Here are a few more testimonials I’ve received from happy clients.
results
Productivity Webinar #2 – Conducting Effective Meetings
According to a study done by Management Today magazine, the average corporate worker spends 16 hours per week in meetings and 4 of these are considered pure WASTE! Add that up and it’s the equivalent of 25 working days a year. Think your work performance might benefit from an extra month’s worth of productive time? Yeah, me too.
Check out my latest webinar in which I give some simple and effective tips for running meetings that have clear objectives, take less time and get better results.
Habits in 21 days? Not good ones.
You’ve heard it before. Do something for 21 days, and it will become a habit. Have you ever developed a new, good habit in 21 days? Didn’t think so. It hasn’t worked for me and I suspect I’m very much like most people in this regard. Continue reading
Data Rich.
With all the data available to us in our organizations it’s so easy to get wrapped up in measuring everything under the sun and having hundreds of cool charts and graphs posted for all to see. The data can tell us all sorts of wonderful things.
It can also distract us from the two most important things. What is our ultimate goal? And, does the data tell us if we are getting closer to that goal? If you answer the latter with a “No”, trash it and find out what does. Continue reading
Oh Great, Another Tip for Success…
It seems there are more and more people trying to tell us the secret to success. How many “Top 5 tips from successful people” tweets can we take.
Sorry folks, there ain’t no secret. Every successful person is a mixture of their own motivations, skills, habits, behaviours 
You aren’t Jack Welch who isn’t Steve Jobs who wasn’t Winston Churchill who wasn’t Abraham Lincoln.
Figure out what’s in YOUR mixture.
Do the things that get YOU the best results with your mix.
Be successful by being YOU.
Image courtesy of Renjith Krishnan / freedigitalphotos.net
Want Solutions? Ask the Right Questions.
If I have to inform you of a problem and I know you will ask me a series of questions about why it happened, I will prepare by coming up with a series of explanations and rationalizations to justify the problem.
If I have to inform you of a problem and I know you will ask me a series of questions about how to fix the problem and prevent it from happening again, I will prepare by coming up with a list of possible solutions.
Are you asking the right questions?
Image courtesy of Master / www.digitalphotos.net
Problem Solvers not Finger Pointers
Think about a time when you needed to solve a critical problem and time was of the essence. Did you care whose fault the problem was? Nope. All you cared about was what information you needed to get a solution, and who and what you needed to implement it. In a crisis we filter out irrelevant concerns and focus on the task at hand.
Finger pointers don’t want to focus on solving the problem. Finger pointers rationalize that there is no need to change anything because they NEVER would have made the mistake that caused the problem.
Everyone makes mistakes.
Image courtesy of Pakorn / http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Do people in your business, or personal life expend mental energy finding who to blame for problems, instead of solving the problems and finding ways to prevent them? If so, why would anyone in that environment try a creative new idea that might take a few tries before working properly? If people are afraid to make mistakes, forget about them coming up with a creative solution to a problem. (oh, and financial incentives don’t help either, watch Dan Pink’s TED talk for more on that)
If we want to build a problem solving culture, in which deep thinking on elegant solutions is highly valued, our focus won’t be on who caused the problem. Our focus will be on what needs to change. And critically, what help is needed to change it.
The next time someone tells you about a problem that has occurred and your first instinct is to ask, “who’s responsible?”, catch yourself. Instead, ask, “What do we need to do to fix it?”
Don’t point the finger. Solve the problem.
