Release the Hounds

Why do people limit themselves through anxiety and fear? Too many people limit themselves through fear, through your opinions and actions.  Anxiety in contrast arises purely from our own thoughts, not external reality.  

 

Limitations are both physical and mental, mostly mental – your mindset governs your potential and unfortunately people often relegate themselves to negative thoughts.  These emotions are self-limiting your potential and our mind plays a significant role as negative thoughts keep us from doing what we really want. I am susceptible to negative thoughts, just as everyone is, they are hounds constantly hunting to expose your anxieties or weaknesses at the most inconvenient times.

 

Changing your perspectives and your mindset influences your attitude and outlook.  Self-limiting, negative behaviors to avoid in your pursuit of shaping your ethos are the following:

1. Stop Using Hope as a Strategy – There is no substitute for action, hope and wishful thinking cannot be mistaken for action.  Start to start, do something that drives outcomes by looking at the entire process to achieve the objective or goal. People need to detach from fantasies that may relieve them momentarily in a guise of action, but there is no basis for achieving the desired outcome set forth. I have written before that massive goals require massive action, I cannot take credit for that phrase, but it has resonated with many of the people I speak with.  It’s critical to take bold action toward your visions, in order to create success.  This can only be accomplished if you are grounded in reality – breaking down these large goals into digestible chunks.  Spend each morning to contemplate your short-term and long-term goals identify one action you can immediately take today to realize those goals.
2. No Free Rides – Seeking for easy answers and entitlements is a negative mindset high performing professionals avoid.  They know how to keep negativity out of their mindset, they figure out how to get the help they need without entitlements.  There is a reciprocity that exists in any relationship – these people do not expect something for nothing.  They have an objective approach to anything or anyone they come into contact with - they treat others impartially and fairly and know they expect the same.
3. Stop the Victim Mentality – People view the world in limitations and barriers versus an opportunistic outlook on life and new ways to solve problems.  This type of thinking is can be summarized simply that the world is not fair and why is this happening to me. Being a victim lends itself well to the concept that everyone that is happening to you is outside your control and everyone else’s fault. High performers look at the world with eyes wide open and understand the challenges associated with what is going on with their goals and objectives.  High performers fail fast and learn from the mistakes. Personal accountability comes into play where you must anticipate variables and be quick to address having a plan.

 

Release yourself from hell hounds of anxiety - While we can’t always control how we feel, we do have the power to choose how we think and act.

 

What are other sources that “limit personal potential”?

Call the Ball - Career aspirations start with being authentic

Managing your career is based on a combination of aspiration, inspiration and attitude.  You are charged with manifesting your own destiny.  All our lives are products of the many small decisions we make. How you spend a minute can dictate how you spend an hour and eventually how you spend your hours determines whether you will reach your goals. An opportunity lost is lost forever and ultimately, self-control lets you relax because it removes stress and enables you to conserve willpower for the important challenges.

 

More and more people are looking for their purpose in the world and in the workplace looking for validation as a sign of life. People want to be heard, but more importantly they want to know that their contributions are being noticed and not taken for granted.  Not for the sake of attention, but more so because they want to know that their skill sets are still relevant and useful and that they are making a difference to advance the organizations they serve.   With training and professional development budget cut-backs in recent years, people have had to start investing in themselves as concerns grow about where their capabilities best fit in their organizations and what their futures hold.

 

At the same time, leaders are trying to make their people feel more secure in order to maintain consistency, conscious that if too much disruption leaks out into the workplace, there is risk of losing high-performers which is challenging to replace from the impact of time, lost intellectual capital and cost. In this ever changing “war on talent”, landscape, leaders need to think differently about how to keep their teams on track. 

 

They must become more intuitive, diverting from the traditional ways of leading that have become too predictable and uninspiring. Many leaders are out of touch and disconnected from their employees, focusing solely on their own personal agendas.  

 

Where it becomes most apparent, are when leaders try to use a “one-size-fits-all” approach to earn trust, build loyalty and inspire team and individual performance. Leaders must understand that in today’s new workplace, there does not exist a single formula to inspire employees to perform better.   Rather, it’s about how to maximize all the components in order to create hundreds of formulas that provide long-term value, continuity and impact, but are most importantly authentic.    Organizations have a responsibility, but so do the people who comprise  the organization.  The mutually beneficially relationship between employer and employee has gone by the wayside like work life balance.  These are semantics and you need to be authentic and true to yourself, leading your own career, in order to realize your full potential in any organization.

     

 

Inside Out - The haze of commoditization

Inside Out - Breaking through the Haze of Commoditization

The business of professional services is to take away problems and or capture benefits.  At the center of professional services is that they work to prepare clients for the future, identify new opportunities, anticipating adversities controlling what can be controlled.

 

The main objective of any professional service marketing organization is to establish a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with their clients.  This is where experience based marketing and positioning comes into play.  The level of interactions through a number of different endpoints and platforms need to be consistent in order to break through the haze of commoditization.

 

Firms Need Differentiated Strategies for Their Brand to Stand Out - One of the biggest challenges for professional service firms is category parity. Surprisingly many firms lack differentiation not because of their brand necessarily, but because they all have virtually the same business and operating model, the same strategies, and the same mission. The root of the problem with professional services is not brand differentiation but business differentiation.

 

Success of professional services is based equally on the quality of the client relationship and on the quality of the solution to a performance, regulatory or legal issue. But most of all the challenge lies in the fact that advice is often intangible. While it may appear as self-serving, the role of marketing plays a significant role in the context of standing out. Professional services are intangible by the nature of services, so they must excel at branding, marketing and such other processes as business development and knowledge management.

