As the midday heat started to give way to a gentle afternoon breeze and the lunchtime conversation with my accountant began to slow down it was time to ask for the bill.

Scanning the restaurant verandah I saw a young, somewhat shy looking, female restaurant attendant. I waved at her and, upon her arrival at our table, informed her that we wanted to pay, would she please bring the bill.

A few minutes later the young lady re-appeared by my side, shyly proffering the bill in a leather folder sponsored by some credit card company. Instead of taking the folder I leveled a steady, slightly stern, gaze at her and asked in a flat tone “Do you think this is the right thing to do?”…

The young lady stared at me blankly. As I steadily looked at her without saying a word her sense of loss and discomfort grew, the hand holding the leather folder started shaking slightly and a little droplet of sweat stated forming on her forehead: she was stuck, her mental process and expectations of what should ‘naturally happen’ at this point (me taking the bill and paying) had been completely derailed.

After allowing her to remain in silence for a minute waiting for me to say something I said “Well, tell you what, go away for 5 minutes, then come back and tell me what you think!”

As the young lady trotted off my accountant shot me a withering look and hissed “How could you! Poor thing, what has she done to you!!”

My accountant was just about to continue her reprimands (after all she is a very proper lady a few years my senior and felt entitled to set me straight) the young lady re-appeared. With jaws set, a menacing look on her face to hide her insecurity, she sternly said: “Here is your bill sir!”, to which I asked “So, is this the right thing to do?” “Yes it is!” she shot back looking as imposingly strong as she could… “Of course it is!” I replied with a big grin and a cheery voice while I whipped out my wallet.

The transformation on the young lady’s face was pure magic, she beamed the biggest smile ever! A smile of newfound confidence: she had smashed through a mental block, she would never be scared of another ‘big bully’ like me, she had learned that just because a guy is bigger and older than her this does not mean she has to go into instant ‘it’s just little old me’ subservient mode. Her initial knee-jerk reaction to my seemingly stern face and the patently absurd question if it was right for her to bring me the bill after I myself had asked for it was the classical product of what we term ‘culture’.

All cultures are nothing else but an agglomeration of stories and rules that are implanted into our subconscious as soon as we trainable in childhood. Break these rules and woe to you, you will be punished. Once you have absorbed all these rules and follow them unquestioningly you have become a ‘good child’.

On the way to becoming that good child you have lost something vital: the will to vigorously enquire why things are supposed to a certain way and not another, thus generating truly fresh and independent insights. On the other hand you have gained something dangerous: a truckload of stories and do/don’t rules that will run your life at knee-jerk speed if you don’t clean up your attic and decide which of these rules makes sense and which keep you hostage to some idiotic and downright harmful mindset.

3 of my all time favorite mind-high-jacking stories that paralyze human behavior are:

The ‘Women Can’t Talk About Their Age’ Story

In many societies it is still absolutely impolite to ask a woman for her age. This is why I make it a point to ask many women that very question. Of course many women blanch and go into their instant ‘how-dare-you’ mode. Once I ask them why it actually is not ok to reveal their age these very same women, who were flirting with coronary failure at the very thought of revealing their tenure on planet earth, stare at me blankly… why it’s not polite? Well… cos’ it just IS, OK?!

Once you point out that the actual reason why a woman should not reveal her age after she turns 25 (or some such arbitrary timeline) is linked to the fact that woman’s value up to a few decades ago was commensurate with hear ability to bear children, meaning: the moment a woman moved past her prime childbearing age it was better to keep quiet about her age because this would ‘devalue’ her it becomes amply apparent that this is actually a really horrible reason: it means you were looked upon as a child bearing object of no real other value!

Being Obedient = Being “Good”

Mind you, I am aware that some societies have made an art form of civil disobedience, making a creative discourse almost impossible. I am not referring to these societies. My invitation goes out to members of societies who have over-codified obedience into creating individuals who are obedient at all costs, especially at the cost of de-activating their own questioning abilities. There was a time when unquestioning followership might get you safely through life, those times are gone. Your value will not be measured in how many nonsensical orders you have faithfully executed but in how many constructive questions you have asked to achieve a better results faster: if that makes you feel queasy at the start, so be it! The faster you re-learn the art of free thinking and enquiry we all had as a child, the faster your value and contribution will rise.

The “I Am Not Qualified” Fallacy

A major mental block that keeps popping up like a Jack-in-the-box and derails many company brainstorms with metronome-like predictability is the “I am not qualified to talk, think, speak about X” mindset. Sure, if I need a triple bypass surgery performed I’d prefer it to be done by a highly specialized individual, short of that let serendipity rule! Disengage from the delusion that just because someone has an official certification to do XYZ it means that he/she is actually good at what they are supposed to now.

90% of all professional economists goof up their forecasts and spend most of the time scrambling to put together workable theories as to why all these ‘unforeseen’ events happened that derailed their last theory.

Success as often belongs to the highly focused specialist as it does to the consummate outsider who has a fresh viewpoint and is not stuck in old paradigms. If you happen not to be a specialist at something rejoice in the fact that you have the gift of ‘fresh eyes’ and the childlike ability to ask two simple questions:

‘Why does it have to be so?”

“How could it be done better?”

Free Your Mind And The Rest Will Follow

Your new anthem shall be the great song by En Vogue: Free Your Mind And The Rest Will Follow!

The first steps to freeing your mind are:

1. Observe every knee-jerk reaction you have towards what people say or do, take a closer look at this knee jerk reaction and analyze how/when this unthinking knee jerk reaction was implanted into your system
2. Be playful: mess with other people’s belief system a bit and see how they react with metronome-like predictability to the buttons you are pushing in them, this will show you how important it is to rid yourself of your own pre-programming and it will lead to great conversations with the people you have just interacted with
3. Enjoy the state of outsider serendipity, the total freedom to observe with clarity and ask simple questions: you are as smart as the rest of them out there, certificate or no certificate.

