Landing in the Executive Chair: How to Excel in the Hot Seat by Linda Henman   In today’s fast-paced, unprecedented, and unpredictable economy, many executives simply don’t know what to do. Conventional methods-which many never entirely understood in the first place-often don’t work during economic upheaval. Executives, especially CEOs, need something better. They need a guide that identifies the roadblocks and points out the landmines. In her more than 30 years of working with hundreds of executives, Dr. Linda Henman has observed the critical elements of success, both for the new leader and the one who aspires to the next level of success. In Landing in the Executive Chair, you’ll learn how to: Avoid the pitfalls and identify a clear plan for personal and organizational stress. Leverage the first months in a new executive position- that time of transition that promises opportunity and challenge, but also brings a period of great vulnerability. Create a competitive advantage, set the right tone, make effective decisions, keep talent inside your doors, and establish credibility-all while navigating unfamiliar and turbulent waters. As organizations expand and grow, the skills that led to success often won’t sustain further development in a more complex, high-stakes environment. Present and future executives need more. They need Landing in the Executive Chair.

Too late? Then, start preparation now. These ideas will help:

1. If you didn’t have the advantages of a stellar education, remedy that situation. Study history, literature, art, music, and foreign languages. Begin today to augment your liberal arts knowledge, because doing so will help you with creative problem solving, conversation, and life balance.
2. Address the nuts and bolts of business too. If you don’t understand finance and accounting, enroll in a course immediately. With so many online options, there’s really no excuse to overlook this essential building block to your success.
3. Read. Read the Wall Street Journal and your local paper every day. If your city has a weekly business journal, read that too. Read your leading-edge industry publications, Forbes, other finance journals, and popular business books. At any given time, you should have read at least two books on the best seller list. In addition to giving you valuable information, this reading will make you a more interesting person.
4. Map out a path to the executive position you want. How did others get there? Position yourself for each rung on the ladder; take the requisite training; learn the relevant skills; and acquire the needed experience.
5. If you don’t hold a finance or operations position, consider cross training. Will the CEO allow you to work in these arenas for a short time? You’ll need this sort of groundwork for upward mobility. You can read books about HR and marketing, but getting your head in and hands on the finances and operations will pay huge premiums later on.
6. If you hold an HR position, get out as soon as you can. HR professionals tend to hit both glass walls and glass ceilings. They find that they can’t get promoted outside the HR function, and that road seldom leads to the executive chair.
7. Look the part. Everything about you should scream ‘Success!’ Dress well. Get a good haircut. Surround yourself with quality objects: car, pen, shoes, brief case, etc. If you’re uncertain about points of etiquette, hire a coach. If you’re out of shape, get a trainer. In short, send the message that you’ll be 100% at home in the C-suite, boardroom, or country club.
8. Get a mentor. The military, better than many civilian organizations I’ve worked with, understands the value of committing to high potentials – a commitment that turns those who may not have reached their potential into top performers. Many senior military officers begin mentoring future candidates when those would-be generals are still captains. Use this best practice for yourself. Find someone inside or outside your organization who has achieved what you aspire to do. Ask them to give you advice when you need it. Few will refuse to drink a cup of coffee with you while you pick their brains. Instead, they will feel flattered.
9. Get a coach. In the world of professional athletics, no one questions the value of coaching top performers, yet in business, the stigma seems to linger that those who need coaching must be ‘at risk.’ I have built my entire business model on the opposite approach, however. As ‘the virtuoso coach,’ I only work with high potentials.
   Recently the St. Louis Cardinals added former Cardinal player John Mabry to their roster of batting coaches. Mark McGuire will continue to coach the right-handed batters, and Mabry will concentrate on the left-handers. This focused approach should serve as the gold standard for hiring business coaches too. High potentials should hire specialized business coaches who have built successful businesses themselves and who have developed a proven track record for helping others get promoted.
10. Conduct your private life with uncompromising integrity. Unlike some of the aforementioned, you have 100% control over this. No one can rob you of your integrity, but you can give it away. I have seen so many high potentials derail themselves from a seemingly-sure path to success with bad decisions in their personal lives. Assume everything you do will make the front page, because some day it just might.

As the Baby Boomers leave executive positions in droves, others will need to ascend the corporate ladder, but too few have actively prepared themselves. No matter when you plan to climb the next rungs of the ladder, now is the time to start planning.

About the Author

Dr. Linda Henman, the catalyst for virtuoso organizations, is the author of Landing in the Executive Chair, among other works. She is an expert on setting strategy, planning succession, and developing talent. For more than 30 years she has helped executives and boards in Fortune 500 Companies and privately-held organizations dramatically grow their businesses. She was one of eight succession planning experts who worked directly with John Tyson after his company’s acquisition of International Beef Products. Some of her other clients include Emerson Electric, Avon, Kraft Foods, Edward Jones, and Boeing. She can be reached in St. Louis at www.henmanperformancegroup.com.

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About the Reference

How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is the timeless classic that reveals how leaders can engage and motivate individuals to become teams; joining together to achieve a common purpose and produce more than the sum of their singular efforts. This book unveils:

• The six ways to make people like you
• The twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
• The nine ways to change people without arousing resentment

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like How to Win Friends and Influence People because is provides the reader with easily understood and actionable methods of influencing people without being manipulative; engaging and motivating them to achieve more together than they could as individuals.

StrategyDriven Contributors believe that while leaders naturally act to serve and promote their self interests, it is equally important to benefit those who are supporting those initiatives. Dale Carnegie’s prescription for advancing one’s agenda is a benevolent, win-win approach that influences instead of manipulates. His ‘honorable’ approach to winning people’s support makes How to Win Friends and Influence People a StrategyDriven recommended read.

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About the Reference

Finance Without Fear: A Guide to Creating and Managing a Profitable Business by William S. Hettinger and John Dolan-Heitlinger unveals the mysteries of financial statements in this easy-to-understand, example filled book. William and John arm leaders with the knowledge of what is in each financial statement, how statements relate to each other, and, more importantly, how business operations impact reported financial outcomes.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Finance Without Fear because it imparts the appropriate level of financial report understanding needed to be a successful executive or manager while not requiring the reader to be a CPA. Additionally, the illustrative examples relating business operations to financial statements clearly conveys the relationships and importance of strategic and day-to-day decisions to the financial well-being of the organization.

StrategyDriven Contributors believe it is vitally important for all executives and managers to understand how operational decisions impact financial performance and its conveyance in financial statements. Likewise, it is critical that these leaders be able to draw conclusions about business operations from their financial statements. While newly ascending managers may not have this knowledge, they should seek and be provided this information early in their management careers. Finance Without Fear can be used to impart such knowledge; making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

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† Available only to those living within the United States after the first monthly membership payment is received. Name and address information required. Books typically valued from $14.95 – $29.95 USD. Book value is not guaranteed.

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by Roger Fisher and William Ury

About the Reference

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury recognizes that professionals are in a frequent state of negotiation and provides them with the tools needed to achieve a desirable outcome. This book probes many diverse negotiation circumstances from both sides of the debate and offers constructive, easy-to-follow methods to achieve one’s desired outcomes by:

• Disentangling the people from the problem
• Focusing on interests, not positions
• Working together to find creative and fair options

These methods help the reader negotiate with anyone at any level of their organization.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors believe that negotiation is a key component to individual and organizational success. Getting to Yes breaks down these give and take situations; providing the immediately actionable tools needed to achieve a favorable outcome and making these situations less intimidating. If we had one criticism of the book, it would be that the authors seek to achieve a ‘fair’ or ‘equitable’ outcome for each side. While this appears admirable, it forfeits an upside gain that an effective negotiation might be able to otherwise achieve.

Getting to Yes provides a thorough, actionable negotiation tool set that is critical to every professional and organization’s success; making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

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† Available only to those living within the United States after the first monthly membership payment is received. Name and address information required. Books typically valued from $14.95 – $29.95 USD. Book value is not guaranteed.

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About the Reference

I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words edited by George Beahm reveals Steve Jobs’ core beliefs about business in a way no other author has been able to achieve… because these insights come directly from Steve Jobs himself. George’s book systematically covers a wide range of topics from ‘Being the Best’ to ‘Risking Failure’, from ‘Passion’ to ‘Values’, and ‘Beyond Recruiting’ to ‘Firing Employees’.

Throughout I, Steve, three predominate themes are revealed:

• the intersection between design and business values as expressed in products
• the importance of people, teamwork, and organizational culture in achieving innovation, and
• the necessity of cutting against conventional wisdom to fulfill what people want before they know they want it.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like I, Steve because it reveals the intimate thoughts and beliefs of a man who was not only a creative genius but who was also a business giant. Most of Steve Jobs’ approaches align well with the principles and philosophies we recommend business leaders adopt to further the success of their organizations. While we recognize that some may disagree with Steve Jobs’ approach to certain circumstances – and on occasion we do too, all agree he was one of the great leaders and visionaries who has shape our modern world.

StrategyDriven Contributors appreciated the layout of I, Steve, the organization of quotes around meaningful topic areas, the dating of each quote, and Steve Jobs’ life story timeline provided at the end of the book. We found that knowing the setting and circumstances of the Steve Jobs’ quotes provided insightful context from which to interpret them. As such, we recommend first-time readers review the ‘Milestones’ timeline presented at the end of the book first and refer to it often when reading individual quotes.

For it’s intimate portrayal of an American entrepreneurial icon, I, Steve is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Tribute to Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs who has forever changed our global society. This tribute video by Antonio Marotta and Diana Casadiego was made on one of Steve Jobs’ Macs…

…and this article produced on another.

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Building a Winning Business: 70 Takeaways for Creating a Strong Company during Good and Bad Economic Times by Tom Salonek Use this book as a blueprint for successfully competing in good times or bad. Building a Winning Business is organized around 70 short, practical and highly useful ‘takeaways’ that allow readers to easily digest the book in a few hours. Includes 20-plus downloadable templates and tools.

• Speak your mind
• Be critical of our business
• Stay on point
• Respect confidentiality
• Be on time
• Have fun!

Speak your mind. This means what it says. I want people to share what they’re thinking , not think about how they are going to position it. That said if you have an argument, you do need to think through your position and the things that support your position. We often discuss the same story when this topic comes up at meetings.

A customer hired us to teach a class only for their team. The manager stood up at the start of class and said, “We paid for Intertech to just teach us so we could have an environment where we can discuss anything.” He then paused and said, “Well folks, what questions do you have?” There was a long silence and a lot of looks between the team. One of the newer employees raised his hand and asked a question. While he was mid-way thru his question, the manager interrupted and said, “WHAT! You don’t KNOW THAT! What is wrong with you?” Needless to say that was the only question asked that week when the instructor was in the room.

Be critical of our business. When we have discussions, I usually say “We can be hard on our business or our competitors would be more than happy to do the work.” For both of the past two yearly strategic planning sessions, I was not in agreement with half of the leadership team on a key initiative. In both cases they ‘won out’ we did their approach, and guess what? They were right. One of those decisions, our push into virtual training, is responsible for 40% of our public enrollments today.

Stay on point. I can’t stand people who ramble, use their floor time as a chance to remind us of how smart they are, or someone who takes us on a wild ride of tangents just to arrive at a point that could have stated in a couple of sentences. To be honest, it’s one of the reasons that I prefer giving back to the community thru our Intertech Foundation instead of being on the board of a non-profit , where, in my experience, people love to hear themselves speak.

Respect confidentiality. It’s hard to have a ‘real’ discussion if you’re concerned about information about a decision or an event getting back to folks not in the room. In years past, we used to have several non-leadership team members involved with our two-day offsite. I found members of our team not bringing up positions because they were concerned about the discussion getting back to the group at large. Today in addition to having just the leadership team at the offsite planning, every Friday just the leadership team goes out for lunch together. While the purpose of the lunch is to have an informal meal together, I’ve noticed that when issues come up there’s no hesitation to jump right in and discuss the matter.

Disagreements can be one of the best triggers for innovation, strategy and great business decisions. I can certainly point to a lot of money we never would have made without them!

About the Author

Tom Salonek is the founder and CEO of Intertech, a successful technology and training company in the upper midwest. Intertech twice has been awarded a place on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies in the nation and is a seven-time ‘Best Places to Work’ winner in Minnesota. Building a Winning Business 70 Takeways is Tom’s first book. He also blogs at TomSalonek.com. To read Tom Salonek’s complete biography, click here.

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Networking can be and should be a wonderful thing. In theory, you meet people, share ideas and grow richer for the experience. Indirectly, it enhances the climate in which business is done.