 

Successfully branded organizations base their brand on a core positioning that is uniquely own-able and represents a distinct attribute or capability. This clear definition is supported and reinforced by everything the firm does – requiring all professionals and staff to live the brand every day. This internal dimension of branding is critical to product, services and professional services is becoming top of mind with many organizations.

 

Operationalizing the brand, may appear to be a lofty management consulting term, but think about the implications.  What does it mean to operationalize the brand, to live the brand? It involves the alignment of the brand and its values, long-term strategy, human resources, operations, internal communications, and more, to ensure the right behavior is in place. Obviously branding cannot solve every business performance issue and cannot be applied in all situations, but the transformation of the brand must start from Inside Out.

Kickstart - In Search of Personal Motivation

Kick Start - In Search of Personal Motivation


Everyone wants a happy beginning and ending in their journeys and activities, but guess what – life is not perfect.  The subtle art of KICKING A** is about kicking your own a** with a personal smack down.  Not about negative speak to yourself, but about committing yourself to a broader plan of attack.  Complaints and venting are often cathartic, but you need to move from “complaint to commitment”. There are times where we get so caught up in what everyone else is doing and telling us that we need to do that we stop listening to the signals that our bodies are sending us. If something feels wrong, it probably is.  Sometimes the stress that we place on ourselves for results, in and of itself, is enough to make us sick and unsuccessful in our pursuits. We get so obsessed with trying to ‘feel’ something that we can actually create that effect or symptom.

I’ve done it to myself and I see it over and over again in the misguided and futile attempts of people who are not committed – this is small stuff and obsessing about it is sucking the life out of you. It’s not okay to spend your life caught up in the idea that life stinks because you are not making the right amount of money, have a specific title, weigh a certain amount or because you look a certain way, have this number of friends on social media platforms. Until you start to know yourself – where you are and for who you are – you aren’t going to find happiness.

 

So the fine art of KICKING A**, is about motivating yourself to live and be the best you that you can be – because that’s enough.

 

It is true that that hard work doesn’t always equal success. Some people work really hard, but fail. They tried and didn’t succeed.  The simple fact is that people tried and there is a subtle difference in what I just referenced – “hard work doesn’t always guarantee success, but working harder than anyone else opens unique opportunities and insights if you are paying attention”.

 

While it may not appear to many people that know me that my confidence is not based purely on my innate talents, it is based  on the fact that I try to work harder than anyone else.  No one is going to come out of the shadows and hand you things. A good friend and associate joked around with me that he would have to get up at 3:45AM to get a jump start on me – get ahead of my morning emails, rants, celebrations and personal expectations.  The fact is he was as passionate about the day as I was! It is about passion and jumping, crawling, careening out of sleep to meet the day represents an opportunity. Kicking A** is about sucking the marrow out of life and realizing that every day you have an opportunity to be at your personal best – seize it as fortune favors the bold.

Early riser or night owl doesn’t really matter it is about finding the morsel of motivation – if you can’t find a way, make one!

Differentiation – Waiting for the Perfect Solution

The concept of being unique of different is far more important today than it was ten years ago. The key to successful marketing and competing is differentiation. Our global economy is in a constant state of disruption based on advances in technology, speed of the consumer, changes in regulations and socio-economic and political instability. All of these changes are signaling that the shape of the global market is moving towards a services based economy.

With the enormous competition markets today are driven by choice - your targeted clients and customers have too many choices, all of which can be fulfilled instantly. Choosing among multiple options is always based on differences, implicit or explicit, so it is paramount to differentiate in order to provide the reason and factors to select your product or service. Differentiation is one of the most important strategic and tactical activities in which companies must constantly engage and shape to outperform your competition.

 

Your differentiation strategy is an integrated set of action designed to produce or deliver goods or services that customers perceive as being different in ways that are important to them. It call for you to sell non-standardized products to customers with unique needs.

 

This requires challenging convention and thinking creatively to yield a focused differentiation strategy. It requires BREAKINGTHROUGH!

Breaking through requires creativity and curiosity – the ability to explore beyond the normal confines of linear thinking.  This means going outside traditional barriers of expected ideas and solutions that have already been brainstormed or developed. 

• Just do it – Take a lesson from Nike’s mantra and have the courage to do what’s needed. 
• Being creative ultimately is about being resourceful in thought, mindset and execution.
• Creativity is, and had been a resourceful tool for getting out of tight spots, and it undoubtedly had a place in the lives of artists looking for their next inspiration.  

Waiting for perfect – I frequently learned that in a world of titles, tools and all kinds of other associations, there is accepted convention that unless you have permission then trying to share creative ideas with others may meet with disapproval. 

Don’t wait for perfect - Consider the unspoken conditions to choose between feeling that permission and approval must be sought before deciding how to create something in 5 Steps (Reserve 30-minutes to quickly drive a process and do not get caught up in looking for perfect).

 

• Background and Context – take 2-3 minutes to frame the problem
• Context – What is the Reason or Relevance in solving the problem?
• Define – The information to include
• Hypothesis – Outline three solutions and considerations
• Conclusion - Follow-up or Questions you expect to be asked or that you might ask

 

This simple approach can drive creative solutions by forcing yourself to think differently.  New ideas are not produced in the confines of traditional or conventional thinking.  In order to breakthrough – don’t wait for permission frame out the problem and drive multiple solutions.