Changing leadership paradigms …. the key to business success.

One of the greatest personal challenges for us as leaders today is to change the way we think.

Its all perception.

It’s difficult to achieve that with another person as their coach, it’s even more difficult to do it to one’s self.

However, here’s the reality. If we are going to move our lives and our companies to the next level, obviously we can only do it through a change in the way we see the world; in other words our paradigms.

The reason it can be so difficult is because our paradigms are simply mental patterns that run at an unconscious level.
Traditional leadership models tend towards organisation structures or personal characteristics or leader behaviours. While they may fill the pages of management text to the point of overflow and line the corridors of corporations intent on growth, models don’t get results. Models create a framework for having meaningful discussion and help embed an idea in visual form in one’s mind. However, when it comes to the crunch you can teach as many models as you want but results may never eventuate. So let’s forget about models for a bit and think about thinking.

Flexibility in Leader Thinking
Effective leaders today must have flexibility in the way they think, flexibility in their paradigm or the framework through which they view the world in different contexts. For example, a leader can’t be so fixed on cost that cost becomes the only paradigm for decision making. When a consultant comes to them and offers to do work for say $50,000 per week, the response should not be “That’s way too much, what’s your best price.” That leader must also be able to shift to a value paradigm when needed and in this case a more appropriate response might be “What return will you deliver to me for that outlay?” If that consultant returns a bottom line impact of $70,000 per week, it is a clear value adding investment. The only thing that would have prevented them from making that investment was a cost mentality.

With the cost paradigm, as with all others, it was learnt, quite correctly I might add, in a specific context (e.g. when budgeting, when the economic situation was tight, or purchasing something that doesn’t generate revenue etc). However, it is inadvertently utilised in other situations some of which are not appropriate (e.g. when undertaking revenue generating purchases).

I am convinced that the most common shifts in thinking [with respect to specific contexts leaders operate within] leaders must be able to engage in consciously include these.

Making the shift when relevant between …

• Cost (how much you pay) and Value (what it returns to you)
• Behaviour Control (you controlling them) and Employee Release (letting them explore their own talent and potential)
• Authority (they do it because you are the boss) and Influence (they do it willingly)
• Answers (content knowledge) and Questions (extracting answers)
• Actions (what to do) and Results (what to produce as an outcome)
• Fixing (in reaction) and Improving (before things break)
• Solutions (the how to improve now) and Scenarios (what we might have to improve for)

Flexibility of Time Span
Not only is flexibility a necessity from a paradigm perspective, it’s vital that leaders understand the shifts they must make from a time span perspective.

One of the most significant barriers in business thinking can be observed in the meetings held at various levels in the company. ‘Replication of Time Span’ is so common I now expect to see it when I visit a company. Permit me to give you an example of what I mean. The business leadership team meets and their discussion is focused on what happened last week and what has to happen in the coming week. The content is regurgitated at the department level meeting – last week and next week is the focus of discussion. And so on ……. each level of meeting replicating the span of time that dominated the previous conversation.

I know it doesn’t make sense, but this is practiced widely.

The strategy of ‘cascading objectives downward’ into a company is understood in principle, but the mental inflexibility embedded through this type of time span replication limits the ability to actually make the strategy come to life.

Time Spans of Relevance for Leaders in Business Today …

• 1 to 5 year horizon (the big picture about where you would like to be in the future)
• 1 year (the specific business objectives you have to hit to make the numbers)
• Quarterly (the milestones you must achieve in order to move closer to the 1 year objectives)
• Weekly (the results you must get in order to move closer to the quarterly milestones)
• Daily (right down to the specific activities that must be undertaken to get the specified weekly results)

Different levels of leadership must not only think at different levels of detail, they must also have the mental dexterity to shift focus to different time spans relevant to their level in the organisation. But ….. how many business leaders would be comfortable with only talking about progress towards some milestone a quarter out, and not worrying about what’s happening next week? Only those who are able to trust AND hold people accountable for results.

