Awareness

1. Think Like A Child
Children are like miniature reporters, constantly asking who, what, when, where, and particularly why. They also have very few preconceived notions, so they are open to taking in new information without being constrained by biases and judgments.

2. Look Beyond the Obvious
The obvious can mask information that may be vital to learning the truth of a situation. The next time you catch yourself thinking, writing, or saying, "Obviously..." make a note of your assumption. Then invest a few hours in looking beyond what appears to be true. Keep searching until you find at least three pieces of information or sources that conflict with what you classified as "obvious."

3. Fire Your Inner Critic
Remember that someone had every great idea in history. Why not you? We can be so critical of ourselves. Fire that inner critic. Give your ideas time to develop. Respect your intuition. Let ideas percolate for a time prior to applying a critical eye.

4. Vary Your Daily Routine
Take different routes to work, or school, or the market. Use your curiosity to see how many ways you can get there from here. Ask directions of a number of people and evaluate how many variations you hear in these directions. Try them all and evaluate the differences.

5. Identify the Most Impossible Solutions
When faced with a challenge, try to identify the most absurd solutions possible. This can be a fun exercise and may unmask a solution. This process tends to expose the boundary lines in your thinking.

6. Work Like a Detective
Good detectives follow all potential leads, often gathering a huge amount of possibly relevant information, much of which turns out to be useless. However, your attention to detail can eventually pan out when you find the one thread that leads you to a solution.

7. Try New Things
Take a class. Try a new mini-hobby. Taste a food that is new to you. See a movie that you normally wouldn't be attracted to. Read a book on a topic that is unfamiliar. The more you put yourself in learning and questioning mode, the more you develop curiosity as a habit.

Thanks Jim Canterucci for sharing this wisdom.

Expanding Focus

Expanding your focus is one of the most valuable aspects of developing your personal brilliance. When what you are doing is the same as what you are thinking, you are present and focused. In this state of mind, you have a feeling of mental smoothness, even when there's a lot happening.
1. Broaden Your View
Consider the big picture with all of its components and possibilities.
2. Look Beneath the Surface
Appearances can be deceiving. Take a closer look.
3. Practice Being Present
When your mind wanders into the past or future, gently bring it back to "now."
4. Observe with Flexible Intent
Be clear about what you are looking for in each situation and simultaneously be open to learning something entirely different.
Thanks Jim Canterucci for sharing this.

Initiative

Intensifying Your Initiative: 5 Tips
Without harnessing the power of initiative, the wheel of innovation comes to a screeching halt. We all have a desire to "make a difference" or to make improvements in our lives, but for a variety of reasons, many people face challenges in regard to taking initiative in one form or another. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to enhance your power of initiative, and the payoffs are huge.
1. Give Yourself Permission to Decide for Yourself
Waiting for others to join you in your initiative can slow the wheels of innovation and drag out the process.
2. Make Choices and Act on Them
Keep in mind that you don't have to come up with the best possible decision, you just have to come up with one way that will work.
3. Don't Wait to Be Inspired; Get Inspired!
Take responsibility for feeding positive input into your mental process.
4. Increase Your Accountability
Practice increasing your initiative by stepping up to the plate and volunteering to lead projects.
5. Live By Your Word
Make a firm commitment to yourself that you will keep your promises, no matter what.

Thanks Jim Canterucci for sharing this.

Life is short

Be passionate - Yes, strategies and processes are important. But personal passion, perseverance, risk taking, informed intuition and vision always trump process and conventional wisdom
Broaden your horizons - Avoid routine at all cost, push yourself to explore outside of your comfort zone.
Make connections - Innovation is all about seeing and exploiting connections and intersections of opportunities. See what's there, not just what you're looking for.
Work with people you like - Life is too short to put up with bullshit. The politics and backstabbing of my last corporate role challenged my values, but I chose to change my work rather than change my values. Work with people and clients you genuinely enjoy -- You'll be more creative and productive than you ever thought possible. I am.
Repeat... life is short. Thanks for sharing this - Mike Docherty.