The Great Certification Hoax

Open up any newspaper or magazine containing a business section, flip through it for a couple of pages and, sure enough, you will find the tertiary education ads.

Brash and alluring these ads will promise you an excellent education followed by a stellar career, provided you acquire their MBA!

Wake Up And Smell The Roses

Many moons ago an MBA was something rare, a way for non-business grads to acquire business know-how, allowing them to become more valuable to their employer. It was a way for an engineer to become more business savvy and thus have a shot at moving up the corporate ladder, past the dead end of just becoming the head of engineering.

As more and more profit oriented education institutions woke up to the fact that the 3 letters M-B-A sounded like a lot of coins to be made off unsuspecting individuals with a true wish for personal betterment, every shack with the name ‘university’ written on it’s entrance started offering their supa-dupa MBA.

The MBA Inflation

This greed by the education institutions led to the current MBA inflation. Far from being a mark of distinction, an MBA has possibly become the biggest money drain for many people with a true desire to enhance their career.

The truth is that the letters MBA on a resume mean little or nothing by now. Most all companies are smart enough to recognize that the education sector is populated by many mercenary education organizations offering nice sounding certificates for the right amount of money, period.

As with all good things in life: you pay for what you get. The discount MBA, that seems so tantalizingly within your budget is exactly that, a discount product with little or no value. The university offering it to you has bought this product (for that is what an MBA is) from another education institution. You will be buying a second hand product with outdated information, taught to you by second class lecturers with no hands on experience. The result: you have bought a product you believe will pave the way for your career only to find out that no one is really interested!

If You Really Want An MBA…

Then do it once and do it right. Globally there are only a handful of recognized MBA providers. These institutions are expensive! And they are so for 3 reasons:

1. They strive to bring in the best and brightest tutors and information, giving you a real cutting edge in the market
2. These institutions know their name is a brand that will give you an edge in the market. Hey, you want to use their name, you pay!
3. It is not what you know, it is who you know: these top end institutions are where you meet and greet today’s and tomorrow’s big players. This gives you the chance to become part of the inside family, to have the right phone numbers in your Blackberry, to kick-start your career.

No Money For A Big MBA? Good! Here Is How You Become A Success!

Of course you may feel despondent if you look at your bank account and figure out that your funds will not allow you to get that blue ribbon MBA. As a matter of fact this may be a blessing in disguise! It will ‘force’ you to use a totally different strategy to success.

Look around yourself at the next meeting in the company. You may be surprised to see how many people around you live in the ‘is-this-enough’? paradigm. Somehow many middle-aged players in the field never made the connection that times have shifted. Afraid of standing out, rocking the boat and making truly innovative decisions these players see their value in their unbending loyalty to the company. Whatever top management decides will be implemented, whether it makes sense to them personally or not.

Loyalty To The Company-> A Commodity That Lost It’s Value

Our father’s generation was brought up on the singular notion that the highest good a man could offer to a company was loyalty. A man who would have 2-3-4 or more jobs in a lifetime was considered a job-hopper, or worse: a guy who was a dissenter who could not fit in!

Hand-in-hand with loyalty to the company you were asked to check in your brain and opinions at the office door. Those times are gone. Technology and society have started moving at a disruptive speed, making continuity of anything impossible. This means that you will only be a hot commodity if you are able to bring in the hottest new ideas, trends and strategies. In fact, you have stopped being a loyal employee and have become an innovation consultant to the company.

Start Your One-Man Think-Tank And Branding Organization

The time of having brilliant ideas in silence is over. Those famous moments of quiet despair when you sat in meetings thinking ‘if only anyone would listen to me I would do it like this’ But I am just an employee, so I better shut up’ are a thing of the past.

In our brave new world of digital media you can now become your own one-man think-tank and an in-house consultant.

Look at it this way: it is possible that you have a brilliant idea to solve problem X. It is also possible that your immediate superiors are too dense, too afraid or too traditional to understand it. Does that mean you have to give up? That would be a grievous mistake.

It would mean that you have again checked your personal intelligence at the office door and remain a grey sheep indistinguishable from the flock.

Think Gen Y: start your own blog, your own in-house one-man consulting operation. Take that really good idea to solve problem X and turn it into a fact driven presentation or article. Send it to top management and see what happens.

Is your intention to create politics? No. Is your intention to offer a specific new solution that will allow the company to grow? Yes!

The result: top management will wonder who this person is who went the extra mile and produced a short, sharp, number-driven document with new ideas. Hmmm, he/she is an interesting individual with fresh ideas’ he/she does not have an MBA, but he/she sure has some sharp ideas’ all the MBAs in the world cannot compete with a person able and willing to deliver fresh ideas.

The future belongs to the individuals willing to think new thoughts, able to create simple, fact-driven, presentations to management and ‘risk’ going up the ladder 2 or 3 steps to present their case. You either create your own brand as a solutions-driven consultant to the company or you stay one of the loyal gray flock of sheep who unthinkingly wait for orders from above.

The 5 Stages Of Achieving Radical Change In Human Consciousness

Leaders are liars, or so it seems. No, I am not talking about many political leaders who glibly manipulate the truth to create fictitious ‘realities’ we are supposed to believe and live in (can you spell Iraq and ‘Mission Accomplished’?).  I am referring to a completely different kind of leader, the kind of leader who is at the bleeding edge of human development and thought consciousness, the leader who sees so far into the future that to the rest of humanity he/she and his/her ideas seem like mere fantasies, delusions or lies, these are the leaders who truly matter.

