Business Coaching Brain

Mission Statement Madness: Make it your Mission Statement to Change Mission Statements.

WayneG — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:55:10 +0000

Mission Statements?

Make it your Mission Statement to Change Mission Statements!

Mission Statements are like DVD Players:

Mission statements are like DVD players: everyone’s got one but no one knows how to use them properly or to their full potential.

Mission statements by themselves do not work, do not change anything, do not enhance performance, do not increase profits, do not produce better leaders, do not provide strategic direction – by themselves, mission statements do none of things people believe they do.

The Mission Statement is only one of a set of ten techniques which can enhance the performance of the organisation and everyone in it. And, just taking one step in any journey does not get you to the destination.

It’s like deciding to go to Hawaii for a holiday, booking the flights, paying for the accommodation but then staying in the departure terminal in your home town for two weeks. Once you have committed to creating a new Mission Statement, you have also committed to the process of turning the ‘Statement into Success.

The Ten Techniques:

Technique one - Mission statement. Get it? Got it? Good…now the real work can begin;

Technique two - Everyone in the organisation understands what the Mission Statement is, what it means and how it can help them as individuals enhance their personal performance;

Technique three - Everyone in the organisation feeling like they own the Mission Statement and believe in it;

Technique four - Everyone understanding how to take the content and context of the Mission Statement and apply it to enhancing their performance in all they do every day;

Technique five – Consistent, open, honest, regular, direct evaluation, assessment and feedback of how the changes to behaviour, thinking, attitudes and values that were inspired by the new Mission Statement are measurably impacting on performance (and profit);

Technique six – Everyone in the organisation openly embracing and welcoming accelerated learning and change as a way of life in your organisation’s culture and in their own lives:

Technique seven – Everyone in the organisation having the confidence to try new things, introduce new ideas and take intelligent risks without fear of reprimand or negative consequences;

Technique eight – Everyone in the organisation consistently striving to be the best they can be as individuals - to be the best of anyone in their field in your industry;

Technique nine: Everyone in the organisation knowing the overall strategic direction of your business, where you are going and are passionately committed to getting there in the shortest possible time;

Technique ten: Everyone in the organisation, willing and committed to reviewing, revising and re-energising the Mission Statement regularly as they themselves and the organisation change, evolve, learn and grow.

Turning the “Ten” into Tangible Targets:

If you need something to inspire a sense of real commitment, real change and real energy in your organisation, then sure, go through the process of designing, developing and implementing a Mission Statement.

But be prepared for what it really means to live excellence and accelerate change in your organisation: your Mission Statement is your public Statement that your Mission is to be the best you can be – the best in your industry.

Ideas without actions are just thoughts.

Innovations without measurable improvement to performance are just window dressing.

Change without demonstrable impact on the passion and attitudes of people which then reflects on their performance is wasted effort.

Mission Statements without a total commitment to implement them into the daily lives of everyone in the organisation are a waste of time, money and energy.

Let your new Mission Statement be the catalyst for creative change, enhanced performance and unprecedented organisational success and not just the words on nice, new sign in your office reception area.

Your Mission Statement must be the cornerstone of creating a high performance environment and a sustainable winning culture in your business.

Wayne Goldsmith

Business Coaching Brain on the Go!

WayneG — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:25:47 +0000

Now you can take the ‘Brain with you anywhere, anytime thanks to our all new mobile theme.

Check it out on your I-phone, Blackberry or Android Phone.

The Business Coaching Brain- now the latest thinking in the business world is in your hands….or pocket or jacket sleeve or wherever you keep your Smartphone.

The ABC of Achieving More with Less: The Mantra for Business Success in the Future.

WayneG — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:49:06 +0000

More with less.

The business world not only could go in that direction and should go in that direction but it will go in that direction.

Look at the alternatives:

Do you seriously believe that successful business’ in the future will be based on achieving more by doing more? No way.

And you couldn’t honestly believe that your business can achieve more by doing the same. Won’t happen.

The world is moving towards a culture of efficiency: using less fuel, wasting less time, eliminating wasteful practices…about achieving more with less. Is your business – and are you – focused on ways of achieving more with less?

Here’s the ABC of achieving more with less.

