Tag Archives: success

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Self Aware, Situation Aware & Balance

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Whatever you are trying to achieve, how you behave is a critical success factor.  This applies whether attempting to make a sale, get agreement, achieve consensus, build understanding, gain support and the list goes on.

Sterotypical behaviours are often associated with the goals.  Things like the pushy salesman, the receptive consensus builder, understanding  listener  and so on.

Do what works!

Situations can drive us toward different kinds of behavior.  In sales mode we might feel a little directness is needed .  Maybe some superiority, at very least there is probably a desire to at least appear knowledgable.

More important, and effective, than pre-concieved behavior is adopting your action to the exact context.  That is being fully aware of yourself, the other parties and the environment.

This awareness enables you to customize your behavior to the needs of the situation, ongoing.  Ultimately what you do becomes reflective of what needs to be done in order to achieve your goal.

Seek a balance

Successful outcomes of any interraction are far more likely to occur when they provide benefit to all participants.  Although you will have an objective, a critical success factor which always applies, is that everyone gets something.

This perspective is often called win-win.  In essence it simply ackowledges the best interactions are those that everyone feels good about.

Over time this type of approach builds reputations.  Those who focus on benefiting themselves become recognized for this type of practice.

Ultimately this impacts their  ability to sustain results overtime.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Some thoughts about Results

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Good results have to be maintained.  Once achieved, relying on past success to be sustained into the future, without continued effort is wishful thinking.

That being said, it is true maintaing a strong positive reputation can be easier than resurrecting one from abysmal failure.  A powerful reason to seek success and when achieved work to continue it.

The Underpinning of Success

I had an interesting discussion today about whether good outcomes can arise by accident or whether planning and effort is required.  Can poor operational processes lead to success.

Obviously happy accidents occur.  People do win the lottery, although the odds are very low and winning is totally unpredictable. And conversly great effort does not guarantee good results.

The risk of failure is higher with bad processes and small effort, hence good risk mitigation dictates putting in the effort and trying hard (whether success is a guaranteed outcome or not).

Controlling Your Destiny

Whatever the level of effort, defining expectations, that is baselining success is a key element in achieving strong results.

Over the years I have seen many projects simply change their duration, cost or scope goals and then when the project is finished, pronounce success.

Moving targets to allow for achievement of same does work but personnally I don’t view it as a successful outcome.   In my experience though this is not an uncommon practice.

Ultimately though, it is like a pyramid scheme, not sustainable.  You can stretch the results for a while but eventually reality catches up.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Structuring for Success

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Groups of  people bonded together by a common purpose require a defined organizational structure.  This applies whether it is a large corporation, charity, non-profit, government agency, to name just a few of the numerous  types of groups, right up to just a simple family.

The structure can develop organically (e.g., the parent child relationships in a family) or can be very complex requiring a lot of time and effort to develop.Outside consultants may be hired to provide guidance in the more complex cases.

Whether, organic, intuitive or intracately detailed the purpose of the structure is to guide the organization toward efficient and effective achievement of it’s purpose.

This is quite different from the individual goals and objectives that may cascade throughout the organization.  The organization structure enables seemless integration of disparate operations all focused on the overriding purpose of the organization.

Every Piece is Critical

Many years ago, I heard the story of a janitor at one of the Boeing aircraft factories whom, when asked what his work was clearly stated ” I build airplanes”.

The point is clear.  Boeing  builds airplanes and everyone who works there, regardless of their own specific role, plays a part in the companies ability to achieve their outcome.

Well crafted organization structures are a critical tool in making this happen.  Like a school of dolphins or military aircraft in close flight successfull completion of the journey requires every part to fully understand not only their role and accountabilities but all the others as well.

Everything must operate in perfect synchronization to ensure success.

So organization structure is critical, what next?

Hopefully I have set the frame in this post for how critical your structure is to your operations overall success.  In future posts I will explore key aspects to consider while developing that structure.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Hindsight

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“If I knew back then what I know now , then I could have ………”. Ah, what a sad lament.  The logic of the statement rings true.  For example if I knew shares In Apple were going to appreciate the way they have before the price began to rise.

Or that Nortel would go bankrupt.  That Bre-X was a fraud.  That Donald Trump would get elected.  The pain I could have avoided, the profit I could have made.

Lamenting the Unknown

The benefit of hindsight is fairly obvious .  There is none.  The probability that you will ever know what the future will bring with absolute certainty is nil.

Recognition that the unknown exists is key to making good decisions.  Attempting to predict the unknown and acting on those predictions can be a risky business.