One such leader is professor Dr. William Rees from the University of British Columbia who in 1992 ideated a term called ‘Ecological Footprint’. Sure, you may ask, where is the leadership in coming up with 2 words that do not seem to belong together. The answer is quite simple:

Taking a close look at my own life I freely admit that in 1992 I was living in a state of semi dormant awareness about our/my impact on the world’s ecology. I was living in a state of denial that said “Oh, come on, it can’t be all that bad now… yes, I do like nature but these ecology guys are taking it a little too far, aren’t they”. As we now are realizing all too clearly ‘these ecology guys’ were taking nothing too far at all: dwindling ice caps, record storms, unheard of rain patterns and geometrical growth in desertification rates speak a very clear language indeed, and all of a sudden the words ‘Ecological Footprint’ make all too chilling sense.

Facing The Firestorm Of Pushback

Much like Dr Rees you ,as a true leader, will often perceive deep truths while most people around you are in dormant denial. You will feel the need, the urge and the necessity to communicate your thoughts, to make an impact, crate change. Quite predictably the result of your initial efforts will be to be thought kooky at best and a liar at worst.

It is at this point that a true leader perseveres, facing his/her own self doubt and the massive pushback from the surrounding lethargic body of prevailing societal paradigms and gets ready for the mud slinging phase of creating a change in human consciousness. Think of society as a single organism, an organism that has a big comfort zone, and this organism likes it’s comfort zone. So if you, as a single person, come up and disturb this comfort zone get ready for the organism to fight back, to claw and scratch and spit, all in an effort to make you and your uncomfortable truths go away.

This is the very moment most give up, the pressure to conform can be like a vicious firestorm and to stand in the heat alone can be overwhelming.
However, the moment the words ‘nuts’, ‘impossible’ and ‘liar’ start popping up in the collective consciousness of society through it’s media channels and political commentators a leader has achieved the tipping point to succeeding. Allow me to elucidate on this using the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi who explained the stages of true leadership breakthrough as:

Phase I. Big Idea

You have a big idea/vision

Phase II. Ignore

This idea/vision is so big/radical unsettling for the currently prevailing vested interest groups (in Gandhi’s time: free India from the British Raj, today: use less oil based products, wind down consumerist behavior, slash carbon emissions) that for the rest of humanity it is best to ignore it and pretend nothing happened in the hope you and your message will just fade away.

Phase III. Ridicule

You have no intention of fading away. You stand by your ‘impossible’ message (we want the mighty British Empire out of India without the force of arms, we have become personally responsible for the future of our planet and every time we turn the ignition on that big SUV we better be aware of that). Now you are becoming uncomfortable to the prevailing collective consciousness (or better unconsciousness) and the collective unconsciousness will start to fight back. The first level of this fight looks like ridicule (to Churchill Gandhi was nothing better than ‘that half naked Fakir’, to the logging lobby of Oregon ecologists looking to preserve the last vestiges of America’s temperate rainforests were nothing better that ‘tree huggers’ and to the entrenched consumerist oil lobby people like professor Rees are ‘bleeding heart liberals’ who do not understand the most basic underpinnings of economy).

Phase IV. Fight

Since you are secure in your knowledge that you are fighting for a worthy cause you will remain steadfast in your course, determined to make that difference. The collective unconsciousness now becomes seriously angry with you: why won’t you just shut up, let go, fade away, things are just fine they way they are and no one needed you to come and spoil the party thank you very much.
This is the moment the collective unconsciousness starts to feel seriously threatened and proceeds to fight back viciously to maintain status quo (here is where the British went from wielding police truncheons to using bullets, when Rush Limbaugh starts calling solid scientists and their findings ‘lies’ and ‘liars’). Yes it will get nasty and personal, you are entering the very phase of maximum pushback from the collective unconscious whose only desire is to remain in status quo.
As the pushback turns into strident tirades about how you and your ideas are totally off the bat, weird, dangerous and threaten the cherished status quo (another way of selling this is to refer to how your ideas are threatening ‘long established values’, the ’societal moral standards’ or any similar kind of coverall catchphrase) this very crescendo of ever more strident attacks rattles the first individuals out of complacency. These individuals start realizing that someone is going overboard now… that all these attacks on your idea may have gone too far. It is this initially dwindling minority who are now willing to examine your idea, it is this group who discover that you may just be on to something.

This is the tipping point: you have woke up the first evangelists from the common unconsciousness, these evangelists will now start the work of spreading your idea, self propelled by the knowledge that your idea is timely, necessary and unavoidable.

Phase V. Acceptance & Mainstream

Slowly but surely the evangelists chip away at the collective unconsciousness, replacing opinions with facts. These facts start shifting the common unconsciousness into a new level of realization: It is at this moment that you will transcend in the public consciousness from being a ‘liar’ to becoming a visionary who saw the tangible truth all along.

It used to be a long road from tipping point through acceptance and reaching the state of rewiring the consciousness of the mainstream. This time lag is shortening in drastically thanks to the accessibility of information and opinion on the net. Witness the rapid emergence of Skype into the mainstream consciousness. Free telephony, a seemingly unattainable dream just 36 months ago has become a totally real and expected reality in my life.

So has my thought process around Dr. Rees’ Ecological Footprint. From being a faint notion, a theoretical possibility, it has taken over a large part of my day to day consciousness, decision making and planning (recycling, using public transport whenever possible, judiciously monitoring my electricity consumption).Yes, I am living in a reality Dr. Rees foresaw 15 years ago, decided to make a stand and go through the 5 painful phases of leadership-thought-acceptance and become major influencer of human behavior.

