Friday 29 June 2012

The world we share

I wrote most of the article below more than a decade ago and expanded on the concept in my Changing What's Normal book.

Nothing has changed in our political landscapes!

Please forward to politicians.

As far back as 2003 authors Kouzes and Posner said Collaboration has become the master skill of this age. Our ability to work together will determine mutual failure or mutual success.

How skilled are you?

Very few of our political leaders have the skill or they have the skill just unwilling to use it.

I find politics fascinating from the perspective of how not to be in the modern world.  Almost everything the government says, the opposition fights and vice versa. How incredible that in the age of collaboration, we have to have an opposition!

I listen to parliament in Australia occasionally and did so yesterday during debate about what to do about asylum seekers.  The most basic of actions required to have high value relationships of mutual reward were being ignored by these highly paid so called representatives of ours.

We live in three worlds; the world in here, the world out there, and the world we share. In here our views are just that, out there are other people’s views. In the world we share are the views we agree on.

In any successful relationship the world we share is the critical one.

Human conflict is fundamentally the result of firstly, failure to agree on the goal, and secondly, failure to agree on the strategies to achieve the goal.

This second one often causes all the trouble for our parliamentarians. It seemed they all had the same goal; a more civil universe for all. But do you think they could agree on the strategies to achieve this most noble of purposes?  Not on your life. Every speaker I heard was only interested in the world in here.

I guarantee that today all of our troubles, personal, local, national, and global, are fundamentally based in our perceived need to hang onto the world in here, our issues with the world out there, and, our failure to focus more on the world we share.

In the free countries of planet earth we can express our personal views without fear. What makes life really worthwhile is when we can share our views (without ridiculing one another as these politicians did yesterday) and come together with a shared view, which may mean we let go of things we previously held dear.

I trust that today and every day you will resolve to build more of the world we share and be less precious about the world in here or the world out there.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian

I work with leaders to conceive and achieve highly successful change initiatives.


Monday 25 June 2012

The key to life

This weeks sparkenation.

My thanks to my friend and colleague Susan Furness for emailing me the following:



More sparkentations here.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
I work with leaders to conceive and achieve highly successful change initiatives.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Would you like to be free of people problems in your business?

Are you a business owner or leader employing 10 to 200 people?

Would you like to be free of people problems in your business?

There are massive rewards from doing so, namely:
increased top and bottom lines
freedom to do more of what you want
improved well-being and the many associated consequences

Enhancing their gifts™ is a low investment/high return system that you implement in your own way.

Subscribe here to the complimentary 9 lessons online course and learn how the system can be the game-changer in your business.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.

Ian
I work with leaders to conceive and achieve highly successful change initiatives.


Monday 18 June 2012

Who are you being there for?

This weeks sparkenation.

I loved a blog recently by Warwick Merry on the Thoughts Leaders Central site that talked about consistency and used these great photographs of  Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.



Consistency and being there for people are hallmarks of authentic leadership.

Who are you being there for? 
And how consistent are you?

Please check out the years sparkenations so far here.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.

Ian

I work with leaders to conceive and achieve highly successful change initiatives.



Thursday 14 June 2012

Where do you stand on the leaders ladder?

Even good leaders tell me that they are spending 25% of their time solving or attempting to solve so called people problems. Where do you stand on the leaders ladder below?



If you stand where good or most leaders do and want to step up and be remarkable I can help you.

I am in the process of completing my Enhancing Their Gifts™ system, the culmination of my life’s work to make it simple for leaders to ensure that the majority of your people are performing at their best on a consistent basis.

And as I complete the development of this system there is a never to be repeated opportunity for a limited number of organisations.
Find out all about this opportunity here.

Be the difference you want to see in the world
Ian

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Albert Einstein

Monday 11 June 2012

What the world needs are people who have come alive

This weeks sparkenation.

The following is one of my favourite quotes:

“Ask not what the world needs. Instead, ask what makes you come alive and go do that, as what the world needs are people who have come alive.”
Dr. Howard Thurman

One of the things that makes me come alive is making a difference. I am blessed to have a lot of friends in Differencemakers Community who inspire me every day.



Please find out more and join us here and come alive.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.

Ian
I work with leaders to conceive and achieve highly successful change initiatives.


Wednesday 6 June 2012

Closing your leadership gap

At least once a week I observe what I call The Leadership Gap.

Business owners and entrepreneurs suffer big time from this gap and so do leaders in multinational corporations.  No one is immune.  The consequences for your business are dire - lower than possible morale and productivity, employee turnover and therefore unnecessary employment costs, lower than essential levels of service and therefore you lose customers/clients as well as failing to gain new ones.

The list of dire consequences is a long one so I won’t add anymore. Ultimately failure to close your leadership gap can mean the end of your career and/or your business.

The Leadership Gap occurs when the Leader is so far out in front of their people that they turn around one day and find no one is with them.  And as they old saying goes you discover that “you’re not leading, just out taking a walk.”

Closing your leadership gap

*There must be authenticity and transparency, in a word, truth, about where your business is really at.  BS is bringing down organisations everywhere.  Remove the BS or you might be next!  Take the BS Detector Pulse Check here.  You just might be staggered by what it shows and tells you.

*The story you are telling about where your organisation is going must be compelling and contain no BS.