I hope I have stimulated your thinking with this topic. I realise that I probably raised more questions than answers with this, so if you would like to know more, why not attend one of my 3-hour ‘Changing Paradigms of Leadership’ events in Australia and New Zealand – visit our website here to register.

If you learn about 1 thing this year, make it this!

You may or may not be aware of this – more has been discovered in the last 10 years about performance and human achievement psychology than in the previous 100 years.
Albert Einstein, Milton Erickson, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were way before their time. They paved a way for us to explore this intriguing topic. They knew something that few realised at the time – most of what happens in our life is driven by our UNCONSCIOUS MINDS.

Who’s driving the car?
It’s a fact that more than 95 percent of the ‘neural’ activity in your brain is controlled by your unconscious mind. You got it … that means LESS than 5 percent is controlled by the conscious mind.       I’m serious!

You don’t have to think about breathing, balancing yourself while walking, moving all of the muscles required to clean your teeth or catch a ball in the air. You don’t even have to think about driving the car. ‘Mmmmm, I don’t remember driving that last 5 kilometres … ooops, my conscious mind must have been elsewhere.’

Think about it, when the unconscious mind does it’s job, the conscious mind is left to focus on important issues at hand at any given moment; issues such as a conversation, typing a sentence, playing a piece of music, answering the phone or coming up with some plan or course of action. But …. this most amazing process can also cause problems for us.

Out of rapport with ourselves – is it possible?
The truth is we struggle to achieve our goals when our unconscious mind is NOT IN RAPPORT with our conscious mind. When you want something, but your beliefs are out of alignment with that, you get what you believe, not that which you consciously want. For example you might WANT to sink that putt on the golf course, but unconsciously you EXPECT to miss it. The expectation is usually met.

How does this related to business or business leadership?
The challenge for leaders today might be viewed in this way. There are so many negative influences in the western environment, the unconscious mind is being conditioned in a way that disempowers or limits most people. People are generally so busy and so focused on engaging in activities driven by demand and deadlines, they inadvertently condition an unconscious pattern of reaction. The result – proaction becomes difficult to do.

Think about this – when do most people do something about their health or their wealth? That’s right, when it’s broken. You’ve only got to look at health and wealth statistics to see that I’m right when I say most people have in many ways conditioned an unconscious pattern of reaction to the demands of work and daily life.

You as a leader are focused on driving improvement and creating growth in your company or part of the business, but your aspirations beyond some average result are proving difficult to achieve.

Why?
My experience is that the weakness of your organisation is the collective limitations of the people in it. Unless the unconscious limitations, or unconscious patterns of thinking of your staff are changed, your aspirations will never be in rapport with the psychology of the people who are there to help you bring those dreams to life.

So what do you do about it?
In one word – education. You have to find out what is taking place right now when it comes to performance enhancement. And if you pursue one course of learning in the next year, choose to LEARN MORE ABOUT THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND, particularly how it behaves and how neural patterns are created and replaced. This information IS AVAILABLE to you, and it is the domain of the most remarkable leaders this century will produce.

Learn this and your effectiveness as a leader will be massively increased, absolutely no doubt about it.

Don’t have time to go to a course … okay, try out some of the online webinars that are available. You can even join us as our guest for any of our F*R*E*E* leadership webinars.
Click HERE to view the list.

Combining passion and work for profit.

When I delivery my ‘Most Effective Leader on the Planet’ seminar, the goal is to shift people’s thinking away from this belief that life and work are separate. For heaven’s sake, its all life and we all can take away a simple lesson from my good friend (and fast becoming legend) … Asa Boardman.

Asa was originally a graffiti artist who has now combined his passion with his work. And it has undoubtedly contributed in a significant way to his success in running a profitable business!

Some time ago he took over a cafe business in Brisbane that had failed to produce decent returns for the 3 previous owners. Years of frustration had done nothing but bring stress to every person who tried to make that location work.

