrase, or One Question for the Year (1-4-23)

Happy Wednesday and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope you had wonderful and relaxing holidays.  For the past couple of years, I’ve started January with a series to help us have a strong start to the year.  This week we will reflect on our north star for 2023. 

At the beginning of every year, I take time to reflect and choose a word or phrase that will be my north star for the year.  I’ve found it helps ground me vs. getting lost among setting too many goals.  To identify my one word/phrase I ask myself things like: What went well last year that I want to continue?  Where could things have been better?  What do I want to achieve?  How do I want to feel about things?  What do I want others to notice and say about me? 

In 2022 my phrase was, “Channel the chaos” and I did that and then some 😉 Everything was crazy from the start, and while I was able to find ways to channel a majority of the chaos into progress it did take a huge toll on me.  With that in mind, my phrase this year is, “Protect my peace.”  The phrase is a reminder that my primary goal is to find peace, which I view as that feeling of stillness and connection with the important things in life.  Protect my peace is about understanding that I will need to take ACTION in order to maintain this peace.  Inaction will allow life and its challenges to erode this peace.  I’ll need to be disciplined and deliberate about creating the time and space for me to find and remain in a state of peace.  Part of protecting my peace will be about putting the right boundaries in place in work and life.  Part of it will be about putting the right habits in place, so I have the fuel and mental/physical/emotional health to handle life’s challenges.

The challenge: What is your one word or short phrase for the year?  What is your north star? 

Bonus: A few weeks ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn from Eric Johnson, co-host of The Inside Job podcast along with Dr. Nayla Bahri.  He shared a story about a co-worker who decides to go with a question of the year instead of a word/phrase of the year.  For example, “How are my actions aligned with my vision?”  “How am I growing?”  I thought this was a really cool approach.  Nayla and Eric dove deeper into this idea of a new question to start the year in the most recent episode of their podcast.  Go HERE if you want to give it a listen.  I’m going to keep noodling on my question.  The first thing that pops into mind is: How would the person I want to be respond in this situation?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Centered vs. Focused->Customer Centricity vs. Customer Focus (2-9-14)

Has anyone else seen that Nike is going to make Marty McFly shoes!  That got me daydreaming about going on a day trip in a Delorean.

Let’s take it all the way back to the late 1400s and early 1500s.  If you were like most people at the time you would think that the sun is bright and worth focusing on, but the earth is the center of our galaxy.  Then, one day Copernicus came along and theorized that actually the sun is the center of our galaxy, not the other way around.  Talk about blowing minds and shattering paradigms…

Now, let’s come back to the present.  What is your life centered on?  What are things that you focus on in life?  For me, my life centers on and revolves around my family.  Everything I do I do for them.  Now I focus on a few things, being a great partner at work, writing poems, performing slam, etc., but everything I do always connects back to my family.  Do you see the difference between centered and focused?

I bring this up, because one day a colleague pointed out to me that we use the phrases “customer centric” and “customer focused” like they were interchangeable, but they aren’t.   Being customer focused means that we are only this way when we are really thinking about it.  On the other hand, being customer centered means that everything we are doing, big or small, revolves around helping customers.  If the customer is the sun in our solar system, then that light and gravity should be dictating everything that we do.

Are you customer centered, patient focused, or neither?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry