Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Monday, June 28th, 2010
The national autopsy has already begun following England’s exit from the World Cup finals yesterday. Whether football is your passion or not, there was a very obvious lesson to behold from observing the performances of the cream of English football. Talent is never enough.
In every walk of life there exists individuals who possess very obvious natural abilities yet they fail to bring those gifts to bear upon results. ABILITY and CAPABILITY are not the same. Capability is a result of ability that has been enabled by improved self-awareness. It’s just not possible to influence that which we’re not aware of.
The window through which the light of our potential shines is our attitude, and yet it’s what influences our attitude that addresses the question. More specifically, it’s what shapes our thoughts and feelings at any given time that makes the difference to our personal and professional performance.
Where awareness is lacking, our beliefs, the myriad of ideas that originated with other people and sources, the concepts that have been subliminally impregnated in the mind over many years, subtly influence the quality of our thoughts and emotions. We’re rarely conscious to this process, yet we live it’s consequences. Then there’s the unconscious acceptance of the opinions of external sources such as friends, colleagues, family and the media that influences our thinking with their way of thinking.
Last but certainly not least is the influence of leadership itself. Returning to the English football team, I doubt whether any of the players, who enjoy somewhat of a celebrity status, lacked belief in their ability to perform at the highest level, but they clearly lacked belief in something. That is a leadership issue.
Whether it was a lack of belief in the system and tactics employed on the pitch, or the consequences of poor communication between a leader who struggles with the English language and the world-class players at his disposal, at some level there was a lack of belief that infested the group psyche of the English camp. It intoxicated individual mindsets, nullifying the talent, skills and abilities that have brought these players to the world stage.
Sadly, whatever the field, achievement is not accomplished through reputation alone. Talent is never enough.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
A few eyebrows were raised at a business leaders meeting earlier this month when I discussed cutting training budgets as a means of cost reduction. To a certain extent, I actually agree that it’s an entirely appropriate thing to do in difficult economic times, however, very few business leaders faced with difficult cost reduction decisions undertake them with degree of intelligence, and it costs the business far more than it saves.
It’s fundamentally due to a perception problem. There’s a world of difference between training employees and developing them. The former can be sacrificed in the short term to enable suitable recovery without significant implications on performance, the latter cannot. Why? Because training provides competence, not sustainable improvements in performance. If staff are already competent in role, it’s personal development that inspires them to greater performance by drawing potential into performance, not more training.
Business performance is autobiographical, when employees are growing personally they’re growing professionally, and it ALWAYS correlates to growth in top and bottom line performance. This is nothing new, yet sadly, in a business world dominated at senior levels by economists and accountants, when it comes to leveraging the most expandable asset in the business, common sense is rarely common practice.
Training is strategically essential, however, in most cases, it’s misused against it’s purpose. Competence and performance are two very different aspects of success. Established and experienced employees can operate successfully without further training, they already know how to do the job, it’s how well they are doing it that is the key differentiator between surviving and thriving.
There needs to be a more intelligent approach to cost reduction exercises in the business community, specifically around organizational development, if leaders are to protect and grow their business in the unique challenges of the creative economy. Culling the entire employee development and education budget has dire consequences, with any short-term gain offset by the inevitable medium to long term pain.
Of course, the impact of unintelligent cost reduction measures are rarely measured, least of all by the perpetrators of such decisions, hence what feeds the naive and ignorant view that people development is an non-essential expense that can be turned off and on depending on the prevailing market conditions. It’s poor, reactive business leadership that seriously risks the sustainability of the business by liquidating its primary asset.
Unlocking the untapped potential of employees is not a “nice to have” when times are good, it’s a critical and permanent factor in business success that becomes even more imperative in difficult market conditions. Suspend training initiatives that provide in-role skills and competence if necessary during difficult trading periods, but never suspend the character development of employees.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, May 10th, 2010
I was speaking with a Chief Executive of a large professional services business a few days ago. During the conversation, he mentioned that his business prides itself on world class client service, and that his business strategy is underpinned by the mantra “the client experience is always king”.
I don’t think he’s alone in that, it’s an admirable and essential aspect of survival in todays service based economy. The problem is, it’s misinformed. The client experience isn’t king, the employee experience is, because the client experience will always reflect the employee experience.
It still astonishes me when I witness organizations who make little or no investment in the employee experience, and still expect those employees to deliver best in class service to their clients.
The issue goes much deeper than that. If we’re going to “unpeel the layers” and move from the effects of the client experience to the cause, we need to look at what creates the employee experience, and that responsibility rests firmly on the shoulders of the people employed in leadership positions.
The problem for most companies today is that they are so poorly equipped in leadership ability. They might have employees in positions of leadership, that doesn’t necessarily qualify them as leaders. I have found, in my two decades of business experience, that most of these employees are skilled in management not leadership, and there’s a huge different between the two in both practice and performance.