The Business Tree: Growth Strategies and Tactics for Surviving and Thriving by Hank Moore Any company or organization is like a tree. It seemingly looks the same each day but sheds leaves, lets its limbs rot and applies “band-aid surgery” to its branches late in life. Therefore, it does not fully grow and bloom. Often, it withers and dies an early death. The Business Tree™ has 7 major parts… 5 primary branches, a trunk (6) and the base (7): The business you’re in Running the business Financial People Business development Body of Knowledge The Big Picture No single branch (business component) constitutes a healthy tree. None of the limbs and twigs on each branch (staff-consultants) provide all nourishment required to breed a healthy tree (company). Each branch has its proper responsibility and should learn to interface with the others. The Business Tree™ will not stand without a trunk and the base. These keep the branches, limbs and twigs (divisions, consultants and vendors) on a growth curve. Trees with thicker bases and deeper roots will sprout greener (be profitable), shed less often (fewer corporate flaws) and live longer (dominate its industry). Learn more about Hank Moore and The Business Tree™ by visiting his website, www.HankMoore.com.

Ostensibly, all participants benefit from the synergy.

If one is growing from networking and all parties benefit, it works well. Unfortunately, one can get caught in a trap of being on the short end of the equation. One can wake up, realize their energy has been zapped and experience setbacks in their business because he-she was spending disproportionate time on networking.

These pointers are offered to help manage time and resources. Business organizations are like trees. They seemingly look the same from day to day and will live forever. To the untrained eye, most resemble each other. After all, they are just trees (companies)!

This essay is not to discourage networking. It stimulates questions about your own wants, desires, experiences, gains, losses and changing perspectives in the game of ‘give and take’.

By curbing old behavior patterns, you may feel less-used and get more out of future networking. By analyzing the true motives for networking (yours and other people’s), one can avoid hurt feelings and letdowns. By approaching the process with a realistic attitude, positive outcomes of future efforts will pay better dividends.

Categories of Networking

Professional Networkers. For some people, it is their job to network, on behalf of their companies. They are given salaries, expense accounts, support staff and a company machine which sees business development and lobbying value in their work. These people jockey for favor with the power structures and are accorded community standing based upon the reputation-value of their company. People defer to them because of the wealth of their companies. They regularly squire stakeholders to charity events at corporate-purchased tables. None of their community stewardship comes out of their own pockets. Some of these people get the ‘big head’ and think of themselves as local celebrities. They get a rude awakening when they leave their job.

Hobbyist Networkers. These people want to get involved, partly for business and partly to interface with the community. When they network, it means dollars, resources and time out of their own pockets. They exchange ideas, swap cards, engage in base-level volunteer work and participate in several concurrent networks. They are also valued according to the reputation of their companies, directly commensurate to how much money they give to charities and business organizations. In-kind donations (especially their time) are not valued as highly as money. It is unfair to stack them against professional networkers, but the community does. Since many are small business people, solo practitioners, sales force members and entrepreneurs, they make great sacrifices to network… usually much more than the payoff.

Niche Networkers. These people may have started with the shotgun effect but have narrowed down. They network through trade associations, chambers of commerce, leads groups, conventions and other sources which are primarily devoted to business. They staff committees and events, hoping to generate more leads. The longer they network, the better they get at niche marketing. They cannot be all things to all people.

Social Networkers. Business networking receptions became the ‘singles bars’ of the 1980s and 1990s. Breakfast clubs carved their own niche… a balance of business, community and social networking. The same holds true with the ‘rubber chicken circuit’ (clubs, associations and coalitions of networking groups). Just like the 1970s night club scene, people went into situations indiscriminately looking. They wanted to get something but were not quite sure what. Some really believed a chance meeting in a bar would produce Mr. or Ms. Right. They came out unfulfilled because they didn’t really have clear objectives going in. The same is true with networking. The ideal customer doesn’t ‘discover you’ across a crowded room.

Wanna-Be Networkers. These people try to network anywhere and everywhere. They are in your face, at every turn. Their sense of accomplishment is in the quantity of business cards collected, lunches arranged and referral calls generated-completed. They network for the sake of networking… rarely with targeted purpose. Their opening line is: “What do you do?” Sizing you in terms of immediate benefit to them, they either probe further or move on. Usually, they are selling something and focus upon one of the niches listed above.

The Kind of Networking That Should Exist. This is the category that rarely exists. Senior executives do not really have networks of our own. Our junior staff members populate the trade associations, chambers of commerce and service organizations. Top executives isolate themselves from people with differing opinions. They say they crave roundtables with fellow seasoned executives but rarely attend. Inevitably, when high-level forums are organized, the juniors, mid-managers and self-marketers infiltrate and take over… which chases us away. Veteran executives meet on the charity party circuit, in board meetings and sometimes socially. Some commercial programs cater to this market but are usually populated by entrepreneurs on the way up. In the main, the top corporate strata is without an effective mechanism to network, share high-level ideas-experiences, get stimulated to overcome burnout and move toward higher plateaus. That’s why many senior business leaders wear down or retire earlier than they should.

Red Flags in the Network

I Knew You When. They see you as they once did. They connect with the old commonalities and find it hard to see the evolution that you have made. Try to enlighten them, and they convert it all back to their old frame of reference, with questions like “Do you still talk to X?” or “Whatever happened to Y?” or “Remember the time when Z happened?”

Gurus of Networking. These are often the worst violators of the process. They want you to be there for them and those whom they refer to you. Yet, try to get something meaningful out of them. When you set boundaries to your free access, they cut you out of their network. That’s not entirely bad, since you were likely peripheral to it in the first place.

Who Do You Know Who… In networking, the person who wants something stands three or four steps away from their ultimate target. As a member of the network, you are usually one of several conduits in their quest. It’s tough to not be consulted as an expert, but rather as a step on someone else’s journey.

You Once Did ____. Now I Want ____. Just because you once spoke to their business club, attended a workshop with them or served on a volunteer committee, they keep coming back to you for free work. To them, there is no statute of limitations on free access to your time, influence, resources or abilities.

X Says I Can Pick Your Brain. X probably gave your name to get rid of them. X doesn’t really value your time or would have asked in advance if you could be periodically referred. Try referring callers back to X as really being the ‘best person’ for them to consult. Tell them that X is far too modest and is your expert in that area. That will stop X from referring unsolicited nuisance callers.

If You ____, It Will Lead to Business. They always say that so you will volunteer to help their pet cause or serve their momentary need. People wave any carrot that will help to get what they want, think they need or wish they had. Entrepreneurs and service providers are easy targets to entice with the promise or glimmer of future business. Tell the networkers that you will do what they ask but only in reciprocation after the business transpires. Request a ‘show of good faith’ gesture from them in the first place.

Adopt My Interests. It’ll Be Good for You. This is the previous ploy with a new coat of paint. These people couch their requests in terms of your benefit. They just know that supporting their interests will get you somewhere and quickly add that it will be fun, as well. Don’t be fooled. The same requests go out to all whom they approach.

Feeding Egos in Hopes of Getting Somewhere. Many people do things to get noticed by others, in hopes they can do something for us. So, we serve on their volunteer committees, convinced they will think well of us…enough to speak well of us to still others. The problem is ‘they’ want to be noticed by others and only want committee members to support their agenda. You will likely be perceived as a conduit or support mechanism to their causes and objectives.

Circuitous Routes to Get What You Think You Want. Many of us do things for reasons for which we are not quite sure. Spending time networking or volunteering for projects seems like a good idea at the time. Surely benefits will accrue. I’m not saying that people should create agendas for every act or action. However, one must recognize and curb patterns of doing things for nebulous reasons, from which nebulous outcomes always emanate.

Have You Got a Card? That means they will be calling you for their own networking purposes. If you don’t want to get their calls, either say you are out of cards or tell them the truth… that you’re trying to cut down on networking activity. They’ll move on to someone else. Most of the time, they’re not after you… any warm body will do. Being completely upfront about setting your boundaries helps you feel better and deters future unsolicited calls.

Hard Core Clueless. Some people simply don’t know or care where you’re coming from. They are self-serving networkers and offer nothing for you. There is no converting them to your more enlightened way of thinking and operating. Spot them and avoid them.

People Who Refer You for Freebies – But Not for Business

I once agreed to meet to discuss serving on a non-profit board with an influential business executive, whose account I sought for my company. He had been using a pale-by-comparison, low-expertise competitor, and I thought he surely would want to grade up to the best. By knowing and working with me, he would discern excellence, switch his business to my company and be better off for it.

In the get-acquainted meeting, the executive explained that he did not mix business with volunteer work. He stated that I was a good person to serve on the board and give away my time, yet the incumbent agency had his business. That was his belief, and he wouldn’t change it. Curiously, his own business was predicated upon community goodwill, and he owed his fortune to the public appearance of being a good citizen.

So why, then, should I waste my time serving on his board? He started dangling carrots of potential business from other board members. I fell for the bait and regretted it after the first board meeting. Other members had like minds to the executive who recruited me. They had their network of business resources and referrals, and I was not part of it.

I gracefully bowed out, citing the press of business and over-commitment to other volunteer work. The board member took it as a slap in the face, proclaiming that we would never get any work from him. After all, it was my job to curry community favor. How dare I meet to consider volunteering and then pull out? He found other warm bodies. Curiously, that charity has been clouded by public investigations of questionable ethics and dubious fund-raising practices. I sensed that at the time…which was the other reason why I walked away.

Lesson Learned: Set boundaries up front. Tell them that you only volunteer on committees of people who have the willingness and actually do business with each other, if that’s your objective for participating. Let it be known that your volunteer time is a reward to those who support your company…not a prerequisite to being considered. Remind inquirers that you must be successful in your business first… in order to be in a position to give back to the community.

They Don’t Care What You Think – Just Do What They Want

Public officials are notorious for this. They make it clear that you are important to them. Once you give a contribution or volunteer time to their initial campaign, you are pigeon-holed on the solicitation mailing list. Then, it is hard to convert to another level in their minds.

Public officials spend your contributions hiring young, inexperienced staff members and rely upon them for advice. They pay great sums to so-called ‘political consultants’ but will not consider asking CEOs and seasoned business executives for meaningful policy advice. And the consultants with whom they contract are usually out-of-towners or those who have not ‘paid their dues’ to the community.

Try offering your advice-counsel, and it falls on deaf ears. Try to get them to open doors or somehow return the favors. You’ll quickly see how they aren’t available, forgot that they owed you a return courtesy and resent being asked for ‘quid pro quo’. Only money or volunteer time are wanted, thank you. Even though they decline or avoid you, the fund raiser invitations keep coming in the mail.

Lesson Learned: Set boundaries up front. Tell political candidates how you expect and are willing to be utilized. Give expertise on the front end, not money. If you want to be their advisor, tell them so. Don’t expect them to read your mind, after the fact.

Caring When Others Don’t

Some people will always go the extra distance for their organizations. They are consummate professionals and give their all to the company. They pursue professional development on their own time, bear personal monies to further the job, participate in community and volunteer activities and serve on committees. They have perfect attendance, rarely use all vacation days and don’t know what a coffee break is.

Yet, many of their colleagues do the bare minimum to get by. These people learned the Peter Principle and enjoy the same pay and benefits as those who knock themselves out. And they always take more days off. The system allows them to continue, without accountability or the stimulation to try harder.

The active few say they are setting an example by which others will follow. Who? When? Why should the non-involved join the active few, at this late date?

Those of us who have been the ‘active few’ in our organizations did not understand why the ‘non-active many’ did not behave accordingly. We sometimes begrudged the others for not doing their share. Yet, we kept on being active… as if it were a mission to the death.

Lesson Learned: Understand your true motives for going the distance. If you’re really doing it for your own enjoyment and fulfillment, you’re rare. Realities dictate that we all do some things for the good of the company, the job, the community and others. Keep it in balance. Don’t cheat yourself because you are spending energies on the ‘non-active many,’ mostly people who could care less.

Leadership Programs

Community stewardship – for the right reasons – is wonderful. Every executive must devote quality time toward volunteer work, service on boards and community involvement. It builds character, helps their career, showcases their company and pays dividends to the community.

Service in community activities is one of the few win-win propositions. It should be nourished and cherished. Senior executives must mentor young people on their obligations to give back to the community in classy, meaningful and definable ways.

Leadership programs exist in every major city. I went through one and followed with six years on their board of directors (their longest tenured board member). I innovated programs which brought acclaim, prestige, fund-raising, community collaborations and more to that organization.

It was one of the most important things I ever did. It also provided material for this essay, as well as my earlier chapter, ‘Has Beens, Never Wases and Wanna-Bes.’ That was because of the intense jealousy, inflated egos, unrealistic images and ill-planned projects of many of the members.

