Resourced Leaders

Who hasn’t noticed how much things had sped, up, and seems to continue to speed up in our lives?

We used to say “I’ll meet you under the Flinders St. clocks at 10am, and be OK if they arrived at 5 past.  Now, if it ticks past 10, we are on email, text or the phone asking ‘where are you’?

Many organisations struggle with the idea of change. There is a real desire to create something different, to evolve their organisation or to enhance efficiencies and effectiveness. However, there seems to be a real status quo within their business which creates an inertia that works against real change.

We want people to come to work to commit, to engage and be productive. 

The truth is, so do they!

I recently ran a one-day workshop on negotiation.  This was an experienced group of sales managers, each with lots of experience in negotiating big deals, and all with previous negotiation experience.  Even the best of them was being sabotaged in their negotiations by their 'little black duck'.

A question for you about your business:  How many organisations are you?  Or, to put it another way, how many organisations should you be?

Most of the problems we face in business and in life occur because we get stuck in abstract or global views of issues.

When we are certain that there are clear, concrete steps for achieving an outcome, we are able to take each step in the correct sequence to get our outcome.

In this way, ‘marketing plans’ are a great example of how we can break down a global concept (‘growing the business’ or ‘changing behaviour’) into a series of strategies and tactics which can be completed, one at a time., to get to the planned result.

If you are in business, you should expect a crisis.  Whether your organisation survives depends on how you manage it.

Decision Making is one of the critical roles of leaders and managers.

It is also something that is often not done very well, or done for the wrong ‘reasons’.

What is your reaction when someone says one thing, but does another?  How do you feel?  Often we find that this lack of consistency is a major concern and we cannot find a reason to trust them.  When this happens with an individual or company that we are doing business with – how much do we want to avoid doing business with them?

And yet, the laws of business are so often broken that a ‘business law’ becomes a ‘business statement’.  That is, BL’s become…complete BS.  Whilst a BR (Business Reality) sets in.

I was coaching a client on their approach to decision making. In their risk-averse organisation, decisions were rarely taken, and this was leading to a high level of frustration in my client, who was really keen to get things done.

Taking decisions as a manager or leader involves a certain amount of risk. We can never have all the information. In fact, we take decisions where we cannot know all the information, because the knowledge of the success or failure of the decision we take exists only in the future.

As I worked with this client, I outlined how the process of taking decisions is really about risk and reward. In the human brain, we are more sensitive to avoiding risk than to seeking reward. This makes sense as a survival strategy, but in terms of making quality decisions will often reduce decision making to risk avoidance. In organisations that are ‘defensive’, this need for survival skyrockets and can bring decision making to a stand-still.

I have just returned from working in Europe, where I spent a fair bit of time with one particular client - possibly the worst client I will ever have.

Here is a precautionary tale of how not to treat your customers, along with some ‘suggestions’ of where some coaching interventions could make a difference.

This story is true, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent/ignorant.

Colin bought himself a near-new demonstrator car from a well-known local dealer. He dealt with Sam the salesman, and was really happy with the experience. Soon after the purchase, a strange noise emerged from the front of the car.