These 5 phases may be one of the biggest ’secrets’ of why so few people persevere on their journey to meaningfulness. It is the ability to keep on track in the shadows of the valley of death during phase IV when the collective unconsciousness is starting to fight back in earnest, hitting you with everything it’s got. Just hang in there, the bigger your idea is the louder the screaming will be. Hang in there, counteract the flailing, fearful ‘beast’ of the common unconscious with calm facts, know that the first individuals are just about to open their eyes and truly examine your idea for the first time and come to their own conclusion: you have reached the tipping point and the world is just about to turn in your favor.

The American Idol Way To Finding The Best
Here is the mother of all corporate questions: how do I find the right people for my organization? Reams of books have been written about how to find that right fit, oodles of tests have been designed and deployed only to come up with so-so results.

Here is the short and skinny to finding the right people:

1. Today everyone can look good on paper, you can download template CVs from the internet that make Einstein look like an apprentice janitor
2. Today many people have become test savvy, outsmarting the cure-all HR testing methods that are supposed to ferret out your darkest-deepest personality secrets
3. Today many candidates have become interview savvy and can dutifully answer all the ’surprising’ questions HR has in store for them.

So, what works?

Let Them Tell You About Themselves:
Have you ever watched American Idol? What do American Idol and your company have in common? American Idol and your company are looking for talents to fulfill specific goals. To find the ideal talent-goal match American Idol holds auditions in which each hopeful can showcase his/her abilities.

Instead of being asked to fill out endless mindless personality profiling tests that reveal little or nothing about the individual’s true abilities the candidates are simply asked to perform the task they came to fulfill: Sing!

Just by observing the candidate’s actions, behavior patterns and innate talent the panel judges and the audience can make pretty accurate decisions about the individual candidate’s personality (egomaniacal, humble, open, aggressive, etc) as well as gauging their innate talent at the task to be given, in this case: singing…

Have Them Audition – YouTube Your Way To A Great Team
Of course you may say ‘Hey, that’s all fine and dandy, but I am not Simon Cowell and I am not looking for singers, so how does that apply to me?

The answer is: how about you are Joe X and you are looking for really hot salespeople.

You can now throw the market a challenge and put an invitation into cyberspace: ‘We, Company X, are looking to hire hot, talented salespeople who are ready to make excellent money. Send us your personal YouTube video that:

1. Tells us about you
2. Tells us about what makes you special unique (USP)
3. Gives us 3 examples of how you would sell ice to an Eskimo, sand to a Bedouin and saltwater to a sailor

Sit back, relax and enjoy the show. This exercise is the best people filter you will find. Individuals willing to take on the challenge of making their own video have to be entrepreneurial, inventive, imaginative and driven to go the extra mile, doesn’t that sound like a great set of basic characteristics for a new team member?

In An Age Of Self Expression Allow Them To Express
On top of that: allowing people to tell you who they truly are will allow you to uncover some amazing and unexpected individual talents that would have been smothered by run-of-the-mill personality tests.

The Otter & The Oil Spill
Sleepiness & possibly alcohol-induced lack of attention by a captain led to one of the most catastrophic oil spills in history: the Exxon Valdez supertanker was sliced open and spilled 11 million gallons of oil into the ocean.

For weeks the world was treated to the spectacle of oil soaked creatures dying tortuous deaths and thousands of volunteers desperately trying to clean up the gooey mess while highly trained experts & engineers struggled to contain the spill with the best high tech tools at their disposal.

Enter the outsider: Philip McCrory, a hairdresser from Alabama. While watching the TV coverage of the oil spill he noticed that otter fur acted like an oil-magnet. The otters where dying by the score laden with large clumps of oil. The reason for this is simple: otter fur is engineered to retain oil easily, keeping the animal dry and comfy in the cold Pacific surf under normal circumstances.

Enter Curiosity
Piqued by curiosity McCrory swept human hair from his shop floor and stuffed it into a bag and threw it into a water basin filled with water and a gallon of motor oil. After 2 minutes the water had been cleansed of the oil which had been sucked up by the human hair in the bag!

Radically New Results
Further tests by NASA revealed that this new natural method of capturing spilled oil could have soaked up the whole Exxon Valdez oil mess in one week, saving a large chunk of the $2 billion Exxon shelled out to remove only 12% of all the oil spilled!

‘New Eyes’ Are The Name Of The Game
The biggest challenge of today’s companies and employees is the trust and belief in ’specialist know-how’. If I have not been educated to do X then I am not a certified specialist in this field, which does not allow me to have an opinion about it or even be curious about this field, that is why we have hired specialists to do X in the first place, isn’t it?

While it seems logical to rely on the services and opinion on a highly specialized group of individuals to deliver X, it is also dangerous:

The highly focused X specialists will eventually suffer from over-focusing & group think as much as from a lack of fresh perspective.

This is exactly what happened in the case study above, a total outsider, a ‘naive’ hairdresser who may not have been ’smart’ enough to make it through top engineering universities had the elegant simplicity of looking at the problem with ‘New Eyes’ and come up with a totally new approach.

P&G: Where Outsiders Are The New Insiders
P&G has caught on to a simple truth: the geometric increase of ideas, technologies and the resulting endless convergence of these into a myriad new products and possibilities are too much to be handled by a single company’s R&D team hired for the purpose of understanding it all and developing new solutions.

On the contrary: the company-hired R&D team will sooner or later fall prey to it’s own group-think and become blind to many of the new ideas and trends.

The solution: P&G has given out a simple directive->50% of all innovations introduced by P&G must have their origins outside P&G! This directive forces the company to stay open, to constantly see the world and themselves with New Eyes and to avoid the ‘we are so smart’ trap.

