Some words of encouragement for you, if your race towards your goals in the first half of the year did not go as well as you had hoped.
You might know someone who could use this to re-energise themselves and redouble their efforts for the times ahead, if so feel free to pass it on.

”Quit, give up, you’re beaten” They shout at me and plead
“There’s just too much against you This time you can’t succeed”.
And as I start to hang my head in front of failure’s face,
my downward fall is broken by the memory of a race.
And hope refills my weakened will As I recall that scene
Or just the thought of that short race Rejuvenates my being

A children’s race, young boys, young men; how I remember well,
excitement sure, but also fear, it wasn’t hard to tell.
They all lined up so full of hope, each thought to win that race
or tie for first, or if not that, at least take second place.
And fathers watched from off the side, each cheering for their son.
and each boy hoped to show his dad that he would be the one.

The whistle blew and off they flew Young hearts and hopes afire
To win and be the hero there Was each young boys desire
One boy in particular, whose dad was in the crowd,
was running in the lead and thought “My dad will be so proud.”
But as he speeded down the field across a shallow dip,
the little boy who thought he’d win, lost his step and slipped.
Trying hard to catch himself, his hands flew out to brace,
and midst the laughter of the crowd he fell flat on his face.
As he fell, his hope fell too; he couldn’t win it now.
Humiliated, he just wished to disappear somehow.

But as he fell his dad stood up and showed his anxious face,
which to the boy so clearly said, “Get up and win that race!”
He quickly rose, no damage done, behind a bit that’s all,
and ran with all his mind and might to make up for his fall.
So anxious to restore himself, to catch up and to win,
his mind went faster than his legs.; he slipped and fell again.
He wished that he had quit before with only one disgrace.
“I’m hopeless as a runner now, I shouldn’t try to race.”

But in the laughing crowd he searched and found his father’s face
that steady look which said again, “Get up and win that race!”
So he jumped up to try again, ten yards behind the last.
“If I’m to gain those yards,” he thought, “I’ve got to run real fast!”
Exerting everything he had, he regained eight, then ten…
but trying hard to catch the lead, he slipped and fell again.

Defeat! He lay there silently. A tear dropped from his eye.
“There’s no sense running any more! Three strikes I’m out! Why try?
The will to rise had disappeared All hope had fled away
So far behind so error prone A loser all the way
I’ve lost, so what’s the use?” he thought. “I’ll live with my disgrace.”
But then he thought about his dad, who soon he’d have to face.

“Get up” the echo sounded low “Get up” and take your place
You were not meant for failure here “Get up”, and win the race
”With borrowed will “Get up” it said “You haven’t lost at all”
For winning is no more than this To rise each time you fall

So, up he rose to run once more, and with a new commit
he resolved that win or lose, at least he wouldn’t quit.
So far behind the others now, the most he’d ever been,
still he gave it all he had and ran as though to win.
Three times he’d fallen stumbling, three times he rose again.
Too far behind to hope to win, he still ran to the end.

They cheered the winning runner as he crossed the line first place,
head high and proud and happy no falling, no disgrace.
But, when the fallen youngster crossed the line, last place,
the crowd gave him a greater cheer for finishing the race.
And even though he came in last with head bowed low, unproud,
you would have thought he’d won the race, to listen to the crowd.
And to his dad he sadly said, “I didn’t do so well.”
“To me, you won,” his father said “You rose each time you fell.”

And now when things seem dark and hard and difficult to face,
the memory of that little boy helps me in my own race.
For all of life is like that race, with ups and downs and all.
And all you have to do to win is rise each time you fall.
And when depression and despair shout loudly in my face,
another voice within me says, “Get up and win that race!”

I came across this poem again through a friend, Andy (Thanks Andy!) It resonated deeply with me and have shared it with many people who have also found it useful. It is called ‘The Race’ and is writen by D. H. Groberg.  I find that simple words can stir the soul to action much more than management speak! One of my mother’s learned poems, which she used to recite to us kids, has lived with me forever – and now lives with my 2 sons. You can find it here.

 What words inspire, ignite, motivate and move you in good times and in bad? I’d be grateful if you would consider sharing them here, through leaving a comment below.

So, part of your priority management strategy over the next month or so  is not to miss any critical World Cup matches. Here is a link to a great Microsoft Excel file that will place all the fixtures into your Microsoft Outlook calendar for you in one click.You can use it to plan your workload vs Football priorities either in your main Outlook calendar or a separate World Cup Calendar subfolder. Either way, you will see your matches alongside your other priority calendar commitments which you can sync with your Blackberry or phone.

This clever Microsoft Excel import to Outlook file was created for me by my Excel Guru friend Sean Blessitt over at http://www.astradyne.com
Simply click on the link to download and save the file to your desktop, open it up and follow the instructions. You will have all World Cup football fixtures in your Outlook calendar in a couple of clicks.  Let me know what you think! Enjoy!!

