Crispin (Page 5)

productivity

In: Career

Most of us are looking at ways for getting a productivity boost, a way to get more done, to lift to our performance in both quality and throughput. Jandra Sutton writing for Entrepreneur makes five suggestions that can apply immediately and start achieving results. SLEEP – Well it may seem obvious but getting enough sleep is a fundamental step to our wellbeing and poor sleep can significantly impact our decision making processes. Studies of sleep deprivation have shown that when you are tired, even increasing the time to make a decision will not improve the quality of the decision.  SET A TIMELIMIT – Based on the ‘Five Second Rule‘ promoted by Mel Robbins who makes the argument that if you don’t act on an impulse in five seconds you wont do it. If you set yourself arbitrary limits to tasks you will get more done – timebox how long to spend on email,Continue Reading

In: Career, Career Development, Resilience

Creative inspiration can help you to be happier, smarter and more emotionally aware. Amy Stanton-Minutes writes about how you can build your creativity and use it to change the way you see the world. She has four ways that can help you have a happier and healthier life through a little creative inspiration. MORNING PAGESAn exercise in free writing your thoughts first thing in the morning. No editing what you have written or criticising it. Much like writing a journal the creativity of capturing your thoughts no matter where they ramble, also helps with clearing the sub-conscience. PERSONAL PROJECTSDesign a business card or a T-Shirt, take photo’s make a music playlist, knit sweater it doesn’t matter what your project as long as you feel you are creating and putting some original thought into it. SING, DANCE & PLAYDancing, singing and other kinds of play help release inhibitions and provide aContinue Reading

In: Crisis Management, Culture, Effective Communication, Leadership

Leadership in a crisis requires a different emphasis to retain the trust and motivation of team members. As everyone within the team collectively deals with rolling waves of challenges that impact personal and professional lives the leader needs to be a beacon of light and clarity. The McKinsey authors commence this article by pointing out that leadership is most important when people face significant objective threats and that the usual ways of working are no longer possible leading to stress, anxiety and confusion. During times of disaster (natural disasters such earthquakes, storms and pandemics or financial disasters such as the GFC) there is always a significant impact on people creating economic hardship. A catastrophe happens when people impacted “freeze up and freak out” losing the trust and faith in leaders, rules and social norms. A core tenant of leadership in a crisis is to provide cultural and psychological protection forContinue Reading

culture

In: Culture, Leadership

Consultancy O.C. Tanner have analysed and studied the Culture Trends for 2021 and produced a report on the top five culture trends that organisations need to get ready for to help their employees thrive. TREND # 1 – Emerging from crisis, companies focus on culture as companies around the world return to the workplace after months of remote work or they adjust to a new normal mix of onsite and remote work. The workplace culture in significant instability and change. Some organisations will need to restore the culture following layoffs, furloughs or site closures which have drastically changed and impacted the workforce. Other organisations are changing work processes and methodologies to adapt to the new need for social distancing. The underlying fear of COVID19 continues to provide uncertainty on what else might change. A recent CNBC/SurveyMonkey Workforce study found two out of three companies reported keeping employee morale up toContinue Reading

In: Career, Time Management

One of the first lessons taught to MBA students is ‘The Time Value of Money’ but the question is more personal when you consider the impact of money on your life. How much money is enough? How much time do I need to work? It is a divisive question that comes down to how you value two valuable resources – time and money. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy beer and that is a close second.. Unknown The flippant quote that money can’t buy happiness but can buy beer (or insert any other consumable here) is actually making the point quite aptly. It implies that chasing the money for its own sake can lead you to prioritising and losing sight of the importance of your own time even when you have the means to buy something you will enjoy. Back to the Time Value of Money its beenContinue Reading

magic ingredient

In: Collaboration, Culture, Leadership, Team Diversity

Search on the term Cognitive Diversity in Teams and you will find hundreds of scholarly articles on the topic in journals, as well as editorial articles in magazines from all over the world. So what is cognitive diversity and why is it a magical ingredient for teams? Highly diverse teams bring a wealth of thinking, creativity and opportunity as the article author Richard Bliss states “diversity in the workplace or on a team is a competitive advantage. It’s also something that is not easily copied or replicated”. So why is it so hard to build a diverse team and get them to work effectively together? Well that is because that same diversity of thought can generate friction and cause conflict through the debate of alternative opinions. The greater the wealth of different opinions and diverging thoughts the harder to corral and align for critical decisions. This topic is tackled inContinue Reading

In: Career, Career Development, Resilience

Preparing for disappointment, it’s not something you want to think about at the beginning but for some it can become overwhelming, so how do you strike the right balance? It is something that we all face, preparing, waiting, hoping and finally bracing ourselves for the chance we will not get what ever the big opportunity we were hoping for. From school grades to job interviews we all face disappointment and waiting for results can be agonising. The frustration of not knowing can mess with your sleep and your concentration, so how do you manage during the time of uncertainty, rather than drop into a rabbit hole of potential negativity? Amy Gallo spoke with some other experts to advise some coping mechanisms, and here is what they propose: Ask yourself if worrying helps According to Art Markman (a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and author ofContinue Reading

In: Entrepreneur, Startup

Silicon Valley is world famous for being the birthplace to many start ups, most of the US’s venture capital goes to firms based in the valley but many fail as they struggle to grow and the process weeds out the best ideas and the strongest businesses from the rest. Silicon Valley has access to talent from the best universities, lots of venture capital funds, decades of tech firms and an ecosystem that fosters founders into startups, providing a connection to the global market not to mention a group of peer companies that might buy or be bought. Those firms most likely to succeed are often a startup paradox those with good ideas that look like bad ideas to everyone else. Good ideas that look like a good idea are too obvious you need something more. In fact Airbnb makes a perfect example, on the surface the challenges to the businessContinue Reading

In: Crisis Management, Leadership

Extreme Uncertainty reflects the length of time and the magnitude of impact of the crisis and it is becoming the new normal for management. Around the globe leaders have learned to deal with various types of crisis, they come in some standard ways, natural disasters (such as earthquakes, fires, floods, cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes), economic disasters (economic crisis such as recessions / depressions /GFC or Asian financial crisis), infrastructure disasters (such as Fukushima, rolling power brownouts) and environmental disasters (too many to mention). “Due to the severity of this crisis, many organizations are in a struggle for their existence. An existential crisis puts at stake the organization’s survival in recognizable form.“ The difference that these disasters have to the situation leaders face around the globe is that those were all confined by industry or geography and the magnitude of the impact decreases steadily with time. “In the present crisis, however,Continue Reading

comedian

In: Creativity, Innovation

While it doesn’t sound like the most obvious approach there are a number of tools that business leaders can take and apply from comedians. But the approach doesn’t require you to try and be funny, rather by better understanding how comedians do their job, leaders can learn techniques to be better at theirs. Comedians use an arsenal of cognitive tools to develop a repertoire, one of these is what Peter McGraw author of Shtick Business refers to as “benign violation” this premise of the incongruous is when a violation (say of social norms or laws of physics) intersects with harmlessness, (or at least acceptability). An example is where comedian Chris Rock says, “I love being famous. It’s almost like being white, y’know?” he hits an unexpected contrast and people find if funny. That unexpected contrast is something that McGraw is encouraging leaders to explore an MIT study in 2011 foundContinue Reading