Celebrate Your New Eyes->They May Just See The Truth
Give yourself permission, go back to your company, look around you, notice all the things that can be improved, from small to big and become a consultant in your own right: write an opportunity cost study on what it would mean to change it and have the guts to present it to top management.

This is the way of the world to be: the heroes of today are not the eternally loyal who patiently wait for their hard earned pension to roll in, the heroes of today are the people who are outsiders and dare to creatively re-invent the world!

Why You Should Get Up And Out When Things Look Rosy!

A strange thing happened on Jake’s journey to management Nirvana: things were looking peachy for years only to end up on a dead track.

Bright, young and engaged Jake was talent spotted at a local office of a global logistics company and found himself posted to the national HQ of the company by age 26. Not bad, the small town boy was going places in his management career. After a few years of patient toiling he was posted to the regional HQ, things were kind of falling into place. If he just worked hard enough at his job Jake’s management career would surely stay on track!

But something funny happened:
Hard as he toiled, managed and delivered predictably consistent results, even in tough times, one year followed the next and Jake still found himself in the same chair located in the same corner of the same office in regional HQ.

Unknowingly Jake had bumped against the invisible Glass Ceiling. He was going nowhere…

Decoding The Invisible Glass Ceiling
Legions of managers are out there today, right at this very moment, ensnared in the seemingly invisible web of the Glass Ceiling. Try as they may, they just can’t figure out what went wrong with their career, why they are not getting past this invisible barrier.

They have worked diligently, cooperated, contributed and delivered and yet, here they are: stuck… their name is not hot property anymore, the promotions pass them by, everyone is nice and friendly enough to them but no one really tells them why they are going nowhere, it’s as if they are stuck in a sensory deprivation chamber watching through a hole in the wall as the world passes them by.

3 Steps To Remove The Glass Ceiling From Your Management Career

Step 1. Statistics Apply->Why People Go From Young Hero To Being Invisible
Think of an old fashioned hierarchical organization as a pyramid. There is plenty of space at the bottom of the pile. Most people who join a company at the bottom of the hierarchy pile have one goal in mind: find a job & pay the bills. Even one ounce more energy & determination than the rest will make you stand out from the crowd… you will be noticed easily and given your first leadership role fairly fast, for in the land of the blind the one-eyed is king.

But don’t be fooled, far from being an ideal pyramid shape a hierarchical organization looks more like a funnel: broad at the bottom suddenly tapering into a thin end. This means: there is much less space at the top and the air gets much thinner much faster than people believe. Your natural good looks, affable charm and ability to deliver predictable results will not get you past this sudden narrowing of the management strata.

Step 2. Don’t Become A Legend In Your Own Mind
Blessed with a few initial management successes and promotions many a young manager gets excited about his/her abilities.

Far from understanding that these initial successes owe as much to their personal ability as to the fact that they achieved easy wins being the one-eyed kings in the land of the blind (it isn’t hard to succeed in an environment populated by individuals who just want to pay the bills) these managers actually start believing in their personal prowess and that they are irreplaceable… WRONG

The moment you become a legend in your own mind: “I am good, what would they do without me, etc” a predictable psychological mechanism sets in:
The egotist mind now has a delusion it needs to defend at all costs: “Only I can do this, they need me, etc…” which starts excluding all other possible realities and opinions. You have trapped yourself in a cycle of having to prove yourself right.

How many times have you sat in a meeting and heard Mr. X or Mrs. Y ramble on and belabor a silly point with only one intention in mind: prove themselves right when everyone perfectly well knew they were wrong…

Get over it: you are not perfect, you cannot know everything and in a world of geometric knowledge & technology expansion wanting to be ‘right’ is a one way ticket to disaster.

Step 3. Move-Move-Move From Company To The Next!
Yes, this does contradict traditional wisdom. Words like loyalty, perseverance, staying power, etc start flooding our minds instantly: “My gosh, what will my CV look like! People will think I am a mercenary!”…

Lets look at this from another angle:

What is it that you really get paid for: results or hard work?

Many long term employees of organizations have got it back to front: loyalty, hard work and obedience to the ‘corporate culture’ of their team characterize their thinking and actions… “I have sacrificed long years of my life in loyal, hard-working service to this company, don’t I deserve some recognition?” well, yes you do… IF you have delivered results…

However, there is a strange correlation between long term loyalty, hard work and playing along with the corporate culture, it’s called inflexibility, lack of imagination and diminishing results because we get bogged down in the corporate politics.

Wake up my loyal, long-suffering, sacrificial friends! No one is interested in your sacrifice! No one is interested in your Siren’s song of hard work and unrewarded loyalty!

Everyone is only interested in: can you bring me a result! Are you fast, efficient, self driven and innovative?

All the qualities of speed, mental agility and willingness to deliver are crucially attached to your ability to change and taking on new challenges, instead of stagnating in an old pond you are like the rushing water of a waterfall: full of fresh oxygen, ideas, zest, power and energy to change things around you. That is what you will be paid for.

Talent search companies are taking a very clear look at CVs, one of the most important criteria is: have you been with a company for a long time (10 years or more)…then you might just have become a pond of stagnant ideas…. Too focused on adeptly sailing the political maze of your company and not innovative/disruptive enough to break old thinking patterns.
Simply put: the employee is dead.

Companies are looking for fresh thoughts, fresh solutions, individuals who are willing to stand up and deliver (and those companies who are not looking for such people won’t be in the game for much longer).

Companies are looking for Co-Creators, emotionally mature individuals who know that there is only one reason to join a team: achieve results, learn, improve processes and take this fresh knowledge to the next position in which they can become a key catalyst for results

Achtung dear fellow leaders! Gen Y is coming your way.
As all things in life Gen Y is basket of mixed blessings. Historically the most educated, wired and connected generation to date, a large minority of this generation have a very specific handicap: lack of hardship experience!

