The dictionary defines it as “showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous.” But I like the thesaurus description much better: daring, intrepid, brave, valiant, valorous, fearless, dauntless, audacious, adventurous, heroic, plucky, spirited, confident, assured, swashbuckling…

I love the word “swashbuckling,” as it evokes images of pirates and sleek clipper ships running fast with the wind. Just imagine if we dressed up as pirates when describing our vision of winning to employees and stakeholders! Think it might change how they hear the message?

Bold can also be a word to describe your actions, your drive, your efforts, and your organization. But only if you’ve created habits and behaviors that constantly progress you and your team towards your vision of winning and excellence.

People are attracted to bold. Employees want to believe in something big. They want to pursue goals that push the limits, and they yearn to achieve something that has never been done before. They want to take bold steps to achieve their dreams and have a significant impact on their customers and the world.

The opposite approach is to be timid. And who wants to be known as bashful, fearful, apprehensive, timorous, trepid, intimidated, mousy, cowardly, faint-hearted, pusillanimous, or wimpy – especially by their customers?

Timid takes the safe course of action when the riskier one would yield much bigger rewards. Timid operates with a fear of failure mindset rather than a ”we play to win!” attitude. Timid settles for the field goal rather than going for the touchdown when it’s fourth and goal on the one-yard line. Timid may protect you from the pain of failure, but it won’t put you in a position of market leadership.

How do you get bold?

Pause and get clear on winning. But make sure it’s a big win. In football, teams want to win their divisions. But what they (and their fans) really want is to win the Super Bowl. Define what the Super Bowl looks like for your business or industry and then go out and win it!

Push the envelope. Bold doesn’t involve doing the same things over and over again. Remember the old Star Trek theme: to boldly go where no man has gone before. Fire up your Starship Enterprise and lead your company, your market, or your entire industry to a place it’s never been before. Keep in mind that what made you successful today will not necessarily make you successful tomorrow.

Project a bold image. For example, Starbucks currently has its baristas wearing red stickers about Bold. Of course, it refers to a new coffee they’re promoting. But no matter the context, the word “bold” reaches out and grabs your attention.

Think about some of the memorable tag lines or slogans that project bold. Nike’s ageless “Just do it!” Gatorade’s new slogan, “Win from within.” Apple’s “Think different.” Fed-X’s “When it positively, absolutely has to be there overnight.” Or even the Olympic phrase, “Go for the gold!” These exude bold. They draw a line in the sand and dare you to cross it. They make you want to get off the couch and achieve something big.

Act decisively. One disadvantage of today’s thoroughly wired world is that we can easily get paralyzed by information overload. The tendency to wait until we have gathered all the data before moving forward with a new project or product offering can be hard to overcome. Except that we will never have all the data.

Instead, we need to gather what we can from diverse sources and make sure we have considered as many different perspectives as possible. Then move forward boldly and aggressively, knowing that our plans will change along the way.

Most of all, position yourself as a winner by your thoughts, words, actions, and deeds. People want to align with a winner. And in today’s markets, it takes boldness to win.

If you’re not bold, what are you waiting for? Things to slow down? Fewer emails to distract you from winning? The light at the end of the tunnel (which is really a train coming at you full speed)?

The time to be bold is now! Being timid is not a goal or desired state, it is a default when we don’t pause and get it right, make it big, and stay focused on achieving something!

According to the Department of Labor, unemployment fell for a fourth month in a row. The current rate of 8.5% represents its lowest point at any time in the past three years.

Leading indicators also show that the economy continues to grow. Granted, it isn’t creating jobs as quickly as we would like. But economists expect that to improve during the second half of 2012. Also, employers are laying off fewer workers than they have in the past few years – another sign that bodes well for employees.

But here’s a fact that really caught my eye: the number of Americans quitting their jobs has begun to increase for the first time since well before the recession.

Generally speaking, people don’t voluntarily leave their jobs unless they already have another one lined up. Or, they have confidence that they can find a new job in a reasonable period of time. Combine an improving economy with this leading indicator and the employment pendulum appears to be swinging back to the employee side.

What does this mean to business leaders?

At the present moment, the majority of American workers are not happy campers! They’ve been let go, laid off, and cast aside. They feel mistreated, over-worked, and underappreciated. And they see banks and some large corporations raking in record profits while wages stagnate or decline.

Those who do have jobs have been stretched painfully thin to make up for understaffed organizations. They’re constantly being asked to do more with less. And they’ve all been running too fast for too long to feel much (if any) loyalty to the companies they work for.

