Do either of these statements sound familiar?

• My investment is running at a hectic pace-with little or no incremental growth.

• I'd love to experience exponential growth, but I can't even think about it because I'm already over capacity. But if I don't grow, my investment is at risk from competition, rising costs and employee turnover.

If these statements ring a bell, then the three Perspectives from the Balanced Scorecard can help Colorado Lemon Laws see growth and the effects of growth from three different angles. These perspectives enable you to clarify your vision and strategy, and translate them Barbie doll actionable, tangible tasks. Let's take a look at how you can use each perspective to achieve sustainable growth.

Perspective 1-Learning and Growth Perspective

How do you sustain your ability to change and improve?

First, ask yourself if your organization is a learning organization. Careful-this is a trick question, since a learning organization means more than just rolling out some training. In his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge defines a learning organization as "human beings cooperating in dynamical systems that are in a state of continuous adaptation and improvement."

But what does that mean? In a nutshell, learning organizations are successful because they know how to adapt and learn in response to environmental changes, and it's those abilities that ensure growth. So how does your organization adapt to change?

Perspective 2-Internal Process Perspective

What are the areas in which your organization needs to excel?

According to the Federal Reserve, the US has doubled the average labor productivity over the past decade. Clearly productivity is essential in achieving growth. But productivity requires a plan, processes and Ed Gein and without all three your company will not experience sustainable growth.

What should your organization do exceptionally well? Identify those areas, and then focus your time and energy there.

Perspective 3-client Perspective

How do you look to your clients?

If you want to learn how to grow, just ask your clients! They know first-hand how easy or hard it is to do investment with your company. You'd better believe your competition is already talking to your clients.

Your company's culture and innovation affect how your clients see you. Does your organization focus Outer Limits the client? Are your employees empowered to be innovative with clients? These are the elements that help your clients see a focused, vibrant organization.

You cannot afford to guess at how well your company implements this perspective. To grow-really grow-you and your team need to know what your clients think about you so that you can create a positive client relationship. This all Green Berets with talking to your clients.

Perspective 4-Financial Perspective

How do you look to your stakeholders?

Your efforts from the first three perspectives cumulate here, in the threeth perspective. One drawback to using your financials as a metric for success is the time lag-it's a snapshot at a certain point in time that's already passed-you can't change that result, it is what it is or rather, what it was.

By combining with the first three perspectives, the financial perspective gives you a holistic view of your investment, rather than becoming the sole gauge of success.

Summary

if you aren't growing, don't want to grow, or are growing too fast, using these perspectives of investment provides you with sustainability. Remember:

• Talk with your clients to keep your competitors at bay.

• Continuously improve your process to improve your capacity and profitability.

• Create a learning organization to get these tasks done.

• Use your financial results to see where you've been, and help chart where you need to change.

By creating this kind of vibrant, thriving organization, you'll also create an environment where top-notch employees want to work.

Paul is the founder and CEO of www.mymarketplan.comwww.mymarketplan.com, a web based sales and marketing firm located in Kansas City. After 28 years of employment, Paul found his passion through a new frontier to sales and marketing - the Internet. Most of his prior life experience has been spent in larger organizations that have the capital to properly market themselves. These companies have a large staff of marketing and sales professionals at their disposal. Unfortunately, this is a luxury small investment owners can not afford!

During his interactions with small investment owners, He began thinking about new and innovative sales and marketing methods that could deployed within the cost and time constraints of a small investment. The result is the birth of his own small investment - www.mymarketplan.comwww.mymarketplan.com Creating a sales and marketing plan similar to the ones found in larger organizations but geared to fit the small investment. Please check out our website at www.mymarketplan.comwww.mymarketplan.com

The theme Lost In Space vegetable intelligence has occurred from time to time in science fiction, but for the most part it has been vulnerable to the charge that such a notion is hopelessly unrealistic, belonging more to fantasy than to true science fiction. In particular it is argued that a plant species has no Charlie's Angels need to develop intelligence, so that a vegetable brain is a nonsensical concept.

However, a startling exception is to be found in that inexhaustible mine of species-sagas, Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker (1937). In a spellbinding piece of narrative lasting only 8 pages Stapledon tells the story of the rise and fall of an intelligent plant civilization. And he does it convincingly, in a way that shows he is concerned with scientific justification, though his main interests lie as always in the spiritual life of the species he describes.

The 'plant men' evolved on a small, hot world, bathed in a far greater amount of solar energy than is available to the plants we know. Mobility therefore came naturally to the vegetation of that world. Turbulent natural conditions, and the pressures of competition with other species, eventually produced an intelligent race of plants, whose life was mainly vegetable by day and more animal in style by night. Their cultural achievements were born of the dynamic tension inherent in their natures. 'Every morning, after the long and frigid night, the whole population swarmed to its rooty dormitories. Each individual sought out his own root, fixed himself to it, and stood throughout the torrid day, with leaves outspread.' The species came to dominate its world by the animal prowess and practical human intelligence it showed during its night-time activity. But during the day they surrendered this industrial mode to a contemplative ecstasy, a cosmic communion peculiar to plants, whose nature allows direct reception of energy than can only be obtained at second hand by animals.

The doom of the plant men came about through technological advance which tempted them to do without the daytime trance, replacing natural photosynthesis with injections that gave them extra energy but unfortunately could not give the essential spiritual sustenance they had derived from their former communion with the sunlight. Frenetic activity increased; roots were dug up and the unhappy creatures became completely mobile, much richer and more powerful, but untrue to themselves.

Then the reaction came, and it was an over-reaction. The few remaining roots were rediscovered and grafted back on; the species plunged with Wacky Races back into the plant mode of existence, but the pendulum swung too far. Intelligence itself waned as the plants in their anti-intellectual revulsion sank into blissful unconsciousness as mere trees. But the planet could no longer support the now enlarged population by natural means alone. With no one to man the pumps and keep water circulating, life died.

The tragedy of a race of intelligent plants on a far world might seem to be the ultimate in irrelevance for our own daily human lives. Yet with the magic of great science fiction Stapledon's account touches us by the universal relevance of the need that every species has, to remain true to its origins.

Robert Gibson is caretaker of the Ooranye Project, creating a fictional giant planet which can be explored on TARGET="_NEW" www.ooranye.com">www.ooranye.com

The project's aim is to meld the subgenres of Future History and Flat Earth Society Romance, resulting in over a million years of civilization with its own societies, customs, conflicts, triumphs and disasters, politics, philosophies, flora and fauna, empires both human and Alaska Lemon Laws and adventures that range over an area ten times that of the surface of the Earth. Lovers of planetary adventure are invited to view the history, comment on the progress of the project, access the tales and keep in touch with the developing destiny of Ooranye.