Start Your 100 Day Leadership Plan!

Photo Credit: Richard Chicoine iCopyright 2009

100 Day Plan for Leaders: Duck!

Background: How The 100 Day Plan Evolved

Photographer notices "the usual" and snaps the unusual. Sends image to creative writer. Writer's imagination stirred up - weekly.

Result? The innovative intersection which results in:
This blog.

My husband Richard is the photographer who inspires my writing. I never know what he's going to send as this week's theme.

My challenge: allow the story to unfold from the image.

As the lead facilitator for Leadership Thunder Bay - and in my "other practice" as a professional speaker and master coach, I need to keep my mind sharp and my brain flexible. Coherent.

Leaders expect me to guide them to the place where "they get it". Most of the leaders I work with, aren't familiar with the intimate details of how their brains get locked into familiar patterns and expectations. They need to experience as well as learn the theory.

My weekly musings and writings based on pictures, are just one example of how creative thought works in real life. I simulate and stimulate my own thinking style weekly. How could I expect others to do the same, if I don't take the lead? Let me share how this all happens. (And then we'll get to the 100 Day Plan: Duck!)

The Process (in short form)

• Image received... "Duck enjoying shower on a hot day"
• Research (what do I know about ducks?)
• Reflect (what do ducks and leaders have in common)
• Intersection of multiple ideas (key question: what else happens in 100 days)
• Hatch: 100 Day Plan Duck! for Leaders?
• Experiment: Draft 1 or 2 or 3...
• Laugh! (if it's not amusing or titillating, start again...)
• Action Plan: Write, edit, write, edit
• Remarks - comments - thanks!

That was the process. Now, for the real point of this column:

The 100 Day Plan for Leaders: Duck!
The intersection of Duck Maturity & Innovative Leadership Thinking

The research says:

Ducks incubate for up to 30 days. Hatch.

Ducks mature - reach that independent stage - in another 70 days or so.

Total? 100 Days...

Here's the bottom line:

The 100 Day Duck Growing Up Plan also applies to Leaders who want to grow.

If you, as LEADERS, could strategically incubate an idea or two - reflect - for 30 days and then move to action for another 70 days...

In 100 days, the changes you want to happen - your "tipping point HOT Seat GOALS - could begin, and also be measured.

* Always think in 100 day blocks of time.

(a) What is the concept you would like to take forward?

Take the time to reflect. Incubate. Don't rush.

Then hatch the central core of the plan.

(Let the duckling of an idea emerge slowly from its shell...first glimpse of surroundings, new environment...

(b) Work on the action plan - who else, what else, how. Research. Make intersections of ideas. Write it all down.

(c) Set up the standards and measurements, loosely at first

(d) Be aware of the "red flag" moments - do not discard what is niggling...find the texture and context of the part that doesn't seem to fit. Source the danger - get out of the nest. This could be the best part!

(e) Look ahead to the 100 day deadline (duck line) and back to measure your growth as you go. Allow natural growth. Do This Daily. Take notes.

(f) Start the next 100 days.

If Canada Day (July 1) marks Day 1, then Canadian Thanksgiving could be the 100 Day closure point.

What could you and your team accomplish during this 100 point continuum of thinking and actions?

If ducks can fly in 100 days......what about what you want to do?

Let me know!
***

Maggie Chicoine is Leadership Thunder Bay's Lead Facilitator for 2009 -2010 and a professional speaker, master coach and professional writer. She specializes in "Strategies to Think Ahead". Her experience speaks...with a twist of ingenuity.

807 939 3000 maggiechicoine@gmail.com