Today’s workers appreciate having a job, but they don’t necessarily appreciate their employers. And with more employment options becoming available, don’t be surprised if your employees start migrating to other employers who will show them a bit more TLC.

One thing I have learned as a leader and manager is that inspired and employees rarely leave their jobs. If you want to avoid a mass exodus (or even the loss of a few key players) as more jobs become available, make inspiring and engaging your employees a top priority.

To inspire people:

Get clear on winning.

I realize I’m beginning to sound like a broken record on this one. But if there’s one record that deserves to be broken, this is it. No matter what your business or industry, people want to work for a winner! In order to win, they have to know what winning looks like for your organization. So get clear on winning, and then get going on communicating your vision of winning. And not just how you will win, but why.

Share your passion.

People understand why winning is important to the organization. They also want to know what it means to you. Talk frequently about why you feel so passionate about where the organization is going and how it will benefit customers, employees, and other key stakeholders when you get there.

Connect the dots.

Even when employees understand your vision of winning, they often have a hard time seeing their roles in it. Let people know — specifically — how their jobs contribute to winning and why it’s so important for them to perform at a high level. Also let them know how they will win on a personal level when the organization wins as a whole.

To engage your employees:

Give frequent feedback.

When employees don’t know where they stand performance-wise, they think you don’t care about it. When they think you don’t care, their interest in winning wanes. That’s when they start looking for people and/or companies that do care.

Listen up!

Actively solicit ideas and opinions from your employees and then pay close attention. Nothing makes people feel more engaged than having leaders and managers who take the time to hear what they have to say.

Pat their backs.

I have yet to run across a quicker, easier, and more effective way to engage employees than simple recognition for a job well done. A “thank you” here. A “nice job” there. The occasional small reward, such as a handwritten thank you, Starbucks card, dinner coupon, or gift certificate can go a long way. The return you receive from these small but sincere gestures will far exceed the investment of time and/or money.

Recognition, both public and private, feeds that very deep human need to be acknowledged and appreciated for our contributions. Feed it often and individuals in your organization will be far less inclined to seek out greener pastures.

Don’t wait until you have a turnover problem. Get ahead of the curve and begin re-recruiting your best team members through some of the simple behaviors and sincere appreciation noted above!

If you’re struggling to build a winning attitude in your organization, I have some encouraging news. Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.

Not some of the time, but always. Which has huge implications for business leaders trying to shape attitudes and opinions in their organizations.

According to the scientists, when the percentage of a population committed to a certain idea or opinion is less than 10 percent, that idea or opinion will spread very slowly, if at all. However, once that percentage climbs above 10 percent, the idea will spread like wildfire. As long as proponents of the idea hold firm to their belief, once they begin to talk about it, opinions about that belief will begin to gradually change and then at some point suddenly shift.

As an example, the scientists point to last year’s tumultuous events in Tunisia and Egypt, where dictators who held complete power for decades were toppled in just a few weeks.

Clearly, the uprisings benefited from the use of social networking tools, which made it easier to connect with others in the population. But the scientists assert that the type of network does not influence the 10 percent tipping point. As long as the percentage of committed opinion holders remains at 10 percent or higher, it will eventually become the majority opinion, regardless of how or where it got started or spread throughout the society.

For business leaders, this means we can leverage our efforts to build a winning culture by engaging informal thought leaders throughout the organization. And once we get that critical 10% to care as passionately about winning as we do, the majority of employees will soon adopt the same point of view.

How do you engage those thought leaders?

Start by sharing your compelling vision of what winning looks like for your organization. Not just how the company will win financially, but how it will improve the lives of customers, employees, and all key stakeholders. Talk about how you positively impact others and the world.

In meetings and in one-to-ones with direct reports, share why you feel so passionate about winning. What is it about where the company is going that gets you fired up to come into work every day? Ask employees what your vision of winning means to them. How does it motivate them to produce the results your organization needs? How does it impact the way they feel about how they earn a living?

To give people reasons to feel good about what the company does, share positive customer feedback. Relate stories of how your product or service solves problems for your customers or improves their lives.

Celebrate the achievement of milestones, both big and small. Nothing reinforces the positive aspects of winning like recognizing the progress and success people make along the way to the company’s goals.

During meetings, place visual cues around the room to remind people of the importance of winning. Eliminate language that supports outdated ideas and old ways of thinking (i.e., “good idea, but it will never work; we already tried that; the customer would never go for that”…).

