Performance
Opportunity in chaos…
Someone mentioned today that there is opportunity in chaos...Seems like a sensible assertion. And there is opportunity for sure, providing your know what abilities you have to exploit that opportunity. It's been said that "chance favours the prepared mind" and these two ideas sit nicely together. Opportunity and the prepared mind.How prepared is your individual,... Read more
Performance
Survive or Thrive?
I was talking with a team we work with the other day and remarked how they were in a perfect storm. End of year mayhem to bring home the promised numbers, a change of leader, planning for 2009 to be completed and a really uncertain external climate. The perfect situation for a team to fracture.... Read more
Performance
Eating my own dog food….
So I'm sitting on the stationary bike doing a warm down session after a half marathon on Sunday. It's a bike in a hotel gym though exactly the same make and model as the bike I use at my local gym. It's only a warm down session so I'm not going crazy -even so I... Read more
Performance
Go on, be brave…
Whilst having a rare flick through the FT the other day, we happened across a book review for "Managing to Learn Using The A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead" by John Shook. Not the most enticing of titles! However, the FT article was entitled "The Toyota mindset revealed", which got... Read more
Performance
Talents…
When we're in circumstances that look and feel totally foreign, we can often conclude that we don't have appropriate skills to deal with what we're facing. That conclusion comes from focusing on the situation as unique, unexpected, threatening and basically unwanted!However, if you're aware of all of your talents that have led you to be... Read more
Performance
Next step thinking…
The concept of "next step thinking" came up last week in a conversation. This is all about focusing on being in the moment and being confident that you can do the next thing you need to do with complete focus and confidence. It seems that this is very important at the moment. Much of our... Read more
Performance
Stating the obvious…
Do you know that people perform better when they are clearly focused on playing to their strengths, rather than focusing on how not to have their weaknesses exposed? Pretty obvious really, but there's a big assumption that everyone has their finger on the pulse of their strengths. In our experience, that's not the caseWe also... Read more
Performance
Active Recovery…
One thing that we know from working with the highest level athletes is that they value and actively exploit recovery in order to perform better. This contrasts with the views that we hear in the corporate world, where is appears there is a perception sometimes that sleep and downtime are an inconvenience to getting a... Read more
Performance
Attitudes are contagioius…
... are yours worth catching? (Great line that we've seen attributed to Aussie cricket great, Steve Waugh, but I'm sure it came from somewhere else first!).Actually, do you even know your attitudes? If you're not fully aware of those attitudes, then you're probably not realising how you're infecting people around you! When the conditions around... Read more
Performance