My reflection and analysis of the leadership program to which I gave 1,700 hours of my time (and covered all expenses out of my pocket) includes the following:

• Professional Networkers dominate the organization. They are generally mid-managers from corporations, who use the name on the letterhead and the carrot of corporate donations to be treated royally. Most seek from leadership programs what they do not have at the office: prestige, name recognition and power.
• People who work for non-profit organizations also populate leadership programs. Again, they’re getting what they may not get from their own boards, employees and employees.
• There are plenty of Hobbyist Networkers…some just for the resume credit and others to troll for business.
• Political wanna-bes use the organization as a launching pad. They use the mailing list as a fund-raising strategy. Members pressure others to host coffees, attend fund raisers and donate pro-bono time to campaigns. Heaven forbid that you ask for a networking favor in return, because, once elected, they quickly forget you.
• Public officials who were graduates of the leadership program henceforth use the organization as a bully pulpit for their ideologies, positions and initiatives. Members either support them or are ostracized by the program’s officers.
• Members besiege each other – with or without the official mailing list – for networking purposes. Someone who barely spoke to you in the program now wants to get you into their multi-level marketing program. Corporate lobbyists assume that you’ll support their initiatives because you are a fellow graduate of their leadership program. You’re on fund-raising mailing lists for everyone’s pet charity. People selling everything from stocks to used cars badger you… under the banner of the leadership program.
• Then, there were the handful of us who were there for meaningful dialog, relationship building, community synergy and leadership development. Oh, well!

Lesson Learned: All of this sounds like high school student council, doesn’t it? The same personality types tend to be attracted to leadership programs, along with the networkers. No organization is ideal or idealistic. Politics and hidden agendas are everywhere. If the benefits outweigh the negatives, then it was worthwhile. In my opinion, leadership program benefits are infinitely greater than the downsides. Learning stems from perspectives. My learning from leadership programs has far outweighed the other useless and wasted networking initiatives detailed earlier in this essay.

How Quickly They Forget

Some people are creative and innovative. They craft concepts and then turn them over to others to implement or perpetuate. Recipients of other people’s achievements will try to mold them as their own, injecting their touch. Often, it’s not as good as the original creation. The more that people tinker with the concept, it gets watered down. Egos of the latters won’t allow them to consult or involve the originator. In time, the latters will claim it as their brainchild and will not acknowledge the innovator.

I recall creating at least 30 such concepts that took circuitous and downward paths after turning them over to others. Sometimes, my only involvement was destined to be on the front end… giving concepts to fresh faces, with the chance to blossom and grow. Sometimes, the recipient organizations were so ungrateful for the innovation or clueless as to its value that I backed away. Sometimes, the concepts were only meant as one-time projects or to have short-term lives… though others chose to milk a good thing beyond its effectiveness.

It’s tough to create and watch others butcher your idea. That makes it hard to market the concept as your creation.

Lesson Learned: If you are creating ideas and projects and intend to use them as case studies and for business development, get written documentation from authoritative people concerning your creation. Ask for thank-you letters and send to others who will influence the benefits you seek to reap. Apply for awards, where appropriate. Be recognized at their board meetings and other public forums. A pat on the back or a congratulation after an event can be quickly rescinded, when they choose to forget your contributions. Get documentation in writing… acknowledging what you did, how you did it and the long-term implications for what you created.

Questions to Ask About Networking:

• Is the person making the request a true friend, a business associate or just an acquaintance? Who are they to you, and what would you like for them to be?
• Will there be outcomes or paybacks for the other person? Will there be outcomes or paybacks for you? If there’s a discrepancy in these answers, how do you feel about it?
• Are there networking situations which are beneficial for all parties? If so, analyze them, so that you can align with those situations, rather than the fruitless ones?
• What types of ‘wild goose chases’ have you pursued in your networking career? Analyze them by category, to see patterns.
• Is the person requesting something of you willing to offer something first?
• Are the people truly communicating when they network? Or, are hidden agendas the reason for networking? Without communicating wants, it is tough to achieve outcomes.
• How much time away from business can you take? How does it compare with the business you can or will generate?

Concluding Thoughts on Networking:

• Networking is a Two-Way Proposition. Associate with those who feel similarly.
• Show and Demonstrate Respect for Each Other’s Time.
• Be Careful Not to Pro-Bono Yourself to Death.
• Budget Networking Time. See your time for networking and volunteering as a commodity. Budget it each year. Examine and benchmark the reasons and results.

Set boundaries, and offer your time on an ‘a la carte’ basis.

About the Author

Hank Moore has advised 5,000+ client organizations worldwide (including 100 of the Fortune 500, public sector agencies, small businesses and non-profit organizations). He has advised two U.S. Presidents and spoke at five Economic Summits. He guides companies through growth strategies, visioning, strategic planning, executive leadership development, Futurism and Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. He conducts company evaluations, creates the big ideas and anchors the enterprise to its next tier. The Business Tree™ is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. To read Hank’s complete biography, click here.

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Special Edition 62 – An Interview with Mark Sanborn, author of Up, Down, or Sideways explores the actions everyone can take to achieve sustainable success, as they define it, regardless of their circumstances. During our discussion, Mark Sanborn, author of Up, Down, or Sideways: How to succeed when times are good, bad, or in between, shares with us his insights and experiences regarding:

• the difference between sustainable success, dumb luck, and informed misfortune
• the three key, overarching actions one must engage in to achieve sustainable success
• the barrier to sustainable success most people create for themselves and how to overcome it
• the secret ingredient to achieving sustainable success

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Mark shares in Up, Down, or Sideways and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.MarkSanborn.com.   Mark’s book, Up, Down, or Sideways, can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

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About the Author

Mark Sanborn, author of Up, Down, or Sideways, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Fred Factor as well as six other popular books. He is the president of Sanborn and Associates, Inc., an idea studio dedicated to developing leaders in business and in life. Mark is a noted authority and in-demand speaker on leadership, customer service, and extraordinary performance. To read Mark’s complete biography, click here.

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About the Reference

Born To Win: The Ultimate Seminar by Zig Ziggler is an inspiring program focused on helping individuals recognize their value and potential. The program then provides insights as to how to unlock that potential by:

• Achieving balance in seven key areas
• Developing and maintaining a winning attitude
• Building stronger professional and personal relationships
• Becoming a better leader, employee, and parent through more effective communications

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Born To Win because Zig recognizes what prevents many individuals from achieving their full potential and his methods provide real solutions to overcoming these barriers. His style and humor draws in seminar participants/listeners; making the principles presented easy to understand and relate to and the seminar itself engaging. If we had one criticism of the audio seminar it would be that the methods presented are not more actionably detailed.

The principles presented in Born To Win are well aligned with StrategyDriven‘s recommended personal performance improvement and leadership practices; making Born To Win a StrategyDriven recommended resource.

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† Available only to those living within the United States after the first monthly membership payment is received. Name and address information required. Books typically valued from $14.95 – $29.95 USD. Book value is not guaranteed.

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No Nonsense Retention: Painless Strategies To Retain Your Best People by Jeff Kortes Why are some organizations able to retain their best people while others struggle with above average turnover? Jeff Kortes presents the key components of retention in a practical, ‘no nonsense’ book that is easy to read and entertaining. Whether you are in an office, factory or on a construction site, the principles presented will improve your retention and enable you to save your organization thousands of dollars due to lost productivity, poor quality and customer service issues. You will learn: How to avoid the dreaded meeting where you have to say, “We are letting you go because you just aren’t a good fit.” Money isn’t the answer to retention. Size of the organization does not matter. Practical ideas you can use immediately to improve retention. Why good employees leave your organization, and how to stop it. It’s the “little” things that matter and what they are. How to build a comprehensive strategy (or game plan) for your department, facility or entire organization that improves retention. What poor retention is costing you. Retention is going to be the most important factor in the survival of companies in the next 15 years. Changing demographics will leave a shortage of workers that will become critical. Only those organizations that are able to retain their best people will be able to compete and survive in the future. Jeff’s anecdotes, common sense tips and ‘no nonsense notes’ make the book easy to follow and remember. The techniques you will learn are nothing fancy. However, when performed together, your department, plant or organization will be transformed into a sophisticated retention machine that will be the envy of your fellow managers or competitors. You will find yourself wondering why you didn’t use these techniques in the past and immediately become a believer in No Nonsense Retention… Painless Strategies to Retain Your Best People.

You can’t hide behind ‘the team’. You are out there on your own. This creates a certain sense of urgency and determination to win. It’s embarrassing to be beaten in front of hundreds of spectators… much less be pinned!

The negative aspect of the emphasis on the ‘the team’ in this country is that people can point the finger at someone else for the team’s failure… and often they do. In wrestling you are part of a team… but there is more personal accountability because of the visibility when you succeed or fail. If every individual member of the team performs… and part of performing is working together as a team… the team wins. Pretty simple.

With the emphasis on ‘the team’ that has pervaded organizations more and more today, I see coaches/leaders less willing to sit a person down and hold people accountable for individual performance. This… along with our reluctance to make people feel bad… has caused us to overlook substandard individual performance. If people felt bad when they screwed up… they might actually start to perform. Like wrestling… if… when you lose… you feel bad… you will resolve to address what caused the pain of feeling bad so it doesn’t happen again. Don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating ripping someone to shreds when they make mistakes. I am advocating holding individuals accountable… like when you lose in wrestling… so you don’t want it to happen again. That’s what changes behavior! That is what drives performance… along with the positive reinforcement you as a leader/parent can provide when you see positive performance.

As leaders in an organization… we can’t be afraid to address substandard performance and hold people individually accountable because someone will feel bad! If we do… there will be no reason for that individual to change. Ask yourself if the people below will do what it takes to 1) keep performing well or 2) change what they did wrong to perform better and avoid the pain of failure. The answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ Why? Because they are held accountable… or rewarded… based on their individual performance!

About the Author

Jeff Kortes is known as the ‘No Nonsense Guy.’ He is the President of Human Asset Management LLC, a human resource consulting firm specializing in executive search and leadership training. He has trained hundreds of first-line supervisors, managers, and executives during his career. His approach to training is no-nonsense, and practical.

Jeff is also a member of the National Speakers Association and a regular speaker on the topics of retention, recruiting and leadership. For more information, visit www.SlugProofYourTeam.com.

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Landing in the Executive Chair: How to Excel in the Hot Seat by Linda Henman   In today’s fast-paced, unprecedented, and unpredictable economy, many executives simply don’t know what to do. Conventional methods-which many never entirely understood in the first place-often don’t work during economic upheaval. Executives, especially CEOs, need something better. They need a guide that identifies the roadblocks and points out the landmines. In her more than 30 years of working with hundreds of executives, Dr. Linda Henman has observed the critical elements of success, both for the new leader and the one who aspires to the next level of success. In Landing in the Executive Chair, you’ll learn how to: Avoid the pitfalls and identify a clear plan for personal and organizational stress. Leverage the first months in a new executive position- that time of transition that promises opportunity and challenge, but also brings a period of great vulnerability. Create a competitive advantage, set the right tone, make effective decisions, keep talent inside your doors, and establish credibility-all while navigating unfamiliar and turbulent waters. As organizations expand and grow, the skills that led to success often won’t sustain further development in a more complex, high-stakes environment. Present and future executives need more. They need Landing in the Executive Chair.

Here are five suggestions for enlisting in this august body of leaders:

1. Practice F2 Leader Leadership – What explains the differences between the leader who rises steadily through the ranks versus the one whose career mysteriously jumps the track short of an executive position? If people find the fast track in the first place, they probably know how to get the job done, have displayed integrity, and offer enough intellectual acumen to succeed. When a leader offers all these and still fails, flawed leadership style may be the culprit. F2 Leaders – firm but fair leaders whom others trust – commit themselves to both relationship behavior and task accomplishment.
2. Move beyond Problem Solving to Innovative Decision Making – As you climbed the stairs to your current position, others called on you to solve problems. The status quo changed; you figured out the cause for the change; and you returned things to the way they were. But this process only restores the status quo. It doesn’t take the company into the future. Decision making, on the other hand, requires innovative thinking and separates those who land in the executive chair from those who don’t.
3. Tie Strategy and Execution Together – A breakthrough product, dazzling service, or cutting-edge technology can put you in the game, but only rock-solid execution of a well-developed strategy can keep you there. Effective execution pushes you to decipher your broad-brush theoretical understanding of the strategy into intimate familiarity with how it will work, who will take charge of it, how long it will take, how much it will cost, and how it will affect the organization overall.
4. Plan Succession – The previously perceived quiet crisis of succession is now sounding its siren, and smart companies are responding by creating disciplined approaches to managing their futures. These companies realize replacement planning isn’t enough. These leaders understand you need a systematic approach to talent development.

When people characterize those who land in the executive chair, they often offer ‘vision’ as their most important attribute. Without question, effective leadership requires a strategic focus. But remember. People in mental institutions have visions, too. Seeing into the future is not enough. Those who land in the executive chair and excel there understand they must outrun their competitors, all the while inspiring loyalty among those who follow them.

About the Author

For more than 30 years, Linda Henman has helped leaders in Fortune 500 Companies, small businesses, and military organizations define their direction and select the best people to put their strategies in motion.

Linda holds a Ph.D. in organizational systems, two Master of Arts degrees in interpersonal communication and organizational development, and a Bachelor of Science degree in communication. By combining her experience as an organizational consultant with her education in business, she offers her clients selection, coaching, and consulting solutions that are pragmatic in their approach and sound in their foundation.