OutlookWorldCupFixturesRichardMaybury_TZ

Ask about how we can help you create a better work-life balance and how we can help you weld your tactical priorities to your overall purpose. Contact me here

Everywhere I go, recently, people are telling me 2 things and I wonder if these are true for you?
 

1. Those who are thriving, in particular, tell me that they are having to be even more creative in how they approach their business; its almost like they are in a constant cycle of disruptive innovation and continuous reinvention as they anticipate and respond to a challenging market.
2. Everyone seems to sense that it takes more work, effort (and sometimes -pain) to achieve the same business results as we enjoyed pre-crunch.

In this environment it is more important than ever to be able to weld our overall purpose to our daily priorities. It is almost like the old days of separating our ’strategic thinking time’ from our ‘operational time’ is a luxury we can not afford. If we are to avoid chaos, however, we must have a robust, simple structure to our workload and priority management that allows us to think strategically whilst operating tactically.
 
This means, amongst other things, having a one-click view on what is important (professionally, personally, this quarter, next quarter and beyond) so that we can flex tactically with the explicit knowledge of the impact of that decision on our overall objectives.
 
Strategising will always be important – it is just that right now my sense is that conditionality, consensus, creativity and continuous anticipation and response-ability are more important than ever before. I’d really appreciate your thoughts here to help me firm up my own. You can shere your thoughts in the comments section below

Life can be a roller coaster at times. Sometimes we are just about managing to juggle our competing priorities before they become conflicting priorities. Sometimes we are squeezed right up tight against a critical deadline. Other times we feel lost, cast adrift and long for the cut and thrust of meaningful activity.  

Sometimes we can get caught up in the minutia of the moment and we can very easily loose our perspective whether we are too busy or not busy enough!  

Here’s an exercise that I call PACTS which, in less than 5 minutes, can help us reconnect with our higher purpose whenever we need to (and that’s best done on a very regular basis!). The great thing about this is that all the components seem to flow so naturally when we do it a few times. Let me know what you think. What do you do to connect with your purpose when priorities are bearing down on you? 

The great thing about this exercise is that it can be done any time any where – with the exception of when we are driving – obviously! 

P = Prepare for the simple exercise

This is the very important few moments we give ourselves prior to getting into the zone. Time to turn off or tune out of all noise and distractions wherever you are. For me this includes the simple preparation activity of turning the BlackBerry off. Sometimes I find it useful to gaze into the distance (especially skywards) in a frighteningly unfocused way.

A = Allow ourselves to access a state of Awe.

Awe is defined variously as an overwhelming emotion of reverential fear, admiration or wonder; wonder inspired or caused by something majestic, sublime, powerful, beautiful, mighty, sacred. The point here is to allow our quietened mind to take in the enormity of what is around us. We can wonder at the vastness of the universe as revealed through the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Or the tiny intricacy of the Rhinovirus  There is no preferred formula, just so long as we are able to put ourselves, our priorities, our current concerns into some perspective in a short period of time. 

C = Connect to our Core

Now, we allow our thoughts to flow back to ourselves, but back to the core of what we are, our core values, the things that really matter, the things we sometimes take for granted. This is not a thorough examination of all our core values, we just allow ourselves to focus for a few moments on the one or two values that bubble up in this moment. You might want to envision yourself living a particular core value at a high 10. What would you living a perfect expression of that value feel like?

T= Take time to be thankful

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”Marcus Tullius Cicero

Now it the time to be grateful for exactly where we are right now. It doesn’t matter who we  are thankful to, it could be your God or your guide if you have one, Mother Nature, the ‘Universe’, your parents, partner, siblings or friends  – or even the driver who waved you out of your turning and made your commute to work that little bit more human, more hopeful, more positive. 

S = Set our success strategy

Right, we are almost ready to reengage with the reality around us. Before we do so, though, a few moments to set / reset our strategy for the rest of the day in the light of the past few minutes in the PACTS process.  

It may be that the past 4 minutes has reenergised our commitment to the priority management plan we had already established for the day and we can crack on refreshed.
It may be that new priorities have been thrown up as a result and now need to be actioned or scheduled.
It may be that the past 4 minutes has provided us with further insights, inspiration or resource to enable us to create and control the goals that will help us manage our overall purpose.
It may be that we remember to call our parents or that old friend we have rather taken for granted recently, or just to look someone in the eye and say a meaningful ‘Thank you’ when a good service has been rendered to us.

There it is, a simple, seamless process that can help us reconnect to our purpose and our priorities. I’m curious to know what you think? What simple approaches to you find particularly useful? Feel free to share or link them here.

You can always contact me if you want to know more about how we help people manage their competing priorities, their mandated and optional goals and the critical results that want to achieve.

I have been around a lot of talk this week on ‘Leadership’ and ’Management’. I suppose it is to be expected, given that I have been running various training sessions and forums over the week, ranging from a ‘Strategy in Action’ workshop that I ran for one client through to a ‘Welding purpose to priorities’ forum I facilitated and, finally on Friday, into discussions on ’Sales Strategy’ with George Petri and others after the unmissable IoD 859 Club. But today I was blown away…

Sunday mornings tend to be a time of reflection and renewal for me and I was reflecting on Leading and Serving over my slow Sunday morning cappuccino at home with Aled Jones on Radio2 quietly in the background.

