9 Beliefs You Need to Succeed At Anything

As I embark on the journey of entrepreneurship, over the last few months, there have been instances when questions did creep into my mind - will I be able to do it? what are the variables that I have control over? how do I manage them? what are my expertise and skill sets that will help me to succeed in the new venture? Even as I try my best to address these questions and continue to work on my new venture, I happen to read the article below and found it to be very helpful. 

The foundation of success is not a set of achievements or a combination of external factors; it is a mindset.  Success is an attitude that comes from a framework of powerful beliefs and empowering thoughts.  Because what you think and believe about your life largely determines how you feel (your attitude), what actions you take (your behavior), and what you achieve (the end result.)

I’m fortunate enough to know a number of remarkably successful people.  Regardless of their profession or life passions, I’ve noticed they all share nine common beliefs.

And they act on these beliefs every day.

Click Here to read the 9 Beliefs that You Need to Succeed At Anything…

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Encouraging Childlike Creativity is Essential In Business

I have been extremely lucky in my career to have worked with leaders at all levels, and organizations that encouraged me to try new things, charter paths that have been untested, and most importantly encouraged me to fail.  Consequently, whether it was as a salesperson in a leading pharmaceutical company in early eighties or as the program director  in the early part of this century, I tried and tested a number of initiatives be it in creative communication or program management or effective use of public relations as a tool to achieve larger social goals, leading to outstanding results, and several awards and rewards coming my way. 

Looking back, I do realise that besides giving due credit to the leaders and organizations, I do need to recognise that the environment in which i grew as a child and a boy also played a very major role in shaping up my work behaviour later. 

When I read this article  'Encouraging Childlike Creativity is Essential in Business', I went down my memory lane and could recall several instances where curiosity and creativity were encouraged right through my career. I also recall one of my favourite quotes, 'Children enter schools as questions marks but come out as full stops'.

Am happy to share with you the article on the subject by Ted Rubin:

Kids are naturally creative. If left to their own devices with crayons, paint—even a cardboard box, wonderful things often blossom. So what happens as we get older? Many people think kid “lose” that creativity. However, it’s really the grownups who take it away from them—and that’s a real shame.

Click Here to read the Rest of the Article...

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Success at Work or Failure? Make the call

Recently I was working on an initiative for my job that involved getting some feedback from an Executive Director at my company. I had emailed him, asking a couple of questions and requesting a meeting to discuss what I was working on.

Over a week went by without a response. I found out that he was on vacation and wouldn’t be back for another week or so. A couple days after he was scheduled to come back in the office, I emailed him again. This time another week or two went back without any response. I was beginning to get frustrated. Why wasn’t he responding me? I’m sure he had a full inbox to look through when he returned to the office but surely he has cleared it out by now!

That week I was attending a meeting with a number of other local leaders and after the meeting ended I got to talking to VP at my company. I expressed my frustration about the situation and lack of response to my emails by the Executive Director, but was stunned with the VP’s response to my comment. It wasn’t accusatory or condescending, but more inquisitive.

Click Here to read the complete article..

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Want Better Engagement? The Little Things Matter More Than You Think

Companies everywhere are looking at how to drive up engagement scores and results. Yet, research tells us that the most significant factor in engagement is the relationship employees have with their direct manager, and if someone cares about them and their career.

We know that engagement takes more than a corporate program and free yoga classes at lunch. So, what can you do about it?

Here are a few reminders of simple actions you can take as a manager or team leader that make a difference.

Cheerleading is underrated

I’ve seen encouragement start amazing momentum.

A few years ago, Julie Porter, our marketing partner, encouraged us to jump into social media and blogging when we weren’t sure it was a priority or if we had the time. She raved about our progress and encouraged each new experiment – even when it was a small step forward.

As my colleague Kristi Erickson said recently, “She accomplished more with us through sheer encouragement than any business case or ROI would have.” And, we like business cases and ROI analysis!

Click Here to Read the complete article..

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4 Steps To Transform Your Meetings

Do you feel like meetings are a waste of time (don't we all)? Follow these 4 simple steps to keep your employees engaged and increase productivity.

There are so many poorly run meetings that many people hate them. Considering their cost, it’s worth improving them, especially if they are your meetings. An easy way is by getting four things right and visualizing them. This applies to any kind of meeting--regular, special, face-to-face, or virtual. They create the acronym OARRs. The metaphor should help you remember them. Let’s look at each one briefly.