Ask future, active, past tense questions to help people understand what winning looks like. For example, when we have won:

• What will we have achieved from a financial and market-share perspective?
• How will customers perceive our brand?
• How will our competitors view us?
• What will our workplace culture (attitudes, beliefs, values and operating principles) be like?
• What will be our greatest competitive advantage?
• What will we be doing to continually innovate to stay ahead of the game?
• How will working in this organization be even better than it is today?

Future, past tense questions open the brain to figuring out how to get it done versus what is getting in the way. When these questions focus on winning, it gets people thinking about playing to win rather than playing not to lose. It opens the brain to explore possibilities and alternative ways of achieving that we don’t even know we can ponder.

Ten percent is all it takes. If we can’t get one of out ten people to believe as passionately about winning as we do, then we either have a lousy vision of winning or else we’re in the wrong business!

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What an exciting game between two high-powered offenses! And once again, the sports world offered a powerful lesson for business leaders. Specifically, I’m referring to Saints coach Sean Payton and how he approaches the game of football. Now there’s a coach who plays to win!

If you follow pro football, you know it’s nothing new for Payton. In the Super Bowl a few years ago, he shocked the Colts (and just about everyone else) by doing an onside kick-off to start the second half.

Conventional wisdom says that you just don’t do that in the Super Bowl. Especially against an explosive offense like the Colts had at the time. Give them the ball at midfield and they’ll score in no time at all. But Payton plays to win (as opposed to playing not to lose), and his calculated risk served as the turning point in a hotly contested game.

In Saturday’s game against the Lions, Payton again demonstrated this philosophy going for it on fourth down. Not once, but several times. Conventional football wisdom says to punt and play it safe when your team has the lead. But Payton knew that holding onto the ball gave his team the best chance to win. So he took a few calculated risks, and they paid off.

Of course, it helps to have a quarterback like Drew Brees and plenty of offensive weapons, as the Saints do. But Payton’s “play to win” attitude clearly rubs off on his players. No matter the opponent or the situation, they don’t just believe they can win, they expect to win.

Why is playing to win so important?

People want to be on the winning side, and playing not to lose sends a subtle message that changes their thinking and their behavior. People become a little less focused on the small things that lead to winning. When faced with adversity, they get discouraged and disheartened a little more easily. And when major setbacks occur, they have doubts about whether the company can still win. When you play not to lose, you’re playing for second best (or worse).

What does playing to win look like in the business world?

Dare to take risks.

This doesn’t mean to call a fake punt on 4th down at your own 10-yard line. Risks should be calculated, not foolhardy. Look for opportunities that offer huge upsides with minimal downside if they don’t pan out. Or outline the risks and mitigate or minimize them beforehand.

Get comfortable with failure.

When you take risks, you will fail much of the time. They key is to make it safe for people to fail, and to learn from your mistakes. Even Tom Brady throws an interception every now and then, for gosh sakes. His coach puts him back out there every time. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough and you are probably falling behind.

Shake up the status quo.

This is hard for most business leaders to get comfortable with. In the U.S., we tend to have a real short-term mentality, especially in large public companies. We’re so worried about the quarterly numbers that we play not to lose rather than to win. When we innovate, we usually do it incrementally, which yields a safe but minimal return.

In today’s markets, becoming a market leader requires shaking up the status quo; going for the long bomb rather than the 3-yard run up the middle. Easier said than done. But if you don’t at least aim for it, you’ll never hit it.

Change your thinking.

Most of all, get rid of the idea that what made you successful today will continue to make you successful tomorrow. In football, the players keep getting bigger, faster and stronger. Coaches know they can’t stand pat, so they continually develop new offensive and defensive schemes to stay ahead of the game. In business, your competitors are also getting bigger, faster and stronger. To stay ahead, your products, services, and ways of doing business must continually evolve.

When it comes to winning, there’s one big difference between pro football and business. In football, the rules of the game are imposed on every team by the NFL. In business, when you play to win, you get to impose a lot of the rules.

When you change the way customers perceive value, they have to play by your rules. When you come up with a new product or service that transforms your industry, competitors have to play by your rules. And when you build an organization that is so passionate about winning that the top performers clamor to work for you, other employers have to play by your rules.

Doesn’t that sound like more fun than playing not to lose?

Will you be focused on winning and moving towards it each day, celebrating milestones along the way? Or will you be playing to not lose, worrying about the past, talking constantly about what went wrong, stewing about how tough markets are these days, why you can’t do something, or why customers just won’t X, Y, Z, etc., etc.?