Then, as part of his sign-off, Aled read out this quote by John Quincy Adams, the 6th President of the USA,

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

What got me was the word ‘ACTIONS’. Talk is cheap. Rhetoric, no matter how brilliantly constructed to engage emotionally or logically, is nothing without the sweat of struggle to see a dream through into reality.

Much to reflect upon, and then the pragmatist inside me focused into one of my favourite definitions of ‘Values’ from one of my favourite Business World Leaders, Jack Welch:

‘Values are just behaviours – specific, nitty-gritty and so descriptive they leave nothing to the imagination..’

The same could be said of Leadership! Here’s to a great week next week!

To discover how we can help you, your team and your business turn your vision, strategies and goals into real results within the constraints of the conflicting priorities of the day-job just contact Richard Maybury now

Gabriella Climi has come a long way in a short time. Her single ‘Sweet about me’ has sold over 2 million copies world-wide, she’s won numerous music awards and sang the Australian National Anthem at the Melbourne Grand-Prix last weekend. She’s just 18. And she has a secret – a secret you should know about.
You know that I find inspiration in the extraordinary things ordinary people do well and I like sharing them with you. It’s also important to know I’m not writing this as a raving fan although I do like the sentiment and the pure pop production value of her latest single ‘On a Mission’. 

Here’s the scoop: It is not just talent, hard work and luck that has got her to where she is right now.

I have just found out that she has a massive Dream-Board at home. On this Dream-Board she has put all the people and the shows she would like to be involved with in her life. A pictorial representation of some of the things she finds important, motivating and empowering. As a big fan of the excellent and influential ‘Later with Jools Holland’ TV show, she has him on her dream-board.

No surprises then that she found herself singing an acoustic version of her song on the ‘Later’ show in December 2007!

So friends, what’s your vision, your purpose and your goals? What do they look, feel and sound like to you? How do you store, access and leverage their potency? Especially when everyone in your busy life is intent on pulling your focus and energy into their daily grind?

Naturally, if you want any support in this I’m only a call or a click away.

A guy I met recently was told by his UK employer that he was too sick to hold down a senior job, even though he was a rising star and was the youngest employee to ever hold his then current role. That clearly did not sit with his view of his world and his purpose in it, so he did something else. Something much bigger.

His name is Andrew White, AKA ‘The Vicar of Baghdad’, and I was fortunate enough to share an evening with him, along with some friends, the other day.
 
His life is far too rich to be condensed meaningfully into a few short paragraphs so I will only highlight a couple of fascinating facts and share the reflections I wrote out for myself after our meeting.
 
Yes, he is a vicar but read these notes in the same way you would if I was writing about Lance Armstrong (Its not about the bike, its about purpose and momentum) or Randy Pausch(Nothing to do with academia – everything to do with dreams).
 

• The guy suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, which is evident from his speech pattern and his gait.
• He is the trusted intermediary between fighting factions in Iraq, at one time receiving fortnightly telephone calls from the president of the USA whilst having meetings with leaders who the West demonised.
• He is heavily involved in peace and hostage negotiations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East (over 140 hostage negotiations alone), dealing with people who often hate and mistrust each other.
• Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qusay once summonsed him to a meeting in their notorious Baghdad Hunting Club with the explicit expectation that if he did not accept their ‘Invitation’ the messenger and all his family would be killed. He attended the meeting and, unlike many before him, he walked out alive.
• He had 11 of his Top Leadership Team exterminated but still kept the show on the road.
• He has survived serious attacks on himself, as well as detentions, he deals with really difficult people every day and spends long periods of time away from his family.

 All this on top of the ordinary stresses of the day job you and I are subject to!

All this by a man who was considered by his employers to be too sick to do a much easier job in the UK!

Here’s what I wrote to myself after that meeting:

• We should never let anyone’s opinion (especially well intentioned opinions) define us.
• The only things that truly limit us are the limitations we put on ourselves.
• Purpose and passion make the hardest work ‘doable’.
• Inspiration is everywhere, the world is full of people who have less and achieve more than most of the people we know. We need to learn from them.

There is obviously so much more to this experience and my learning from it. I must admit that I was not going to post it up here and it was only intended as a reflection in my March newsletter. The truth is that the response to my newsletter was so overwhelming that I decided to get my reflections up here for all. I am certainly inspired, humbled and motivated since that meeting.

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” – John Dryden

Improved self-management involves changing our behaviours. Often this means breaking old habits that we ‘know’ do not serve us well. The ruthless reality, though, is that our habits (both good and bad), exert a vice-like grip over our current behaviours.

Replacing old habits and building new ones, therefore, is seldom easy. It can not be achieved through applying random tips and tricks to current behaviours. Tools and technology, no matter how cool or compelling they look, often only add complexity and always dilute personal responsibility. 