1. Outcomes: If you do nothing else, get these clear at the beginning of meetings. This is where you would express your expectations in a regular meeting and indicate the agreed-upon outcomes of a design team in a special meeting. They should describe what you want to have happen by the end of the meeting. Clarifying outcomes is the most effective action you can take to improve meetings. Writing them down visibly makes a big difference.

Click Here to read the complete article…

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9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People

I'm fortunate enough to know a number of remarkably successful people. Regardless of industry or profession, they all share the same perspectives and beliefs.

And they act on those beliefs:

1. Time doesn't fill me. I fill time.

Deadlines and time frames establish parameters, but typically not in a good way. The average person who is given two weeks to complete a task will instinctively adjust his effort so it actually takes two weeks.

Forget deadlines, at least as a way to manage your activity. Tasks should only take as long as they need to take. Do everything as quickly and effectively as you can. Then use your "free" time to get other things done just as quickly and effectively.

Average people allow time to impose its will on them; remarkable people impose their will on their time.

2. The people around me are the people I chose.

Some of your employees drive you nuts. Some of your customers are obnoxious. Some of your friends are selfish, all-about-me jerks.

You chose them. If the people around you make you unhappy it's not their fault. It's your fault. They're in your professional or personal life because you drew them to you--and you let them remain.

Think about the type of people you want to work with. Think about the types of customers you would enjoy serving. Think about the friends you want to have.

Then change what you do so you can start attracting those people. Hardworking people want to work with hardworking people. Kind people like to associate with kind people. Remarkable employees want to work for remarkable bosses.

Click Here to read the complete article…

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What If You Don't Want To Be a Manager

Imagine that you've invested years of blood, sweat and tears at work, and have successfully climbed the corporate ladder, only to wake up one day and realize that you sort of hate what you're doing. Sure, you used to love it, and the more successful you became, the higher up the ranks of management you went. But now, instead of doing the hands-on work that you loved, you find yourself buried in managerial tasks like budgeting and supervising people that leave you feeling numb at best. You find yourself in the ironic position where all your hard work and success have landed you in a job that leaves you feeling empty, frustrated, and unfulfilled. That's what happened to me. But how? Or better yet, why?

As I rose through the executive ranks to my last incarnation, EVP and Worldwide Creative Director for Nickelodeon, instead of feeling directly connected to the creation of our programming and other content, I found myself spending nearly all my time in meetings with corporate peers and higher-ups. In theory, I should have been happy. I was working with good, creative people (many of whom remain my close friends), I was earning a great income, and the company made cool stuff that my own young kids loved. But. But. I was merely managing the people who actually did and made things. I no longer operated in my personal sweet spot, where my sense of accomplishment after closing a difficult sale or launching a new product was contingent on my having had a concretedeliverable and the sense that my efforts were integral to its success. Being a manager caused me to feel disconnected from what career analyst Daniel Pink has identified as the three primary motivators of behavior: autonomy, mastery and purpose. I had little autonomy, little interest in gaining mastery as a manager (in spite of myriad coaches), and felt dissociated from my true self.

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A Simpler Way to Get Employees to Share

A few years back, I helped a large, very compartmentalized and extremely silo-ed global organization launch an internal competition. Its goal was to promote greater sharing of ideas, information, best practice and innovative processes. Leadership recognized that business units and functions had effectively been allowed to ignore the rest of the enterprise. Significant opportunities and resources were left underexplored or untouched. They wanted to signal a cultural change but weren't prepared to spend millions — or even hundreds of thousands — to achieve it.

The design was simple, clever and cheap: top management would recognize and reward people who demonstrated an ability to cross-functionally get real value from their colleagues and cohorts. We created two complementary yet competitive awards: "Thief of the Month" — a modest prize and high-profile internal acknowledgement for teams and small groups who "stole" an idea or innovation from another unit and successfully incorporated it into their own business; and "We Wuz Robbed" — a comparably modest prize and recognition for having one's group's best practice or process adopted by another internal group.

Dual prizes created a symmetrical "marketplace" where employees were simultaneously encouraged not just to look for interesting ideas to "steal" but to think about which of their own best practices deserved wider internal promotion. The competition thus incented both "supply" and "demand" of knowledge worth sharing.