*The strategy that you have in place, the compass, the how you intend to get where your going, must be owned by your employees, the primary executors of your strategy.  If your strategy is hidden in a thick document in a drawer somewhere you are in deep trouble.  And if a stakeholder asks your employees what your strategy is and they can’t answer truthfully and enthusiastically you are also in deep trouble.

Ownership of your strategy by your employees is impossible without a performance leadership and management system.

Such a system means:

*recruiting of people aligned with your values and how you live them

*people are properly inducted and engaged to bring their best to their work consistently

*leaders having informal and formal and candid conversations about performance that appreciates people, inspires them, and leads to personal accountability

*employees having informal and formal and candid conversations about performance with each other and other stakeholders that appreciates people, inspires them, and leads to personal accountability

*wisdom is retained when people move on

*succession planning works in practice

*overall the special gifts or talents of individuals are being enhanced on a daily basis

Do you have such a system?

Usually when I ask people what kind of performance leadership and management system is in place I hear about annual appraisals and how they don’t work.  I am no longer surprised by this.  Appraisals went out with the ark.  The main reason they are walking dead is that most people don’t have the expertise to replace them with a viable and vibrant system as referred to above.

I have such expertise.

If you are suffering from a leadership gap or don’t have a proper performance leadership and management system in place then it’s time we had chat.

I can help you put such a system in place, fully customized for you. And I guarantee you performance improvement and at least a 10 times return on your small investment within 90 days. Get that from your bank!

Be the difference you want to see in the world
Ian

Monday 4 June 2012

Being wise is far more valuable to you and everyone you connect with than being clever

This weeks sparkenation.

See all this years sparkenations and 20 more here.

On June 1st in Melbourne I participated in the Key Person of Influence Brand Accelerator Day, a game-changing event for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to be the go to people in their field.

One of the presenters used this line:
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes in your fruit salad."
Anon

Be wise this week and every week. Being wise is far more valuable to you and everyone you connect with than being clever.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.

Ian
I work with leaders to conceive and achieve highly successful change initiatives.



PS If you can be in Sydney on 30th June I highly recommend you participate in the Key Person of Influence Brand Accelerator Day there. Details here.

Friday 1 June 2012

Is the behaviour of most politicians the opposite of what we actually need and want?

After hearing for the umpteenth time last week the following coming out of the mouths of Australian politicians from all sides, “We must do whatever it takes to uphold the integrity of parliament,” I looked up integrity on my computer dictionary. It says: “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. The state of being whole and undivided.”

Instead of being whole and undivided it seems to me that most politicians behave in the opposite.  Their brawling in question time in the Australian parliament is something to behold.  I saw veins popping last week and behaviour that wouldn’t be tolerated in the school yard. It is a farce.

We need people of integrity and character leading us and we don’t when it comes to most of our politicians.  The political system it seems to me is largely to blame.  I regard Barack Obama as a true visionary and a person of integrity and character, yet even he can’t bring about the changes he desires and most of us want, because he is strangled by a system that is about division not wholeness, walls in the way of progress rather than bridges to progress, a system that perpetrates disharmony rather than wholeness.

And how about the organisations you lead and belong to, are they being whole and undivided?  And what are you doing about it when they are not?

Sparkenation 10 in my Changing What’s Normal book is titled Where have all the people of character gone? and reads:

“Normal

Heavy storm clouds stay hanging over business, religion, politics, sport, and the media. Almost daily many so-called ‘icons’ are continuing to have their characters questioned. These clouds always produce rain and wash away the ‘stars’ like twigs in a river.

Changing What’s Normal

Like never before the world needs ordinary people of character to stand up and be counted because many of the people leading us don’t understand leadership, have sacrificed their characters in their quest for power, and in some cases, their behaviour threatens our very lives.

Recently the father of a good friend passed on. He was a man of character and an inspiration to my friend. His passing caused me to reflect on my own father who passed more than a decade ago.

Like my friend’s father, my dad never had his name up in lights too often but left a legacy to be proud of in his world nonetheless. I miss him.  Dad was a man of character.  We never always saw eye to eye.  It was the words of the Mike and the Mechanics song In the Living Years that urged me to settle my differences with Dad not long before he died.

“It’s too late when you die”, the song says, “to admit you don’t see eye to eye.”

Towards the end, Dad came to hear me speak.  Before I began he announced publicly: “I probably won’t agree with everything the speaker says this morning, but I am proud that he is my son.”

People of character lay it on the line like that.

People of character are unafraid to speak their minds.

People of character always tell the truth as they see it.

People of character are trustworthy.

People of character have integrity.

People of character enjoy being popular but don’t seek popularity.

People of character seek win/win but do not compromise their principles.

People of character do what they believe is best for the common good regardless of the resistance they encounter.

People of character praise in public and offer critique in private.

People of character are givers not takers.

People of character focus on building people’s self esteem and never engage in ‘put downs’ or the blame and shame game.

People of character are those we really look up to and admire.

People of character are those we follow when it matters most.

Be a person of character.  You are needed like never before.”

Send me a email and I will send you the eversion of my Changing What’s Normal book.  You can purchase your own copy here.

Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian

In fond memory of my mother Gwenda who passed on 14th May 2012 aged 82.  She lived her whole life a person of integrity and character.  I am glad I was able to often tell her so.