A new year is all about possibilities, promise and potential. But making all those dazzling possibilities turn into a reality requires a real focus on, and a commitment to, winning.

When an organization lacks a clear destination, it usually has many ill-defined ones. Employees feel unmotivated and uncommitted. Time, talent, and resources get wasted on products and projects that go nowhere. And people end up working on their own personal agendas rather than doing what’s best for the company. They think they are doing the right thing, but directions changed and someone forgot to realign them.

Having a clear definition of winning provides focus and clarity at the individual, team, and organizational level. It gets everyone aligned and moving in the same direction. And it motivates and inspires people to perform at their best. When employees know where they’re going and what they need to do to get there, it becomes much easier to reach your destination.

That’s why your #1 job in 2012 is to create a compelling vision of winning, then keep yourself and everyone else in the organization focused on it with laser-like intensity.

Start by getting clear on your vision of winning. Pause to think about what really matters: what does winning look like for you? What do you need to do – as individuals and as an organization – to win? What will it look like when you have won?

Answer these questions with as much specificity as possible. For example, identify the key operational and financial metrics that you will have achieved. Paint a picture of what your workplace and culture will look and feel like when you have won – what attitudes, beliefs, and core values will the organization be living by?

Identify the skills, knowledge, tools, technologies, and abilities you will have acquired or enhanced in order to win. What organizational structures will be in place? What new products or services will you have brought to market? What new customers will you have acquired? How will you have leveraged the customer relationships you already have?

Once you have this crystal clear picture of winning, share it with everyone in your ecosystem. Not just employees, but customers, vendors, suppliers, partners, alliances – anyone that has a stake in helping you win.

Don’t share your vision of winning like you’re giving a quarterly financial report. Use it to inspire people. Talk about why winning is important to you personally, and why you feel so passionate about where the organization is going. Link your vision of winning to the bigger picture by letting people know how they will have made a difference in the world when you have won. At the same time, point out what’s in it for them when the organization wins.

To stay focused on winning, also get clear on what you will not do. Then make sure those things don’t sap your time, energy, and attention. Make a list of all the major initiatives and big projects that no longer fit your definition of winning and shut them down.

Most leaders know intuitively when a project no longer makes sense because the goals have gotten out of sync with changing market realities. Yet they still cling to the belief that they can somehow squeeze some mileage out of a dead horse. Don’t let outdated assumptions and thought bubbles prevent you from getting those obstacles to winning out of the way!

Help your organization stay focused by setting clear individual goals that link directly to the organization’s key strategies for winning. Then give ongoing feedback on how they and the organization are doing. You’ll know you’re communicating enough when every employee can answer these questions without hesitation:

• What are my top priorities?
• What are the three primary objectives I need to achieve this week/this quarter/this year?
• How will I know I have been successful after I have worked so hard this week/month/quarter?
• How will we know when we have won – as a team, as an organization?

As the leader, you set the tone for your entire organization. Does your language and behavior reflect a relentless approach to winning? Or does it reflect a willingness to settle for just not losing, being second best….or less?

Keep in mind as you read these that exposing yourself to diverse sources of information — even those that seem to have nothing to do with your business — is a great way to stimulate the brain and spur innovation.

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite dinner table subject: body parts.

• The blue whale’s tongue weighs about as much as an adult elephant.
• After circumcision, human foreskins are sold to biomedical companies and used as an ingredient in anti-wrinkle gels. (Think about that the next time you try to take a few years off your look!)
• A single square inch of skin on the human hand contains 72 feet of nerves.
• The human ear contains about 4,000 wax glands.
• In one hour, your heart burns enough energy to raise a ton of lead three feet off the ground. A pumping human heart can squirt blood as far as 30 feet.
• One to two percent of Americans have an extra nipple somewhere on their body.

Next we move on to the amazing world we live in, which is part of an even more awe-inspiring universe:

• Need to stock up for your New Year’s Eve party? According to scientists, the largest supply of alcohol resides in a vast alcohol cloud in the Milky Way that measures 288 billion miles across.
• Saturn has such a low density, that if placed in water, it would float.
• If there was no air between its atoms, the Earth would be about the size of a baseball.
• Nearly three-fourths of all the fresh water in the world is in Canada.
• What do Eric Clapton and all four of the Beatles have in common (besides a boatload of musical talent)? All have an asteroid named after them.
• At a steady pace of 6 mph, it would take a jogger 173 days to circle the earth.
• You can tell the temperature (in Fahrenheit degrees) by listening to a cricket chirp. Count the number of chirps in 15 seconds and then add 37.
• Siberia gets so cold that boiling water poured from a pot can freeze before it hits the ground.
• The state of Alaska has 40 active volcanoes, more than any other state in the U.S.

