Thanks for coming back, if you want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

You’ve heard it all before about us all being uniquely ‘wired’ making us all different in our own way. Realizing we have our own filters for our experiences so that even when we see a red rose or smell it we are all experiencing it in our own way.  That unique way of seeing the word can become ‘hard wired’ in  leading to people becoming set in their ways  and how they do things – approach and solve problems for example.  Your leadership qualities and abilities can only be improved by challenging your own thinking and getting outside of your box!
Even if you think that you are an open minded individual, chances are that you could still improve. Truth is, most people believe that they are open to ideas and opinions, but then when it comes time to prove it, they find themselves sticking to the same thoughts and opinions that they have had for their entire life. This can hold you back and lead others to believe that you are not open to ideas and possibilities. In order to be a true leader for yourself and for other people, you need to be able to easily work on a team; be open to new ideas and not close down your mind for new or out of the box suggestions.
Take a look at these top 10 reasons why you need to think outside of the box:
1.    It will further your personal and career development. If you tell yourself that something can be done, than most likely, it can. By being open, you are letting others around you know that you are willing to take on new challenges head on, even if the challenge seems difficult.
2.    You will earn respect from your peers and co-workers when you respect their ideas and opinions- even if those ideas and opinions seem a little farfetched. You will also be respected when you come up with your own ideas that are outside of the box. The person who speaks up and offers their ideas is always more respected and well regarded than those who sit in the back of the room and is silent.
3.    It shows that you have the ability to think and act quickly if you need to.
4.    It gives you the leading edge over competition. Think about television commercials that have catchy songs in them or a funny storyline. The idea and concept might be a little out of this world, but they also stick with consumers and help companies profit. If you have the ability to think outside of the box, then you will always be one step ahead.
5.    Some of the most famous inventions did not come from people who thought that their idea was simple and easy to create; they came from people who had big ideas, big dreams and would stop at nothing to make those dreams come true.
6.    It shows that you have control, drive and determination.
7.    If you think outside of the box, then those around you are going to be more willing to open up as well.
8.    It will be easier to solve conflicts when they arise at work or in your personal life. Those who think outside of the box are more willing to compromise than those who have one track minds.
9.    You will be less apt to get stuck in a rut or feel bored with things going on in your life. Thinking outside of the box will help you come up with creative ways to keep things interesting and fun.
10.    It will enable you to experience new things in life. Those who tend to be more closed minded usually stick with the same types of food, the same job and going to the same places. If you can think outside of the box a little, you will bring things into your life that you will enjoy that you never would’ve tried before.
Having good leadership skills does not just include being able to effectively manage your work environment or your employees. Being a good leader takes into account how you respond to new situations, change and new people. If you open your mind up, then you are more likely to respond positively to those things and that will enable you to lead more effectively.
If you want more articles like this , check out 'Changing Times’ and for help developing you or your organizations leadership skills contact us via our website – Future Performance.

Do you need to change your leadership style? If you do, then it is first helpful to know what kind of leadership styles there are so that you can determine which category you fall into. Not all types of leadership styles are the best to possess, but by figuring out where you fit, you will then have the power to make changes if necessary. Be honest with yourself when reading over this information so that you can improve your leadership skills.

•    Task Leader: You focus on the details of every little thing. You organize everything, you delegate everything, you plan, you organize and then you probably plan and organize again. You only give certain tasks to those who are in the “right” position to complete them and never trust anyone else to do the job of another. The thoughts and feelings of your time or people around you are rarely taken into consideration and you are always right. Your staff may not stick around long or if they do, they may lack motivational qualities.

•    The Leader Who Participates: A leader who participates and lets other team members play a role in the decision making process ultimately makes the final decision. The decision may be one of their own or it could be a thought from one of the other team members. Employees of leaders who participates and lets others participate tend to be more motivated because they feel as though their thoughts and opinions are valued.

