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Creating Meaning for Yourself
How do you create meaning for yourself in what you do? People want and look for meaning in what they do. The meaning has to be created by you – you cannot just take what others have created for themselves, it is not otherwise sustainable. In creating meaning for yourself you need to find the intersection point of three variables: Strengths – what are you good at? (supply-side) Needs – what do others and the world need (demand-side) Interests –
How to Use Question-Storming to Innovate
…a better way than brainstorming when innovating The idea of brainstorming is to get a group of diverse people to generate a lot of ideas, without judgment, in order to discover a solution to a problem. It has its use at times, but the problem is that it doesn’t work! Why do I say this? There are two key problems with brainstorming. Firstly, the problem starts at the beginning when we look to solve a problem rather than to find
Building Your Personal Leadership Brand
Just as businesses need to build their brands, so leaders need to build their leadership brand. You probably already have a personal leadership brand. But do you have the right one? And is it the one that will take you from where you are to where you want to be? This is an important question as it is your leadership brand that conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. It communicates the value you offer. If you have the
Building Your Career
Tips on planning your future career Successful executives are not just successful because they do a good job, but because they look to build their own career. This does not happen but by chance, but with forwarding planning. As such business executives can learn useful lessons from those engaged in politics. This is not to say that those who have successful careers are Machiavellian by nature - manipulating or using others will only hurt you in the long run –
Negative Network Effects
When networks become counter-productive A network effect occurs when a product or service becomes more valuable to its users as more people use it. For example, when people first started using telephones they had little value as there were very few other people who you could call. As the number of people who had telephones increased, then so did the number of people with whom you could communicate – this making telephones more valuable to those who had them. This
Five Ways to Create an Environment for Employee Engagement
Only employees can engage themselves. You can’t do it. All you can do is create an environment which helps people to be self-motivated and engaged. Everyone is different, that is true, but there are common factors that are intrinsic to everybody’s level of satisfaction and engagement at work. Engaged employees voluntarily invest time, effort and take the initiative to contribute to business success in various ways over and above what is expected of them. Why? Because they feel three basic
Why People Fail to Achieve Their Goals
The four reasons why and what you need to do Most people and I assume that you are one of them, know the importance of having goals and goal- setting. Setting goals gives you something to strive towards and boosts your self-confidence when you achieve them. But do you set goals and pursue them? Research suggests that 80% of all people never set goals for themselves; furthermore, of the 20% that do set goals for themselves about 70% fail to
Creating Competitive Advantage Through Connection
How creating a “connection culture” can drive business results & the bottom-line We are all living and working in an increasingly volatile environment where accelerating change is the norm. This, with the fact that most people like to live and work within their comfort zone, can cause problems for leaders and their businesses as people strive to cope with change whilst keeping some semblance of control. As result of the rapid change people experience they often feel disconnected and disengaged
When Your Team Knows More Than You
What to do when your team is better than you! Leaders often have individuals working with them who know more than the leader does. This is part of being a leader when you have responsibility for areas outside your specialty or expertise where your reports know more than you do. They will ask questions that you cannot answer and may not even understand. So what do you do? Firstly, you don’t want to become an expert in all these areas