Put another way: there is a large group of Gen Yers who grew up with the proverbial silver spoon firmly lodged in their mouth. Doted on by over-loving parents life has been a smooth sail for them, nice homes, excellent schools, far flung vacations and branded items galore have been an unquestioned part of their existence thus far.

All this has created a sense of entitlement, choice and personal specialness which makes these members of Gen Y behave like a strawberry:  beautiful to behold yet easily bruised when touched too roughly.

The problem is that you, as their manager, might be the first taste of real life they will get.

Filtering The Guys With The ‘Right Stuff’ & Getting Them To Deliver

The arrival of the Strawberry Generation in the corporate world is heralded by frustrated managers who regularly enquire at sessions:

How come we chose this person? He/she looked so good during the interview, has excellent certificates, is well spoken, intelligent… then he/she turned out to be hard to motivate, not driven and willing to leave at the first challenge!

Get Them MOVING -> Use The Commando Reverse Psychology Strategy

Have you ever watched a movie set in the world of elite commandos? There is an interesting scene in many of these movies:

Some young guy wants to join the team. He seems like a nice guy, intelligent, well spoken… yet something is missing, that special ingredient, the OOOMPH factor.

This is when the sergeant steps up. He gets really close up to the potential recruit, eyeballs him closely, nose to nose… then he slowly walks around the potential recruit and says ‘Son, why do you want to join this unit?’ says it and sniffs at the young man’s collar “Son, I smell fear in you! Are you man enough for this challenge? Hmmmm, you see son, we don’t just take anyone who happens to have a little hero dream… so what will it be. Are you ready to sign on with everything you’ve got! Follow orders, play team and when we say ‘jump’ you will shout ‘how high!’… is that clear son?! ”

Make Them WANT IT!

This classic scene plays out a simple psychological mechanism: if you hand an opportunity to a person on a silver platter chances are the person may ignore the opportunity.

Make an opportunity exclusive, hard to get, secret or scarce and something strange happens in the human psyche: our hunting instincts mixed with our fear of scarcity kick in! All of a sudden we want it! Whatever ‘it’ is…

The Strawberry Gens are superbly educated and for the most part are used to getting things served on a silver platter. Ignite their hunting instincts: it’s time you made things a little harder to reach for them…

Have Them Sell Themselves To You!

When interviewing a Strawberry Gener firmly resist the temptation of offering your job opportunity on a silver platter. Create an aura of elitist exclusivity, give them the ‘Right Stuff’ speech:

‘OK Peter, I see you have excellent certs and a good degree. Now tell me a little about yourself and your family, what car do you drive, what hobbies do you have…’

After Peter has tells you about himself it’s time to use reverse psychology:

‘Interesting Peter, so your father is a corporate lawyer and your mother an accountant. You grew up in a nice neighborhood, went on overseas holidays ever since you can remember, have had an all expenses paid education at X University, currently drive a model Y car that you did not pay for and wear a Z brand watch your parents bought you for your birthday…  Now tell me Peter, why should I hire you? Why should I give you this unique opportunity that may be much better suited for a hungry young upstart who has something to fight for in life, who cannot go back to a cozy penthouse when the going gets hard… tell me please why I should give you this opportunity?’

This puts the Strawberry in the back foot! The tables have turned, instead of being welcomed with open arms and acknowledged for all his achievements ,as he is used to, Peter all of a sudden has to justify himself and truly dig in deep to sell his services and understand that his ‘goods’ may be replaceable… that what is truly wanted is commitment.

Test this strategy the next time you are interviewing potential young team members and you will have an excellent new filter to uncover the true personalities and agendas of your interviewees.

How Exponential Growth Changes Everything & What You Can Do About It

The Best Carburetor Repairman In Town
John was busy under the hood of the shiny Chevy. He was too busy to pay attention. He was the best carburetor mechanic in San Jose. He had work lined up for days, the future looked bright. As he was busy with his head stuck deep in the machine something interesting happened outside the machine: someone thought about a way to build cars without this pesky piece of equipment (as a matter of fact most of the 20 year old and younger generation may not have a clue what a carburetor was). Within a wink John became a historical footnote because he was too busy being busy with his head deep inside the machine.

Get Your Head Out Of The Machine
The next time you have a meeting with your management team pay close attention to their thinking process. Ask them wide ranging questions about technology developments, societal trends, how they gauge the markets and you may realize that you are faced by a room of carburetor repairmen. Highly focused artisans who have mastered their specific trade but are hopelessly disconnected to the real changes that are sweeping through all aspects of our existence.

It is time to take your team’s head out of the machine, their present knowledge and abilities may be obsolete within the next half decade, and here is why:

The Exponential Information & Computation Tsunami
The future will be dictated not by how much you know, but by how fast you can manage information. This flies in the very face of our whole educational fiber, after all we still like to grade stuff kids learn by heart. I still remember the day the first electronic calculators came on the market and how my engineer father fought the very preposterous idea of purchasing these machines for us. His fear was that this newfangled toy would dumb us down and, worst of all, what if there was nuclear war and electricity seized to exist… who would do the calculating then?

The fact is that information and it’s delivery are growing at an exponential rate:

• Over 3000 new books are published daily
• 1 week of today’s New York Times contains more information than was gathered in the lifetime of a human existence in the 18th century
• 1.5 exabytes (1.5 * 10 exp 18) of unique new information will be generated this year
• This is more than in the previous 5000 years
• New technological information doubles every 2 year currently
• By 2010 there will be a doubling of technological information every 72 hours
• NEC & Alcatel are currently testing 3rd generation fiber optics, these push 10 trillion bits/second, equivalent to 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone conversations/second

What Does It All Mean?
It means in the simplest terms that whatever knowledge you own at this very moment is most likely obsolete in real-time terms. It means that you have to get your head out of the machine and become a broad based reader, researcher and Information Glutton, an Information Synthesizer who is adept at reading trends and re-mix this information into cutting edge solutions.