Recently I was talking about performance and the future with a leading swimming coach. He had produced several Olympians including an Olympic Gold Medalist in Athens in 2004.

We were talking about the future of performance and where things might head in the next 5-10 years.

He said, “We are going to have to work smarter and find ways of getting our swimmers to go faster with less training. In the past to go faster, we have simply worked harder and longer. Now, we need to find ways of going faster using less training time and with less work. Success is a moving target. World records will continue to improve but at the same time people have no time. People want to be the best but they want to spend less time getting there. Our greatest challenge is to find ways of enhancing performance but doing so more efficiently – more with less“.

The future of business success will be based around four fundamental and inter-connected themes:

These so called “Mega-trends” underpin the key directions and decisions the world has to make in coming generations. And, at the moment, as most of your business is conducted here on earth, your business also needs to embrace and reflect the Big Four (innovation, integration, imagination, individualisation) when it comes to your strategies, plans and operations.

How can we (you) do it? How will we achieve more with less? What is it exactly that we need to do more and less of?

More Attitude: Less Apathy – the future is whatever you make it;
More Brilliance: Less Bulls$&* – be yourself, back yourself, let who you are shine for everyone to see;
More Creativity and Connectedness: Less Criticism- create new ideas, share them with others and stop criticising those who dare to be different;
More Drive: Less Drivel – inspire others with your actions instead of just talking about it;
More Enthusiasm: Less Ego – It’s not about “Me” – it’s about “We”;
More Fun and Fitness: Less Fossil Fuel – Get up, get healthy, create some energy instead of just using it;
More Generations: Less Geriatric-thinking – Listen and learn from young, talented, passionate people – let the past go;
More Human: Less Hot heads – People, personality and potential not temper, tirades and tantrums;
More Innovation, Ideas and Integration: Less Idiots – be unique, be open, collaborate, grow, learn, change – forget the petty personality and political differences;
More Journeys: Less Jerks - take risks, experiment with new ways of doing things - ignore people who tell you “that’s not the way we do it here”;
More Kids: Less Kings - think like, act like a kid – use your imagination everyday in everything;
More Learning: Less Limits - learn faster, learn every day, learn to love learning;
More Motivation: Less Money – get excited, be passionate and the money will flow – chase your dreams don’t just chase the dollars;
More Nerve: Less “No” – reject people who tell you it can’t be done – it’s just that its never been done before;
More Originality: Less Offense – express new ideas and creativity – give people the chance to speak, to think, to try, to fail and to learn;
More Passion: Less Politics – nothing excites the world more than passionate people;
More Questions: Less Quibbling – move on from petty arguments and political squabbles – question, wonder, ponder, challenge and discover;
More Resolve: Less Respect - fight hard for change - be committed to ideas and reject the old “our way is the only way” mentality;
More Service: Less Selflessness - put the needs and dreams of other people first;
More Teamwork: Less Talking - teams grow together through the power of individuals working to their peak potential more often and inspiring each other;
More Uniqueness: Less Uniformity - the common denominator of all great people is that they accepted themselves and embraced their uniqueness – have you?;
More Vigour: Less Venom – energy, enthusiasm and excitement can change the world – negative thoughts, words and actions only destroy it;
More Walking the walk: Less Waste – everyone talks about being green but still has a 20 minute shower each morning – talk the talk – the green economy is here;
More X-Factor: Less X-clusion – put your faith in the indefinable qualities of being human;
More Youth: Less Yelling – get kids involved with your business – their ideas, their imagination, their innovation, their ideologies can transform you and your business;
More Zoom: Less Zealots – grow your culture from inside to out by the passion, energy and determination you show every day.

The future is about achieving more with less – and your future starts today.

Wayne Goldsmith

Nextperts: Because Everyone is an Expert.

WayneG — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 04:37:05 +0000

The Internet has a lot going for it.

Free on line newspapers, web-mail, lots of great information and ideas: anyone can get anything, anytime, anywhere and without paying any money!

The downside – for service based businesses is……everyone now thinks they are an expert.

Want to know how to build a brick wall? Check out the 4560000 videos about home maintenance on YouTube.

Keen to improve your Spanish? Go to one of the 1000000 on line Spanish language programs.