And wrapping up again with some more totally random facts:

• Before making it big, Jimi Hendrix played as the opening act for The Monkees on several occasions.
• Christopher Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria, weighed less than the rudder on the Titanic.
• One out of five American meals is eaten in a car.
• It’s about 10 times easier to shoot a hole-in-one-while golfing than it is to bowl a perfect 300 game.
• Every day, 500 Americans are injured in their bathtub.
• Keeping mothballs in your tool chest will help to prevent rust.
• A single ounce of gold can be stretched into a wire 65 miles long.
• Pope John Paul II was an honorary Harlem Globetrotter. (But could he dunk?)
• Party on! Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence while drinking beer in a tavern.

Merry Christmas to all, and best wishes for a prosperous New Year!

The bad news? If you think you’re running fast now, get yourself some new track shoes, because the world isn’t slowing down. In fact, it will continue to go faster and get more complex as time goes by. The good news is that we can turn this challenge into an opportunity by embracing three simple leadership strategies.

1. Get clear about winning.

I don’t mean partially clear, or sort of clear. I mean crystal clear on what winning looks like for your organization.

Become obsessive about winning, defining it with as much specificity as possible. Talk about it all the time with employees and other key stakeholders. Put visual reminders around you. Prompt yourself via your smart phone. Make sure every meeting starts out talking about winning. Embed your definition of winning into all your ways of working.

The hard part is that we can no longer define winning once, and then let it go. We now have to constantly revise and update our picture of winning as the world changes around us. We need to continually think about winning, continually fine-tune our version of winning, and continually move towards it while bringing our employees along with us.

2. Shed your outdated ways of looking at the world.

What gets in the way of winning?

More often than not, it’s our old ideas about what we “know to be true” about our customers, markets, and industries. It’s our brain’s natural tendency to screen in information that agrees with our view of the world and screen out data that contradicts it. And it’s our thought bubbles (unspoken thoughts and assumptions) that tell us what made us successful in the past will continue to make us successful in the future.

I’m not saying all old ideas are bad. But when our world changes so quickly, we need to make a habit of checking our ideas, assumptions, and beliefs on a regular basis. And by regular, I mean every few months, at minimum. Once a year will not cut it!

Start by gathering information on what you know to be true. Not what you assume, speculate or hope, but what you know to be true through verifiable data. For example, aging populations, changing employee demographics, shifting customer communication channels, etc. Then compare this data with what you think you know to be true.

Put the two data sets together and begin to explore:

• Of what we know to be true, what is no longer true? Why?
• What has changed with our customers? Our industry?
• What new wants or needs do our customers have?
• What new services or products can we come up with to meet those needs?
• How could we redefine value in our market?

3. Slow down to go fast.

I’ve been talking about this concept for several years, and it becomes even more important in 2012.

Slowing down to go fast requires pausing from time to time, challenging your beliefs and assumptions, learning to think differently, and focusing on opportunities to add value to customers in ways that nobody else is doing. It also involves setting yourself up to win by creating space for your brain to ponder, wonder, explore, and connect.

For example, start meetings by asking, “When we have done this incredibly well, how will we have done it?” This will prompt your brain to look for solutions rather than what’s in the way. Winning is about subtle shifts in language and behavior each and every day. Ultimately, it comes down to whether you’re looking for solutions or talking about, and focusing on, roadblocks.

Spotting the winners

It’s easy to tell the companies that have a clear picture of winning versus those that don’t. For example, Southwest Airlines is really clear on their mission as the low-cost provider. No baggage fees. No change fees. Constantly fine-tuning faster ways to load the airplane. They get it, their employees get it, and so do their loyal customers.

Counter this with American Airlines, which recently filed for bankruptcy. I frequently fly American because I live in San Diego and have limited options. I have no clue how their leadership defines winning, but I am guessing it varies dramatically from their flight attendants and gate personnel. I often wonder if their idea of winning is to see how badly they can tick off their passengers every day.

When it comes to winning, make sure everyone in your ecosystem gets it. Not just employees, but suppliers, vendors, partners, alliances, and even (and especially) your customers. When you’re a winner, it’s obvious to those who meet you and work with you.

Get clear on winning in 2012. Start looking at the world differently. And slow down to go fast so that you can focus on solutions rather than what’s getting in the way. Winning is not only good for your business, it’s a lot more fun!