The artisans, individuals who are only able to perform a small range of professional services (accounting, client servicing, actuary services for example) will become second-class citizens, much like worker ants, who deliver a dependable yet duplicable service for an ever lower income.

Change Is The Name Of The Game

• The US Department Of Labor estimates that the average new human will hold between 10-14 jobs… by the age of 38!
• Former US Secretary of Education Richard Riley projected that the top 10 jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004
• This mean we are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist using technologies that have not yet been invented. Students starting a 4 year tech degree will find that ½ of all they learned in year 1 will be outdated in their 3rd year of study.

The Future Belongs To The Synthesizer & The Orchestra Conductor
This onslaught of information goes beyond the capacity of an individual to comprehend or control. The old strategy of becoming a highly knowledgeable specialist in a narrow field is self -defeating, as you focus on becoming the best in a given field someone else is busy creating a new, disruptive and better solution.

To stay relevant it is imperative to step back, observe trends, do a massive amount of wide ranging reading and you-tubing. As mentioned above: Information Gluttons & Synthesizers will be the most valuable members of future organizations.

Start thinking like an Orchestra Conductor: stop focusing on just mastering one instrument, focus on getting different instruments (trends) to make sense together and re-mix them into a new symphony (strategy).

The Employee Is Dead
Employees vs. Co-Creators

A father’s well meant advise to his children not too long ago sounded somewhat like this:

‘Get a good education, graduate with decent grades and find a good employer. If you don’t rock the boat too much and are diligent at your job your loyalty shall be rewarded with promotions and, more importantly, with a steady income’

This paradigm is still very much in evidence across large swathes of businesses. A re-active, you-tell-me-what-to-do employee mindset that abdicates responsibility and creativity in exchange for a stable income.

The time for this way of living has come and gone. The new reality will be owned by individuals who see themselves as ‘one-man-consultant’ operations who rent their time and knowledge to other operations in order to achieve specific targets: the Co-Creator.

Categories like ‘loyalty’ and ‘hard work’ if unaided by inventiveness, contribution and co-creation are losing their shine faster than a new dime in the salty water of the Pacific Ocean.

Simply put: if you do not have new ideas to contribute you are virtually useless to a company…. You are just another mouth to feed (also known as headcount… can you hear the bleating of the sheep?)

The Big Hurdle – Is Anyone Listening?

The biggest hurdle is not that people may have nothing to contribute. It’s the fear of their ideas not being heard (or outright ignored) that has many a team member keeping their mouth shut.

This is the main culture challenge for old/established organizations: how do we open our cultures, become transparent and not merely pay lip service to the top management’s exhortations about being open and creative from the bottom up.

Bring On Jeremy Sevush

Never heard the name? Perk up your ears, Jeremy is the sign of things to come for companies who will make a difference.

Best Buy is a household name in the USA for price conscious electronics buyers. What started as a powerful idea (go into critical mass bulk business and offer the best price in town) ran it’s course, ending up in an ever downward pointing spiral. Cheap begat cheaper and this begat dwindling bottom lines.

It was time for a change.

This is when Best Buy did something very clever. It tapped into the very people who were the nexus between the company and the consumer: the everyday Joes who worked the floors of their mega-shops. Normal people who understood the company and at the same time lived the lives of the people who would actually consume the products the sold.

Best Buy took a few of their best & brightest younger floor and outlet managers, locked them up in 4 teams for 10 weeks with 1 mission: think of a viable business model that can be implemented in a short time.

The result was Studio D. A design and shopping concept focusing on women, allowing them to design the home of their dreams… all ideated by Jeremy Sevush, who is now the boss of this new organization1

Create The Unasked For Presentation

Don’t wait for your company to lock you up at an internal Big Brother think tank party. Take that idea you have been having for a long time. Manifest it into a tightly focused powerpoint presentation, create your own business case and send it to the top management. Yes, I said: top management. Don’t waste your time slashing your way through the middle management BS jungle.

No Idea How To Start? – Here Is A Hint

Of course you may be all excited about the idea of finally uncorking all that know-how you have and gelling it into a tangible presentation that will impress top management. But how to start? When was the last time you wrote a pitch… ? Possibly never…

Here is a hint: the internet is full of free resources. Type in ‘business case’, ‘power point presentation’, etc and you will find other people’s materials, use their formats as templates, it will give you great ideas on how to make your content palatable and understand which are the key questions you need to answer.

What If They Don’t Listen?

There are 2 reasons why people will not listen:

a)     Your idea missed the point. So what, we all learn from mistakes. Have the guts to invite the top manager who rejected the idea for coffee and ask him/her precisely what was off with the idea. Thus will achieve two great things: you will learn a lot from a good corporate leader and you will become very visible to this leader. Leaders are always on the lookout for innovative thinkers… even if they make some mistakes.

b)    The management missed the point. After interviewing the manager in question over a cuppa you realize that he/she lives behind the times and has not caught up with current realities. Well then there is only one thing to do, escalate your ideas to the top of the mountain and if the old man with the white beard in the Mahogany paneled room also doesn’t want to listen to what you have to say it’s time to vote with your feet. Take your box of tricks to someone who will want to listen.

As we said last time, don’t wait for permission to be brilliant and cooperative to be granted. Winners give themselves permission.

