While Promoting Nothing but Fear  The dream of previous generations was to find a good job, settle in, work hard, get promoted and retire. People were happy to be in one place, and for many of them, one place provided them everything they needed. The world has change. Business has changed. People have changed. I recently read the book Jump by Kim Perell. It's not exactly a business book, definitely geared towards taking big leaps - more framed for life in general. The core ideas are great. Nothing dramatically different than a lot of what you will find in other books in the self-help genre, however the presentation is on point and well structured. Kim sets up the three main buckets for why people need to take big leaps (or jumps) in their life. You have no choice (i.e. something has happened to you) You see an opportunity You're feeling stuck The book did connect for me on a personal level, however I found a lot of parallels for my professional life as well. I've spent the ...

Why Opening Up Helps You and Your Team Soar Vulnerability is a great leader’s superpower. It ties together elements of risk, uncertainty and emotional exposure — personally I lean more towards the idea of just exposure, and the requirement of being open. Why is vulnerability so important for a leader? Being vulnerable allows you to make real and solid connections with the people around you. Success comes when people WANT to work with you, that they choose to be part of what you are doing. If you want someone to lower their guard and take their armour off, you have to take yours off first. You cannot expect someone from your team to come to you with a problem, with something they are struggling with and lay it all out on the table for to “manage” them and have a one way conversation. This doesn’t work. It’s not effective. And what ends up happening is that you don’t make the right connection and will most likely not actually get to the root of the problem — let alone really solving it. ...

 Is It Really Always Best to “Be Yourself”? You’ve been in this room before. Maybe hundreds of times. It’s used whenever a presentation is being made. It’s a simple room. Exactly what you would expect of a basic conference room. A long rectangular shape with walls painted a neutral colour. The decor is is nothing special. Awards, posters and memorabilia from the organization’s history. It’s supposed to make you feel like your part of the team. And it does. Until you don’t agree with what’s being said. Now you feel like a a big red dot on a bright white canvas. Just be yourself is some of the most popular advice people will give you these days. Everyone is encouraging you to be authentic and bring you whole self to work. Depending on who you are speaking with or what you happen to be reading, there is more that can be added in. They’ll tell you that being authentic doesn’t mean that you always have to be exactly the same. That there is a time and a place for different versions of yo...

  The Best Decision Isn’t Always as Obvious as It Seems Your success at work is correlated to the quality of your relationships. Easy right? It’s common sense. You might even be wondering who doesn’t already know this. The challenge isn’t about attitude though. You’re right, nobody likes the as%ho^e — Don’t be that person. The challenge comes when you have to choose between being right or making the right choice. The Problem My team and I had been working on a large project that had been pushed back multiple times over the years. The market finally got to a point where the problem in the field had to be addressed. We dusted off our files and started looking at the information we had built 3 years prior. We made our plans for what needed to be refreshed and how we would go about it. We cut through the project quickly. The team had matured a lot in that time and those roadblocks from the past were mere pebbles on the road this time around. Cue the problem. The fundamental assumptions...

 Use This Activity To Develop The Most Crucial Habits for Lifelong Success It’s a cool October night. One of those nights where the sun starts going down, coaxing people back into their houses. The type of night that is actually perfect when you are going to exercise and sweat. Moving through the subdivision is easy enough. You can chart a rectangular course to meet the distance requirement you have. In my case, I’m able to do one big loop to get in 5k of activity. Little did I know that the distance was going to be the easiest part of the night. Most people outside of the military have never heard of rucking. It seems absurd when someone explains it to you. Rucking, is a low-intensity exercise in which you add weight to your back while walking or hiking. But what makes this the best exercise you have never heard of? It creates a unique set of conditions and variables to play with. It challenges you mentally as well as physically. The Physical This part is easy to understand. It’s ...

 Promoting Value is Exactly Why No One Is Listening We live in a world of innovation. Every day something new is created. So why is it then that so many great ideas die? Sell the features. Sell the benefits. Sell the value. The right way to sell is to show how good your service, product or idea is. Wrong. Those things are necessary, but they are not what is essential for new ideas or innovation to catch on. Changing The Frame I have spent the majority of my career making things better. Continuous improvement, network design, process re-engineering — it has many different labels. It’s all the same. Make changes to what is being done to generate better results. The single biggest key to my success in implementing new ideas? Lower the barrier for entry. We like to believe we are organic computers. Rational to the end. That given the right information and the correct inputs, people will produce the best output. To get someone to actually change, give up on that idea immediately. In the...

Dealing With the Discomfort of Decisions  T he inability to make a decision in the face of uncertainty is the greatest barrier that holds people back. We have created a world of judgement. We are afraid of how others will react and how they will view us. So we abstain. There’s nothing to judge if you follow with everyone else. I have been leading teams for over 15 years now. The most common developmental area that I have worked on with my teams is decision making. It’s easy to come up with reasons why you can’t make the call. Not enough information. Don’t have enough experience. Don’t have the authority. Do you know what the real reason is? Fear. It’s almost always fear. They just don’t want to make a mistake. That’s normal. We reward success and discipline mistakes. I have never chastised anyone on my team for making a decision, even if it was “wrong”. Making the decision is more important than them making the same choice I might have, or what the expectation would be. As long as ...