Let me put a simple analogy to you in an attempt to emphasise the point. You wouldn’t entertain hiring a person to improve the performance of your car who has little or no understanding of a car engine, would you? And you certainly wouldn’t hire someone who has never improved the performance of their own car.
Yet most companies employ people in leadership positions who have no understanding of the mind or how to influence it and have never engaged in any kind of self-development process. If you can’t improve yourself, then how on Earth can you expect to do it for someone else?
The evidence of how detrimental this is to the top and bottom line is plentiful for those awake enough to find it. The performance barometer for EVERY business, regardless of size, lies in its leadership ability.
Just as it is with individual growth, a business has to be prepared to look a little closer to home if it’s to sustainably improve results. In these unprecedented commercial times, the need to evolve beyond conventional approaches to leadership development and work at the cause of performance not the effects of it is long overdue. It’s time to start developing the character not the toolkit.
A company can make all of the platitudes it likes about the client experience, if the employee experience is dull, shaped by poorly equipped managers with an unhealthy exuberance to measure performance rather than improve it, the writing will be on the wall when it comes to results.
Be willing to ask some intelligent questions of your people. Get curious and take a look under the hood of your business. You might be surprised by what you find, and the first step to improving performance is becoming aware of what is currently inhibiting it.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
You might be surprised to hear this from someone in the field of personal and organization development, however, if you’re investing money in training with the intention of sustainably improving the performance of your employees, STOP NOW.
That’s right, I’m recommending you stop training your employees if you’re intention is to improve results and gain a sensible return on investment.
Sounds ridiculous does it? Actually, it isn’t when you examine the evidence. Every week there’s a business leader somewhere bemoaning the poor return on investment from training employees. A short term burst in performance may sometime occur however, beyond a few weeks, people continue to operate as they’ve always done.
In 2008, research conducted in the United States calculated the loss of knowledge from a typical training programme to be eighty-three percent in the immediate four weeks that followed. Ouch. Perhaps that’s why so many companies avoid measuring the actual impact of training on performance.
The problem isn’t with training, it’s about the perception of it’s capabilities. We have a misinformed and misaligned perspective of what training is actually for and what it can achieve.
Training is strategically imperative, however, it isn’t effective in sustainably improving performance because it’s purpose is to provide competence, not performance. You train talent to be competent, you coach and develop the person for performance.
What’s created this flaw in our thinking? It’s because our business training methodologies and adult educational systems are based on the same learning principles as the traditional education system, and it’s flawed.
For a start, the premise that knowledge is a prerequisite for improved performance is nothing short of a nonsense. The world of academia is built upon rewarding people for what they know, not what they do, the world outside of academia rewards people for what they do, not what they know. That creates a significant misalignment that limits human potential.
Most people know how to do a better job, the problem is, they’re not doing it, and you can pour in as much information as you like, the performance isn’t going to change. To change people at a behavioral level, you have coach and develop the person.
Training for competence in product, process, systems, marketplace, competitive landscape and technique is important, however, all of that knowledge isn’t going to deliver a lasting improvement in results.
Training does it’s job and does it well, however, any company intending to sustainably improve performance must maximise on the inherent potential of its’ talent, and that requires a very different approach to the one currently taken by the vast majority of organizations.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, March 15th, 2010
I thought I’d offer you a thought-provoking, true story that I recently shared with my Leaders Digest community.
It’s a cold January morning in 2007. In a Washington DC Metro Station, a man with violin begins to play six Bach pieces for approximately forty-five minutes. During this time two thousand people passed through the station,most of them commuting to work.
After three minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried along to meet his schedule. About four minutes later the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping,continued to walk.
After six minutes a young man leaned against the wall to listen, and then, looking at his watch, darted off toward the platforms. At ten minutes a three-year old boy stopped but his mother moved him along hurriedly. The child stopped again to look at the violinist, but again his mother tugged at him, this time even harder so the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, and EVERY parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
During the forty-five minutes, the musician played continuously. Only six people stopped and listened for a short while. About twenty gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
After one hour, he finished playing and silence ensued. Nobody noticed, noone applauded. There was no recognition at all.
The violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell played to a full-house in a Boston theater where the average ticket price to listen tohim play the same pieces was $100.
Joshua Bell played incognito in the DC Metro Station in partnership with the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.
The experiment raises many questions, here are only a few:
In a common environment, at an inconvenient hour, do we perceive the beauty that surrounds us?
How limited is our conscious awareness as we speed through our lives in the endless of pursuit of doing for doings’ sake?
What is inherent within children that we appear to disconnect from as adults?
Are we able to recognize talent in an unexpected context, and what talents do we consequently miss in ourselves and others?