The Kaizen Way

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - Tao Te Ching -

Wisdom from the book One Small Step Can Change Your Life - The Kaizen Way, an old concept but excellently portrayed by the author Robert Maurer. Kaizen is a Japanese term that roughly translated, means “improvement”.

Kaizen is the conjunction of two words “kai” meaning change and “zen” meaning better (or “for the better”). Incorporating as it does, aspects of Buddhist thinking, kaizen is more philosophy than mere methodology or management technique. “Kaizen means continuous improvement in personal life, home life, social life and working life” - Kaizen Institute, 2004 -

Kaizen is the art of making great and lasting change through small, steady increments. Kaizen is the tortoise versus the hare. Kaizen is the eleven Fortune 500 companies that significantly outperformed the market through moderate, step-by-step actions. Kaizen is losing weight not by a crash diet (which more often than not crashes) but by eating one bite less at each meal--then, a month later, eating two bites less. Kaizen is starting a life-changing exercise program by standing--just standing--on a treadmill for one minute a day. How to think small thoughts?, take small actions, solve small problems, small rewards motivate better than big rewards, paying attention to little details most of us overlook, and more.

Top 10 Reasons Your Staff Wants to Quit

From an employee's perspective, management often conducts itself in ways that make no sense. When the economy is slow, jobs are few and far in between or people are fearful, staff will tolerate management behaviors and policies that are nonsensical (in their eyes) or they judge are harmful. But when staff gets together for lunch and they start critiquing management, these are the Top 10 Reasons Why Staff Quit.

10. "My boss is arrogant and believes his own press clippings." As a result, staff feels taken advantage of..
9. "My manager micromanages rather than trusting staff to perform." Staff hates the boss and looks for ways to resist being over controlled.
8. "My manager is crushing my drive and desire." Hired because they were smart and energetic, the manager is afraid that she will not be seen as the shining light (the reason for success) and crushes the very qualities that made the new employee attractive to hire (and desirous of joining).
7. "My boss guesses what is needed without resorting to data or facts." Maybe he has the facts, but they sure aren't being communicated leaving the impression of "It's my way or the highway." There are a lot of new roads being built in this country and staff will leave rather than be abused.
6. "I'm treated like a child." Look, there are often generational differences between how managers and employees work. Younger workers may have "know-it-all" attitudes and unfamiliar techniques using technology to accomplish tasks. Staff feels misunderstood and resent their boss.
5. "Manager promotes someone from a different function who does understand the job and how to be successful." Staff does not believe they can learn from this person, judges her to be an anchor around their department and resents that they were passed over for promotion.
4. "My boss is extremely critical." The only way they interpret their boss is pleased is in the absence of nit picking.
3. "I get ideas lobbed at me with little clarity and I have to figure out what is really wanted." Staff is caught between a rock and a hard place and doesn't know the target of the task or have a clear idea of what needs to get done.
2. "I don't have sufficient resources to get the job done." Fitting 10 pounds of stuff into a five pound bag is pretty tough. Imagine you're the ten pounds and have to get squeezed in there! Staff often believes they have inadequate resources to get a job done.
1. And the number one reason your staff wants to quit: "My company is grossly underpaying me." Show me the money! Staff can read job ads online and learn what their real value is. As much as they may love you and their work, eventually people realize they need to pay their bills and start to think of leaving. Your staff, the ones you are mistreating or taking for granted are your competition's staffing solution (just as theirs is for you). Rather than taking their continued employment for granted, motivate them, excite them, coach and encourage them and they will go do anything for you (at almost any price).

Thanks Jeff Altman. Concepts in Staffing, jeffaltman@cisny.com (c) 2004, all rights reserved

Who moved my cheese!