There’s a lot involved in helping people – individually and as a team – change the habits of a working lifetime. It is something I have developed a deep expertise in.  It is an expertise I build into all our support programmes. That’s why we are able to help people deliver sustained behaviour change. 

I don’t mean to belittle the challenge of changing the habits of a working lifetime but here’s my top 5 suggestions. The first one is worthy of a workshop in its own right!

1. Know why you are embarking on the habit change journey. No purpose – no follow through.
2. Launch your new habit as strongly as possible. Change your routine immediately. Seize the first opportunity to act on your resolution because when you delay implementation, it becomes more and more difficult to sustain the new habit. 
3. Go public. Announce the change to those who care about you. Give them permission to support you and hold you accountable for your journey.
4. Keep the right score. Sometimes we can be winning but feel like we are loosing unless we keep the right score. You might find this post useful here.
5. Work through the pain barrier, knowing it will pass. Never let an exception occur until the new behaviour is firmly embedded. All new behaviours feel uncomfortable at first. Remember your first time driving a car? 

If you are looking for a better way to work, for yourself or your team, why not get in touch to see how we can help.

It’s amazing how people who don’t do ‘Change Management’ can make change happen! I was recently asked to facilitate a team meeting within a client’s Kick-Off event based upon ‘Change Management’. None of those present were ‘Change Champions’, Project Managers’ or held ‘black-belt’ titles in anything work related. They are just a group of hard working people who are responsible for creating and driving improvement changes within the business during 2010, whilst keeping on top of the day-job. Here’s how we tackled the challenge.

This is a medium sized business where every minute matters; they do not have a Project Management Office (PMO) and they can not take people away from the front line to drive the initiatives full-time. Following earlier work with them, the senior team agreed that successful delivery of the agreed initiatives would be incentivised and the appropriately categorised and calendared activities would be protected and respected by default within the business.

Given that I was only going to have a couple of hours with them during their kick-off, a full blown session on ‘Creating, executing and delivering Change Management’ was never going to work – no matter how powerful (or pompous) it sounded!

Luckily a friend had recently passed me a copy of John Kotter’s excellent little book ‘Our Iceberg is Melting’ which I had never read before. Like most people with a professional interest in productivity, I am aware of Kotter’s 8 step process for managing change within organisations (see below). And have well annotated copies of his ‘Leading Change’ and ‘Heart of Change’ books on my ‘Trusted Resources’ book shelves.

‘Our Iceberg is melting’ is an excellent little book, a fable about a colony of emperor penguins whose iceberg home was in danger of collapse and who, therefore had to find a new home – fast!
It is also a fast read – 160 pages of large type with plenty of attractive colour pictures (it is a fable after all!) – a 60 minute read, max.

That little book became the pre-work and the workbook for my session. And what a session it was. Insights, inspiration, energy and processes flowed and were slotted into Kotter’s 8 step structure. This, along with our earlier work on ‘Teamworking’ and ‘Managing projects alongside the day-job’ generated a lot of practical take-aways from the session.

My own learning from this?

1. Always investigate book suggestions from people who seem to know what they are talking about.
2.  Stories can be truly powerful learning tools in their own right. I deliberately avoided introducing any additional concepts into my session.
3. Most people have most of the answers to most of their problems most of the time.
4. I will keep more up-to-date on writers I respect. Why didn’t I know Kotter wrote a book called ‘A sense of Urgency’ in 2008? Especially as urgency, workloads, priorities and projects are in my DNA!

Resources:
Kotters 8 steps can be read and expanded from here:  http://www.kotterinternational.com/KotterPrinciples/ChangeSteps.aspx

 Contact me for further information on how we can help you and your team with your productivity challenges. Inspiring, practical and durable solutions guaranteed!

Projects can and do go wrong. The UK government has deep experience – and often deeply painful experience – with projects. That’s why when the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) within the Treasury produce a list of common causes of project failure, it might be worth a quick look at some of the specific failures that cause them pain… It would also be worth a slow reflection on how we manage our own projects. Use this list to question yourself about how you manage your important projects, large and small, personal and professional. Don’t forget to ask yourself uncomfortable questions about how you are managing your own project for your life.

Read this with a pencil in hand! http://www.ogc.gov.uk/documents/Project_Failure.pdf

If you are looking for a better way to work, for yourself or your team, why not get in touch to see how we can help. Call me on +44(0) 1428 607763 or Contact me

I made an 84 mile round trip yesterday evening to hear Tom Ilube, a member of the founding team of Egg PLC and now CEO of online protection company, Garlik. He was speaking at a WOW! event on 5 of his insights into building a business. I have no doubt he has more! Here is a link to the notes WOW made for us all following that meeting last night: http://www.thewowcompany.com/November-event.htm

The world will not always be on your side, that’s reality….. and we should not let that deter us from creating and delivering our magnificent obsession .
Mother Teresa had a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children’s home in Calcutta, that was taken from The Ten Paradoxical Commandments, originally published by Kent Keith in 1968 whilst still at school. Here is his full list.