Want to publish a book? Repaint some furniture? Plant a banana tree? It’s all there: anything, anywhere, anytime and for free.

Running a service industry??? The bell tolls for thee – unless……

In the old days you needed experts.

An expert came and fixed your toilet. An expert came and cleaned your roof. An expert tuned your piano. An expert enhanced the performance of your motor vehicle engine.

You wanted to go on holidays so you rang an expert who booked flights and accommodation for you.

You wanted to learn guitar so you went to an expert to teach you to play like Hendrix or Clapton or Neil Young or John Lennon or Kurt Cobain (depending on when you went to see the expert).

But that was then and this, as they say is now.

Everyone is an expert. And when everyone is doing it – no one wants to pay for it.

Try this little test.

Write down any question you can think of – one that needs an answer to help you do a job or task around the house.

In writing this blog post, I came up with, “How to mend a broken curtain rail” – and Google came up with pages and pages of articles, presentations, tips, tricks, hints and guides on how to mend a broken curtain rail. So guess what? I am now an instant expert in curtain rail repairs! Armed with this information I can go and buy the tools, parts and equipment that I need and fix my curtain rail.

Now, that’s great for me. I save time and money and hassle but it is not so good if you are an expert curtain rail fixer-upper with a large mortgage, a family to support and a ravenous business overdraft to feed.

And therein lies the problem for businesses selling knowledge based products and services.

People will no longer pay for information: they want ideas and imagination.

People will no longer pay for what’s known: they want you to help them into the realm of the unknown.

They don’t want you to teach them ”how to” - they want y0u to help them create “what will be”.

Things have value only when they are hard to get. Make things easy to find and free to access and people just simply will not pay for them.

Some of the world’s largest media organisations including newspapers, radio, television and music companies are all grappling with the free for me attitude of many consumers. Add to this to plethora of “do it yourself” instant expert sites and you have a world wide business revolution where knowledge is worthless and what is already know is of little to no value.

The past – what we already know - is worth nothing. The past has never been so distant as it is today as ideas flow and grow more rapidly than at any time in our history as a species.

Selling the present is similarly worthless – because the present is here all too briefly and today’s fads becomes yesterday’s failures faster than ever.

What people will pay for is the future.

The big currency items in this new economy are innovation, creativity, imagination and vision.

In the past it was all about qualifications, knowledge and experience. It was about selling what you knew. Now, everyone knows what you know – so what do you have left to sell?

Now it’s about learning: learning faster than anyone else in your industry and to create ideas faster than your competition. It’s about creativity. And risk taking. And being left field. And being unique. And continuous improvement. And being different. And thinking and doing things no one else has even dared. It’s about forging the future and racing towards tomorrow rather than sitting back and waiting for it to happen.

So all you experts out there….it’s time to move on.Time to accept that the knowledge based economy is dead and buried and the future is for those people who can think it, talk it and see it first.

Be a Nexpert – and in so many ways – the future is yours.

Wayne Goldsmith

Continuous Improvement, Continuous Improvement, Continuous Improvement, Continuous…

WayneG — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:23:51 +0000

Do you want to win? No you don’t. Not really. You want to win and win and win and win!

Winning is rarely about doing it once and walking away. Winning is about sustaining performance: sustaining competitiveness: about getting to the top and staying there.

Lots of people, teams and companies win once – very few are able to adopt the thinking, systems and practices that enable them to sustain competitiveness year after year after year.

Why is sustainable competitiveness so important?

Sustaining competitiveness is critical for one reason…..no one goes from being uncompetitive to winning.

There are three types of organisations in the world:

Not competitive: those organisations devoid of the ideas, people, passion and knowledge to be competitive in their industry – they are doing nothing right;
Competitive: those organisations who are doing most things well and are close to their peak performance level – they are doing most things right;
Winners: those at the top of their industry – at the peak of their performance – with the world at their feet – they are doing everything right.

Being competitive means you can launch a winning new product campaign or successful sales program or drive into a new market from a position of relative strength. It is almost impossible to go from last to first in a single year – but from a position of competitiveness, anything is possible.

However, for some reason most organisations are notoriously bad at sustaining competitiveness.