If we don’t have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made, what else are we failing to notice as we rush through our lives?
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, March 1st, 2010
It’s not a statement you’d expect from a person who’s calling in life is to facilitate growth and success in others is it? But that’s the point, success is a consequence of personal growth, and personal growth is amplified as a consequence of failure.
We have a perception problem. Knowledge is not a prerequisite for success. Some of the most knowledgeable people on the planet are unhappy, unhealthy, financially destitute and struggle to have meaningful connections with other people.
Success is a consequence of wisdom, and wisdom is knowledge applied through experience. And even that isn’t the full story, because we don’t really learn from our experiences, if we did, we wouldn’t keep on doing the things that no longer serve us in relation to our expansion and success. We learn from evaluated experience. So our true learning and the foundation for greater success in life comes from knowledge applied through an evaluated experience, the outcome of which is wisdom.
Interestingly, we rarely choose to learn from success either. It often takes failure for our eyes to open (although many people fail to learn from failure too). I’ve seen many leaders in business carry out a detailed post mortem on a failed contract opportunity, which is a very useful exercise, yet rarely have I seen them do the same on a successful one. If you aren’t willing to also learn from your successes then how on Earth can you expect to replicate them in the future?
Once again, it’s a perception problem, and it’s not the only one. Failure has become a dirty word for many people, yet failure is a necessary component of success. You need to experience what’s not right in order to understand what is.
That’s why the journey of successful entrepreneurs is littered with failures, some of them catastrophic by many people’s standards. And yet what differentiated those successful few was that they understood the process, dusted themselves down, assessed where it went wrong, adjusted their though processes and behaviors, and got on with it. They understood that success is not a consequence of what you have but who you are, the purpose of failure is to help you grow in order to become the person worthy of the success you intend for your life. It’s a truth that applies to every aspect of life, from boardroom negotiations to personal relationships.
Failure is the most potent form of learning there is. Sadly, most people attempt to avoid it by not making decisions, scared of the risk. Growth cannot occur in the absence of risk. Ironically, by avoiding failure, they’re already experiencing it, they’re just not aware of the fact and consequently, not learning in the process. Failure is not in the falling down; it’s in the staying down. That is why I say in the interest of your success, I hope you fail.
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
One of the most profound understandings that I have been blessed with from my 15 years as a serious student of leadership and success is that our potential is limitless. Anyone who chooses to study human potential to any degree will discover this incredible truth.
Every individual has been gifted with unique abilities in which to draw that unlimited potential into performance. Sadly, so very few of us choose to do so. It’s been said that many people possess a hundred acres of possibilities but keep only one acre under cultivation. Why? The primary reason is most people are unwilling to take what they perceive to be risks.
Taking risks is essential for success. It provides the birthing process for unexpressed potential. Success is a consequence of growth and growth is a consequence of risk. All growth occurs from the willingness to take risks, and yet, for most people, risk is something that is simply unpalatable.
It’s not as if I’m referring to the kind of risk that puts everything on the line (and that’s what the most highly successful people are willing to do by the way). I’m referring to how many people consider it a risk to do anything outside of the routine of mediocrity that is often referred to as a “comfort zone”, living out the same old daily/weekly/monthly activities, rarely, if ever, willing to even contemplate doing anything outside of that routine in order to help them achieve more in their personal and professional lives.
It’s the default setting of the masses, and there is nothing more limiting and detrimental to success in life.
It’s no exaggeration that most people tip-toe their way through life hoping to make it safely to death. In a recent study, fifty people over the age of ninety-five where asked “if you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?” The most common answer was “if I had the chance to do it all again, I would risk more”.
Risk and growth are the fast lanes on the highway leading to success. What evidence exists right now in your personal and professional life that indicates you are willing to take risks?
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
About a month ago a good friend called me up with a proposition. The charm offensive began in earnest, “Christian, with all the transformation you’ve brought into your life, you’re the one guy I know who’d be up for a new challenge”. With my ego suitably stroked, I replied, “of course, what do you have in mind?” (Ignoring the knots in my stomach as I said it).
Two weeks later I found myself in Snowdonia, North Wales, climbing the UK’s most dangerous peak. So, there I am, a man who’s climbing experience hadn’t advanced further than taking the stairs in a typical corporate office, navigating my way up the treacherous rise of Crib Goch, a notorious approach to Snowdon, standing just under 1000 meters in height and infamous for it’s fatalities.
The approach was a mass of wet, slippery, vertical rock and the peak is half a mile of long thin, jagged rock, with sheer drops of 900+ meters on either side. One slip, as unfortunately many have found, and it’s over.
For my virgin climb, I was in at the deep end.