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About the Reference

Make Every Second Count: Time Management Tips and Techniques for More Success With Less Stress by Robert Bly presents a collection of time management and productivity tips to help knowledge workers and other professionals achieve greater levels of efficiency. Robert’s productivity methods address personal performance practices as well as the employment of technologies. While the methods presented focus on improving workplace performance, many of these methods are equally applicable to one’s personal life.

Benefits of Using this Reference

While the productivity methods presented are commonly known individually, the book itself does a good job at providing a fairly comprehensive and organization collection of productivity enhancers. This book will be particularly beneficial to those new to and entering the professional business world or to those who are reentering the professional workforce after a long-term sabbatical.

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Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success by Napoleon Hill and annotated by Sharon Lecther Napoleon Hill wrote this book in 1938, just after publication of his all-time bestseller, Think and Grow Rich. This powerful tale has never been published, considered too controversial by his family and friends. Using his legendary ability to get to the root of human potential, Napoleon Hill digs deep to identify the greatest obstacles we face in reaching personal goals: fear, procrastination, anger, and jealousy, as tools of the Devil. These hidden methods of control can lead us to ruin, and Hill reveals the seven principles of good that will allow us to triumph over them and succeed. Annotated and edited for a contemporary audience by Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Three Feet from Gold co-author Sharon Lechter, this book is profound, powerful, resonant, and rich with insight.

In order to gain more control of your career and take it to the next level, implement a strategy to overcome fear by following these seven principles that will help put you on the path to success.

1. Definiteness of Purpose – Discover what your purpose is and work each day in a passionate way to strengthen your mission. As you work through daily challenges in your job, remember your original reasons you chose this career path and your greater purpose. By keeping the overall goal in mind, the little obstacles and stresses will be easy to get through.
2. Mastery Over Self – The person who is not a master of himself can never be a master of others. In order to become a leader, it is important to practice self discipline in all walks of life and maintain a healthy emotional and mental state. This means staying away from habits that cause you to procrastinate or drift, like smoking or excessive drinking.
3. Learning from Adversity – Every professional will be faced with adversity, especially in the beginning, but the trick is to learn and grow from those obstacles. Know the difference between temporary defeat and failure. Success usually is but one short step beyond the point of where one quits fighting.
4. Controlling Environmental Influences – Stay away from negative presences and interject positive, friendly and harmonious thoughts into your head. Not only align yourself with positive associations, partnerships and personal relationships, but seek out helpful advice from experts in your industry.
5. Time – Give permanency to positive, rather than negative-thought developing habits. Instead of spending time worrying or fearing failure, use that time to gain additional insight into your industry, meet new people and think through future goals.
6. Harmony – Act with definiteness of purpose to become the dominating influence in your own mental, spiritual and physical environment.
7. Caution – Think through your plan before you act. Will this action move you towards you goal?

Overcoming negative emotions in your life is no easy task, but the skill will give you an edge against others in your industry. By mastering these seven steps and becoming fearless in your professional and personal lives, you will likely find yourself on a strategic path toward prosperity.

About the Author

A life-long education advocate, Sharon Lechter is the founder of Pay Your Family First, a financial education organization, and YOUTHpreneur, an innovative new way to spark the entrepreneurial spirit in our children.

In 2008 Sharon was appointed to the first President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy. She and the 18 other members of the council, selectively appointed by President Bush, continue to serve President Obama and advise him on the need for financial literacy education. To read Sharon Lechter’s complete biography, click here.

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The Business of Innovation is a five part series created by CNBC in association with IBM. Within each episode, Maria Bartiromo and a distinguished panel of guests discuss what it takes to be an innovation leader.

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The Benevolent Dictator: Empower Your Employees, Build Your Business, and Outwit the Competition by Michael Feuer and Dustin Klein What does it require to take a concept rapidly and effectively from mind to market? The Benevolent Dictator recognizes that entrepreneurship is a gauntlet. Those who succeed are benevolent dictators – able to make the intricate process happen in days, weeks and months to win. The Benevolent Dictator gives you no-nonsense how-to advice and examples that have worked. This non-traditional, gung-ho guide is not afraid to lay out the leadership methods that can effectively get a new business off the ground, and through the requisite fast-track growth phases that produce tangible success measured by your bottom line and your wallet. Learn critical specifics on how to move from idea development to build-out, through steps for continuous improvement, and on to the big cash out Features proven tools, strategies, and tactics that will help you bottle entrepreneurial lightning over and over again As the co-founder of office retail giant OfficeMax, the author turned a $3 million investment into a $1.5 billion sale in his 16 years as CEO Beating the competition is never easy. For those times when you need an iron hand, then you also need the wisdom to know when and how to use it. Whether you’re a business student, aspiring entrepreneur, or a practicing executive, you need to discover the winning ways of The Benevolent Dictator.

These three qualities might not sound extraordinary, but they can truly set you apart. The truth is, there isn’t a simple magic bullet that will propel you straight to the top. Success in any endeavor, especially business, really comes down to specific character traits and habits. If you have those qualities, you’ll excel. And if you don’t, you probably won’t.

I speak from experience: I have launched a number of successful business ventures, including OfficeMax and my newest business, Max-Wellness, a new and unique health and wellness chain. And I think that making sure that you constantly work with focus and discipline, and always, always follow up are crucial ingredients of getting the results you want – whether you’re launching a start-up, leading a team of employees, or going after that big promotion.

Before you ever craft a sales strategy or walk into a client meeting, whether or not you have a chance of success has already been decided by how you think about your work, what you have to do, and how you do it. Outcomes are shaped by your focus, discipline, and commitment to follow-up…or lack thereof. It’s important to remember that achievements are often less dependent on your technical know-how and more dependent on how you organize and think.

Read on to learn what these three qualities look like in practice, and how you can make them work for you:

Take good notes. Taking notes in business is just as important as it was in your advanced economics class in college. Your brain isn’t always as powerful as you think it is, and having a written record of your boss’s project analysis or your colleague’s sales strategy can save you from having ‘oh darn’ moments, and can set you apart from the pack and put you on a straighter path to success.

I’ll frequently dictate the notes from a meeting the second I walk out, or appoint someone to act as a scribe beforehand. I keep all of my past notes in a folder on my computer, and I also always make sure to jot down next steps. These habits ensure that nothing falls off the radar unintentionally, and that I always have a good idea of what needs to happen next. Oh – and I often shock new team members by writing the letters ‘FU’ and a date at the bottom of my notes. New people are always relieved when they learn that those letters aren’t a pejorative, but a shorthand I use as a reminder to ‘Follow Up’ by a specific date!

Do what you say you will, period. In today’s dog-eat-dog environment, a person’s word isn’t always his or her bond. And that’s a shame. When you fail to follow through on promises and commitments, you imply that you lack discipline and – perhaps – shouldn’t be trusted with more important tasks and objectives. However, if you cultivate a reputation for being completely reliable, you’ll enjoy more responsibility and success as well as better business relationships.

I routinely tell my employees that I’m not their father and won’t babysit them, and that if they tell me they’re going to do something, they’d better make good on that assurance. I can’t afford to have people on the team who are undependable. However, I do provide alternatives by giving everyone three acceptable ‘outs’: They can tell me that they can’t finish on time, that they don’t want to do it my way because they have a better idea, or that they think their assignment isn’t worth the effort and can convince me why.

Give homework assignments. A leader’s job is to make people think and discover alternatives. It’s a great way to determine who on your team you can rely on and who is capable of taking a project to the next level. You can afford to invest in developing someone who is interested in developing.

When I give assignments, I keep a running tally of what happened or changed from previous sessions on the same topic or project. No matter if you’re on the giving or receiving end of homework, remember that the way these assignments are handled is a great way to gauge attitude, commitment, potential, reliability, and whether or not someone is a player.

Scrap your iron-clad five-year plan. Being able to work with focus and discipline is generally a good thing… unless you’re focusing on things that won’t help you or propel you forward! To help prevent this, develop a short-term plan with a six- to nine-month outlook. This plan will help you get through the year. Also, create a longer-term plan with a seventeen- to eighteen-month strategy. It will encompass the goals and benchmarks you need to achieve during this time period. Why have two plans instead of one? Well, the world is simply evolving too fast to rely on a one-size-fits-all five-year plan.

I’ve found that many organizations spend too much time thinking about what’s going to happen way down the road when all they’re doing is guessing. And when their predictions turn out to be inaccurate, they find out too late that they’ve been focusing their efforts on the wrong things. You must always be ready to modify your plans when necessary, change quickly, and deal with the unexpected. That’s what will make the difference between a company that might get by and one that is good or even great.

Use a rifle, not a shotgun. When you fire a shotgun, your shot hits a wider area, but it lacks focused precision. In business, a shotgun approach gets the job done…but usually doesn’t yield outstanding results. Sure, you’ll hit something with a shotgun, but the price in doing so seldom provides the big payback. Yes, a rifle or laser-sharp approach will take more planning and forethought, but in the end you’ll probably save time and resources. It pays to identify exactly what needs to be done and then focus relentlessly on accomplishing those objectives.

Trying to cover a wider area and hoping that something resonates is inviting your efforts to fall short of the mark or even backfire. A laser-sharp strategy is much more practical, productive, and economical. So make sure that you’re ready, and that you aim well before you fire!

When you take the time to focus, have discipline, and require follow-up, whether you’re a business owner, a manager, or an employee moving up the ladder, you’re creating a road map that documents what has to be accomplished and by when. Few things ever fall through the cracks when you follow this process. It is the most direct way I know to set yourself up for success!

About the Authors

Michael Feuer cofounded OfficeMax in 1988 starting with one store and $20,000 of his own money, a partner, and a small group of investors. As CEO, he grew it to more than 1,000 stores worldwide with annual sales topping $5 billion. He is also CEO of Max-Ventures, a venture capital and retail consulting firm, and founder and CEO of Max-Wellness, a comprehensive health and wellness retail chain that launched in 2010. After opening initial laboratory test stores in Florida and Ohio, a national roll-out is now underway. To read Michael Feuer’s complete biography, click here.

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Additionally, corporate executives must have personal goals written, in conjunction with a professional business coach or mentor. Goals require measurable objectives, with realistic dates and percentages for successful accomplishment.

The Business Tree: Growth Strategies and Tactics for Surviving and Thriving by Hank Moore Any company or organization is like a tree. It seemingly looks the same each day but sheds leaves, lets its limbs rot and applies “band-aid surgery” to its branches late in life. Therefore, it does not fully grow and bloom. Often, it withers and dies an early death. The Business Tree™ has 7 major parts… 5 primary branches, a trunk (6) and the base (7): The business you’re in Running the business Financial People Business development Body of Knowledge The Big Picture No single branch (business component) constitutes a healthy tree. None of the limbs and twigs on each branch (staff-consultants) provide all nourishment required to breed a healthy tree (company). Each branch has its proper responsibility and should learn to interface with the others. The Business Tree™ will not stand without a trunk and the base. These keep the branches, limbs and twigs (divisions, consultants and vendors) on a growth curve. Trees with thicker bases and deeper roots will sprout greener (be profitable), shed less often (fewer corporate flaws) and live longer (dominate its industry). Learn more about Hank Moore and The Business Tree™ by visiting his website, www.HankMoore.com.

Goals should also focus upon balance between corporate ideals and a healthy personal life for executives.

Reasons for Goal Setting:

1. Human beings live to attract goals.
2. Organizations get people caught in activity traps… unless managers periodically pull back and reassess in terms of goals.
3. Managers lose sight of their employees’ goals. Employees work hard, rather than productively. Mutually agreed-upon goals are vital.
4. People caught in activity traps shrink, rather than grow, as human beings. Hard work that produces failures yields apathy, inertia and loss of self-esteem. People become demeaned or diminished as human beings when their work proves meaningless. Realistic goals can curb this from happening.
5. Failure can stem from either non-achievement of goals or never knowing what they were. The tragedy is both economic and humanistic. Unclear objectives produce more failures than incompetence, bad work, bad luck or misdirected work.
6. When people know and have helped set their goals, their performance improves. The best motivator is knowing what is expected and analyzing one’s one performance relative to mutually agreed-upon criteria.
7. Goal attainment leads to ethical behavior. The more that an organization is worth, the more worthy it becomes.
8. Most management subsystems succeed or fail according to the clarity of goals of the overall organization.

How to Find Goals:

1. Examine problems.
2. Study the organization’s core business.
3. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
4. Portfolio analysis.
5. Cost containment.
6. Human resources development.
7. Motivation and commitment.

Make Goal Setting a Reality:

1. Start at the top.
2. Adopt a policy of strategic planning.
3. Strategic goals and objectives must filter downward throughout all the organization.
4. Training is vital.
5. Continual follow-up, refinement and new goal setting must ensue.
6. Programs must be competent, effective and benchmarked.
7. A corporate culture must foster all goal setting, policies, practices and procedures.