A better practice is to quantify what you know and where possible what you don’t know.  In some cases of course you won’t even know what you don’t know.   Those cases cannot be quantified.

Knowledge Based Actions

Knowledge is a combination of the things you know and those you don’t know.  That is, you know of them, but don’t know the answer.  (Obviously things you don’t know of at all cannot be included)

Knowledge based decision making is  based on known information (included those with an unknown quantity but which you are aware of).  This method provides better results than hindsight or historical data.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Do it yourself

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One of the hardest task a leader faces is achieving goals and objectives while using the available resources.  Sometimes just doing it yourself can be very appealing.

Leading by example, certainly involves a “do it yourself” element but at its heart, this a  balanced technique to build empathy and set a overall cultural tone.  It is an example not actually doing it yourself.

Undertaking a task and doing it, particulary when the assigned resource is not working out, typically turns out to be unsustainable.  This can be an influencing factor behind  personal “burn out”.

Is It Worth the Effort

For a truly effective leader the ability to use all your available tools, (human, machine, or otherwise) is crucial.  It just takes common sense to realize a single person cannot achieve the results of 3000 by themselves (or even just 10).

This is not just managing resource utilization but most importantly guiding all the resources to success.  That is, after all,  a key function of leadership, creating an environment for success.  Doing it yourself can appear easier, but this is a false view.

How?

The fundamental attributes of leadership are almost exclusively focused on enabling the leader to unleash the power of others.  That is enabling others to achieve their best.

Essentially leaders perform truly a catalytic role.  You are not involved or used up by the reaction but you are instrumental in the reaction occuring at all.  Without a leader the chances for success are diminished.  The risk of failure looms.

I have posted about specific leadership attributes in the past (self awareness, confidence, empathy, vision, achievement orientation, to name a few) and I will post more specifics in the future.

Todays takeaway is an understanding of the linkage between these atrributes and not doing it yourself.  That leads to success.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Sharing Information

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When I was a child we used to play a game called broken telephone Or some called it just the telephone game.  It was an educational exercise geared to demonstrate how easily verbal communication can go off the rail.

It’s a simple exercise where a group of five or ten people whisper a word or phrase to each other down a chain.  The original information (the word or message) rarely (probably never) survives intact to the end of the chain.

The last person states what was passed to them and everyone has a good laugh.  For example start with lock and don’t be surprised to see it morph through several whispers as clock,block, rock , and finally emerge as possibly love (where did that come from).

The confusion grows with the use of phrases ,for example try ” Two tiny toads ate flat flying flies.”

The point

This exercise  clearly show how small misconceptions can end up making a huge difference.  It is  a fun way to highlight the  importance of active listening.

Most importantly though it shows just how hard it is to share information accurately.  The last person in the game thinks they are replicating the information, it was just the simple sharing of a word or phrase, after all.

Don’t be fooled

You may be positive your information share was clear, however, more often than not this is not true.  Don’t assume the meaning of your message (communication, information share) is interpreted the way you understand it.

There are many techniques associated with good and effective communications but the most important one is restating.  When you have finished communicating, ask the other party to repeat the message.  Don’t be surprised at how often this leads to the need for clarification.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The World is my Oyster

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I think many would be surprised at how large a number of English idioms have their source in the literary works of William Shakespeare.  A key driver of the longevity of these sayings is how cleverly constructed they are.

From the play ” The Merry Wives of Windsor” the lines,  “Why, then the world is my oyster,   Which I with sword will open. (2.2.3-4), Pistol to Falstaff”  have come to mean, I can do whatever I want in this world.

The use of an Oyster , from which, with a little effort, a pearl might be found is a very clever way to make this point.

Here is a brief list of some of the more well known sayings from Shakespeare’s works.  This is not a complete list, intended just to give a flavor of how prolific he was in this space.

  • A fools paridise
  • A foregone conclusion
  • A horse, a horse, my Kingdom for a horse
  • A sea change
  • A sorry sight
  • As dead as a doornail
  • At one fell swoop
  • Beware the ides of March
  • As pure as the driven snow
  • Et tu Brute
  • Fancy free
  • Eaten out of house and home
  • What a piece of work is man
  • Woe is me

I took this small sample from a list of 162 common sayings atributed to the Bard.  While I did not recognize all of them the majority struck me as very well known.

The beauty of these, as you can see from the examples, is how with just a few brief words, Shakespeare is able to create a clear and. compelling image which contains a strong, clear message.