With very few exceptions around the world, most organisations, sporting teams and even people feel the need to (unnecessarily) go through the Performance Cycle:

Performance Cycle Stage one: Not Competitive: the organisation is failing to perform and struggling to survive;

Performance Cycle Stage two: Striving for Success: A passionate person and / or motivated team ignites the desire to succeed and inspires the organisation to strive for success. The acceleration of progress comes from embracing change and learning and the commitment to turn learning into action;

Performance Cycle Stage three: Creating the Right Culture: The right people and the right environment are in place and the opportunity has been created for the organisation to be successful;

Performance Cycle Stage four: Success: The organisation gets to the top but then loses momentum by ceasing to change and learn at an accelerated rate. They adopt a “secret formula” mentality, i.e. “we know what it takes to win, therefore all we have to do is repeat what we did last year and we will keep winning”. The have forgotten the fundamental principle of winning: Success is a moving target! In the meantime the competition is accelerating their learning, their improvement and their performance – and they are determined to become the next no 1;

Performance Cycle Stage five: The Fall: Things start to fail. Management and staff get sacked, reviews, reviews and more reviews are commissioned, finally the board is overthrown, there is public brawling and the organisation is at the brink of collapsing altogether…… And we are back at stage one again – if you are lucky!

Most businesses, sporting organisations and even people believe it is inevitable that they will perform in cycles: good days and bad days, upturns and down turns, bears and bulls – yada yada yada.

They believe, that there will always be times when they are performing well – and times when they are performing poorly: and that is why they fail.

The performance cycle of an organisation can be compared to a clock – the Performance Clock.

At 10 o’clock, the organisation is hungry for success and changing rapidly. They are accelerating their rate of change by learning fast and by being innovative, creative and committed to success;
At 11 o’clock, the organisation is close to their best. They are consistently performing well, stock prices are rising and they are continuing to strive for success. Most importantly, they have created a culture which has a high likelihood of succeeding;
At 12 o’clock – the organisation wins! They become recognised for their innovation, their creativity and their industry leadership – they are the benchmark – they are at the peak of their performance cycle.

But then, for some reason, a funny thing happens……

Often when an organisation is at the top of its performance cycle it stops doing many of the things it was doing to make it successful.

1 o’clock and the organisation stops being creative and open minded. They start believing that their way is the only way and that they have the infallible secret formula for success. This is the beginning of disaster!

They begin losing market share. Their competitors begin to make inroads in the organisation’s traditional markets. Their stock prices fall.

2 o’clock……3 o’clock……..the Sales manager gets sacked. The Marketing Director soon follows. Then the CEO. The organisation starts spending money on new staff, new equipment, new leaders and new technologies in a frantic attempt to stop the decline in performance.

They continue losing.

4 o’clock…..5 o’clock….the new CEO and the entire management gets sacked. The organisation is in disarray.
6’clock. The team cannot do anything right. The investors and customers have deserted it. It appears that the organisation may never ever experience success again.

But then…..

7 o’clock – someone decides things have to change. They put together a plan, they work with passion and find some people and money to turn things around.
8 o’clock…..9 o’clock – people start believing that things can change. New people, new plans, a team team, new ideas, new thinking……..there is enthusiasm and excitement and energy and passion in the organisation.
10 o’clock and 11 o’clock – the cycle is complete and the organisation can look forward to a short period of success as their performance cycle is at its peak once more.

The sad reality for most organisations is that they spend one or two years (at most) between 10 o’clock and 12 and then often spend many, many, many years between 1 o’clock and 7 o’clock – hoping for a miracle.

The message is clear – for your organisation to be successful over the long term you must be committed to continuous improvement. You must reject the TTWWDIH (“that’s the way we do it here”) disease and continue to strive for excellence in all things everyday.

The aim is to create a sustainably successful high performance environment – and to ensure your organisation is always competitive. Winning once can be due to luck, good weather or a lack of performance by your competition – but sustainable competitiveness comes from good planning, good management, good vision, hard work and a commitment to continuous improvement.

How can you sustain competitiveness?