Priorities:

1. Focus on important goals.
2. Make goals realistic, simple and attainable.
3. Reward risk takers.
4. Recognize that trade-offs must be made.
5. Goals release energy.
6. Information leads to dissemination, leading to teaching-training, leading to insight, leading to understanding, leading to knowledge, leading to wisdom.
7. View goals as long-term, rather than short-term.

Rules for Budgeting-Planning:

1. Use indicators and indices wherever they can be used.
2. Use common indicators where categories are similar, and use special indicators for special jobs.
3. Let your people participate in devising the indicators.
4. Make all indicators meaningful, and retest them periodically.
5. Use past results as only one indicator for the future.
6. Have a reason for setting all indicators in place.
7. Indicators are not ends in themselves… only a means of getting where the organization needs to go. Indicators must promote action. Discard those that stifle action.

Developmental Discipline:

1. Discipline at work is accepted, for the most part, voluntarily. If not voluntarily accepted, it is not legitimate.
2. Discipline is a shaper of behavior, not a punishment.
3. The past provides useful insights into behavior, but it is not the only criteria to be used.

Applying Developmental Discipline:

1. Rules and regulations must be known by all employees.
2. Disciplinary action should occur as close to the time of violation as possible.
3. The accused person must be presented with the facts and the source of the facts.
4. The specific rule that was broken must be stated.
5. The reason for the rule being enacted should be stated.
6. The accused person must be asked if he-she agrees with the facts, as stated. If the reply is affirmative, he-she should justify the behavior.
7. Corrective action should be discussed in positive and pro-active terms.

Ways in Which Goals Improve Effectiveness:

1. Defines effectiveness as the increase in value of people and their activities as resources.
2. Recognizes that humans are achievement and success creatures.
3. Goals infuse meaning into work and work into other aspects of life. Life is fully lived when it has meaning.
4. One cannot succeed without definitions of success. One must expect something to achieve success.
5. Failure is inevitable and is the best learning curve for success.
6. One’s goals start from within, not from work situations. The goal-oriented person adapts to the work environments.
7. Collaborations with other people create success. One cannot be successful alone or working in a vacuum.
8. One is always dependent upon other people, and other people are dependent upon you.
9. Commitments must be made to other people.
10. One must view the future and change as affirmative, in order to succeed.
11. Knowledge of results is a powerful force in growing and learning.
12. Without goals, one cannot operate under self-control.
13. Objectives under one’s own responsibility helps one to identify with the objectives of the larger organization of which he-she is a part. Sense of belonging is enhanced.
14. Achieving goals which one set and to which one commits enhances a person’s sense of adequacy.
15. People who set and are striving to achieve goals together have a sense of belonging, a major motivator for humanity.
16. Because standards are spelled out, one knows what is expected. The main reason why people do not perform is that they do not know what is expected of them.
17. Through goal setting and achievement, one becomes actualized.
18. Goal setting creates a power of one’s life…especially the part that relates to work.
19. With goals, one can be a winner. Without goals, one never really succeeds… he or she merely averts-survives the latest crisis.

About the Author

Hank Moore has advised 5,000+ client organizations worldwide (including 100 of the Fortune 500, public sector agencies, small businesses and non-profit organizations). He has advised two U.S. Presidents and spoke at five Economic Summits. He guides companies through growth strategies, visioning, strategic planning, executive leadership development, Futurism and Big Picture issues which profoundly affect the business climate. He conducts company evaluations, creates the big ideas and anchors the enterprise to its next tier. The Business Tree™ is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. To read Hank’s complete biography, click here.

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No Nonsense Retention: Painless Strategies To Retain Your Best People by Jeff Kortes Why are some organizations able to retain their best people while others struggle with above average turnover? Jeff Kortes presents the key components of retention in a practical, ‘no nonsense’ book that is easy to read and entertaining. Whether you are in an office, factory or on a construction site, the principles presented will improve your retention and enable you to save your organization thousands of dollars due to lost productivity, poor quality and customer service issues. You will learn: How to avoid the dreaded meeting where you have to say, “We are letting you go because you just aren’t a good fit.” Money isn’t the answer to retention. Size of the organization does not matter. Practical ideas you can use immediately to improve retention. Why good employees leave your organization, and how to stop it. It’s the “little” things that matter and what they are. How to build a comprehensive strategy (or game plan) for your department, facility or entire organization that improves retention. What poor retention is costing you. Retention is going to be the most important factor in the survival of companies in the next 15 years. Changing demographics will leave a shortage of workers that will become critical. Only those organizations that are able to retain their best people will be able to compete and survive in the future. Jeff’s anecdotes, common sense tips and ‘no nonsense notes’ make the book easy to follow and remember. The techniques you will learn are nothing fancy. However, when performed together, your department, plant or organization will be transformed into a sophisticated retention machine that will be the envy of your fellow managers or competitors. You will find yourself wondering why you didn’t use these techniques in the past and immediately become a believer in No Nonsense Retention… Painless Strategies to Retain Your Best People.

Our discussion got me thinking about how we often fail to have discussions about development goals with our kids… or our employees. The discussions tend to be more spur of the moment… not that it’s a bad thing to have discussions when the moment arises… but certainly no substitute for structured discussions that force the parties to think about where they want to go in their career.

When having those discussions they need to take into consideration career goals but… almost as importantly… how the career goals fit in with their life goals. This is particularly important when dealing with employees early in their career. Those discussions can have a significant impact on someone’s long-term success and your ability to get the best out of your people. Another side benefit to you as a leader (or a parent), is the satisfaction of seeing the impact you can have on that person’s life. In the end… you will find that is one of the most satisfying things you will ever do as a leader. Seeing them succeed is truly worth the time and effort spent!

Unfortunately, he lost an incredibly close 6-4 match in the semi-finals the next day. After the loss, we talked about his goals for the tournament… as well as the season. Discussing his goals enabled him to refocus… and… ultimately win his final match to place at the tournament. (In sudden death overtime no less!) I am convinced that without those goals to keep him focused… he would not have experienced the satisfaction that we both felt as he stood on the podium and received his medal for placing at the State wrestling tournament.

About the Author

Jeff Kortes is known as the ‘No Nonsense Guy.’ He is the President of Human Asset Management LLC, a human resource consulting firm specializing in executive search and leadership training. He has trained hundreds of first-line supervisors, managers, and executives during his career. His approach to training is no-nonsense, and practical.

Jeff is also a member of the National Speakers Association and a regular speaker on the topics of retention, recruiting and leadership. For more information, visit www.SlugProofYourTeam.com.

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When we think of all the responsibility, setbacks, and other difficulties that a leader must face in today’s work environment, the need for an underlying optimism is hardly surprising. But that optimism, something that is widely viewed as a valuable personality trait, can be an Achilles’ heel for leaders.

Better Under Pressure: How Great Leaders Bring Out the Best in Themselves and Others by Justin Menkes Most business leaders can take only so much pressure before their performance slides. Yet some CEOs deliver their greatest successes when times get toughest. How do they do it? In Better Under Pressure, Justin Menkes, from executive search firm Spencer Stuart, reveals their secrets. Through in-depth performance evaluations, behavioral interviews, cognitive ability tests and referencing of more than 200 CEO candidates, Justin identified the three cornerstone attributes that allow great leaders to realize their potential and that of their people: Realistic optimism: They recognize the risks threatening their organization’s survival – yet remain confident that the company will prevail. Subservience to purpose: They dedicate themselves to pursuing a noble cause, and win their team’s commitment to that cause. Finding order in chaos: They find clarity amid the many variables affecting their business and cull data to form the conclusions that matter most to the company. Drawing on more than 60 additional interviews with long-tenured CEOs, Justin then demonstrates how these attributes are deployed in real life by leaders who shine under pressure to maximize the discretionary effort of a 21st-century workforce. Personal and practical, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike.

Optimism is a much more complicated concept than we often realize. Consider the following illustration involving a former employee of mine.

The first time I met ‘Steve’ we were having lunch outside a hotel in Beverly Hills, and I remember he kept remarking about the beauty of our surroundings, the tremendous expanse of sky above us, and how terrific the food was. As we talked, that positive outlook was a continual presence. When we discussed the toll that constant travel could take, he spoke about how much he liked to travel and how he would always write ahead to friends in the area to find the best local known restaurants. He truly believed there wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be figured out with the right attitude.

As research by prominent psychologist Martin Seligman has shown, that kind of optimism is critical to those in the insurance sales business and those who must handle rejection well; certainly it came in handy for Steve. Once I was at a meeting with him, when a senior HR executive was downright rude and acerbic to Steve. All Steve said afterward was “I think that went really well. We’re gonna close that sale!” His optimism allowed him to thrive in the sales profession, but it would render him completely ineffective in a leadership position.

Given the setbacks that every leader faces in today’s environment of unprecedented competition, why wouldn’t people with Steve’s almost boundless optimism be able to use that as an asset? It is because that kind of optimism shows a disregard for a huge amount of critical information that is available in the world around him. Impervious optimism is a critical flaw because leaders have to process and address a tremendous amount of failure on their way to any success of significance. By examining their failures and why they happen, leaders determine what they must do differently to succeed. Furthermore, frustration and disappointment, though unpleasant emotions, are a critical internal thermometer that helps leaders measure the seriousness of a given setback. Great leaders are acutely aware when their efforts are encountering an obstacle, and they insist that their people be so as well.

Effective leadership requires an individual to take in both positive and negative messages, recognize their respective merits, and use the data to pursue a strategy that is most likely to yield positive outcomes in the future. Leaders need to remain painfully aware of the real uncertainties that exist and use them as part of their calculations to discover the best possible route to success.

And they must demand the same mentality of their people. To effectively realize potential in yourself and others, then, you must react to setbacks with the appropriate level of disappointment that reflects the seriousness of the problem so that your people also take the bad with the good. Impervious optimism blocks an awareness of actual circumstances and is a fatal flaw to anyone trying to lead in a world of ongoing duress.

What makes the negative feelings associated with setback even more essential is that frustration, obstacles, and moments of doubt are actually required if we are to grow to our full potential. Beyond the practical implications of being realistic (i.e., knowing what problems need to be fixed), by facing those failures and deliberately pressing on in spite of them, a leader ultimately finds gratifying success.

Success by winning the lottery, on the contrary, does nothing to teach the gratifying process of realizing potential. People who do so get no closer to understanding their fundamental need for gratifying achievement. In fact, because wealth is often regarded as a public and visible signal of accomplishment, effortless attainment of wealth can actually push people further away from pursuing the kind of challenging work that leads to realizing potential, which can only be forged through adversity.

Similarly, a person born with extraordinary mental or athletic gifts often receives accolades throughout his or her early years without putting in as much effort as peers do for the same grades or athletic prowess. However, like free money, extreme talent can also be costly, because it can push people who possess it further from learning the lessons of how to realize potential. Ultimately, as their lives progress and they inevitably confront serious challenges or setbacks, they know nothing about the value of frustration, the discipline required to face their moments of doubt, and the gratification that comes from succeeding in spite of these challenges.

Gifts you receive are of far less perceived value because they cannot be internalized as something hard earned, something learned, or something that you otherwise had a personal role in obtaining. The journey to press on, to overcome adversity, must be derived because of a choice made. This is how self-esteem is built. This is how adults create an internal feeling that they matter – by choosing to play an essential role in bringing about something important but difficult to achieve. To be a master of realizing potential, you must be able to teach others how to overcome adversity.

This chapter examines how to develop an awareness of actual circumstances – especially when you look at yourself. As part of this examination, we’ll look at the role humility plays in a leader’s ability to face reality and how humility in turn helps craft the kinds of elastic organizations needed in today’s pressured environment. We’ll also learn how your ability to model pragmatism depends on the degree of humanity you exhibit, and how you can make the organization’s drive for survival palpable for your people.

About the Author

Justin Menkes is an acclaimed author and leading expert in executive assessment. A consultant for the influential executive search firm Spencer Stuart, he and his colleagues advise the boards of the world’s leading companies on their choice of CEO. He authored The Wall Street Journal bestseller Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have and has written articles for Chief Executive and the Harvard Business Review. To read Justin Menkes’ complete biography, click here.

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Think of the phone interview as a first date. Going out for an ice cream is a great first date: cheap, easy and noncommittal.

The Essential Phone Interview Handbook by Paul Bailo Today more than ever, job candidates make initial contact with prospective employers via the telephone. Phone interviews are often the most unexpected facet of job interviewing, yet they are fast becoming the standard for employers when narrowing the pool of applicants and determining who will be invited for in-person interviews. The Essential Phone Interview Handbook covers: How to prepare, what to say, and when to say it How to establish your professional presence over the phone How to get to the next step Your dream job may be a call away. Let The Official Phone Interview Pro Handbook walk you through the steps to success and ace your phone interview!

If the ‘ice cream’ date goes well, then you may want to spend more time and money on the person so you move on to a dinner or a movie date.