And for me, a long and fruitful life awaits, the world is my oyster.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Inspiration

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Simply put, inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.  For me, inspiration hit  almost two years ago when I was inspired to write a blog.

I acted on that  inspiration (as regular readers know) and four or five time a week I post about a top of mind topic.  These are selected at random and derived from, well, anywhere and everywhere.

More specifically, anywhere and everywhere could be the result of discussions with friends, colleagues or acquaintances.  It could be from news or other communication sources like web or social media.  It be from dreams, hallucinations and so on.

And the posts continue

The results of inspiration are not always successful, and sometimes we choose not to act on our inspiration.  When the action derived from the inspiration does work a great feeling of accomplisment can result.

Some personal filtering is helpful to avoid acting every time inspiration hits you.  My own experience has been the best and most effective inspirations are not the ones I seek or urge onto myself but rather those that are simply organic in nature.

Desired Outcome – Personal Satisfaction

Ultimately when you act on an inspiration both the acting on what inspired you and the end results will be satisfying more often than not.  Occassionally it might make sense to ignore a sudden unbidden inspiration  but as a general rule acting on your inspirations will be a good thing.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Managing Investment Risk

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When you invest your money the basic objective is to get the highest return with the lowest potential you will not get all or even worse, any, of your investment back.

Risk Aversion Basics

The number of processes and techniques to avoid loosing money while maximizing return is virtually impossible to list.  New methods pop up every day.

I am referring to things like laddered bond etfs indexed to central bank rates when giraffes dance in Africa.   For me, the best place to start is simple and basic.

Weird esoteric investments and associated practices have their place but these are contextual.  If you are a day trader, a bank or a fund manager, things like covered calls, long puts or rate swaps might appeal.

For the average retail investor there are much simpler and possibly more effective approaches to consider first.

Top Three Risk Mitigators

1) Do the research – If you are struggling to understand how an investment works, stop.  Only invest in things you personally fully understand how the returns or losses occur.

2) Leverage Asset Classes – There are three basic asset classes.  Balance the assets within your investment portfolio according to your willingness to take losses while seeking high returns.

Cash – things like GIC’s, savings accounts, paper money under the mattress.  These investments typically have the lowest return and the highest likelyhood at a minimum you will get your original investment back. Cash and savings accounts are typically very liquid.

Fixed Income – things like Government and Corporate bonds the inestments are usually granted a higher priority in terms of security in event of bankruptcy and will pay regular income (monthly, yearly, etc)

Equities – This type of investment is the least secure but can offer the opportunity for the higest return.

3) Balance the Sector – all investments fit into some category.  For example real estate, transportation, financial and so on.  Overweighting your investment in one sector or another can be profitable but also exposes a greater risk in the event that sector comes under stress.  An example of this was financial investments in mortgages  suffered as a whole in 2008 due to the crash in the real estate market.

Starting with these three simple to understand concepts can lead you to more advanced concepts, however, understanding the basics will lay a foundation for trying the more complex in the future.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

The never ending quest for balance

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Basically our daily lives are filled with a series of behaviors ( and the associated actions).  That is, what  we do results in outcomes, that is why we do it.

The outcomes are either satisfying or not.  Very simplistically stated, we do stuff to cause stuff and then we die.  (We may die because thats the natural outcome of the stuff we do, but that is a different deep  conversation).

Sounds boring

We do stuff that causes stuff to happen over and over.  On the surface it seems repetitive and unmotivating, why bother?  The key to managing the outcomes in a fun and motivating way is  through the practice of balance.

This requires analysis and planning.  Balancing the things you do to achieve better results more efficiently can be invigorating.  It puts a lot of spice into your activities.

How does it work?

Practicing balance is the process of determining how much time, effort and what kind of time and effort is best used to achieve the result you seek.

For example you need groceries because you are hungry.   You are low on funds so you will need to balance what kind of food you buy against what you can afford, yet still satisfy your hunger.

You are hungry now but you need to balance speed ( by car -low on gas) with walking ( slower but definately better on gas).

These simple examples highlight the competing choices we encounter all day as we figure out if we should do this or do that or some combination.

Frequently we need to balance the options carefully to attain the best result.  The simple emotional approach to resolve the need directly is often not the best.  Take your time, plan it out, incorporate balance.

For example, building on the above scenario,   you are hungry so  drive to the store intending to buy what you want.  Unfortunately you may run out of gas or money so can’t afford what you want and end up still hungry.

Remember, things are not always as straightforward as they initially appear and a considered balanced approach might not only be more satisfying, but could also achieve a better result.