There was a point in my life when I prided myself on how much stress I could take. No matter what I was dealing with, I would take on more. It destroyed me. I have never been able to tolerate the same stress level since. I’m extremely thankful for that. Feedback is as gift that most people undervalue . No matter what you are doing, there is always a way to assess what is happening. Focusing on those cues, and developing my self-awareness has been vital to dealing everything in front of me. Cues These are personal. The patterns that I fall into are mine. We may share some, maybe even all of them, the point however is to identify the behaviours that are your response. These are some of my reactions to overload: Binge Eating This might seem obvious for you, it is for me as well. It is perhaps “more serious” for me. I used to be a lot bigger. Six years ago I lost a lot of weight and have been able to maintain my form.  I was successful because it came with a lot of understanding, a shi...

 The Opportunity That Almost Everyone is Missing For the majority of the population, the 40 hour workweek is here to stay. I sit in the contribution/results camp vs clocking time. Forcing anyone to live by the ticker is a remnant of the past. Unfortunately my opinion won’t change the world. Have you ever thought about how much time you spend working?  How about you work 7.5h a day, meaning 37.5h per week. You are a little ahead of the filthy forty. Good for you. Before you start smiling, did you know that a 7.5h workday is 31% of your ENTIRE day. I’m being generous unfortunately. Remember you sleep 7h a night (you do sleep 7 hours a night right?) leaving you with 17 waking hours. With that new base, work now takes up a whopping 44% of your day. Gross. But wait, there’s more! It’s the roaring 2020s baby, let’s not pretend your nine to five is really all the work you do. Side hustle? A start-up? Gigwork?  Even sitting here now, writing this for you, do you classify th...

 How your ability to hold both positions sets you apart as a leader Nobody wants to follow an asshole.  Leadership is not about your authority, it’s not about telling people what to do. Your position doesn’t make you better than anyone else. You’re probably thinking, how they hell can you be “unyielding” as a leader while still being open minded … these are not the same. Unyielding — adjective unable to bend or be penetrated under pressure; hard: trees so unyielding that they broke in the harsh north winds. not apt to give way under pressure; inflexible; firm: her unyielding faith. People follow those who take charge. Who are confident. Who default to action and make decisions. When leading a team, they expect you to be able to provide this structure, to provide them the context and the guidelines that they need to operate. How then can you mix these two ideas to be a kick ass leader while delivering results? It’s all in where you apply each idea. You have to be unyi...

 Are you living your own life or following someone else's compass? Here are three questions for you: What is your name? What is your quest? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? If you’re like most people, it was probably easy to answer two of those three questions. We all know our name, and a simple Google search can give us the other answer—twenty-four miles per hour. I saw that today and it spoke to me. There has never been more pressure to "get life right". From what we have been taught, to a culture that is focused on keeping up and the onslaught of social media - most people don't understand how they don't have it together while so many other people do. There are so many people in the world telling us what to do, who we should be and what is the right path it's easy to start living by someone else's rules. The challenge that I have seen and experienced with this is that most people come to the realization that they are living by other ...

 How Sales Techniques Make You More Effective at Any Job Do you ever get frustrated trying to get your point across? Struggle with great ideas stuck in your head? Answered yes to one of those?  Start learning about copywriting. Copywriting is the strategy of creating persuasive content for Marketing and Sales with the goal of generating conversions and sales. How does learning about marketing and sales techniques make you better at your job? We are all selling. All the time. Sales isn’t just transacting a product or service for money. In the simplest form, sales is the transfer of belief. You believe that you have the right answer, know how to fix something, have a better tool for the job. You want to get others to buy in —  re-framed, you want them to believe what you believe. People struggle in their lives, both professionally and personally because they don’t accept that we are always selling. Accepting this idea and using it to shape your interactions increases y...

The Art of Better Decision Making Have you felt scared to make a decision? Maybe you get preoccupied with making the 'wrong' decision?  Did you know that 68% of people have admitted to not doing because they thought it would be harder than it actually is. Getting comfortable with making decisions is one of the biggest challenges new leaders face. You will be placed in situations where there isn't enough time to get all of the information. Or even harder, you will be placed in situations where you'll never get more information than what you have. The good news? Making better decisions is something that you can improve by being deliberate with your learning and how you choose to approach it. This is the approach I take to decision making. These have been test and is what I have used over my 15 year career to teach and develop teams. - Accept that you will make mistakes. There is rarely a perfect answer. Getting comfortable with ambiguity is a leadership muscle you need to...

Every organization rates their employees. Every organization identifies high-potentials (HIPOs) within their ranks.  Usually part of an annual review process, managers are asked to rate each member of their team against a pre-determined scale; and while programs, criteria and assessment cycles change, these reviews are all essentially the same. A high-potential employee (HIPO) is someone with the ability, engagement, and aspiration to rise to and succeed in more senior, critical positions. Where you get classified within a matrix influences your career. Those identified as high-potential are given the opportunity to take on more projects, they work on more challenging problems and benefit from wider exposure to the business.  If your aspiration is to rise within an organization or find yourself with a senior level role at some point, it is essential that you be seen as a HIPO.  Disclaimer: There is absolutely nothing wrong taking on a role as a key player / regular cont...

  We all have an ego, that’s not the same as being egotistical. When people are labelled with an ego, they are usually exhibiting egotistical behaviour. This is the difference between the two: EGO — a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance EGOTISTICAL — excessively conceited or absorbed in oneself; self-centered Ryan Holiday defines the problem of ego in “Ego is the Enemy” and how it impacts our lives by saying that it’s  “an unhealthy belief in your own importance”. I would add to this that not only is it an unhealthy belief in your own importance, but also an inability to challenge your beliefs. You are not you without your ego. You are the sum of your experiences, an ever evolving story. We all use what happened yesterday to help us navigate tomorrow. The lenses you wear, that default node network you have built in your brain, that is you. Not to say we all haven’t developed bad habits along the way, we have. Everyone has things they want to ‘fix’ within themselv...