•    The “Leave Them Alone” Leader: This type of leader gives their staff their tasks to do and then they leave them alone to complete those tasks or their work. This type of leader can be effective if daily work tasks are the same or similar, but problems can arise if the tasks change often as it can lead team members to be confused. Team members may also feel unsure if they can approach their leader with a question if they have one. The leave them alone leader can be a good leader, but it might also mean that the leader is not interested in daily operations and does not want to make an effort.

•    The Powerful Leader: The powerful leader is often thought of as the high power that controls everything. Powerful leaders do not take suggestions from employees and generally doesn’t care for outside opinions. Staff members of a powerful leader may start to resent being treated in such a demeaning way and the turnover rate of the staff is usually high.

•    The Leader Who Never puts Down the Policy Book: This kind of leader adheres to every policy and rule and never deviates from it. There is no room for change with this type of leader and the thought of change can make a “book leader” cringe. While this type of leader may be appropriate for jobs that need to be followed exactly for legal or other reasons, it can bring down the creativeness of the team. It can also prevent the team from knowing how to react to change and that can be a severe consequence.
•    Communicative Leader: The communicative leader is one who is in constant contact with his or her staff. They also regularly participate in staff projects and help complete goals. Communicative leaders know how to motivate the staff and keep customers happy at the same time. While communicative leaders are usually a positive asset, they can also become overbearing at times.

•    The Leader Who Can Change: The leader who can change can easily adapt to meet staff and customer goals. They know when their involvement is wanted or needed and they know when to back off. Since they have such a good ability to change and adapt, they are most often seen as the best types of leaders.

Sometimes when you give it a label it starts to make sense. Check out more leadership articles at "Changing Times' or email us and we'll help you find some answers.

Consider the following scenario:
There is a wooden beam, 15ft long lying on the ground in front of you. The beam is 3 inches wide, and your task is to walk from one end to the other without stepping off. Pretty straightforward for most of us under normal circumstances you would think.

But now suspend the same beam 150ft in the air between 2 buildings and attempt the same feat. Very likely, if you attempted this feat at all, your performance would be much more stilted, cautious and hesitant, and you would certainly feel very different about the experience!

Now it can be reasonably argued that the “fear” or trepidation we would feel with the second task is a perfectly normal response, as it is our minds’ natural protection mechanism kicking in, and a normal way of preventing us from putting ourselves at risk without being very aware of the consequences.

But the point is this: whether the fear is based on real or imagined dangers, the impact on our performance is same.

In sports this is often called the “choking” or “tanking” effect, and in the world of entertainment “performance anxiety” or “stage fright”. The same phenomenon also occurs in all other walks of life whenever we perceive the outcome of our performance to have heightened importance or significance, such as when taking an exam or driving test for example, or when delivering a wedding speech or business presentation.

The key to maximising our own performance levels and ultimate success in life comes down to being able to identify whether the fears which impact our performance are based on “real” dangers, or simply those things in our perception which “appear” real. To quote a common definition of fear, this can be described as False Evidence Appearing Real.

The ability to view your fears from a 3rd perspective and to dispassionately question their validity represents the start in the process to overcoming them.

Check out ’Pick from 18 excuses to inhibit your success’ for more insights into blasting away those road blocks!

For more articles like this go to ‘Changing Times’ or follow our ‘Twitter feed‘  for updates.

It never ceases to amuse me when I engage with clients and find similar issues affecting more than one client. Recently I have been working with clients around their ‘Sacred Cows’.

Now for the uninitiated this is not the Hindu practice of worshipping ‘Sacred Cows’ but the corporate equivalent of creating and then following without question a procedure or policy as if it was written in stone!

Every business needs systems, procedures and policies if it is to produce consistent results. However there has to be someone who is prepared to challenge the status quo and champion change.

What may have seemed sensible, if not vitally important, at a time in the past can quickly become outdated and potentially ludicrous in today’s business climate?

I read recently of an experiment where scientists put 5 monkeys in a room and placed some bananas in a far corner. Obviously the monkeys wanted the banana’s but every time they went to get then just before they got to then a jet of cold water shot out and sprayed them!

The monkeys quickly learnt not to go near the Bananas and when the scientists replaced a monkey in the cage the old monkeys stopped the new one from getting the bananas and a potential drowning.