Waiting For Permission…..
Until You Die

Most people tiptoe through life to arrive safely at death’s door! As I look around me in every session, talk and workshop I am always struck by the sheer amount of people who are living unfulfilled destinies. Human beings who act like automatons: they wear the ‘right clothes’, talk the ‘right talk’, go to the ‘right job’ and yet never reach the pinnacle of what the universe had sent them to this planet to achieve. They are just play-acting at wanting their job, at wanting to serve client, at wanting to have their careers…

They tiptoe from their mortgage-financed condo in their credit-card-bought designer outfits into their bank-financed car to arrive safely to their workplace where they plug straight into the ‘right mindset’: they check the ‘weather report” (how’s the boss today) and launch into politically correct ‘corporate speak’.

The Simple Question
If you’d stop most any of these corporate illusionists who live a life by proxy and ask them: “Tell me George, what is it that you’d really want to be doing?” the answers would startle you: “If I only could, I would become an orchid farmer!” he would whisper conspiratorially into your ear while furtively checking all around if his innermost secret had been exposed to too many people.

If you now ask George in a loud, clear voice: “SO, WHAT’S KEEPING YOU FROM FOLLOWING YOUR DREAM AND BECOMING AN ORCHID FARMER!” something amazing will happen!
George, in his smart, starched shirt and the impeccably pressed trousers will change color and shape in the most staggering ways, turning from a deathly white to a deep purple that finally fades into an ever so pleasant mauve, while his body deflates, his shoulders sag and he slinks out of your presence at the speed of light.

What Happened?
Simple, really… what happened is that your brought George face to face with his true desires vs his current reality. The current reality is one of dissimulation, of hiding his true desires to pay the bills on time, to keep the illusion alive that his life is peachy in the glitzy condo and in the shiny car when he actually, truly, deeply knows that he is in the wrong place and job to fulfill his innermost wishes and dreams: to fulfill his true destiny.

By asking this simple question you have just revealed to George that he may be living a lie. That he is playing it safe, that if he just doesn’t rock the corporate boat he may slip through his life and be able to pay off his condo and car(s) before they slam the lid of the pine box shut on him.

Permission Is Not Given By Anyone But YOU!
The reason why millions of people never get to live their true inner dream is that society at large takes a big branding iron and puts a searing hot mark on our brains:

Who are you to decide anything!? You are here to wait for instructions, follow them, and if you have any ideas that do not fit the norm you will have to come and ask for permission. Got it?!

The process starts at home, continues in school and then into adult working life, by which time most people have become black belts at not having a real opinion and waiting for permission.

Permission Is A Muscle: Train It!
Here is the rub: giving yourself permission is like a muscle. It has atrophied over time from lack of use. As a matter of fact: you may even experience pangs of guilt and little nagging thoughts when you grant yourself the power of making decisions (‘Oh, c’mon, who am I to think that I am that important… it’s OK , I can handle what others want, I am after all mature and not some needy child…’).

Observe this inner psycho-babble carefully, it will dis-empower you every single time you want to take a decision, a decision to please yourself, to honor yourself and to empower yourself.
Make a commitment to make at least one decision a week that shatters your normal modus operandi and allows you to get something you truly want, desire or need.

Decision Making Calisthenics:
Lets start with something simple:
Go to a restaurant and look at the menu: that steak looks really excellent! But the mashed potatoes don’t really do it for you. You’d rather have some fresh rocket salad with it. Get the waiter over and just decide for him, do not ask him if changing the mash for the salad is possible:

‘I’ll have the T-Bone, I always have it medium rare and instead of the mashed potatoes I will have rocket salad with balsamic vinaigrette, than you!’

The very simplicity of your decision being expressed gives you the Power of Intention, you will see how the seas part in front of you, how things starting moving the way you want them to be.

Now that you are comfortable practicing your decision making muscle in situations in which you are in control (in a restaurant you are always in control, after all: who’s holding the cash? You are!)

Fast forward to the office:
You have been invited to partake at the 15th meeting of the day. In your head you are counting the amount of reports and e-mails you still have to write in the last 2 hours before the sun disappears over the horizon and dreading the prospect of another senseless, unfocused blab-fest. It’s time to show your decision making muscle:

Decide exactly how much time you can devote to this meeting. Decide exactly what results you want from this meeting.

Enter the meeting and declare loudly and politely:

‘Thank you for inviting me to this meeting, I have exactly 20 minutes to devote to this session, please let me know how I can support you, which questions you needs me to answer and I will do my best to support you.’

Magic will happen right in front of your eyes: you will see the seas part in front of you! The very clarity of your decision to invest 20 minutes of your life in the meeting will focus the rest of the participants to make the best of the time you have allocated to them. Their thoughts will sharpen, their questions will be intelligent, sharp and focused, the results will be measurably better.

After 20 minutes you get up, politely point out that your time is up and leave the room. As you close the door the meeting will deteriorate into the usual bullshit bingo session where the posers take over and the rest of the crew pretends to be interested… but that is not your concern anymore… you have a path to walk, a destiny to fulfill.

The Mother Of All Decisions
Having taken your power back, and trained your decision making muscle to a nice, firm tone it’s time to make the biggest decision of them all:

What is it that you REALLY want to do with the rest of your life?!

You have a fulfilling destiny to live, we all have! The first step to getting there is to decide to have the guts to go all out to get what you truly want.

It may be that you are in the right profession: good, then go and really give it your all.

It may be that you actually really want to be an orchid farmer: then decide to take the first step to achieving this goal, go and buy the right books, flower pots and tools to start your first mini test farm on your balcony… It’s the small steps that lead to big things, they took Hillary & Tensing all the way up Mount Everest…