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centred.
Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
7. People favour underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
Develop your magnificent obsession, get to work on it, create a great day.
contact us directly to tailor a support programme to your needs.

Establishing a firm foundation for a project is critical to its success. If you don’t, then it’s a bit like building a house without bothering to lay proper footings. Things might look OK for a while (although if you look closely you can probably see the cracks already appearing). Inevitably though, the whole edifice will come tumbling down, bringing pain, distress and abject misery to all involved.

Our experience shows us that managers don’t lay adequate foundations for their project assignments. Instead they work on assumptions or what they intuitively feel to be the case. This is a very risky thing to do! Studies show that problems in establishing the assignment properly at the outset are a major cause of projects going off the rails.

So when you begin your next project make sure you have the answers to these ten questions. They will ensure that your project begins on a sound footing.

1. What’s wrong with the current situation? It’s important to define the problem, issue or opportunity that the assignment will address.

2. How will things be different when we’ve finished? What are the benefits that this assignment will bring to the organisation? There has to be a clear business case for the assignment.

3. What are the performance criteria? What does this “thing” that we will be creating have to do? How well will it need to perform? Here we are defining the business requirements for the deliverable, not the actual deliverable itself.

4. What’s the scope of the assignment? What is in and what is out? This will help to prevent the onset of the dreaded “scope creep” and provides the basis for change control.

5. What are the cost constraints? How much can the organisation commit to the assignment? Note that this is not the same thing as a detailed project budget!

6. What are the time constraints? Again, this is not the same thing as a detailed project schedule. Questions 5 & 6 refer to constraints, not estimates.

7 What project specific constraints exist?.  These could be people, equipment – whatever will constrain the project team’s ability to deliver the work.

8. Who is the project sponsor? It’s astounding how often this vital role is not clearly defined, resulting in confusion and delay due to slow (or no) decision making. Essentially the sponsor is the person who makes the decisions, on behalf of the organisation, about the assignment. They also hold the purse strings!

9. Who is the project manager? The person responsible for making it happen.

10. What authority is being delegated? Project managers need to know the limits of their authority, so that if one of those limits is reached it triggers a conversation with their sponsor. It’s important for project managers (especially for their sanity) that they have sufficient authority to make the day-by-day decisions necessary to deliver the work.

Of course, laying a firm foundation is only the first step to creating the project deliverable and many potential pitfalls remain for the unwary project manager. But without clear answers to these ten questions it is highly likely that the project will encounter significant problems later.

This article is written by my colleague Paul Stacey at Priority Management and published here with his permission. Paul is a lead facilitator for the Project Management Breakthroughs programme.

Call or mail me for further information

Let me clarify that: Microsoft Project, on its own, is not a good project management tool. This was bought into sharp focus for me again yesterday when I was supporting a rock-solid business unit leader struggling with the weight of too much to do. He is not a formal ‘Project Manager’ but he and his direct reports recognize that much of the business unit’s workload is about managing multiple, competing mini-projects. Boy oh boy was there a lot of learning in that session!

Before we get to the learning list I think it is important to recognise that we do offer one of the most practical project planning training programmes on the planet as a PMI Global Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.) and we also offer an excellent Working with Microsoft Project training programme. MS Project however is not always the most appropriate solution to managing multiple projects.

Here’s the learning list that this hardworking manager created at the end of our time together:

1. New tools are no substitute for good process. Reaching for an additional tool rather than researching the process is too easy and rarely satisfying! (More ‘productivity tools’ gather dust than do meaningful work for most people)
2. You can not really create a project plan in MS Project.
   (Even Microsoft says that MS Project should not be used without an executable project plan being created. Furthermore, there isn’t even a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) functionality built into MS Project to facilitate this element of planning.)
3. MS Project is not great for communicating and sharing project progress.
4. So – Use fewer tools and integrate them better.
5. Agree a Team-Based approach to sharing workload through the use of Outlook Calendar, Task and Categories. Agree email protocols specifically for team project communications.
6. Check how the team feels about Mindmapping for project plans (after seeing how we integrate Mindjet Mindmanager with Outlook)
7. Apply Richard’s processes across the team.
8. Book Richard (Yippee!!)

I’m curious to know how you manage multiple mini-projects across your team. What works for you? Join the debate below.

To assist with ‘Strategic thinking and planning’ why not  contact me to discuss how we can tailor a programme to your exact needs.

I was speaking with one of my sons yesterday. He is in his final year at University reading Philosophy. We were discussing different approaches we can use to help us weld our purpose to our daily priorities to help us reach our goals.

Part of our conversation skirted my own early morning practice to help me weld strategic purpose to daily priorities which I outlined here . My son pointed me to Marcus Tullius Cicero  106 BC – 43 BC,  the Roman orator and philosopher and  politician (106 BC-43 BC)  who said  

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

I can’t help wondering what the world would be like if we all approached life from a deep sense of gratitude.

What do you think? Was Cicero right? Is Gratitude the foundational virtue? If so how do you deliberately build gratitude into your life?

