Stephen Coveys The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one such book which I thoroughly recommend rereading.

Indeed, I am valuing the content so much that I intend to recap on each of the 7 habits in subsequent posts. However, before starting that journey, one of the early scene setters is worth reflecting on.

The P/PC balance refers to the ability or capability to produce, and the ongoing maintenance of that capability. Covey uses various examples to explain, but the use that resonates for me is when considering people in our lives, and people in our business. It’s also highly relevant given that May is Mental Health month.

Let’s look at colleagues or team members.

Having colleagues or team members that really go the extra mile and do great work all of which contributes to yours and the business success is great. However, overusing them, or indeed not supporting them in maintaining that productive capability is likely to result in diminished capability. Organisations / businesses that continually ‘use up’ their people are essentially ‘killing off’ one of their key assets.

One does wonder whether the increased incidence of suicides, particularly in men is as a result of their PC being diminished to a point where they are unable to make rational decisions. In many cases this can mean irrational and desperate actions.

What can you do today to really checkin and understand the wellbeing of your team?

A great summary of the book can be found on the McKinsey Authors Talk website. It’s worthy of a read and for those interested further I’d recommend checking out the book.

A couple of key takeaways for me as I started reading the book.

The first is where he defines Longpath as “a simple but profound mindset that shifts thinking from the short to the long term.” How often do we as leaders (and indeed humans) get caught up in reactionary thinking that means we get caught up in the immediacy of the situation

Indeed, Wallach the goes one step further to posit that we can loose sight of the big picture because of sort term reactionary thinking. Indeed our physiological fight or flight response to short term events or thoughts can cause reactionary responses that completely ignore any long term impact or value.

The situation is always the situation bit its our interpretation and how we react that defines us.

In 2011 I wrote an academic paper entitled Entrepreneur Optimism and the New Venture Creation Process with my colleague and friend Dr Amanda Gudmundsson. This was published in the Journal of Asia Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, and was also the topic that I presented at two conferences.

Despite the paper getting published and presenting it at a number of academic conferences changes in circumstances mean that I changed careers and it was cast aside, as was my teaching and other activities within the academic system.

Fast word to today where in the course of a meeting with some colleagues at BHP we came on to the subject of what I had done previously. As a result of that single conversation a number of people asked for a copy of the paper so I visited the university website to provide the link for them to access it. To my surprise I saw that it had been down loaded over 600 times. I was pleasantly surprised.

Now for those of you in academic roles, that download number is likely to be small and inconsequential, however for me it meant a lot and has caused me to reflect on the topic and its relevance today.

I suspect that my original premise, which was that we have a propensity to focus on the encouragement of optimism and associated forward movement, without due consideration to managing negative risks may still stand.

One only has to look at the way that many of us have responded to the COVID events that we have experienced over the past 2 years.

I have also been reflecting on the increasing prevalence and relevance of coaching in its various forms, and the importance of optimism and positivity to my own life. Certainly I have experienced significant change and upheaval and I do wonder the extent to which my own optimism was not tempered by good old fashioned reality!

Suffice to say, that my interest has again been piqued and the posts that will follow will be my way of exploring this to see where it takes the next stage of my life and career.

The result of all of this is that I now looking at the value of revisiting that research, with a view to updating it to understand the landscape and context 10 years on.

The term fake news’ despite it often being overused and misused by some well-recognsied people, does have a place in our information filtering and prioritisation. I would always recommend keeping a level of deeper curiosity in the front of your mind when consuming any information.

What can be more challenging is the oversimplification of the facts to the point that the real meaning often gets lost.

I recently had first-hand experience on this when trying to unpack the ‘facts’ behind the Job Keeper Payment being promoted and offered in Australia. The differences between what many of the news media outlets reported in summary form and the information contained on the appropriate Australian Government web site were quite stark. Making decisions based on incorrect or misunderstood information can be emotionally dangerous.

My advice to anyone about to make key decisions is to go to the original source of the information. Don’t rely on third-party web sites, media outlets, despite their size and stature. Beware, that even adopting this approach can be challenging given the speed with which the Government and others are creating policy and announcements. These are likely to evolve and become clearer over time, so exercise judgmental caution before making final decisions.

In Australia, the Government have established a number of key ways of accessing data across a wide range of areas relating to Covid-19.

I encourage you to use them.

There has been much analysis done, and writing published on many of these things, with much of it having been discarded as pseudoscience, religious ramblings or fairy tails.

Whether you agree within specific doctrine, writing or viewpoint is not the point. The point is, that they all exist and they all have and continue to contribute, through the energy and vibration that we experience from what they offer, to the way we continue to develop and grow.

Our role is to be open to all possibilities, be the best we can, show love and respect to our fellow human beings, and enjoy the journey we are on.

It is only when we call better align the energy that we have that we, as individuals, will become the person we were always meant to be.

There are so many of us facing complete disruption to not only our lives, our businesses and potentially our sources of income.

I’m based in Perth, Western Australia, and am happy help in whatever way I can should you need advice, someone just to talk to, a sounding board, and independent option or indeed in any way you need. I am also well connected, so if I don’t know, I’m sure I can find someone that does.

Reach out to me directly on my mobile 0405 188664.