"If you don't like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” - General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff. U. S. Army -

Lessons learned from the book Who Moved My Cheese. Author - Spencer Johnson, 1998; M.D. from Royal College of Surgeons; known for simplicity; One Minute Manager, The Precioius Present. No doubt that it is still continuing as a bestseller, a self-help book providing a simple, powerful message to the people confronted with unwelcome CHANGE.

A story of two mice (Sniff and Scurry) and two “little people” (Hem and Haw) living in a maze (labyrinth). Cheese is a metaphor for whatever you want in your life (food, success, happiness, financial security). Cheese found in Cheese Station C was a symbol of stability. One day, the cheese disappeared ………

Wisdom in a nutshell from the book:
Leadership attitudes towards change,
•The compulsive changer: Enjoys making changes even when not needed
•The transforming leader: Changes what needs to be changed, fixes what needs to be mended, and preserves what needs to remain unchanged
•The resilient leader: Learns to adapt in times when change can lead to something better
•The resistant leader: Denies and resists change with the belief that change will lead to something dreadful (active resistance or passive resistance)
•Having cheese makes you happy (status quo).
•The more important your cheese is to you, the more you want to hold onto it (status quo preservation).
•If you don’t change, you may become extinct.
•What would you do if you weren’t afraid (of trying something new).
•Smell the cheese often so you know when it is getting old (review, evaluate, review).
•Movement in a new direction helps you find new cheese (research and renew).
•The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you will find new cheese (quick adaptation).
•Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come (scanning)

Happy reading/rereading!

Negotiating skill

Think back to the last time you were blindsided by an unexpected motivator. What was it? The art of successful win-win negotiations will certainly help to Swim with the sharks without being eaten alive. Few thoughts below.

Typical tangible motivators:
1. Fiscal impacts (Enterprise & for their own or department)
2. Workload/Overtime/training/vacation impact
3. Contractual/Organizational issues, etc.

Less Tangible:
1. Desire to be heard and have their needs acknowledged
2. Desire to save face/look good in the eyes of others
3. Resistance to change (fear of unknown/untried)
4. Desire to satisfy their own or bosses hidden agenda
5. Biases, dislikes, ethnic customs, political alliances, etc
6. Emotional (and why should they trust you?)

How to practice win-win negotiations?
1.Establish rapport and common goals
2.Probe for understanding of beliefs, goals, win-win options, and hidden stakeholder motivators
3.Paraphrase for confirmation/affirmation
4.Analyse outcomes and risks
5.Summarize what was agreed on, and next steps (even if these are only “baby steps”)

From Business Week, I found the below article quite intriguing. Indeed, while women now represent more than 47% of full-time executives and managers, their wages continue to lag far behind. College-educated women still earn only 72% as much as their male counterparts -- a gap of 28¢ on the dollar, according to the American Association of University Women. More>

Negotiation tips:
>Show enthusiasm.
>Know what you want.
>Avoid showing your hand.
>Show why you are the best fit.
>Wait until they really want you.
>Be on the lookout at all times.
>Network, network, and network.
>Want a raise.

A customer born every minute

Food for thought... There's a Customer Born Every Minute.