‘The quality of the question determines the quality of the outcome- always’ Richard Maybury

I have been working with people on big picture questions a lot recently, probably a function of the times we live in. Leaders always ask great questions of themselves and others. In a recent discussion I found myself referring to the questions I first wrote about back in Feb 07 and I found that this had not made its way to this blog, so here’s an edited version with a great schedule of ‘Leadership’ questions and important source references. This is not a thesis on Leadership, you can’t read a thesis over a quick cup of coffee during a power-break at work! 

This was inspired by reflecting again on Jack Welch’s book Winning (of which I am a big fan and raving advocate – BUY IT!) Then I read Robert S Kaplan’s article in January’s Harvard Business Review. I like Kaplan. He makes sense. The strap line to the article is ‘There comes a point in your career when the best way to figure out how you are doing is to step back and ask yourself a few questions. Having all the answers is less important than knowing what to ask’

He suggests asking ourselves a number of questions in 7 key areas. You can check how to find his full schedule further in this article, meanwhile here’s a selection for you to consider for yourself:

Vision and Priorities
How often do I communicate my own vision for my part of the business?

Managing Time
How am I spending my time? Does it match my key priorities?

Feedback
Do I have specific reports who will tell me things I may not want to hear but need to hear?

Succession Planning
Have I become a decision making bottleneck?

Evaluation and alignment
Is the design of my part of the business still aligned with the key success factors for the business?

Leading under pressure
What type of events create pressure for me and how do I behave in those events under pressure?

Staying true to yourself
Do I assert myself sufficiently, or have I become tentative?

With acknowledgement to Robert S Kaplan whose papers I always read and HBR.ORG, a must-read journal and a great web resource. 
Feel free to  contact me to discuss how we can tailor a programme to your exact needs.

Our habits have a horrible hold over us. I’m not talking here of the obvious habits of pathological or psychological self-destructive behaviour – no – I’m talking about the insidious little behaviours, beliefs and attitudes that we allow ourselves to get away with, even though we ’know’ they are not empowering (and we would often criticise others clinging to them). This is a challenge for most of us, and today was no exception.

I was working with a guy, providing follow-up support on a Goal Management programme. He is good. Great job, great track record, great prospects. But by his own admission it’s all been ‘incremental’ and ‘easy’. He ‘knows’ in his gut that he could achieve a great deal more. He ‘knows’ that in terms of his own capability and capacity  he is playing small and safe. We were working on this. I knew from our conversations that he is a keen sailor.

“Because we sailed too close to the shore”

I was reminded of the prayer that Francis Drake, vice-Admiral to Queen Elizabeth I, penned before he left on the Golden Hind to circumnavigate the world (and liberate a little Spanish gold for his sovereign queen) in 1577 .

Disturb us Lord, when we are too pleased with ourselves. When our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little. When we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us Lord, when, with the abundance of things we possess, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life. Having fallen in love with life, we have ceased to dream of eternity. And in our efforts to build a new earth, we have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us Lord, to dare more boldly. To venture on wider seas. Where storms will show your mastery; where, losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push into the future, in strength, courage, hope and love.

Although not a person of faith, this resonated deeply with said ‘Good Guy’, who, in addition to some wonderfully outrageous business goals has added a voyage to Fastnet rock and West Cork to his outrageous goals list. Given that the most he has done to date is sailing around the Isle of Wight and over to France, I would suggest there is nothing incremental or easy in achieving that one!

Feel free to contact me to discuss how we can tailor a programme to your exact needs.

Turbulence is nothing new. As I mentioned earlier, Recessions serve a valuable purpose and when I’m not looking forward and planning to do things differently, I find myself going back to the trusted and true sources of knowledge and wisdom to help me put things into perspective – a practice I find much better than reading the current commentaries from most journalists! Peter Drucker is one such source. What personal action points can you draw from this mini-masterpiece?

When it rains manna from heaven, some people put up an umbrella.
Others reach for a big spoon.

The manager will have to look at her task and ask, “What must I do to be prepared for danger, for opportunities, and above all for change?”
 
First, this is a time to make sure that your organization is lean and can move fast. So this is when one systematically abandons and sloughs off unjustifiable products and activities – and sees to it that the really important tasks are adequately supported.
 
Second, she will have to work on the most expensive of resources – Time – particularly in areas where it is people’s only resource, as it is for highly paid, important groups such as research workers, technical service staffs, and all managers. And one must set goals for productivity improvement.
 
Third, managers must learn to manage growth and distinguish among kinds of growth. If productivity of your combined resources goes up with growth, it is a healthy growth.
 
Fourth, the development of people will be far more crucial in the years ahead.

ACTION POINT: Get rid of unjustifiable products and activities, set goals to improve productivity, manage growth, and develop your people.

This is from Page 76 of ‘The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done’ A wealth of insights one page at a time. Required reading in my view!

