2020 is here.

What are you exploring? What are you deciding to do?

How effective is it?

A definition of “effective” reads as follows: “successful in producing a desired or intended result.” 

Defining “successful” is crucial, and recognizing effective is not synonymous for “perfection” nor it is without mistakes, re-groups, and stopping and re-starting.

Notice, it doesn’t say “the only” result either.

What I find to go hand in hand with effectiveness, is strategy.

Strategy could be defined as: “the art of planning to achieve an overall aim.”

Yes, this could look clinical. However, as an artist, a performer, an artist pursuing a career, we can get very creative with this idea of “effective strategy”. There is an art to it, as well as an action. The creativity you choose to approach it with, will be guided by your own sensibilities, your own approach, your unique abilities. What I love about it, is that is can stay creative without getting emotional or activating the imposter syndrome. It is action without emotion.

First - what isn’t effective? Doing the same thing over and over with the results netting zero.

What do you want to DO? That’s your first task.

I am going to approach this from a singing-actor artist perspective. Feel free to adjust accordingly if that isn’t you.

As an artist pursuing a career, you have two larger and parallel positions: craft/skill/technique and business.

Within each, there are many off-shoots and it’s easy to get lost in the weeds.

Simplify.

Figure out if you are a big picture person, working from the outside in; or if you are a detail first, one step at a time to reveal a bigger canvas.

Often we can do both, so choose what works for you more comfortably. It might not even be the same from the craft to the business. Enjoy this discovery.

How effective is your craft? Get serious about figuring that out. What do you say you do? Can you do that? How well can you do that? What needs more work? What would it take for you to be ready to do all of that?

If you start from the big picture as an example: I want to be able to sing a lead 8 shows a week. Or, I want to take on an operatic role in a “A” house.

What does that take? Craft-wise, talent-wise, psychologically? What do you need to do? If it starts to feel overwhelming, then you go into the detail of the NEXT step, not the LARGER step. As those steps become clearer, and you begin to engage in them fully, the overall big picture may change; the direction may change, based on the effectiveness of your strategy.

And the big picture may not be that. I started big as an example. The big picture may be broken down into increments that make sense in order to find success in shorter and more accessible time lines and actions.

Make sense?

You can learn to get effective and strategic with HOW you are studying. HOW you are practicing. WHAT you are building.

Same goes for the business of you.

Spaghetti at the wall may be a strategy, but how effective is it? Is it the best use of your time and energy, and frankly your resources. Or is it simply a distraction?

Big picture or first step: you decide how you approach it. Work it forward, work it backward - it matters not, as long as you discover the art and creativity of an effective strategy for your business that parallels your craft and your ability as an artist.

The big picture can always morph and change. It simply gives you an outline and a template to begin to fill in. As the steps toward begin, the picture reveals itself more fully, and the outline may be adjusted accordingly.

Some of the most important and most effective thoughts as you create your strategy to become more effective are:

who are you connecting with? why?

who are you following up with? why?

what relationships are you beginning to develop? what relationships are you continuing to develop? How?

How are you connecting? How effective is that?

Observe how you are doing things. Make decisions on effectiveness - and don’t beat yourself up! You aren’t doing anything “wrong”. If it’s not effective, realizing that and changing your strategy is a decision not an emotion. It’s not right or wrong; you aren’t good or bad. It’s a choice, and when we know better, we do better.

I challenge you with discovering a more effective strategy in your pursuit of success. The definition of that success is up to you and it’s never locked in stone.

I ask my singers when they walk in the studio each time, no matter how “regularly” I see them or not:

why are you here today?

There is no right or wrong answer. We need to be on the same page in strategy so our effectiveness together can begin to shed light and awareness on the reason they are there.

Claim the action of finding effective strategy. In craft, in business, in you.

Enjoy the discovery it brings!!