The Top 10 Reasons Your Staff Wants to Quit

10. "My boss is arrogant and believes his own press clippings." As a result, staff feels taken advantage of..
9. "My manager micromanages rather than trusting staff to perform." Staff hates the boss and looks for ways to resist being over controlled.
8. "My manager is crushing my drive and desire." Hired because they were smart and energetic, the manager is afraid that she will not be seen as the shining light (the reason for success) and crushes the very qualities that made the new employee attractive to hire (and desirous of joining).
7. "My boss guesses what is needed without resorting to data or facts." Maybe he has the facts, but they sure aren't being communicated leaving the impression of "It's my way or the highway." There are a lot of new roads being built in this country and staff will leave rather than be abused.
6. "I'm treated like a child." Look, there are often generational differences between how managers and employees work. Younger workers may have "know-it-all" attitudes and unfamiliar techniques using technology to accomplish tasks. Staff feels misunderstood and resent their boss.
5. "Manager promotes someone from a different function who does understand the job and how to be successful." Staff does not believe they can learn from this person, judges her to be an anchor around their department and resents that they were passed over for promotion.
4. "My boss is extremely critical." The only way they interpret their boss is pleased is in the absence of nit picking.
3. "I get ideas lobbed at me with little clarity and I have to figure out what is really wanted." Staff is caught between a rock and a hard place and doesn't know the target of the task or have a clear idea of what needs to get done.
2. "I don't have sufficient resources to get the job done." Fitting 10 pounds of stuff into a five pound bag is pretty tough. Imagine you're the ten pounds and have to get squeezed in there! Staff often believes they have inadequate resources to get a job done.
And the number one reason your staff wants to quit:
"My company is grossly underpaying me." Show me the money! Staff can read job ads online and learn what their real value is. As much as they may love you and their work, eventually people realize they need to pay their bills and start to think of leaving.

Jeff Altman
Concepts in Staffing
(c) 2004 all rights reserved

Bill gates wisdom

Highlights:

Bill Gates is an outstanding example of another sort of guru, the guru who preaches more by deeds than by words. He revels in change and draws inspiration from a crisis.

His first book, 'The Road Ahead', was published in 1995. Gates famously ignored the Internet at first. The Internet and its implications dominate his second book, 'Business @ the Speed of Thought'.

But we can learn as much from Bill Gates by looking at what he does, as a manager and a leader, than by reading his books:

1. Concentrate your effort on a market with large potential but relatively few competitors
2. Get in early and big
3. Establish a proprietary position
4. Protect that position in every way possible
5. Aim for high gross margin
6. Make the customers an offer they can't refuse

Gates, with no previous experience, no MBA, and no mentors, set about creating a new sort of organization, what he called a knowledge company. The knowledge company's raw material is brainpower.

Vital to a knowledge company is what Gates calls the DNS - the Digital Nervous System, the e-mails and computer systems that allow everyone to learn everything they need to know.

Microsoft also has some very clear people policies, which give the company its extraordinary vitality. Gates summarizes them as five 'E's:

Enrichment
Empowerment
Emphasis on Performance
Egalitarianism
E-Mail

Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden Turner Wisdom

Highlights:

For twenty years these two academics, a cross-cultural Anglo-Dutch partnership, have been interviewing managers around the world, giving them questionnaires to answer, conducting seminars and advising their companies.

Most of the management theory we know about has come from the Anglo-American culture, the one that most of these gurus belong to. This is a universalist culture, one that assumes that the rules that work for it will work universally. That might be a dangerous illusion. After all, we know that things work quite differently but equally well in other parts of the world.

Trompenaars and Hampden Turner discovered that North Americans and North Europeans were almost totally universalist in their responses. They would put the law first. Only 70 per cent of the French and the Japanese would do so, however, while, in Venezuela, two thirds would be particularist in their response.

Universalist countries take contracts very seriously and they employ lots of lawyers to make sure that the contract is kept. Particularist countries think that the relationship is more important than the contract and that a good deal requires no written contract - the particular people and the particular situation matter more than the universal rules.

Trompenaars and Hampden Turner have detailed their conclusions in a string of books, amongst which are 'Building Cross-Cultural Competence' and '21 Leaders for the 21st Century'.

The answer to the dilemma, say Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, is to reconcile the opposites, to recognize that the cultures need each other.

Michael Porter Wisdom

Highlights:

Porter suggested that there were just three generic strategies for managers to choose from if they wanted to gain competitive advantage, something that he believed was the underlying purpose of every business.

You could make things as cheaply as possible and become the lowest cost producer in a market.

Alternatively you could offer something special or different which would allow you to command a premium price.

Or, thirdly, you could choose to be what he called a focused producer, looking to dominate in a niche market, so that others would find it too difficult to challenge you.

