Crawling to Quadrant II

Published 6:00 pm Wednesday, February 26, 2020

“I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.” – Romans 7:15

Most days I feel like Paul’s comment in Romans. I know what I need to do to accomplish my goals, but I rarely do the right things.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve gotten pretty good at Habit 1 – Be Proactive. I know that if “it is to be, it is up to me.” Most days I feel God has given me everything I need to produce the outcomes I identified in Habit 2 – Begin With The End in Mind. Habit 3 – Putting First Things First so I can get the right things done, is where my plans tend to fall apart.

Why does planning seem so easy and executing so hard?

I believe the difficulties we face in executing our plans are a natural part of our maturation process. If God simply handed us the outcomes we asked for, we’d goof it up. Look at the horrible stories about lottery winners whose lives were destroyed by the instant wealth. They got the outcome but hadn’t built the fortitude required to handle it.

Here are the steps that Covey lays out to accomplish our big goals: Roles, Goals, Plans and Schedule or Delegate.

Let’s look at each of the four steps.

Roles

What are the primary roles you want to excel at in life? Be careful here. The first time I went through this process I wrote down every role that I wanted to excel at. My energies became scattered and I failed at most of the roles.

These days my priorities are simpler and in order of importance. They are Faith, Family, Finances/Work and Fitness. Only four categories. Yes, I still want to save the world but I’m not working on that by myself anymore. Jill and I look for ways to serve God and others as a family and I look for ways to serve in my work.

Goals

For each of your “most important” roles, what are your goals in each? Define the “win” for each. Start with the end of your life as we did in the exercises for Habit 2.

Plan

This is where we create our “backward plans” that begin with the end and create step-goals for the decade, year, month and week.

If creating backward plans is too much for you right now, pray for God to show you the next right step. Set a goal for the day or week. Sometimes we can’t see the possibilities until we start walking the path.

Schedule or Delegate

In this stage our lofty visions must become appointments on our calendars. Getting healthy requires time for exercise and time to plan and prepare meals. Making our sales goals requires time to plan and do. If we don’t get the activity to our calendars the whirlwind of life will take over and we will spend most of our days in Quadrants I, III and IV. Goals are set and accomplished in Quadrant II.

One of the things we will need to schedule in our calendar is time to delegate well. To delegate outcomes with instructions as needed. We need to spend our time in Quadrant II, but most of our time is currently spent in Quadrants I, III and IV. We must plan, schedule and delegate ourselves into Quadrant II.

If you are ready to get started creating more clarity and meaning in your organization and life, check out our free “Values Driven Leadership” course at  https://valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/.

As always, you can reach me at 229.244.1559 if I can help in any way.

Curt Fowler is President of Fowler & Company and Director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders build great organizations and better lives for themselves and the people they lead.  

Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker and business advisor. He has an MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children.