Ever since being introduced to the excellent ‘Shift Happens’ aka ‘Now you Know’ presentation, I have been pointing countless people to it on the web (the ’Official’ source material) and using it within my Key-Note presentations and training workshops. Inexplicably, I haven’t posted it on my blog until now. In my opinion everyone who has personal responsibility for raising children or professional responsibility for hiring, leading, developing and managing talent (and that’s about all of us) should be aware of this information.

We are living in ‘Exponential Times’: The plates are shifting

The plates are shifting all around us. Change is no longer merely incremental and in this environment our own thinking can’t just be incremental. I urge you to check out these powerful presentations which remind us of what the future may hold for us all.

The primary source I point people to is the UK centric version created by Ray Flemming at Microsoft. This Shift Happens UK Version is available in 2 formats – a PowerPoint presentation and a Windows Media movie. Just click the links towards the bottom of the web page. These presentations were developed from the original USA version.

The original USA version was created by educator karl Fisch. He has now created an updated version available at YouTube. He also blogged about it, including his source data here .

For proven training and support around creating and controlling compelling goals and managing demanding workloads simply contact us and together we will produce ‘Results Worth Talking About’

I’m going to keep this introduction short and sweet. If you believe in the possibility of good news in ‘09 read on. I promise not to mention ‘Interesting times’, I wont waste words on what you have already heard and read ad-nauseam about the ‘current climate’ and you know that I won’t be getting all new-age on you.

OK! You and I know that there will be Good News in 2009, great! This year, like every year before it, represents an opportunity to start anew on our hopes, our ambitions and our plans for the year ahead and beyond. As with every year before – responsibility rests with each of us individually. As with every year, we have to take account of the current reality but not be totally seduced by it. Unlike every year for the past decade or so, the dominant media mood music now invokes feelings of uncertainty and fear, which, although arguably tougher to overcome, have to be kept in context.

 So, we know that there will be Good News in 2009 and we know that we have to take personal responsibility for our year ahead. Seems to me like a good time for an important question:

What do I have to do to make 2009 my best year yet?

Please don’t avoid this question. Re-read it now that you are thinking about it. You might find it useful to answer it in 2 dimensions: Jot down some notes now and reconsider your answers when you have more time. It will be a good investment of time and energy, I promise you.

The Internal Dimension to making 2009 your best year yet:

• How do my belief systems about myself empower me?
• How do they limit me?
• What personal strengths need reinforcement? What neglected areas need redevelopment?
• How can I best protect myself from the insidious doubt, uncertainty and fear that will stalk the external landscape for the next year?
• What’s truly important to me?
• What is my purpose?

The External dimension to making 2009 your best year yet:

• What specific personal goals, in addition to my mandated business goals, will I need to have completed this year to make it my best year yet?
• How am I going to build them into what will be a demanding year anyway?
• How will I keep myself motivated and on track when other imperatives will be bearing down on me?

Further good news; in addition to our usual client company workshops I am opening up limited availability in my calendar for fee-based, individual support to help people make the most of this year. Whilst the support will be tailored to each person, it will be based upon my proven Goal Control approach. Please contact me for an informal chat if you feel this might be helpful to you or people you know.

How you and I emerge from the challenge of 2009 will be very much up to us.  The landscape of the next 6-8 quarters will be very different to the last 8 quarters. Relying upon the personal, team and corporate behaviours that served us well then might not be a good idea. To paraphrase an oft repeated warning from the Financial Services sector: ‘Past performance is no guarantee of future success.’

You know that recessions are part of the natural business cycle. They have a purpose. The fat is cut away, the froth is blown off the top, the flabby is made firm. Ruthless realities reassert themselves. The fittest survive and future-proof the business gene pool – until the next recession.

When times are benign, business is easier won and less than perfect delivery to customers is absorbed into the cost of doing business. Luxury!
In leaner times the opportunities are fewer and every mistake is more costly. Period. 

Most people are already working flat out, and can’t work longer – yet all of our results over the next 6-8 quarters will be harder won.

So, here are 5 tips to help us face 2009 with more confidence and to ‘Keep calm whilst carrying on’: 

1. Next year, more than any other in recent memory, we must create and control meaningful goals – personal, professional and corporate – to carry us successfully through the downturn. Let’s consign the ‘coulds’ and ‘shoulds’ of previous resolutions to history.
2. We must future-proof ourselves. Deliberately polishing up the knowledge, skills and experience we already possess. What strengths can we build on?
3. We must get real with our workload management habits. In how we plan, control and deliver our results within our demanding workloads, we must master our technology not enslave ourselves to our inbox. Specifically:
   a. The way we control and deliver our competing priorities day to day
   b. The way we plan and control out of quarter deliverables against the in-quarter imperatives
   c. The way we manage our most important relationships to achieve these results.
4. We must build renewed rigour into our management systems. Uncompromising professionalism is the new standard of those who will thrive.
5. We must manage our own motivation. The best way to do this is by keeping our main goals before us – beside our hectic daily schedules; holding ourselves accountable for our actions towards those goals; keeping the ‘Right score’ alongside our mandated score card, and celebrating success often. This is how we can ‘Keep Calm and Carry on’ whilst others fall victim to the mood of the moment.