To help you choose which strategy to adopt, Porter says you need to decide which of five types of industry you are in:

fragmented
emerging
mature
declining
global

Then, he says, you need to examine the five forces of competition:

the threat of substitute products
the threat of new entrants
the bargaining power of suppliers
the bargaining power of buyers
the state of rivalry among existing companies

Always try to do things in ways that are hard for other companies to copy. Finding that unique position isn't always obvious, in the end, says Porter, it comes down to creativity and insight - and strong leadership, the willingness to make hard choices and to take a stand against the conventional wisdom of the industry.

In 'The Competitive Advantage of Nations', published in 1990, Porter moved his attention from the problems of competition in business to the issues of competing nations. Globalization, it seems, does not mean that everything is the same everywhere. National differences still matter.

There are four factors, Porter suggested, that help to make a nation competitive:

tough domestic rivalry
country resources
country infrastructure (including the educational quality of its workforce)
the cluster phenomenon

A cluster is a critical mass, in one geographical space, of similar businesses, all supported by their specialist suppliers and services that are tied to that industry. You can stay small, in other words, and still have the advantage of being big.

Ricardo Semler Wisdom

Highlights:

Ricardo Semler, author and business manager, is celebrated as a role model of a Chief Executive who breaks all the traditional rules and succeeds, massively.

Semler eliminated what he called 'corporate oppression" from his company, Semco: time clocks, dress codes, security procedures, privileged office spaces and perks, they all went. There were to be no receptionists or secretaries.

He set up 'factory committees' to run the plants, in an attempt to get more worker involvement and Semler guaranteed that no-one could be fired while serving on the committees or for at least a year afterwards.

Ricardo then introduced profit-sharing schemes for all the workers. The thought that they could directly influence their own pay encouraged the committees to look for savings and to question any procedures or layers of management that didn't seem to add value.

Managers were hired and fired by their own employees. More than that, the units were now inventing new businesses for themselves. And so Semco grew, entirely due to the initiatives of its workers.

The workers have unrestricted access to all corporate records and are taught how to read financial reports; they set their own wages and their own production quotas.

When the number of people in a Semco unit hits the 100 to 200 mark it is split in two, like it or not.

Semler lists six principles that guide his always experimental company:

1. don't increase business size unnecessarily
2. never stop being a start-up
3. don't be a nanny to your workers
4. let talent find its place
5. make decisions quickly and openly
6. partner promiscuously, you can't do it all yourself.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter Wisdom

Highlights:

Rosabeth goes into leading-edge corporations, learns from them and then serves up what she's learnt in nicely digestible messages for the rest of us.

Her early work looked at the communes of the 1960's and the social movement that brought them into existence, and the book she wrote about it, called "The Men and Women of the Corporation", had a big impact.

The new model organization, she notes, is lean, flat and athletic, rather than tall and authoritarian.

It's the job of the people at the top, Kanter says, to set the goals and values of the corporation, below them the middle layers design and manage the programmes and the systems, the forums and relationships that bind the whole together, while the project ideas and innovations hopefully bubble up from the bottom layers.

Her latest book e-Volve, draws together the best ideas of the best companies. The Internet, she says, could produce a great leap forward to a shared consciousness around the world and connect peoples everywhere. The best businesses in the digital world, she says, will be those that foster community internally and serve communities externally.

Rosabeth, of course, ends with a list of the qualities needed by business managers if they are to succeed in the new world of digital commerce:

- curiosity and imagination
- good communication skills, near and far
- cosmopolitan mindset, not confined to a single world view
- grasping complexity, finding the connections
- caring about feeding peoples' bodies and spirits

Gary Hamel's wisdom

Highlights:

In their book, "Competing for the Future", which came out in 1995. Hamel and Prahalad start off by pointing out that you can improve your results in two ways: by cutting your costs, or by increasing your outputs.