I have never felt fear like it. As we got ever closer to the peak, ever cell in my body screamed at me to go back. It isn’t possible because the ascendency to the peak of Crib is so vertical that once you’ve scaled it there isn’t any going back, not for a novice like me, and anyway, going back is not a choice I’ve ever made in my life, so whether it was courage or plain stupidity, I had to go on.
It’s in the experiences of our lives that we truly evolve, and there were many profound lessons on this 8-hour jaunt. The most profound of all was how we allow our current perception, which is always based upon the boundaries of our existing comfort zone, to feed the fear within us that we then allow to prevent us from becoming more that we currently are.
It struck me, as I clung to the rock with the wind howling through my hair, how many of us live our lives imprisoned by our false perception of the feeling of fear.
Of course, there are times when fear is there to protect us, and it’s motives are not entirely unreasonable when scaling dangerous heights, however, the same emotion applies whenever we attempt to do something different in our lives. It’s our perception of fear that defeats us. We perceive it’s telling us we can’t or shouldn’t do something, when in fact, in the vast majority of experiences in life, it’s simply telling us that we’re about to grow, about to do something we haven’t done before.
It’s with increased awareness and understanding that we can distinguish between the fear that is preventing us taking measures that risks our lives, and those which alert us to our growth. It’s the latter that we misinterpret, and that’s why Zig Ziglar described fear as False Evidence Appearing Real.
Posted in Leadership Thinking, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Companies often get berated for the lack of investment made in the development of employees, and whilst it’s an accurate observation in many situations, just how much responsibility are employees taking for developing themselves?
The answer is very few. In the main, corporate employees still behave as if their employer is responsible for their personal development. That is not the case.
A company’s responsibility is to train people to ensure they are competent at the job/function they are responsible for. It’s then a matter of employing leaders (not managers) with the specific responsibility and capability to continually improve performance by drawing untapped potential into performance.
But what about the employee’s responsibility to develop themselves? The vast majority of people employed by a company still abscond the responsibility of making any kind of investment in their own personal development, and yet many are the first to criticize their company for not nurturing their talent.
This kind of limited thinking is the consequence of cultural imprinting. It was the default mentality of the working masses in the industrial age, a throw back to when people often worked for a single employer for decades, if not their entire working life.
The job for life is confined to the museum of employment history. Employees can expect to have, on average, 6 to 8 employers in their careers, and whilst the changing dynamic of business life is something to be celebrated as it offers more choice and diversity, it brings with it greater responsibility to both employees and employers.
In the pursuit of greater career success and fulfillment, individuals need to be willing to contribute at least 10% of their income to their own personal development, that is, improving their self-awareness, developing their emotional and spiritual intelligence, creating a clear vision for personal success and underpinning that vision with meaningful, personal goals (not simply working to the numerical target given by their employer).
For companies, it is time to get beyond the conventional approach of sponsoring leadership talent onto MBA’s, we are in a new age and it requires a radical rethink of how to nurture talent in the pursuit of performance.
Self-leadership is essential for success and should be encouraged at every level by offering employees access to professional coaching and personal development programs that individuals choose to invest in. Many companies shy away from this approach, fearing employees will frown upon having to invest in themselves. It’s incredible short-sighted and constrains performance.
Developing a culture of self-leadership is a win-win situation. Employees grow, stretch, become more creative, effective and resourceful, performance improves, retention increases, and the next generation of leaders emerge. It also offers any company a clear insight into who the real leaders are, for those willing to improve themselves become increasingly skilled at doing the same for others.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, October 19th, 2009
Our pursuit for improved results is greatly undermined by our cultural imprinting. Doing things how we’ve always done them is hardly the foundation for improvement in any area. We have a traditional education system that rewards us for what we know, not what we do, yet life and our business world is constructed to reward people for what they do, not what they know.
What’s makes this even more concerning is that the predominant learning model for our adult education system, including organizational development, remains largely based upon traditional educational strategies, immersing people in information in the blind hope that it sticks and can be regurgitated when required.
The performance gap in life is between what we know and what we do. Most people know how to do a better job, yet few of them are. Why is that? Because no amount of knowledge will help a person perform better unless that knowledge is applied, and that is not as simple as it might sound.
Any sustainable change in performance can only result from a change in behavior, and that takes more than just an intellectual understanding. Ask any smoker, they know what they are doing is killing them, and yet they still do smoke. Ask any overweight person, they know they need to exercise and reduce calorie intake, and yet the vast majority fail to so.
The part of the human personality where all learning takes place happens also to be where all behavior is originated. It is not the intellectual mind. That’s why Einstein said “we should be careful not to make the intellect our God, it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality”.
An evolution needs to take place in our thinking. In the pursuit of performance there needs to be a shift from focusing on performance (effect) to potential (cause). Only then can a sustainable improvement in performance be accomplished. This is one of the primary differences between a manager and a leader, the former measures performance, the latter nurtures potential.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
