To cut down on worrying about making a decision, analyze situation, determine what must be done and carry it out. In writing or on your PC:

Get all facts. Describe problem in detail. List all possible solutions. List advantages and disadvantages of each. Detail what you will do. Follow through.

With personal and work problems, consider all viewpoints, even those you initially do not want to consider. Take step one and move slowly to complete first task, after which next steps will become easier. Don't mountain climb over molehills.

By: Denis Orme ______________________________________________________________________________

America's help wanted ad should read, "New business leadership needed to build confidence and jump-start economy. Only those willing to replace stale management styles need apply."

Business leaders are faced with an unpredictable and frightening economic scenario - one they've never experienced before. First came dot.com crash of 2000, followed by recent terrorist attacks, frightening investors and crippling financial nerve center of our country.

Even before recent events American business had been in a twelve-month economic decline.

Each year for last five years over 45,000 corporate bankruptcies have impacted on lives of over a million people annually.

Add to that permanent loss of over 1,000,000 manufacturing jobs since 1999 and USA businesses face serious restructuring in this new one-world market.

Right sizing and scaling down are now normal business tactics. Over 800,000 Pink slips have replaced signing bonuses of just a year or so ago and many businesses are "encouraging" employees to use up vacation days or work 4-day workweeks.

No one ever downsized to greatness.

Politicians have their hands full defending our rights. They need help of strong, innovative senior executive teams and CEO's to rebuild America's confidence and jump-start economy now.

To do that a new breed of business leader is needed. Old management techniques need to be replaced with new leadership skills and business acumen. Traditional Business Planning Doesn't Work

Too often executives tinker with, add to, or subtract from last year's plan. If you want more of same, just do more of same. If you had a poor or mediocre result then all you will get is a similar mediocre result. Looking forward, even if you had a good result, incremental planning will now produce a poor result because economy has stalled, and recovery is not predicted until mid-2002.

In my direct experience and in observing planning process in hundreds of companies, an incremental approach to planning occurs just all too often and approach provides self-limiting outcomes.

The approach is self-limiting in that assumptions (too often based on perception and not fact) are made and self-imposed constraints follow.

Additionally, organizations go through life-cycles, just like life-cycles people experience.

However, often senior management is not aware of company's life-cycle stage. If stage is recognized, management may be unable to get organization back to flexibility of a much younger, healthier, growing organization.

Just as a family owned business must successfully transition from founder to other family members, so too must organizations transition successfully through changes in leadership, economic shifts, or culture in order to get organization on to a new growth cycle. This requires a vibrant leadership vision, new goal-driven strategies, and implementation of that vision by building and retaining high-performance teams.

However, it is difficult to change an organization. The culture you have today evolved over an extended period and changing it will require a sustained commitment. If you relax, culture will slip right back to starting point.

Any transition typically causes conflict that must be managed. Often organization may not be able to transition effectively without intervention from an outside influence or from occurrence of a triggering event.

The risk is that without change, you will lose your more dynamic people, lose market share and, unfortunately, in some cases, organization may die. I have presided over dissolution of several entities that were unable to make transition.

Much of thinking we do is incremental in nature. For example, in business you spend a lot of time reviewing where you are relative to where you have come from, and also spend a considerable amount of energy benchmarking yourselves against your competitors.

While an incremental approach is human nature, it is also self-limiting because as assumptions are made, self-imposed constraints follow.

The Greenfields Planning process ensures you start with a clean slate. A key element in this approach is to avoid incremental, self-limiting thinking.

The Greenfields Approach is straightforward:

· If you were starting this Business or Business Unit today, would you do business same way?

· If you would not do things same way, then why are you doing it that way now?

If you are looking for a quantum difference in your business then planning process should not commence with incremental, self-limiting thinking. Determination of actual constraints or finding ways to work around perceived constraints are final stage in planning process #6 - Implementation Action Items. The Greenfields planning process has six key elements to be explored in context of your business, and it is now time to start rethinking your business and developing plans which need to deliver sustained high-performance results. The planning process is rigorous, urgent, and driven by Results-Based Leaders.

Remember, it is planning without constraint.

1.SITUATION ANALYSIS - Ensure broad participation in completion of a detailed Situation Analysis to identify all areas in your organization requiring major review and change.

Note that an organization in decline will typically have low-growth or no-growth expectations.

Many of those in organization will be less likely to want to even attempt to change or recapture market share and will reward those who 'follow and don't rock boat.' Generally, these organizations are more interested in retaining internal relationships than taking personal risks usually associated with change.

Accordingly, in those cases it will be important to form a more objective Venture Team to carry out Situational Analysis.

How do you complete a Situational Analysis?