Then Asa came along with his team and they did something different. This is not about how he turned around that location to make it a thriving business, we’ll save that for another time. This is about the fact that he combined his first love, painting, with work he is passionate about … and he makes a profit because of it.

The lesson for us is clear. If we can somehow combine things we are really passionate about in our day to day work … work can become play. THEN you have a completely different physical and emotional experience. Not only do you have the energy to follow through and take whatever action you need to in order to be successful, you will probably do a far better job in the process too.

I guess the questions for you to ask might well be these:

Q. Are you passionate about your work?

Q. If not, what are you going to do to change that?

Q. What habitual thinking pattern do you run that gets in the way of this?

Thanks for the lesson Asa!

(Asa Boardman is proprietor of The Pepper Lounge in Brisbane)

Generate value or forget it!

I guess all of you have been closely watching and feeling your way through the economic situation as 2009 unfolds.

There is no doubt in my mind that the ripple effects of the events of 2008 will test our abilities to succeed in business today and maintain the quality of life we expect to have. With the tightening of credit controls and slowing down of markets, the approach most companies will take is to slash costs within the business.  Is this a sound strategy? Of course it is because in the short term there is significant pressure on revenue and credit so the obvious approach is to work on the cost side of the financial equation.

Does that mean you should reduce the level of energy you give to the ‘business improvement’ strategy you have underway.

Let me answer this question in this way.

• YES you should drop your business improvement strategy if existing efforts are not producing results of an economic nature and you have no desire to continue doing business.
• NO you should not if you are going to continue doing business, regardless of whether or not your existing BI efforts are producing results.

Not Getting Results

Most companies I have researched over the past decade in Australia are not getting the results they want with their BI strategies. They can significantly alter that outcome if they are prepared to rapidly change how they think and what they are doing. However, my experience is that the required change won’t take place until some point of desperation is reached. I guess those times are coming for many. I believe many leaders are now realizing that company profitability has allowed inadequate BI strategies to exist in their company.

The question we must ask ourselves today is are we prepared to do something different, are we prepared to challenge our own beliefs and change our paradigms?  If you would like to get better results, take a minute or two to read on.

(A) Value Generation Strategies for Today’s Successful BI Groups:

• COLLABORATE with other companies to deliver lower cost, high quality business improvement education – there is no need to go it alone today and bear all costs.
• Rigourously TRACK THE VALUE each trained individual adds to the business as a result of applying BI methodology after training – every trained person should know their financial value.
• Be very clear and very confident about the ECONOMIC VALUE the BI Strategy has brought to the business. If you are not clear about the numbers, you are probably not adding value of a financial nature in my opinion.

(B) Business Execution Strategies for Value Today:

• Have a simple yet robust IMPROVEMENT PROJECT SELECTION process that is (a) supported by Value Stream Analysis and (b) driven by department or unit leaders
• Maintain the FOCUS of project team leaders on HIGH VALUE PROJECTS – this means giving them time and resources to do the work rapidly
• Lock in less singularly substantial benefits more QUICKLY and more FREQUENTLY
• Simplify your EXECUTION MODEL so the focus is consistently on progressively moving performance for key variables
• Change your leadership MEETING STRUCTURE so there is minimum replication of ‘time span of focus’ and ‘level of detail’ at the different levels of meetings – the effect of this will be profound.

If you would like to know more about any of these items, particularly those relating to business execution and meeting structures, drop me a line and I will get in contact with you.  Good fortune to you in these challenging times my friend,

George Lee Sye

Hello world!

What a neat way to share thoughts that are intended to get you to think. We are socially hypnotized, yet most of us are unaware of it until some apparent crazy person comes along and thinks about things in a different way and then has the hide to express these thoughts in the public domain.

But so what, we need such crazy people to take a different perspective of the things we have been seeing for far too long from only one angle. My hope is that you do read these ideas, open your hearts and mind to the concepts and walk away with strategies you can use to make change in your own life and business.

I dare you to do that.

George Lee Sye