A phone interview is an easy, cost effective way for a company to say, I’m interested in talking with you – similar to an ice cream date. If a company really loves you, the organization would schedule a formal ‘face to face’ interview in the office, spend more time and money on you… similar to a movie or dinner date. Only if you make a great ‘phone interview’ impression will you get a second date.

Here are tips to improve your phone interviewing skills:

Be yourself – at your best. Do not try to be the person you think the interviewer wants you to be; instead be the person you actually are.

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare. All great accomplishments have their foundation in carefully thought-out preparation. A phone interview is a lot like an open-book test – you can have all your information (resume, cover letters, etc.) right in front of you.

Use a land line, and disable call waiting. Interruptions caused by dropped or incoming calls just add stress you don’t need.

Have a list of questions prepared. Well-thought-out questions show you’re really interested in the company and the job. Also, have your resume in front of you. Make sure it’s the same version the interviewer has.

Listen, Think, Speak. It is important to listen to what the interviewer has to say, and then think before responding. Take a few seconds to understand the question, and then prepare a quality answer before simply blurting out something less intelligent.

Never interrupt. Silently count to two or three seconds after the interviewer stops talking before you start.

Ask about next steps. At the end of the call, ask how well your qualifications meet the company’s needs. This will give you a chance to address minor issues immediately. Then ask when you can meet with them in person.

Say thanks. Follow up with an e-mail or a handwritten note. While you’re at it, briefly remind the interviewer how your skills and achievements can help the company meet its goals.

A few more suggestions…

Wear business attire. Of course the interviewer can’t see you, but you won’t feel, or sound, as businesslike in your pajamas and pink slippers.

Say How You Feel. The easiest way to let someone know how you feel is to say it. This completely eliminates any confusion in a conversation – especially a phone conversation. “I am very excited about this position.”

Have a photo of your interviewer on your computer screen. This could be from LinkedIn, Facebook, the company website, or anywhere else your interviewer’s face might appear online. It makes the interview a little more like an in-person conversation.

Avoid saying ‘um’ or ‘ah.’ Try replacing those sounds with a pause. If you are still having trouble you may want to join Toastmasters International.

Take notes. Jot down topics and questions that seem to be of particular interest to the person interviewing you, so you can touch on these when you send your thank-you note.

Most important item I tell my clients: ‘Do Not Give Up‘… there is no such thing as giving up on your job search. I can guarantee you will find a job. I just don’t know when, where or how much.

About the Authors

Paul Bailo, MBA, MSW, Ph.D. (candidate) is the founder and CEO of Phone Interview Pro – a service for job seekers who want to perfect their telephone job interviewing skills. Paul recognized that while resume, interview preparation, and target company research assistance are commonly offered by outplacement and career counseling organizations, the importance of the telephone interview is often overlooked. In response to this, Phone Interview Pro has created a 250+ point phone evaluation not seen in the career services industry… until now! This is not only a new company, but also a whole new industry; it’s exciting for us, of course, but the real excitement generated by Phone Interview Pro will come from those who hone their skills using the service. To read Paul’s complete biography, click here.

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Before leaders can accomplish anything, they must first understand themselves and present reality, challenge their own thinking, communicate a well thought out and concise strategic direction and define a clear and actionable plan for execution.

Unleashing Genius: Leading Yourself, Teams and Corporations by Paul David Walker Unleashing Genius takes you into the heart of how you actually unleash the genius that creates successful ideas and frameworks. From Paul’s 25 years of experience coaching CEO’s and Executive leaders he shares the foundational elements of ‘The Secret’ to unleashing individual genius and team wisdom. Stephen Covey, in an interview with Forbes.com said, “Once you unleash the creative energy inside of people it affects every aspect of their life.” Through reading Unleashing Genius you will find out how to actually discover and unleash your genius, which will create numerous frameworks and models that may transform your business and your life.

A leader must make the final call. To make that call with confidence a leader must know the answer and/or know how to find the answer, and must communicate in a compelling manner that is clear, simple and concrete. Only then, will his team have the faith to follow and achieve the company’s objectives.

The following six guidelines provide a roadmap for surpassing common business hurdles to achieve success and invent a well-designed future reality for your business or life. These steps work for everything from building a porch of the front of your house, to creating a great company, or nation.

Six Steps to Inventing the Future:

1. Knowing When You Know: Of course the first step is to know the right answer, but more important, you have to know when you know the right answer in business or life. It is not enough to say, after it is too late, “I knew that.” In any endeavor there is a correct course to set – and this course is based on the realities of the market in which one operates, competitive analysis and the true differentiation of the product, service or team being evaluated. A leader must be fully present to the reality of the moment to succeed, rather than being attached to their thoughts and beliefs about that reality. The leader must know the difference between his ego’s hopes and fears and true reality. This involves a deep understanding of both oneself, and the flow of cause and effect. A leader must learn the art of ‘integrative presence’ that allows them to really know and fully experience the unique set of circumstances they face in order to make the correct choices faster and more accurately than the competition. The future emerges from the present, the past is distorted by our beliefs, emotions and the limits of our perceptual abilities.

   ‘Integrative presence’ is similar to an athlete being in the zone. Your presence allows you to integrate the reality of the moment with your intention for the future. Thus, responding correctly to the flow of the game. Product cycles are shortening, business is becoming far more complex, and global competition requires speed and accuracy. Without the correct understanding of the present reality and how that it is emerging into the future, you cannot move with accuracy or speed. A leader must dance with the present while simultaneously carrying an intention for the future, as you do this you know how to move.

2. Communicating Clear Compelling Picture of the Future State: You cannot create something you cannot conceive. Once a leader knows he knows, he must be able to conceive and communicate the opportunity and how the team can capture that opportunity. Until this team can see, feel and hear the calling of the opportunity that the reality represents, they cannot truly follow. Without this clear picture, each team member will create his or her own picture of the future, causing friction and slowing the overall progress of the team. The leader’s presence and authentic commitment to the mission draws followers within the company and in the market place. The more clear the picture of the future state is, the easier it is to create. Without a clear picture of the future in the minds of each leader, chaos will ensue.

3. Creating Total Commitment: After the team can see and feel the possibility of the future, their commitment grows.

   “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation.” -Goethe

   First the leader must themselves be fully committed to the mission, and then develop the same level of commitment in those that follow. Part of being a leader is to challenge teams to face their fears and change their habits. What prevents them from committing is one or the greatest fears of mankind: the fear of the unknown. No one likes to walk into a dark room. As leader, you have to light the future with your vision. To move forward, you must paint a picture of a new reality to give your team confidence, and keep them totally engaged. The clearer and more compelling this picture of the future state becomes, the more committed the team becomes. The same is true for the marketplace and your customers.

4. Acknowledging Present Reality: Leaders who fall short of their goals have often skipped or distorted this step. No matter how committed a team is to a mission, having the wrong starting point can make plans useless. Knowing the good, bad, and the ugly about any situation being faced allows team to build plans that are targeted and effective. The challenge here is that people hate to be wrong, and find ways to make reality comport with their beliefs. This is the problem with the belief in ‘positive thinking.’ It often skips this step and moves too quickly to planning and action. Alternately, pessimists, because of their negative beliefs about life, give-up at this step feeling overwhelmed and hopeless. A plan that is not grounded in reality, no matter how clear and committed the team, will lead you over a cliff. If someone were to give you directions to Chicago, thinking you were in Los Angles when in fact you were in Miami, you would become lost no matter how good the directions. A leader and the team must honestly face weaknesses and misconceptions to invent the future.

5. Developing Targeted Action Plans: Having passed through the first several steps, it becomes easier to create targeted plans, which provide a roadmap that enables teams to deliver focused execution. However, the problem here is often that when things are going well, leaders change the mission instead of adjusting the action plans. This means that they did not do the work in the first three steps. If you know and are committed to the mission, you will know to change the plan, not the mission. With the right plan, a team will surpass competitors while learning about themselves. Even at the final step, there may be obstacles, doubts and fears to overcome. Be on guard for hesitation. A leader must not falter due the team’s fears.

6. Having the Courage to Act Fast: When you have all of the above steps in place your fears are less likely to interfere, but may still prevent you from implementing the plan. Courage to confront your fears and the fears of the team is the difference between someone who knows the answer, but lacks the courage to act and lead. Once a leader knows the answer, that leader never gives up. With shortening product cycles and limited capital, leaders must first define the markets, enter them, and create excitement in the market. With targeted actions that everyone believes in, the leader forms ‘FastBreak Action Teams’ that are infused with clarity and confidence to reach the new reality. With good marketing and branding, the marketplace will have the same courage.

Of course this is all easier said than done, but if a leader can take the time to follow through each of these steps, they can take full control of their future. Fears and doubts arise during each step, a leader must work to mitigate this fear with possibility and a compelling picture of the future state. During WWII Winston Churchill, after the Nazi’s had rolled over Europe destroying great armies, killing millions of innocent people and destroying cities – with his army defeated at Dunkirk, his air force in tatters and U-boats sinking his navy and blocking supply lanes – had the courage to say, “We will never surrender.” He did this with the full knowledge that he and his family would be tortured and killed should Hitler win.

Addressing his divided government and the nation in 1940, two years before the USA joined the fight, he painted a clear and compelling picture of the mission while acknowledging reality.

… I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”

Worthwhile business missions are not this dramatic or important, but the courage and clarity represented in this moment in history, is a great model for any leader. Practicing the steps above will make teams stronger, more confident and more effective to enhance their company’s performance in the marketplace. Each leader who creates opportunities grows the wealth of the company, the people within it, and the communities they touch. Look back on the successes in your life and you will see these steps.

About the Author

Paul David Walker, CEO of Genius Stone Partners, was part of the first to create a leadership firm designed to align strategy, structure and culture to fortify some of the largest companies in the United States including Star-Kist Foods, Rockwell International, Conexant Systems, Chase, Anne Kline and New York Life. His own genius lies in integrating business strategy and philosophical insights, guiding the leadership of major companies with a holistic approach that allows them to grow grounded, stable and balanced – and ultimately, become much more successful leaders. Some of the most influential leaders in American business have relied on him for expert guidance since 1984. To read Paul David Walker’s complete biography, click here.

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The graph below (see Figure 1) may seem boring, but it is the very reason I wake up excited every morning. (Clearly, I live a very exciting life.) It is also the basis of the research underlying this book. This is a scatter-plot diagram. Each dot represents an individual, and each axis represents some variable.

The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Anchor Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research – including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG – to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Shawn explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work. Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential.

This particular diagram could be plotting anything: weight in relation to height, sleep in relation to energy, happiness in relation to success, and so on. If we got this data back as researchers, we would be thrilled because very clearly there is a trend going on here, and that means that we can get published, which in the academic world is all that really matters. The fact that there is one weird red dot – what we call an outlier – up above the curve is no problem. It’s no problem because we can just delete it. We can delete it because it’s clearly a measurement error – and we know that it’s an error because it’s screwing up our data.

One of the very first things students in intro psychology, statistics, or economics courses learn is how to ‘clean up the data.’ If you are interested in observing the general trend of what you are researching, then outliers mess up your findings. That’s why there exist countless formulas and statistics packages to help enterprising researchers eliminate these ‘problems.’ And to be clear, this is not cheating; these are statistically valid procedures – if, that is, one is interested only in the general trend. I am not.

The typical approach to understanding human behavior has always been to look for the average behavior or outcome. But in my view this misguided approach has created what I call the ‘cult of the average’ in the behavioral sciences. If someone asks a question such as “How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?” science changes that question to “How fast does the average child learn to read in the classroom?” We then ignore the children who read faster or slower, and tailor the classroom toward the ‘average’ child. That’s the first mistake traditional psychology makes.

Figure 1: The Cult of the Average

If we study merely what is average, we will remain merely average.

Conventional psychology consciously ignores outliers because they don’t fit the pattern. I’ve sought to do the opposite: Instead of deleting these outliers, I want to learn from them.

About the Author

Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, spent over a decade at Harvard University where he won numerous distinguished teaching awards for his work. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for ‘Positive Psychology,’ the most popular course at Harvard at the time. In 2007, Shawn founded Good Think Inc. to share his research with a wider population. When the global economy collapsed in 2008, Shawn was immediately called in as an expert by the world’s largest banks to help restart forward progress. Subsequently, Shawn has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences: bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, CEOs in Zimbabwe. Shawn’s research on happiness and human potential have received attention from the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and NPR. To read Shawn Anchor’s full biography, click here.