1. Develop and understand your own unique performance culture: Understand who you are as an organisation, what things make you unique: embrace your uniqueness – it is your edge;

2. Bring in people, ideas, resources etc which either sustain your performance culture or add value to it: Once you know who you are, continuously strive to sustain your uniqueness or add to it by bringing in the right people, ideas, resources etc;

3. Work harder, more consistently, smarter than anyone else: Competitiveness comes from consistency – excellence in all things, every day, from everyone in the organisation;

4. Accelerate your performance through better learning: Learn faster – accelerate your performance by relentlessly seeking new, smarter and better ways to do what you do.

Wayne Goldsmith

Social Media – the S.M.A.R.T. Approach.

WayneG — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:51:48 +0000

Lots of people are talking about Social Media.

Lots of people are getting excited and exhilarated about the potential of Social Media to change the world by providing simple, easy, readily accessible tools to communicate, create and collaborate.

And lots of people are getting baffled, befuddled and bedazzled about Social Media and just what it means to them?

As there are hundreds and hundreds of different social media options, let’s just call them collectively SMART – Social Media and Accelerated Relationship Technologies – S.M.A.R.T.

Why S.M.A.R.T.?

The tools are social media – i.e. they are media tools which are freely available to help people connect, communicate and collaborate in a social (sharing) way.

And their primary role is to accelerate relationships – to provide easy, simple ways of sharing ideas, information and innovations between people and accelerating their capacity to share, to learn, to create and to grow.

There are six things a lot of people believe about S.M.A.R.T. that are wrong:

You have to be really smart to use SMART. Wrong: Anyone can do it – anytime, anywhere and most of the time for free;
It is a social revolution of some kind. Wrong: No it’s not. It’s just communicating more often with more people using more convenient communication tools;
The use of S.M.A.R.T. tools like Blogs, Twitter, You Tube, Face book, My Space etc is making people more distant and only wanting to communicate through the net. Wrong – what S.M.A.R.T. is really doing is helping people stay closer, to collaborate and share ideas and connect more often;
Only kids can use SMART. Wrong: Sure kids are good at it and are growing up with S.M.A.R.T. in the same way many of us grew up with radio, television and fast foods but that’s a great thing. Just think how good they will be at learning, solving problems and accelerating the performance of people, places and products in the future!:
It’s a fad. Wrong: Sorry – it’s here to stay and for one important reason….freedom. Once freedom is given, it just grows and grows and grows. Now that people have the freedom to communicate anytime, anywhere and with anyone, it can not be taken away. Twitter may be replaced by another S.M.A.R.T. tool. Facebook might be upgraded to something more practical and functional. But now that people can connect easily, simply and cheaply using S.M.A.R.T. tools, the “fad” is now “fact”;
“It will destroy my business because people are spending too much time on SMART tools and not enough time doing their jobs”. Wrong: It will only destroy your business if your business is not about learning, creativity, innovation, idea sharing and finding solutions quickly and collaboratively….are there any businesses like that?

So be smart, try S.M.A.R.T. and enjoy sharing, collaborating, learning and growing “smarter” with people everywhere.

Wayne Goldsmith

Fundamentally Flawed: Five Business Fundamentals that do not work, have not worked and will not work.

WayneG — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:26:09 +0000

If we learnt anything from the Global Economic melt down it is this….most of the accepted business fundamentals that people have written about, talked about and even preached about are wrong, do not work and need to change.

There are at least five core business fundamentals that do not work, probably have never worked and will never work.

The problem is this.

Who writes most business books, business articles, business blogs and business text books?

People who are either working as consultants with large businesses or business school academics.

And what type of businesses make up around 90% of the world’s economy?

Small and medium businesses.

So people who do not know about or understand small and medium business are telling 90% of us how to do what we do. And when it fails they blame the economy or the environment or world trade barriers or corporate leadership…instead of accepting some responsibility and admitting “we were wrong”.

Think about it. People who work with less than 10% of the world’s business’ (and even then are working with them for only a short period of time), are writing the corporate gospels that the rest of the business world have openly and blindly accepted. Is it just me or is this total insanity?

Result…it failed and we failed. We listened to the economic theorists and the business gurus. We bought their books. We went to their workshops. We did their courses. And we failed.

Take succession planning.

It might work for Ford. It could work for Apple. It should work for IBM.

But show me one small or medium sized business, who adopted a succession planning strategy, developed a future leader to take over the business on a given due date, had the incumbent step aside gracefully and then saw the business lift in performance and profits? Guess what…there isn’t any! Succession planning does not work.

