Work-Life Balance

The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man. I’ve surveyed thousands of audiences about their greatest personal and professional challenges. Life balance is always at or near the top.

Much of my teaching and writing in this area has focused on the power each one of us possesses to:

1) Take responsibility for, and become the creative force of, our lives.

2) Decide what's most important in our whole lives--developing a vision and deep commitment to the "first things" of life.

3) to then put those first things first and organize our lives around our priorities. For something that seems so self-evident to most people, it’s remarkable how many of us struggle to translate our intellectual awareness into day-to-day practice and decision-making.

The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.

We have found there are four keys or organizational/team disciplines that produce this kind of freedom and productivity:

-- Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important. This means you need to narrow your focus down to the one, two or three most important goals you must achieve. These goals are so important that if you don’t achieve them, nothing else you achieve really matters much.

-- Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures. After you’ve narrowed your focus to the few key goals you must accomplish, you need to select the few key activities that are predictive of goal achievement and that you can influence on a weekly basis. These are called “lead measures.” These lead measures are 80/20 activities--that is, 80% of the results come from 20% of these activities. The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto principle.

-- Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. Once you’ve defined your goals and measures, you need to put them on a scoreboard so everyone knows all the time whether you’re winning or losing.

-- Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability—a rhythm of team-based engagement and accountability.

Want balance in your life? Then sure, get your own act together, but don’t forget four powerful disciplines of execution in your team and organization. You’ll not only produce results, you’ll create your own freedom.

Copied From:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/03/19/covey-work-life-lead-careers-worklife07-cz_sc_0319covey.html