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Jolt!: Get the Jump on a World That’s Constantly Changing by Phil Cooke In a world where change happens at light speed, discovering and mastering the power of change can transform your business and your life. Stop feeling overwhelmed with changing technology, culture, business, trends, and values, and regain the confidence that can give you a real advantage. Stability, once a mainstay of American life, is now a pipe dream. For most people, this creates major anxiety, worry, and confusion. In Jolt!, Phil Cooke, television producer, media guru, and cultural commentator, will help you discover how you can navigate the whirlwind of change and actually use it to your advantage. After spending three decades helping organizations master the art of change, he realized that changing a company or changing your life, are both based on virtually the same key principles. In this accessible and relevant guidebook meant to anchor and empower every reader, Cooke unveils 25 ‘jolts’ anyone can leverage to establish a new direction, maximize potential, overcome insecurity, safeguard the heart and mind, reinforce values, and create an amazing future and lasting legacy. Whether your goal is to revitalize your organization, or transform the direction of your life, he reveals the secrets to becoming a game changer in readers’ lives, opening up new possibilities, confidence, and impact. Like the ‘Reset’ button on a computer, Jolt! can revolutionize your thinking and shake up your life!

So even the threat of death isn’t enough to force some people to change. And yet we all know that in today’s world of disruptive, 24/7 change, responding well is critical to our success. So as you struggle with your employees, associates, bosses, and others to try to shift your organization’s thinking – and before you jump out a window in frustration, it’s good to have a reminder of the reasons people work so hard to resist change. Figure out which of these applies to you, and how to overcome it, and you’ll be well on your way to seeing the birth of a transformed organization.

1. It’s all about me. Most people are simply driven by self-interest. As a result, they view your ideas about change as an unfair imposition on their territory. Silos and walls start going up, and people want to control their turf. People have a strong desire to exert control over their immediate surroundings, and want to feel like they have a say in their own future. Like it or not, we human beings are territorial and want some sense of power. As a result, work to make it their idea. Bring them into the process early so they have a sense of ownership and feel like their determining their destiny, not just taking orders.
2. The Message Gets Garbled. As in many business initiatives, misunderstandings happen, which then create a lack of trust. What people don’t understand, they will resist. Just because you see why change is important, doesn’t mean they will. Realize that you have knowledge they don’t have, so make sure you’re helping them understand all the issues and options.
3. We Value Issues Differently. Different people have different opinions, and may see the cost as greater than the benefits. As a supervisor, you might not think much of where the coffee break room is located. But as a secretary, it could be very important. That’s just a small example of how different issues and policies mean different things to different people. Before you announce any changes, get deep inside the organization and discover what matters to employees in different areas of the company. It may change your approach, or at the very least – what you prioritize.
4. People Lack Confidence in the Decision-Making Process. Confidence in the source matters to employees. Sometimes they don’t believe all the relevant info has been included in the process, or they don’t trust the person in charge of implementing the change. If they’re not confident that the cost is worth it, they’ll fight against it. The key here is to be sure they’re aware or involved in process.

Knowing WHY they’re fighting change is at least half the battle. I actually consulted with an organization who hated change so much they had department-wide meetings about how to get rid of me. In spite of the fact that my changes brought in record income, higher salaries, better equipment, and even got rid of their outdated (and widely hated) dress code. Most people struggle with change, so you need to figure out where they’re uncomfortable. When that happens, you can focus on what really matters – becoming the organization you were meant to be…

About the Author

Phil Cooke is a television producer and media consultant at Cooke Pictures in Burbank, California. His new book is ‘Jolt! Get the Jump on a World That’s Constantly Changing.‘. Find out more at philcooke.com.

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Unleashing Genius: Leading Yourself, Teams and Corporations by Paul David Walker Unleashing Genius takes you into the heart of how you actually unleash the genius that creates successful ideas and frameworks. From Paul’s 25 years of experience coaching CEO’s and Executive leaders he shares the foundational elements of ‘The Secret’ to unleashing individual genius and team wisdom. Stephen Covey, in an interview with Forbes.com said, “Once you unleash the creative energy inside of people it affects every aspect of their life.” Through reading Unleashing Genius you will find out how to actually discover and unleash your genius, which will create numerous frameworks and models that may transform your business and your life.

Wisdom Has Created Wealth and Well-Being Worldwide

I have been working with CEOs and their teams for over 25 years. Their biggest challenge is to build teams that create new innovative realities before others have even thought of them. Two minutes of true insight and wisdom can discover realities that can change the world, your life or your company, small or large. A flash of insight into the ‘true nature of something’ important to our future can create a whole new world, as did Columbus and others who realized the world is round.

Ancient Wisdom

The stone circles created 5000 years ago are examples of ancient technology, which enabled prediction of the seasons and increased agricultural productivity. Someone noticed the position of the sun each season, had an insight, and began laying out stones. Then the technology spread by word of mouth, and the world changed forever.

There are remains of over a thousand stone circles in the UK today.

Wisdom Is The Seed

I have seen leaders whose teams, once sparked by wisdom, are like a basketball team ‘In The Zone’ on a fast break committed to a new innovation. I have found a number of important elements on these teams. The first is wisdom that reveals insight, creates actions unleash wealth and well-being. Wisdom is the seed for our field of dreams. The definition tells us why:

Wisdom n. The ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight. Common sense; good judgment: It is a characteristic of wisdom

Without this discernment most of the innovations that make our world so comfortable and safe would not exist today. For example, the use of fire, the wheel, refrigeration, our communication satellites, the Internet, and machines that can fly from one Continent to another with the best safety record of any form of travel ever. When the great sailing ships, which were technological innovations, were the only way to cross the oceans entire crews where lost. The dangers to travelers, and businessmen were enormous. There was no telling when a ship would be crushed by a storm, or blown into the uncharted wilderness, beyond the reach of civilization. Our collective wisdom has discovered new technologies that have dramatically improved wealth and well-being worldwide.

Is Seeking Wisdom A Priority For You?

Yet, how many leaders make the deepening of wisdom an organizational or national priority? Few I would say. Is seeking wisdom one of the most important commitments in your life? Are you refining your ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting?

When wisdom is manifest in action, wealth and well-being are often created – but we seem to long for wealth and well-being without seeking wisdom. Wisdom comes first; it is the seed for wealth and well-being – the desire and need for the two are not enough. When wisdom is the priority for an individual or a team passionate about a purpose they create what seems like miracles.

Organizing Deep Wisdom on Your Team

To lead a team of champions in their fields that partner with leaders to create wisdom, wealth and well-being throughout your company can be the greatest adventure of your life. To me it is our only choice. How many times has a dream glimmered in your consciousness and then was lost. Have you ever seen a new innovation in your mind’s eye, let it go then seen it implemented by someone else? How many of these insights are lost within your company or team? Companies, societies and people who do not make wisdom, and the manifestation of wisdom a priority lose great amounts of wealth and well-being every day. On the other hand, imagine each person on your team, company, in your life, and country committed to seeking the wisdom that unleashes their own genius and the genius of others. Imagine technologies that could be manifest, and then picture how our world would improve.

A New Renaissance Could Happen In Your Company

The Renaissance came out of the Dark Ages, to create the wealth and well-being we have today. Around any business challenge assemble teams of seasoned business advisors who have found their natural genius and have wisdom working in their favor. Teams who partner with leaders and investors and stakeholders, who make seeking and manifesting wisdom their first priority, will change our world and your business. They may even seed a New Renaissance. I recommend you stop wasting time doing anything that does not lead to developing your own wisdom and then unleashing the wisdom of your team. Make seeking and manifesting wisdom your first priority, and find others who are committed to seeking and manifesting wisdom. It will be the most fun and exciting thing you have ever done, and all will benefit from the wisdom you discover. Genius starts with wisdom, and becomes manifest when organizations support the genius that has been unleashed, it is the seed of all great businesses and discoveries. Do you create the time and space within your team and company to seek wisdom? If not get started now.

About the Author

Paul David Walker, CEO of Genius Stone Partners, was part of the first to create a leadership firm designed to align strategy, structure and culture to fortify some of the largest companies in the United States including Star-Kist Foods, Rockwell International, Conexant Systems, Chase, Anne Kline and New York Life. His own genius lies in integrating business strategy and philosophical insights, guiding the leadership of major companies with a holistic approach that allows them to grow grounded, stable and balanced – and ultimately, become much more successful leaders. Some of the most influential leaders in American business have relied on him for expert guidance since 1984. To read Paul David Walker’s complete biography, click here.

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For me, Harvard remains a magical place, even after twelve years. When I invite friends from Texas to visit, they claim that eating in the freshmen dining hall is like being at Hogwarts, Harry Potter’s fantastical school of magic. Add in the other beautiful buildings, the university’s abundant resources, and the seemingly endless opportunities it offers, and my friends often end up asking, “Shawn, why would you waste your time studying happiness at Harvard? Seriously, what does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about?”

The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Anchor Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research – including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG – to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Shawn explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work. Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential.

In Milton’s time, Harvard had a motto that reflected the school’s religious roots: Veritas, Christo et Ecclesiae (Truth, for Christ and the Church). For many years now, that motto has been truncated to a single word: Veritas, or just truth. There are now many truths at Harvard, and one of them is that despite all its magnificent facilities, a wonderful faculty, and a student body made up of some of America’s (and the world’s) best and brightest, it is home to many chronically unhappy young men and women. In 2004, for instance, a Harvard Crimson poll found that as many as 4 in 5 Harvard students suffer from depression at least once during the school year, and nearly half of all students suffer from depression so debilitating they can’t function.

This unhappiness epidemic is not unique to Harvard. A Conference Board survey released in January of 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling.2 Depression rates today are ten times higher than they were in 1960.3 Every year the age threshold of unhappiness sinks lower, not just at universities but across the nation. Fifty years ago, the mean onset age of depression was 29.5 years old. Today, it is almost exactly half that: 14.5 years old. My friends wanted to know, Why study happiness at Harvard? The question I asked in response was: Why not start there?

So I set out to find the students, those 1 in 5 who were truly flourishing – the individuals who were above the curve in terms of their happiness, performance, achievement, productivity, humor, energy, or resilience – to see what exactly was giving them such an advantage over their peers. What was it that allowed these people to escape the gravitational pull of the norm? Could patterns be teased out of their lives and experience to help others in all walks of life to be more successful in an increasingly stressful and negative world? As it turns out, they could.

Concluded next Monday…

About the Author

Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, spent over a decade at Harvard University where he won numerous distinguished teaching awards for his work. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for ‘Positive Psychology,’ the most popular course at Harvard at the time. In 2007, Shawn founded Good Think Inc. to share his research with a wider population. When the global economy collapsed in 2008, Shawn was immediately called in as an expert by the world’s largest banks to help restart forward progress. Subsequently, Shawn has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences: bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, CEOs in Zimbabwe. Shawn’s research on happiness and human potential have received attention from the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and NPR. To read Shawn Anchor’s full biography, click here.

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2. The Happiness Advantage: Introduction
3. The Happiness Advantage: Paradise Lost and Found
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Around the time that Harvard was founded, John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, “The Mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

Three hundred years later, I observed this principle come to life. Many of my students saw Harvard as a privilege, but others quickly lost sight of that reality and focused only on the workload, the competition, the stress.

The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Anchor Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research – including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG – to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Shawn explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work. Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential.

They fretted incessantly about their future, de-spite the fact that they were earning a degree that would open so many doors. They felt overwhelmed by every small setback instead of energized by the possibilities in front of them. And after watching enough of those students struggle to make their way through, something dawned on me. Not only were these students the ones who seemed most susceptible to stress and depression, they were the ones whose grades and academic performance were suffering the most.

Years later, in the fall of 2009, I was invited to go on a month-long speaking tour throughout Africa. During the trip, a CEO from South Africa named Salim took me to Soweto, a township just outside of Johannesburg that many inspiring people, including Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have called their home.

We visited a school next to a shantytown where there was no electricity and scarce running water. Only when I was in front of the children did it dawn on me that none of the stories I normally use in my talks would work. Sharing the research and experiences of privileged American college students and wealthy, powerful business leaders seemed inappropriate. So I tried to open a dialogue. Struggling for points of common experience, I asked in a very clearly tongue-in-cheek tone, “Who here likes to do schoolwork?” I thought the seemingly universal distaste for schoolwork would bond us together. But to my shock, 95 percent of the children raised their hands and started smiling genuinely and enthusiastically.

Afterward, I jokingly asked Salim why the children of Soweto were so weird. “They see schoolwork as a privilege,” he replied, “one that many of their parents did not have.” When I returned to Harvard two weeks later, I saw students complaining about the very thing the Soweto students saw as a privilege. I started to realize just how much our interpretation of reality changes our experience of that reality. The students who were so focused on the stress and the pressure – the ones who saw learning as a chore – were missing out on all the opportunities right in front of them. But those who saw attending Harvard as a privilege seemed to shine even brighter. Almost unconsciously at first, and then with ever-increasing interest, I became fascinated with what caused those high potential individuals to develop a positive mindset to excel, especially in such a competitive environment. And likewise, what caused those who succumbed to the pressure to fail – or stay stuck in a negative or neutral position.