Here are another four business fundamentals – core business truths – that turn out not to be quite so true.

Leadership training – what is the fundamental quality of great leaders? Uniqueness. So what’s the point of running training courses to teach something that you don’t want your leaders to learn – i.e. a standard, one size fits all way of leading.

Succession planning - as above – it does not, has not and will not work. The main reason is human nature. Succession planning means that the next person – the successor – must be by definition more successful, more talented and more brilliant than the incumbent. And who in all honesty wants that to happen? Ego rules the economy.

Strategic planning – Everyone who crashed in the Global Economic Crisis had a strategic plan. They had a budget management plan. They had a business growth plan. Did it save them? Did it give them immunity to failing and falling? The old “failing to plan is planning to fail” is rubbish. It was the lack of ability to read the warning signs, to react dynamically and a failure to adapt quickly to them that cost so many people their businesses, their fortunes and their lives. But…at least they all stuck to their plan!

The Mission statement - what a waste of time, money and energy the old “mission statement” is. Take the company on a retreat, run a workshop where people come up with some obscure, irrelevant sentence about the company, stick it up on a wall somewhere and “presto” – everything changes, everyone performs to their potential, profits rain down from the sky like rain…….anyone else see this for the BS it is?

The Telemarketing / mass marketing plan – is there anything more annoying, more obnoxious or more irritating that receiving a call or brochure offering a one size fits all solution to your problems? Mass marketing is a waste of time – it is offensive – it is humiliating for the sellers and the potential buyers and it has to be stopped. People want to be listened to and engaged with not marketed at.

There is a better way: a much much much better way of doing business in the post Global Economic Crisis………..see my next post.

Wayne Goldsmith

High Performance Teams – do you have what it takes to be the best?

WayneG — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:51:04 +0000

So you think you have a high performance team?

So you believe your team is the best of the best in your industry?

So you feel that your team is capable of creating a consistently competitive high performance environment?

Try the High Performance Teams quiz…..if you dare.

Lots of people talk about creating teams.

Just as many talk about creating high performance teams.

Yet, few really understand what high performance actually is, where it is, how to find it, who owns it and how to keep it.

The best teams in the world – those who genuinely understand creating and sustaining a high performance environment – are those who consistently demonstrate an uncompromising commitment to continuous improvement, excellence and the enthusiastic pursuit of creativity, innovation and accelerated learning.

They see success not as a final, one off destination, but as an inevitable result of their passion, drive, determination, innovation and selfless devotion to team performance. They “live excellence” – they live in high performance environments where honesty, passion, creativity and energy are the currency and being better than anyone in their respective role in their industry is the mantra.

Still think your team is a high performance team? Still think your team has what it takes to be the best?

Take the “businesscoachingbrain’s” High Performance Team quiz…..five minutes that will change the way you think about high performance teams.

Answer Yes or No to the following questions:

Question 1: Does everyone in your team consistently out-perform everyone else in their respective roles in your competition?

Question 2: Does everyone in your team strive to learn faster and apply new ideas more effectively than your competition?

Question 3: Does everyone in your team pursue individual and collective excellence with passion, enthusiasm, determination and drive?

Question 4: Does everyone in your team crave professional development and opportunities to learn, grow and improve?

Question 5: Does everyone in your team thirst for innovation, creativity, new ideas and discovering new and better ways of doing what they do?

Question 6: Is everyone in your team as passionate about the success of the team as they are about achieving their own personal success?

Question 7: Does everyone in your team encourage and energise their team mates?

Question 8: Does everyone in your team embrace total, uncompromising honesty about their individual and collective performance?

Question 9: Does everyone in your team not only accept but enthusiastically seek feedback, input and advice from their peers?

Question 10: Does everyone in your team strive to understand the needs, motivations and passions of their team mates and respond to them?

Question 11: Does everyone in your team strive to be unique, to be different, to take risks and to be themselves - yet respect the uniqueness of their team mates?

Question 12: Does everyone in your team reject the concept of TTWWDIH – “that’s the way we do it here” and are they all committed to continuous improvement?

Question 13: Does everyone in your team embrace hard work and dedication to achieving their individual and team goals?