Click Here to Read the rest of the article….

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To Get A Commitment, Make A Commitment

A few years back, I was running a software company with about 150 employees. I'd been brought in from the outside, and it was my first time as a CEO. In the middle of a workday, a few months into my tenure, a popular employee collapsed and died while training for a charity bike race. He was middle aged and in seemingly good health. His death came as a huge shock to the entire company. Many employees were distraught.

We were three weeks out from a major service upgrade, and under a tight schedule. I thought I needed to do something to acknowledge everyone's loss, but I also was under pressure to deliver. I went to my boss, the chairman (who happened to be the son-in-law of the billionaire owner), and asked his opinion. He thought those close to the employee should be allowed to visit with his family, but we had a deadline. He wasn't going to tell me what to do, but I still had to meet our goals.

I went against his advice. It was a Wednesday, and I decided to close the company until Monday after the funeral. Team members could work if they wanted to, but we declared the days as holidays. This was greeted with great relief. It eliminated the tension between being a good colleague and person and doing one's job.

Click Here to Read the complete article….

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The Top Five Career Regrets

What do you regret most about your career?

I had just finished a guest lecture on business and innovation at Parson's School for Design, and a particularly attentive front-row audience member kicked off question time with the curliest one of the day. I answered quickly with the hope of getting back on target. But judging from the scores of follow-up questions and the volume of post-lecture emails I received, a talk on career regret would have been the real bull's-eye.

Ever since that afternoon, I've been on a mission to categorically answer the awkward but significant question of exactly what we'd do if we could magically rewind our careers. The hope? That by exposing what others are most disappointed about in their professional lives, we're maximizing our chances of minimizing regret in our own.

To this end, I sat down with 30 professionals between the ages of 28 and 58, and asked each what they regretted most about their careers to date. The group was diverse: I spoke with a 39-year-old managing director of a large investment bank, a failing self-employed photographer, a millionaire entrepreneur, and a Fortune 500 CEO. Disappointment doesn't discriminate; no matter what industry the individual operated in, what role they had been given, or whether they were soaring successes or mired in failure, five dominant themes shone through. Importantly, the effects of bad career decisions and disconfirmed expectancies were felt equally across age groups.

Click here to read the rest of the article…

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Asking the Right Question

We are trained to be solution-finders.  In school, we are given questions and graded on the quality of our solutions.  As we develop in our careers, management examines the solutions that we propose, not the questions that we have asked.  For annual reviews, “performance” is usually defined as creating and implementing solutions rather than finding the best problems to tackle.  We become wonderfully efficient at solving problems, even if they are the wrong ones to solve.  Few kudos come from asking the right question.

Yet the right question is often the key to breakthrough business success.  With a properly-framed question, finding an elegant answer becomes almost straightforward. 

Bank of America has had a massive win with its “Keep the Change” program that rounds up customers’ debit card purchases to the next highest dollar, sweeping the difference to a personal savings account.  The patented program is breathtakingly simple, for both the bank and the customer.  The question might be something like: “How can customers save money without thinking, planning, or clearly foregoing consumption?”

Click here to read the rest of the article on 'Asking the Right Question'

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The Five Drivers of Happiness At Work

I am in a wood-paneled boardroom of a large multinational waiting to make a pitch. My stomach lurches as I anticipate having to use the “H” word to the CEO. It just feels too “new-agey” to associate with the hard-numbered world of business.

“We’re here to talk about happiness. Happiness at work.” The words sound so flaky; “happy clappy” and “happy hippy” ping into my mind even though the numbers tell their own story.

We’ve all had to face and deal with a very different working world, especially since the financial crisis and ensuing recession.

Data which we’ve gathered since 2006, shows that people everywhere feel less confidence, motivation, loyalty, resilience, commitment and engagement.

And whether your local economy is in a state of boom or bust, employees are experiencing similar pressures and bosses can only squeeze until the pips squeak for so long.

But imagine a mindset which enables action to maximize performance and achieve potential in these tough times. At the iOpener Institute for People and Performance, we understand that this is another way of describing happiness at work.

Our empirical research, involving 9,000 people from around the world, reveals some astonishing findings.

Click here to know The Five Drivers of Happiness At Work..

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