Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

Last time we were together we were talking about the Boogeyman and what would happen if we didn’t act.  So we’ve been acting ~ we bought that whole Boogeyman thing and got moving.  Then we looked up and realized we were so busy acting, we missed getting back to you about it in our blog and newsletter.

Has that ever happened to you ~ you got so focused on one thing that some of the other details just got dropped?

How do you know which ones need to be picked up and which ones can stay on the floor?  How do you juggle all that needs to get done?

We’ve decided that it all goes back to your values.  Once you are clear on those, you can get clear on what to pick up and what to leave on the floor.

So we are picking up our blog and newsletter…and we’ve learned some things.  Shorter and more often is better.  That’s what we’ll do.

Stephen King & Us

What does Stephen King have to do with LeaderSHIFT? How could he possibly be connected to our 100 Day Challenge?

 To answer those questions, you’d have to know why Stephen King writes. In an interview years ago, Mr. King reported that he writes as prolifically as he does because if he doesn’t get HIM out on paper, the Boogeyman will get him.

 Stephen King has more to do with LeaderSHIFT and our 100 Day Challenge than you might imagine. Claiming our intentions for the 100 Day Challenge, writing our blog and making it public did three things for us:

1.  Caused us to see that we had a Boogeyman of our own out there if we didn’t act.
2. Made us focus on what we want instead of what we don’t have – and that got us moving.
3. Opened doors for our business where before we saw only walls.

 So – enough about us and Stephen King.

 How about you? What’s your Boogeyman? What will happen if you don’t act? Those 100 Days are speeding by ~ they are already halfway gone ~ and time is passing faster than the Langoliers can eat it.

So What’s New?

We probably ought to update this blog more frequently than every 30 days, but hey, we’ve been busy…

Back to our 100 Day Challenge, we said we really wanted to find out what would happen if we only had 100 days to prove our value. In the last 30 days, we’ve taken several strategic actions. We have:

• Refocused our marketing efforts
• Written and published our first newsletter
• Explored a new partnership opportunity and taken the first steps to set it up
• Gotten clear about what we do – and more importantly, what we don’t do

We don’t know what the payoff of these will be just yet. We do know that simply taking action has kept us going and given us new ways to move forward.

So, how about you? What actions have you taken? How have your 30 days gone (and isn’t it amazing how quickly 30 days pass)?

If you’ve done anything, you’ve discovered some things that work – and maybe some that don’t.

What if you are completely stalled? Does that mean that you haven’t taken any action? Taking no action is, in fact, an action.

How can you consider this from another perspective?

Turn around – look in any other direction and find one new opportunity. “Opportunity for what?” you might ask. Any opportunity to take action that will move you or your organization forward.

The 100 Days Challenge

 

The world is all “a-twitter” about President Obama’s first 100 days. Ever since FDR created the concept of 100 days to prove yourself as a president, it’s become the standard presidential measurement.

 

So enough about politics – what’s the connection here?

 

What if you had 100 days to prove your worth as a leader? What would you do that would make a difference?

 

How many days DO you have? How many are left?

 

What are your people saying about you: have you been deemed a success or a failure?

 

What if there was a do-over? Where would you focus your attention?

 

We’ve decided to take the next 100 days (April 29 – August 6, 2009) to see what we can do to make a difference with LeaderSHIFT. We’ll be reporting on our progress.

 

We invite you to take the 100 Days Challenge yourself – no matter what title you hold in your organization. We’d love to here from you about how it’s going.

Being Michelle Obama

The world is in an uproar ~ everyone is talking about Michelle Obama’s visit with the Queen. Did Michelle do something inappropriate (Yikes! Did she really touch the Queen??!!) or were we just witnessing the power of someone who has an amazing ability to create relationship?

Michelle had the Queen “at hello.”

What does Michelle Obama have that the rest of us could use? Clearly, this blog is not long enough to capture all of the exceptional qualities that she possesses. We do think that she has three behaviors that all of us could immediately put to good use.

1. Being authentic ~ Michelle is being herself, not playing the role of First Lady. Her willingness to be herself holds the space for others to do the same.

2. Listening ~ People who have experienced it have said that Michelle listens to you like you are the only person in the room. Her attention is completely on you and what you are saying in a way that makes you feel like you are truly being heard and your message is getting right through.

3. Valuing others ~ Michelle treats other people, no matter what their station in life, as if they truly matter to her. She appears to be looking for and finding each person’s unique contribution.

So what does this mean for you? If you use these behaviors often enough, they will become a part of you AND you will be able to do things that other people wouldn’t even dream of doing.

What would the world be like if more of us acted like this?

What do you think? How often do you use these behaviors and what would happen if you used more of them or used them more often?

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts and observations.

Surviving

Surviving

 

We just read an article in Newsweek (February 2, 2009) about a newly published book The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life (Grand Central Publishing, January 2009). It is filled with intriguing information, research data and several remarkable case studies…all directed towards answering the question of what it takes to survive life’s inevitable challenges. 

 

The author, Ben Sherwood, travels the world to gain insight from people who have survived a near-fatal experience. He has discussed this topic with a number of experts to understand the mix of psychology, genetics and “everything else” that determines whether we live or die.

 

Sherwood comes to the conclusion that no single theory can encompass or explain every situation – and –  he believes that you control much more of your destiny during a life-changing crisis than you might imagine.

 

The article is full of details about Sherwood’s research and discoveries; the one that piqued our interest the most was the conversation about “luck.”   Sherwood explains that “…your attitude and behavior determine nine tenths of what happens in your life.”  We thought this pointed directly to the concept of perspectives: that luck has more to do with personal perspective than chance.