Question 14: Does everyone in your team take time to get to know and understand their team mates and what motivates them to perform to their full potential?

Question 15: Has everyone in your team taken time to discover their own passions, their own motivations and their own unique gifts and what environment they need to create to consistently perform to their full potential?

Question 16: Is your high performance environment strong enough and robust enough to stay strong and continue to improve in times of change?

Question 17: Does everyone in your team inspire those around them and those in other teams, your clients and the public by demonstrating excellence, energy and enthusiasm in all that they do?

Question 18: Does your team work collaboratively and solve problems as an integrated, open minded, non-egotistical group of professionals focused on enhancing their performance?

Question 19: Does everyone in your team work hard on their physical and mental health and their personal and family relationships to ensure they have balance and happiness outside of work?

Question 20: Does everyone in your team “own” the culture of the team, have they bought into it with their complete energy and potential and are they working to grow and enhance the team’s high performance culture?

So – how did you do?

Answer key:

Score one point for each Yes answer and zero points for each No response.

Score less than 5: High Performance? Forget it. You should start looking for a nice, warm, tropical island somewhere and retire to it.

Score 6-10: You have the makings of a High Performance team but at the moment you still would prefer coffee to commitment, holidays to hard work, hot lunches to honesty and popularity to performance.

Score 11-15: You are on the way to becoming a High Performance team. You have the potential – you have the knowledge – you have the desire – now all it takes is the consistent commitment to excellence.

Score 16-20: What are you wasting time reading this article for? You are already driving a High Performance team – please send me the details of your own blog so I can read how you do it!

Wayne Goldsmith

PowerPoint…you are the weakest link – Goodbye!

WayneG — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:00:26 +0000

Got a speaking engagement coming up? Or have to make a big impression with a pitch or presentation?

Want to engage with your audience?

Want to capture their imagination?

Want to get your audience excited and enthusiastic about what you are doing?

What to communicate with each and every person in the audience?

Then join my new club – The PAPPPP – People Against Pointless Power Point Presentations.

There was a time when the horse and cart were cutting edge.

There was an era when black and white TV was the best there was.

There was a moment when we all thought Disco music was pretty cool.

And there was a time when Power Point was a great way to communicate ideas and information.

However, just like the horse and cart, the TV and the mirror balls, it is time to look for something new, exciting, engaging and entertaining and “Power Point just ain’t it”.

There are five really good reasons why Power Point has become Power Point-less when it comes to delivering ideas, information and innovations to groups of people:

People want to be engaged with you, to share ideas with you, to learn and grow with you. They don’t want to be Power Pointed at by you;
Communication in this century is a living, exciting, dynamic two-way thing – not a one way conversation from speaker to audience;
Knowledge is not power. There is no point delivering a long Power Point presentation full of facts and figures - because everyone knows what you know and they can get it anywhere, anytime and for free from the Internet. There are no more secrets;
Power Point forces people to engage with the screen – not with the person or with the ideas, information and innovations – i.e. too many times the presenter talks to the screen and does not share, collaborate and grow with the audience - let’s face it – just how many blue slides with yellow text have you seen in the past ten years?;
People want to engage and connect personally – there is nothing personal about Power Point – unless you are a projector and have a thing about laptops and USB drives.

Great presenting is based on the F.E.E.L. concept:

Feel it (it moves you, it emotionally engages you);
Ears (you hear it – and really listen);
Eyes (you see it and really focus on it); and
Learn (you learn from it and as a result it stimulates change and growth).

PowerPoint is great eye-candy sometimes but as it is with all candy – you just get fat, slow and lazy if you get too much of it.

Power Point can also be a crutch for lazy presenters who aren’t prepared to work hard and who aren’t prepared to communicate and engage with their audience - instead trying to “wow” the audience with graphics, diagrams, photos and flashy transitions…and your audience deserves better.

It’s about energising people with engagement and not trying to baffle them with bull$@^!

And now the good news………….particularly for techno-phobes – who never got Power Point anyway.

The key to being a great presenter is being yourself, speaking from the heart and in doing so engaging the hearts (and minds) of your audience.

Far more effective and far more enduring than being a great “Power-Pointer” is being a great communicator and great human being – one who knows him/herself, who is passionate and knowledgeable about their subject and who cares for their audience and their needs.