Within a week the scientists replaced all the monkeys but none went near the bananas. Even though they’d removed the water hose!
In effect the market conditions had changed but the team (monkeys) were unaware and maintained an inherited practice which had no practical purpose in their new conditions.

These ‘Sacred Cows’ likely exist throughout your business in your leadership, marketing and customer service practices. So what are your ‘Sacred Cows’? Are you prepared to look at your business and hunt these out?

Now I’m not proposing to massacre every ‘Sacred Cow’, merely that every business should be prepared to cull its herd occasionally.
How do you spot a ‘Sacred Cow’? Look for a policy or procedure that outdates the oldest employee and is slavishly followed without thought or question. Metaphorically these have a life of their own and had become a noun!

It is likely that the worship of ‘Sacred Cows’ is stopping many businesses from embracing the innovation at their disposal and improving their profitability and market position.

Take out sometime over the next 24 hours and start to question some of your ‘Sacred Cows’ – make sure you are running your business the most practical and effective way possible – not how it’s always been done because………..

For more articles like this check out ‘Changing Times’ or follow our updates on ‘Twitter’.

 The news has been full of stories in the past few days concerning the failure of General Motors to survive. After over 101 years in business and being an icon in the industry for so long it had simply ceased to exist. I found an article by Peter Cohan to be particularly interesting as it examined the 5 reasons why General Motors had failed to survive.

I was not surprised when I read this article to see a similar pattern in other businesses that have failed to survive in the present unforgiving climate. So here is my take on the 5 lessons to be learnt by the failure of General Motors to survive;

1. Bad financial policies. I was stunned to learn that GM has been bankrupt since 2006 and has avoided a filing for years thanks to the graces of the banks and bondholders. But for years it has used cars as razors to sell consumers a monthly package of razor blades — in the form of highly profitable car loans. In 2005, GM limited its $6 billion in vehicle operating losses due to the $2.2 billion it made financing those vehicles. And the two Harvard MBAs who drove GM to bankruptcy — Rick Wagoner and Fritz Henderson — both rose up from GM’s finance division, rather than its vehicle design operation. Consider other Businesses like ABC child care centres and MFI in Australia who both went bankrupt and then were revealed to have been trading in solvently. Do you think this is limited to large corporations?

2. Uncompetitive vehicles. Compared to its toughest competitors — like Toyota Motor Co. – GM’s cars were poorly designed and built, took too long to manufacture at costs that were too high, and as a result, fewer people bought them, leaving GM with excess production capacity. People were willing to pay more for Toyota vehicles than for GM’s since Toyotas were better designed and built so they had higher quality, cost less to own, and lasted longer. GM resorted to cutting price on its inferior vehicles and it had higher costs so it was squeezed on the revenue and cost sides of its income statement. Imagine being in a business where you continued with a strategy of selling an inferior product at a higher cost price than your competitors but a lower selling price to compete.

3.  Ignoring competition. GM has been ignoring competition — with a brief interruption (Saturn in the 1980s) — for about 50 years. At its peak, in 1954, GM controlled 54% of the North American vehicle market. Last year, that figure had tumbled to 19 percent. Toyota and its peers took over that market share. In retrospect, if Roger Smith’s successors had infused the rest of GM with the Saturn culture of giving the consumer a better car buying and ownership experience than that offered by its competitors, GM probably would not be on the verge of bankruptcy today. I can think of a number of businesses who arrogantly ignore the competition and keep doing what they’ve always done.

4. Failure to innovate. Since GM was focused on profiting from finance, it did not really care that much about building better vehicles. GM’s management failed to adapt GM to changes in customer needs, upstart competitors, and new technologies. If a business ignores its customers changing tastes and technological innovations then it will fail to survive.

5. Managing in the bubble. GM rewarded people who followed the old way of doing things and those who challenged that thinking found themselves on the outs — causing them to lose opportunities for promotion. So the smart thing for those seeking promotion within GM was to praise the CEO’s wisdom and carry out his orders. What looked stupid from the perspective of customer and competitors was smart for those bucking for promotions. At the core of this managing in the bubble is a syndrome called Confirmation Bias (See Peter Cohan) the tendency of managers to filter out information that does not match up with their pre-conceived notions.