 

The bottom-line is that luck (your attitude and behavior) has everything to do with the way you respond to a life-threatening situation. In other words, your perspective determines your fate. (Are you surprised?)

 

Sherwood takes his premise a step further. With a structure of 10%-80%-10%, he identifies the three perspectives that showed up in the life-threatening situations he studied and reports that these are the choices that we all have:

 

1. Assessing the situation calmly to see where the opportunities lie, so you can capitalize on them; 10% of the population reportedly do this as a matter of course.  These are the people Sherwood described in detail in his book, the people he described as leaders.
2. Turning into a zombie and walking around in a daze with your brain shut off, which blinds you to any opportunities that may exist; 80% of the population reportedly take this perspective. The good news is that even though this is their initial reaction, they can learn to “snap out of it” if they learn some alternative strategies like the ones in this book.
3. Becoming so frightened that you flail around and become a danger to yourself and others; 10% of the population falls into this category.  These are the people who die needlessly and often take others with them. These are the people you want to avoid in a crisis.

 

If what you experience is all a matter of your perspective, your mindset and your ways of thinking about a situation, then what about that same connection in other contexts?

 

Take the weather for example, always a favorite topic in our part of the world this time of year.

 

The topic of weather – and perspective – came up just the other day in conversation with a friend of ours, Beca.  She was commenting on the fact that when the temperature hit 32 degrees here in Ohio at the start of winter, everyone bundled up and complained about the cold.  Yet once we came out of our cold snap of -4 degrees, lots of people were out in their shirtsleeves, excited about how warm it was when it hit 32 degrees. 

 

So what’s the weather like in your organization right now?

 

As the storm of this economy swirls around your organization, what behaviors are you seeing – are people calmly assessing the situation to see where the opportunities are, are they in a daze or are they flailing around needlessly?

 

And what about you? What part of your work life would benefit if you took control of your destiny right now?  If you were open to noticing opportunities when they showed up?  If you seized upon openings that other people are missing?

 

We invite you to join us in doing just that this week ~ and let us know how it goes.

 

Playing to Win

Playing to Win

 

The headline read “Bloody Monday”. Seven companies – six of whom were in the manufacturing and service industries – laid off a total of 71,400 people. All in one day.

 

This comes hard on the heels of the 200,000 jobs that have been lost this month alone and the nearly 2.6 million jobs that were lost during 2008.

 

Is it any wonder that people who still have their jobs are feeling an immense need to protect what they have by keeping their heads down and playing it safe?

 

We have a client who has an opinion about this – she says that many people around here (in NE Ohio) have lost so much already that they are holding on tight to what they have, and for the most part, are not willing to take any chances that might cost them any more.

 

In sports, they call this “playing not to lose.”

 

There is another way to play – playing to win.

 

Playing to win takes leadership. One of the leadership qualities we identified last time was the ability to consider any situation from different points of view.

 

How are you seeing the circumstances in your organization right now? Are you hunkering down and playing it safe – or are you looking for opportunities for business results that may have been missed up to now?

 

Hunkering down limits you to one perspective, one that is based in fear.

 

Looking for opportunities requires that you expand your perspective. It’s like seeing the entire playing field; taking in the big picture, not just your own personal experience or emotion, in the heat of the game.

 

We started this blog by talking about headlines.

 

What if the headline read: “A Call to Action!”

 

One of our colleagues is the president of a manufacturing company here. She told us that one of her biggest headaches is the persistence of functional silos – those hotbeds of organizational hunkering.

 

Silos are just one example of hunkering – there are many more, all of them characterized by things like frozen communication, lack of risk-taking (doing the same things over & over, even when it’s not working for you) and protection of turf.

 

This week, look around your organization and get the big picture. What do you see?

 

What steps can you take this week to unfreeze a conversation, try something new or share some “turf”?

 

We’d love to know how it goes.

 

 

Starting the Conversation

 

It’s the New Year – and you may be full of resolutions and goals for 2009 (as well as holiday cookies, gelt, latkes and first fruits!).

 

One of our goals for 2009 was to begin a global conversation by launching this blog. The conversation we envision is exactly that…an ongoing dialogue among many about people achieving business results by building relationships ~ inside, outside, up, down and across their organizations.

 

Instead of starting the conversation out with our opinions, we thought we would just ask you to look around. Who are the people that you know, have heard about or seen who are getting the kind of results you’d like to get?

 

For instance, these are the people who are:

1. getting what they need or want at work from anyone, anywhere.
2. generating sales or increasing profits – despite the economy.
3. getting everybody to pitch in and do what’s needed for the good of the organization.
4. having more fun, regardless of the job stress.
5. progressing up their career ladder rapidly.

 

Now that you’ve looked, we have to admit that we do have an opinion about this.

 

We believe that, no matter what business or industry these people may be in or where they reside on the organizational chart, they are getting these results because they share some common characteristics.

 

In our work with organizations and individuals over 25 years or so, we have found three of these common characteristics that we think lay the foundation for the successful results that these people are achieving:

 

1. The ability to consider any situation from several points of view
2. The flexibility to adapt their communication style to create rapport with anyone
3. The skill to transform conflict into creativity

 

Bottom line: We are betting that the people you identified are focusing on their relationships as much as they focus on their tasks, processes and procedures.

 

That’s our opinion. What’s yours?

 

If this strikes a chord with you, we hope you will stay in this conversation. Explore it with other people – forward it on and talk about it. Send us your observations or questions.

 

Happy New Year – we look forward to hearing from you!