But too many companies focus on the cost-cutting. So why don't people concentrate more on the output than the costs? Because their strategic vision is too narrow. It is defined by what the competition is doing.

It is, says Hamel, important to think about what is NOT there. That done, you need a strategy for doing something about it. A "Strategic Intent", forces one to think beyond the present and to contemplate new worlds.

Being different is really the theme of Gary's latest book, called "Leading the Revolution". Most importantly of all he talks about the "grey-haired revolutionaries" - the companies that reinvent themselves time and time again. Anyone can have one great new idea or vision, very few can keep on doing it.
This is how Hamel's 10 requirements go:

1. Have Unreasonable Expectations
2. Make your business definition elastic, don't get fixated on one vision 3. Have a cause, not a business
4. Listen to other voices: young people, newcomers, outsiders
5. Keep an open market for ideas, don't shut anyone up
6. Have an open market for capital, allow people to bid for funds to support experiments
7. Have an open market for talent, so that people are allowed to work in areas that excite them
8. Encourage low risk experimentation
9. The principle of cellular revolution: breaking the organization down into small groups so that a failed revolution won't damage the whole organization
10. Allow personal wealth accumulation.Successful ideas should make money for the people who came up with them

Nevertheless, as Hamel agrees, you need both revolution AND luck to succeed in an uncertain world.

Kenichi Ohmae' wisdom

Highlights:

Kenichi Ohmae made his mark twenty years ago with his book on corporate strategy. It is still a collection of good sense and clear advice, even though some of the examples may now seem a bit dated.

Successful business strategies, he says in "The Mind of the Strategist", do not come from rigorous analysis but from a thought process which is basically creative and intuitive rather than rational.

Having written what many people regarded as the bible of corporate strategy, Kenichi Ohmae moved on to the changing shape of the world of business.

His thinking on these issues has been nicely brought together in his latest book, which he has called 'The Invisible Continent'. The Invisible Continent is the world in which businesses now operate, which is like a new, just discovered continent.

In the Invisible Continent there are four Dimensions:

1) the Visible Dimension - physical things to buy and make

2) the Borderless World - inevitable globalization

3) the Cyber Dimension - the Internet, mobile phones

4) the Dimension of High Multiples - exaggerated values put on some stocks by the stock market

But Ohmae has bigger concerns on his mind than business. He worries about the governance of the new continent, about a new sort of Cold War, fought by businesses rather than governments, and about the education of our citizens for this new world.

few more words ...

emerged
become known

implies
means, translates into

crucial
very important

wake up to
start to pay attention to

driving
here, moving something forward

being focused
paying attention to

govern
control, direct

assets
property that has value

across borders
into many countries

insights
clear understanding

How to Be a Good Leader - eight rules of the game

During his long career, Jack Welch mentored a generation of future CEOs. His latest book WINNING will be released next week. Full story at Newsweek. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7304587/site/newsweek/

In an exclusive excerpt, his rules of the game.
#1 Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence.
#2 Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.
#3 Leaders get into everyone's skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.
#4 Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit.
#5 Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
#6 Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
#7 Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example.
#8 Leaders celebrate.

20 fastest growing professional jobs in the US

In the March Issue of Fortune, they listed the 20 fastest growing professional jobs in the US.

Here are the 20 jobs likely to see an increase of better than 20%.
Environmental engineers 54.3%
Network systems and datacom analysts 41.9%
Personal financial advisors 36.3%
Database administrators 33.1%
Software engineers 27.8%
Emergency management specialists 27.8%
Biomedical engineers 27.8%
PR specialists 27.8%
Computer and infosystems managers 25.6%
Comp, benefits, and job analysts 25.6%
Systems analysts 24.9%
Network and systems administrators 24.9%
Training and development specialists 22.3%
Medical scientists 22.1%
Marketing and sales managers 21.3%
Computer specialists 20.8%
Media and communications specialists 20.6%
Counselors, social workers 20.4%
Lawyers 20.2% More>