GM’s failure to survive after 101 years is an indictment of American management in general. It highlights the damage to the economy that results when finance becomes the tail that wags the economic dog. And it shows what happens to any company that fails to adapt to change.

And sadly Gm will not be the first or the last company to fold for these 5 reasons. The question is could your business be joining them or are you prepared to take an honest review of your business and make the necessary changes before the choice is taken away?

It’s a reoccurring theme, but one that merits a revisit and some more perspective! Especially if you want to impact now on your future performance!

If you’re ambition is to be successful in your personal life or your work, perhaps sport, it is likely that you will fail a number of times along the way. No matter what people tell you, the only sure fired route to success involves trial and error.

Sadly, too many people take the first sign of difficulties or failure as a reason to give up on the ambitions and accept mediocrity. This is the defining difference between the haves and have-nots, those people that accept the journey will not always be easy. And sometimes the journey is more important than the goal.

We all recognise times in our lives when we’ve given up on something which, we’d thought initially, was highly important to us. And this is where we make our choices at these times of stress or imminent failure

You choose to go on and accept failure as a part of the process that leads to success or you give up and turn your attentions to something new or less demanding. Over time repetition of this cycle results in the psyche, where you no longer strive to succeed, but in fact give up or look for short cuts – sure fired schemes!

Alternatively, it could be said that failing to meet your objectives regardless of what they are is a choice, because something else has been given higher priority. If you fail it’s because you choose to fail.

Consider the examples in the press and on the news of the icons we look up to, successful businessmen and women who have drug addictions, failed relationships or problems with their weight etc.

You see, it is possible to be successful in one area of your life and not in others, depending on the priorities you set! It all comes down to your choices.

We often hear some people called self disciplined and others called undisciplined. Perhaps this is a true reflection of how and why we make the choices we make.

Discipline, always involves the act of reaching a goal and it also reflects the level of commitment that is attached to the goal. Added to this our various personal commitments will be ranked in the order we consciously, or more likely unconsciously, believe fit with our life priorities.

It would be interesting to know how many people know what their top priorities in life are. The answer will be very few. So because we are not conscious of our priorities we tend to move them around. What may have seen important on Monday, will become less important by Friday, when a weekends diversion takes priority.

Call it the New Year resolution habit! We all recognise this as a time when we set goals for ourselves, to which we are not true committed. And yet we beat ourselves up, when we fail to achieve them!

Consider now the difference between a 99% commitment and 100% commitment. Choosing to be disciplined about something means committing 100%, to reaching the objective.

Every year, we watch the Wimbledon tennis championships on our televisions. We watch champions drop sets, and yet come back to win. When watching professionals in the top of the game how many times do you see them double fault? The answer is often because these individuals have discipline themselves to face failure and see beyond it. More importantly, winning that game is their highest priority.

So what does this mean to you? How can this impact on your life?

Try the following challenge: pick out an area of your life where you’ve had week discipline in the past. Now set an objective relating to his earlier handsets that objective as your life’s top priority (or at least put it amongst the top few). Then set a minimum amount of time you’ll remain committed to this objective. I’d recommend a minimum of a month. You may decide on just a week, and that’s okay, because if you can be disciplined for one week you can be disciplined for as long as you choose.

This will mean a reprioritising of your time from your normal weekly schedule and you’ll do this because it’s your top priority!

While doing this you’re going to notice a change. In the past, where you’ve not been committed to your goals your mind has figured out how to get around the objective and taken you back to your comfort zone. However, now you’ll find when it’s a top priority, your mind works only on achieving the objective and taking you where you really want to go.

During this trial keep a journal of your priorities. Each time you fail to meet your objective, right down the activity or activities, which took higher priority. You will quickly see what excuses you allow to knock your objective from its top position.

Finally, you realise that to meet your objectives, no matter what they are, it is a choice. Something else has been given higher priority.