To achieve ‘Results Worth Talking About’ from your training budget simply get in touch.

If you ever have the sneaky suspicion (with or without the guilt pangs) that your Inbox, web surfing and other app habits are not exactly in alignment with your objectives for the day, then you might want to mosey over to a fantastic online habit helper…

It is called RescueTime and is a free browser based time management monitor which allows productivity geeks to understand exactly how they spend their computer time. They are currently in open beta phase and I have been using it for a while now and can confidently suggest you look at it.

Personal productivity is impacted by interference, much of which is internally generated, see Performance = Potential minus Interference (P=P-I)  One of the founders of Rescue Time, Tony Wright, says that the core mission of Rescue Time is to allow information workers to understand how they spend their time in an easy way. “We feel that the knowledge of how you spend your time will make you more productive and will nudge you in the direction of spending your time more deliberately and thoughtfully”.

I say it’s great because:

1. You don’t have to manually enter logs of how you spend your time, it does it for you automatically.
2. You can create categories within it to support your productivity goal setting
3. It is another Web 2.0 tool that I think has a good future, especially as the team is obviously working on its development.

Please note though that there are some issues with running RescueTime on Firefox 3.  Also I have not trailed the Teamworking option yet so can’t confidently comment on that although it looks good for the future!

Let me know what you think. contact us .

‘The quality of the question determines the quality of the outcome …. always’  Richard Maybury

‘A wellspring of good ideas lies just beneath a limiting assumption. An Incisive Question will remove it, freeing the mind to think afresh.’ Nancy Kline, author of ‘Time To Think’

Sometimes, our fundamental assumptions or beliefs about ourselves or a situation hold us back from achieving what we want. This can be a contributing reason for why  many ‘goals’ or, more correctly, wishes and unstructured ambitions are not realised. So, with thanks to Nancy Kline,  and Mike Neil at Success made Fun whose newsletters I always read, lets look at The Incisive Question.

Rather than challenge an assumption or belief head on, the incisive question makes it temporarily irrelevant, and allows you to step beyond your old way of thinking about things and into a whole new world of possibilities.

The incisive question is based on the idea that it is our limiting assumptions about situations, other people, ourselves, and our lives that keep us stuck.

When we move beyond our limiting assumptions, we often receive a rush of inspired ideas and proactive actions.

The method in a nutshell:

1. Think about something that you want but are having difficulty getting.

2. What might you be assuming that’s holding you back from getting it?

3. Choose the assumption that feels the most ‘bedrock’ – the one that you sense is at the heart of the problem. What for you would be the ‘positive opposite’ of that assumption? For example, a limiting assumption about going for a promotion could be ‘I’m too young’. A Possible Positive Opposite could be ‘It’s not about age, it’s about experience’

4. Frame an incisive question using one of the following forms…

‘If I absolutely knew for a fact that (positive opposite of your limiting assumption), what ideas would I have about (your goal, situation, or challenge)?’

‘If I absolutely knew for a fact that (positive opposite your of limiting assumption), what would I do to create or bring about (your goal, situation, or challenge)?’

Be aware that the ‘right’ question is the one that feels right to you – some people describe it as ‘having the lid peeled off your mind’!  Play around with different positive opposites until you find the one that fits best and frees your creativity and inspiration.

How about asking yourself this question:

If you knew for a fact that the only thing between you and the life of your dreams was a question, what question would you ask to begin living the life of your dreams?

Our training programmes are a good foundation for this type of thinking and day to day execution. Contact us for more information.

Check out Nancy’s book, Time To Think

‘Obstacles, problems and people can’t stop you…… Only you can stop you’  Richard Maybury

Need help staying positively focused on your goals? This positive reinforcement idea may help you …..

You know how it is, you want to make changes – and like most people you are less than comfortable with changes – especially personal changes, like the habits that no longer serve us well.

Positive reinforcement is so much more powerful and sustaining than negative reinforcement and this idea reinforces that by focusing on the many wins you experience along the way – despite the occasional lapse. There is no point in beating ourselves up but many people do, quite often because they are keeping the wrong score! I hope these pointers help.

Write down the things you want to start or stop doing. For each of these things write down a compelling reason WHY you are going to make the changes you need to. Select a manageable few to start with.
Now, create a grid or table with your changes and their reasons along the top and plenty of space below. This can be on your PC or on paper.

The idea is to catch yourself ‘winning’ each time you do, don’t do or resist temptation. Dump and date the win onto the table. So,  if you resisted that cigarette after dinner or in the bar with friends dump it on your Habit Helper. If you do slip back, check that one slip against all the other minor victories along the way.

You can post the Habit Helper onto your screen saver, slip it into your organiser or put it on the refrigerator – in fact, you can use it anywhere to keep the score, keep the positive reinforcement and the motivation going.
Finally, go public with your ambitions – it firms up the resolve – and whilst you are at it get trusted friends to support you.

If you are looking for a proven approach to helping your people create and manage meaningful Goals you could always contact us for fuller information on how we might help.