Continued next Monday…

About the Author

Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, spent over a decade at Harvard University where he won numerous distinguished teaching awards for his work. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for ‘Positive Psychology,’ the most popular course at Harvard at the time. In 2007, Shawn founded Good Think Inc. to share his research with a wider population. When the global economy collapsed in 2008, Shawn was immediately called in as an expert by the world’s largest banks to help restart forward progress. Subsequently, Shawn has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences: bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, CEOs in Zimbabwe. Shawn’s research on happiness and human potential have received attention from the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and NPR. To read Shawn Anchor’s full biography, click here.

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The Professional by Subroto Bagchi   Subroto Bagchi’s first best-selling book, The High-Performance Entrepreneur, shared his story of building a company. His second bestseller, Go Kiss the World, was the story of his life, a motivation to young people that anyone can achieve. But as Subroto Bagchi says: Go Kiss the World did not provide a tool kit. In The Professional he gives us his knowledge, based on his lifelong experience, of what it takes to be a professional, what qualities you need to become a great professional. Most importantly, he asks, and gives answers, to the toughest question every professional faces: Is what I am going to do now, faced with a difficult decision and multiple options, the professional choice to make? In a world where a Satyam saga was incomprehensible; where the global economic meltdown has affected the livelihoods of millions of people; where companies and individuals are routinely revealed to have made unprofessional choices, The Professional provides the explicit and implicit code of conduct the boundaries which separate a skilled individual from a professional.

Fifty years ago, we did not have television news anchors, software engineers, web designers, or cosmetic surgeons. Nor did we have tutors to help our children do their homework without ever meeting them face to face. Today, tutors sitting in India help American children do their math homework and Japanese children to get better in English composition. The combined impact of this huge shift has obviously created great benefits, but it also comes with consequences. For in an interconnected world where one person’s decision can affect those thousands of miles away, any professional failure can create a hugely undesirable impact: A rogue trader on Wall Street can bring down a large corporation in Europe; an over zealous news reporter can create security risks while reporting from behind enemy lines; a CEO of a global conglomerate can cost millions of people their jobs by embezzling company funds.

Given the potential and pitfalls, the most common modern definition of a professional – someone who uses specialized knowledge and skills to gain employment – is no longer adequate. There are three fundamental requirements for someone to be called a professional. These are the capacity to work unsupervised, the ability to certify that the work is complete in every respect, and finally, an abiding sense of integrity. Professional competence without integrity is actually dangerous to society. Every professional has an average work-life spanning four decades, and once he embraces these tenets, he can evolve over the years to the point where he is self aware. Some of the qualities that impact self-awareness are knowing who I am, where I come from, what my strengths are, how well I handle adversities, how well I seek help, and how well I am able to rein in my emotions under stress. The journey of the four decades, of growing from an entry-level professional to a leader among fellow professionals invariably calls for mastery over four things: the ability to efficiently manage resources, volume, complexity and finally, rainmaking.

Whether someone is a plastic surgeon or a patent lawyer, these four elements have been there in every profession for some time. But now, we are witnessing the baseline shift. In this essay, I want to present to you, a set of seven new rules for being called a professional. I believe, without mastering these, no one can truly assume that distinct title.

#1. A professional must understand the principles of governance

In large corporations that depend upon a whole host of people, too much sometimes rests on an individual’s shoulders. Quite often, that individual may not even be an employee. As organizations become larger, their capacity to govern the actions of every individual actually shrinks. This means, a true professional must know the principles that govern him without being told and watched over. It is no longer enough to be smart and intuitive and competent, but additionally, one must know where the boundaries of law rest, not just domestically but beyond. I am no professional if I do not know my legal responsibilities, my requirement of disclosure and what liability my actions can cause to the corporation and extended set of stakeholders.

#2. Sustainability is part of every professional’s job

The days of the hippie tree huggers are over. Imagine you are a product manager at Proctor and Gamble or Unilever and are charged with designing a new line of detergents or packaged food. You cannot presume that packaging is simply a matter of clever design that helps your products fly off the shelves of a super market. They may get sold in countries that do not have any recycling capability. Worse, disposed off packaging material is a huge economic waste because the poor cannot afford to throw things away. Folks at Danone learned it from Grameen Bank Founder Mohammad Yunus, who asked them to consider putting Danone’s special formula nutrient in an edible cover, not a disposable package. It illustrates how much sustainability is becoming a critical environmental and economic issue. Every professional today has a carbon footprint. It is not enough to be a good surgeon, a civil engineer or a litigation lawyer. Each one must know how we may impact the environment and, more critically, how we may be able to help.

#3. Every professional must include as many people and organizations in their decision making as possible

The concept of inclusion in business started when Quality gurus like Deming asked Americans to drop the ‘product-out’ mentality and instead practice a ‘customer-in’ mindset. But it went a significant step further when the idea of community involvement and corporate social responsibility gained momentum in the eighties. But the current definition of inclusion goes well beyond that. Starbucks must now align itself with the Rainforest Alliance. In a world in which every professional act could have far reaching and sometimes an unintended impact, every one of us must continuously ask, how do I protect the interests of people who may be twice, thrice or even ten times removed from me?

#4. Multi-cultural sensitivity is critical for every profession

We no longer produce nationally and sell internationally. Value creation in every field is a distributed process. Just look at the ‘product of origin’ information on an Apple device. All it says is ‘Designed in California’! Today, half of Symantec’s patents are filed by engineers from outside the United States. Companies like GE and Microsoft rake in higher revenue from sales outside the US. It is becoming routine for self-employed doctors, lawyers, engineers, copy writers, clothing line designers and other creative professionals to be globally mobile. This means collaborating across cultures. There was a time when multi-cultural sensitivity meant being polite to your host. Today, the very nature of collaboration is dispersed in a flat world and the central issue is not politeness, but how to raise issues, negotiate energetically, work with teams that have little in common except one project. Today’s true professional must understand the nuances of a multi-cultural existence and be effective in a manner that goes beyond the ability to use chopsticks and say ‘thank you’ in six languages.

#5. Every professional must understand Intellectual Property

Nike, Coke, Dockers and Intel have one thing in common: their most precious possession, their source of competitive advantage, is no longer physical in nature. That one thing changed a long time back. Our lives are being increasingly governed by copyrights, trademarks and patents. Ironically, one may get free services from a Skype or a Gmail, but you may not use their logo without their consent. As more free things show up in the real and the virtual world, more people are concerned about their property rights. An attendant issue is ownership of data and privacy. Internationally, there is heightened concern about information privacy and professionals must, while protecting their own rights, guard against contravention.

#6. A professional’s professional is a rainmaker

The term rainmaking means an unusual ability to create value through deal-making and personal contacts. Traditionally, a rainmaker has been understood to be a great a salesperson. But rainmaking is a lot more than just that. Consider the chief technology officer of a company who is able to influence standards by being on an industry body – the revenue impact of such a thing can be immense. Or consider the ability of a surgeon to build a point of view on a certain issue that becomes so viral that the institution he works for gets noticed and receives funding for a path breaking research. These individuals are rainmakers. It is a non-trivial, non-random professional quality that some people hone and harness over time. Rainmaking calls for building a personal brand and ambassadorship, not just on behalf of an employer but, on behalf of the professional community that someone belongs to.

#7. A great professional learns from unusual sources

Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, the founder of the world’s largest eye hospital, Aravind Eye Care in India, cited MacDonald’s as his most admired organization. He believed that that they show the path to bringing down cost by leveraging volumes and delivering a billion predictable dining experiences at affordable prices. Dr. V, as he was known, asked himself – why couldn’t he drastically bring down the cost of eye care by taking advantage of the high number of blind people in India? Why could he not use the assembly line method used by the burger company to maximize the number of operations every surgeon performs? Last year, Aravind Hospitals operated upon 300,000 people, and 70% of them did not have to pay anything.

We live in a complex world. In it, newer knowledge must come by not just casting the net deep but casting it wide. As professionals, we get busy and blinkered. Every professional convention, seminar and exhibition looks like a penguin colony. A great professional, like Dr. V, must continuously look outside and learn from unusual sources, she must try that learning and then create newer bodies of knowledge so that she can build a legacy that does justice to the idea of affective regard.

About the Author

Subroto Bagchi co-founded IT services company, MindTree and is the author of the international best-seller The Professional. Subroto spends one-on-one time with the Top-100 leaders at MindTree on their ‘personal-professional’ issues to expand leadership capacity and build readiness for taking MindTree into the billion-dollar league. In addition, Subroto works at the grassroots by making himself available to its 45 Communities of Practice that foster organizational learning, innovation and volunteerism within the organization. To read Subroto’s complete biography, click here.

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I applied to Harvard on a dare. I was raised in Waco, Texas, and never really expected to leave. Even as I was applying to Harvard, I was setting down roots and training to be a local volunteer firefighter. For me, Harvard was a place from the movies, the place mothers joke about their kids going to when they grow up. The chances of actually getting in were infinitesimally small. I told myself I’d be happy just to tell my kids someday, offhandedly at dinner, that I had even applied to Harvard. (I imagined my imaginary children being quite impressed.)

The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Anchor Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research – including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG – to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Shawn explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work. Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential.

When I unexpectedly got accepted, I felt thrilled and humbled by the privilege. I wanted to do the opportunity justice. So I went to Harvard, and I stayed . . . for the next twelve years.

When I left Waco, I had been out of Texas four times and never out of the country (though Texans consider anything out of Texas foreign travel). But as soon as I stepped out of the T in Cambridge and into Harvard Yard, I fell in love. So after getting my BA, I found a way to stay. I went to grad school, taught sections in sixteen different courses, and then began delivering lectures. As I pursued my graduate studies, I also became a Proctor, an officer of Harvard hired to live in residence with undergraduates to help them navigate the difficult path to both academic success and happiness within the Ivory Tower. This effectively meant that I lived in a college dorm for a total of 12 years of my life (not a fact I brought up on first dates).

I tell you this for two reasons. First, because I saw Harvard as such a privilege, it fundamentally changed the way my brain processed my experience. I felt grateful for every moment, even in the midst of stress, exams, and blizzards (something else I had only seen in the movies). Second, my 12 years teaching in the classrooms and living in the dorms afforded me a comprehensive view of how thousands of other Harvard students advanced through the stresses and challenges of their college years. That’s when I began noticing the patterns.

Continued next Monday…

About the Author

Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, spent over a decade at Harvard University where he won numerous distinguished teaching awards for his work. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for ‘Positive Psychology,’ the most popular course at Harvard at the time. In 2007, Shawn founded Good Think Inc. to share his research with a wider population. When the global economy collapsed in 2008, Shawn was immediately called in as an expert by the world’s largest banks to help restart forward progress. Subsequently, Shawn has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences: bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, CEOs in Zimbabwe. Shawn’s research on happiness and human potential have received attention from the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and NPR. To read Shawn Anchor’s full biography, click here.

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If you observe the people around you, you’ll find most individuals follow a formula that has been subtly or not so subtly taught to them by their schools, their company, their parents, or society. That is: If you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you’ll be happy. This pattern of belief explains what most often motivates us in life. We think: If I just get that raise, or hit that next sales target, I’ll be happy. If I can just get that next good grade, I’ll be happy. If I lose that five pounds, I’ll be happy. And so on. Success first, happiness second.

The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Anchor Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research – including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG – to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Shawn explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work. Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential.

The only problem is that this formula is broken.

If success causes happiness, then every employee who gets a promotion, every student who receives an acceptance letter, everyone who has ever accomplished a goal of any kind should be happy. But with each victory, our goalposts of success keep getting pushed further and further out, so that happiness gets pushed over the horizon.

Even more important, the formula is broken because it is back- ward. More than a decade of groundbreaking research in the fields of positive psychology and neuroscience has proven in no uncertain terms that the relationship between success and happiness works the other way around.

Thanks to this cutting-edge science, we now know that happiness is the precursor to success, not merely the result. And that happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement – giving us the competitive edge that I call the Happiness Advantage.

Waiting to be happy limits our brain’s potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward. This discovery has been confirmed by thousands of scientific studies and in my own work and research on 1,600 Harvard students and dozens of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. In this book, you will learn not only why the Happiness Advantage is so powerful, but how you can use it on a daily basis to increase your success at work. But I’m getting excited and jumping ahead of myself. I begin this book where I began my research, at Harvard, where the Happiness Advantage was born.

Continued next Monday…

About the Author

Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, spent over a decade at Harvard University where he won numerous distinguished teaching awards for his work. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for ‘Positive Psychology,’ the most popular course at Harvard at the time. In 2007, Shawn founded Good Think Inc. to share his research with a wider population. When the global economy collapsed in 2008, Shawn was immediately called in as an expert by the world’s largest banks to help restart forward progress. Subsequently, Shawn has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences: bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, CEOs in Zimbabwe. Shawn’s research on happiness and human potential have received attention from the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Forbes, CNN, and NPR. To read Shawn Anchor’s full biography, click here.

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1. Happiness at Work: Fact Not Fad
2. Recommended Resources – An Interview with Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, authors of The Essential Advantage
3. Leadership Inspirations – Producing Happiness
4. Change Management – Introduction
5. Evaluation and Control Program – Introduction