Where people were once impressed by technology, they now crave connections.

Where once people were gaggled by gadgets, they now want to be consumed with communication.

In the old days we tried to “wow” audiences with graphics, we now need to excite them with engagement.

So….the challenge is over to you….what’s the best way you have found to communicate ideas, information and innovation in a way which engages, excites and entertains your audience?

Let me know.

Wayne Goldsmith

Creating Creativity – Creative Thinking for Business Success

WayneG — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:09:03 +0000

Knowledge is not power.

Things have power and value only when they are hard to get.

The Internet provides the opportunity for anyone to access anything anytime anywhere - and for free.

So now when everyone can readily access and acquire knowledge - knowledge itself is without power.

The real power – the real force in this century is creativity.

The ability to take knowledge – the same knowledge that everyone in the world can access – and by thinking differently – do amazing new, innovative, exciting and imaginative things with it.

The issue is – can you learn creativity? Can you teach someone to be creative?

Can you -”create creativity?”

We are the sum of our experiences.

So when we come across words, ideas, concepts and information we churn them through our “interpreter” – our brains – which use the sum of our experiences to try to interpret the words, ideas, concepts and information and give them meaning and relevance.

For example:

If you say the word “training” to a crowd of people, each person in the crowd will interpret the word “training” and try to understand it, give it meaning and give it relevance based on their personal experiences with the word “training”.

A person involved in human resources for example might think of “workshops”, “training manuals”, “induction courses” and “professional development programs” when they hear the word ”training”.

The word “training” to a sports coach will trigger thoughts of “running laps” or “lifting weights” or “stretching”.

To a person involved in the academic sector, “training” might mean “courses”, “programs”, “units”, “assessment”, “learning” and “problem solving exercises”.

However, to a creative thinker, the word “training” can mean all these things and many more besides - including things not obviously related to “training”.

Creativity is not thinking - it’s un-thinking! It’s doing the opposite of what most of us are trained to do.

Creative thinking is taking ideas and information and expanding them, exploding them and enhancing them.

Where most people put ideas and information into boxes, creative thinking requires the ability to put things in rectangles, pyramids, octagons, circles and tubes – upside down, sideways and inside out – and all at the same time – while standing on one leg in a bucket of blue Jello.

The big question is………..can you teach creative thinking? Can you “create creativity?”

The simple answer is Yes…but it requires some training in “un-thinking” and “un-learning”.

Here are just some simple exercises to try to help you to create creativity.

1. The “A rose but by another name is a truck” exercise.

Look at a common household object like a chair or a table or a door or a plate. It doesn’t really matter. Pick something that is ordinary and something which most of the time has a single, simple purpose.

Now write down everything you can think of – no matter how crazy it may sound – that the object you have selected can be used for, i.e. everything except for it’s more traditional accepted use.

For example a common chair could be used to stand on to fix something. Two of them placed back to back could be used for exercise equipment (e.g. “dips”). You could put a pillow on one and use it for a leg rest. You could sit backwards on it and have someone massage your shoulders in a comfortable position. And of course - if you absolutely had to - you can sit on it.

The aim of this exercise is to teach your brain to look at ideas, objects, concepts and information not as single, isolated things but as triggers to explore multiple possibilities, to embrace thinking without limits and to develop problem solving skills which are unparalleled.

2. The ”Word un-association Game”.

Sit down with a friend or colleague and start to play the word “un-association” game.

We’ve all seen the “word association” game on TV. You say “car” and I say “petrol”. I say “school” and you say “teacher”.

In the word “un-association” game, you score points for how un-related your word is to the initial theme word.

So if your friend says “car”, you might reply “France”. You say “school” and they say “turkey”. The aim of the game is to teach your brain to reject the most obvious and immediate associations and to seek alternate words and thoughts vaguely or remotely associated with the theme word.

The key to creating creativity is thinking differently.

Where most thinking requires people to place things in categories or “boxes” to give them meaning, creative thinking requires “un-thinking” and “anti-categorization”: it requires you to not try and classify, categorize or theorize – it requires you to be imaginative and allow your brain to be fluid, dynamic and see limitless possibilities.

Wayne Goldsmith