The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,400 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
Source: Harvard Business Review – Management Tips of the Day
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Whether you’re a CEO, an intern, or anywhere in between, It can be difficult to stay motivated at work. There are priorities, challenges and distractions. There are people who help you – and perhaps people who hinder you. There are office politics, layoffs, and lost clients to contend with. Even if you have an inspiring boss, mission, and culture, it can be helpful to have your own tools to drive you and inspire you. Here are eight ways I’ve found to get myself in a good place to be productive, at work and in life, when I’m in need of some inspiration:
1) Read a book.
There are thousands of great, time-tested books available for inspiration and motivation. I wrote on LinkedIn about nine great books that have inspired me and changed my life here. I’m currently reading another amazing, timeless, inspirational book that is having a profound impact: How to Win Friends and Influencer People by Dale Carnegie.
2) Write a blog post or letter.
Reading can be very valuable, but writing requires more thinking, and so it can be even more valuable. Write about something you’re passionate about – write about how to solve a problem, or write an article about your business that you wish you had read yourself a year ago. You don’t even need to publish it for writing to be effective. But if you do want to publish it, here’s how to become a better writer.
3) Exercise.
Sometimes you just need to get the blood flowing. Go for a walk, or a run, or a workout. There are two great advantages of exercise: First, it’s healthy for your body. Second, it forces you to spend time thinking – time when you can’t be on your smartphone or otherwise distracted. As little as 15 minutes of movement can burn some calories – and set your mind on fire with new ideas and inspiration.
4) Write a thank you note.
Not a thank you email, or a thank you text, or even a thank you phone call – a physical, hand-written thank you note. Tony Robbins said, “Gratitude is the antidote to the two things that stop us: fear and anger.” I have found that is impossible to feel upset and grateful at the same time. So every morning, I start out my day by writing three thank-you cards. Here’s more about my thank-you card routine.
5) Perform a random act of kindness.
The ironic and amazing thing about acts of kindness is that they end up being kind-of selfish, because you feel SO great after doing them. Open a door for people leaving it for awhile. Help an elderly lady cross the street. Buy a homeless man lunch. Retweet a bunch of people. Whatever you do, take your mind off of yourself and your problems and focus on helping another person. You’ll come back feeling rejuvenated.
6) Read inspiring quotes.
Reading a book or even an article can take more time than you have to spare sometimes. So it’s worth looking at inspiring quotes from great leaders, writers and thinkers of the past. Google makes it easy – simple search for “Inspiring quotes about [whatever it is that’s on your mind],” and feel better within seconds. Here are 25 of my favorite inspirational quotes for leaders.
7) Listen to music.
Plato said, “Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.” Looking to educate your soul? Or perhaps just to let off some steam and feel better about the work before you? Turn on your Itunes, or Spotify, YouTube, or even the radio, to elevate your mood through music. Here are 21 songs to inspire you at work– favorites from 21 entrepreneurs I know.
8) Watch an inspiring video.
As inspiring and uplifting as music can be, video can be even more inspiring. Whether it’s your favorite movie, or, if you don’t have time, a short video you find through a quick search on YouTube, you can get in a good mood in just a few minutes. Here are two of my favorite inspirational videos on YouTube, courtesy of “Facing the Giants” and Britain’s Got Talent respectively:
Whether it’s through reading, writing, music, video, or your own virtuous activities, inspiration is absolutely within your reach, anytime you seek it. Whatever challenges lie ahead for you at work, and in life, I hope you’ll embrace these tools to inspire yourself when needed.
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Now it’s your turn. Which of these tools do you use to inspire yourself? What are your favorite inspirational books, songs, quotes, and videos? Which of these tools will you try the next time you’re in need of some inspiration? Let me know in the Comments section below, and please do share this article with your network if you feel so inspired.
Three things determine a company’s adherence: Focus, competence, and passion. Multiply them together, and you’ve got a measure of a company’s stick-to-it-tive-ness.
At Inc.’s Leadership conference in San Diego this week, co-founder of The L Group and author Lee Colan challenged his audience to rethink the factors that lead to business success.
He said that while the temptation to tweak one’s product or strategy may be alluring, one thing separates the decent performers from the elite: adherence. In other words, the ability to stick to your plan and execute, day in and day out.
Three things determine a company’s adherence, said Colan: Focus, competence, and passion. Multiply them together, and you’ve got a measure of a company’s stick-to-it-tive-ness. And because adherence is a multiplicative function–not an additive one—a zero in any one of those three areas means the company can’t stick to anything at all.
Here’s how Colan exhorted his audience to improve their scores in all three areas:
Focus
This is the area that Colan said was hardest for entrepreneurs. They start out doing one thing, but then a big client asks for something else, and pretty soon they’re all over the map. “Find the one thing that, if you get it done, means your day is a victory no matter what else happens,” said Colan. “Not everything has equal value. I guarantee you there is one thing. If you identify that it will bring tremendous clarity to you and your team.”
Colan also said there is a filter between your conscious and subconscious mind that decides what to bring to the fore. Once you’ve decided on your “thing,” it’s important not to keep it a secret. Talk to people about it, and research it. Colan said it’s not that you get back what you put into the universe – it’s that focusing on your “thing” encourages your brain to make sure you notice related information and opportunities.
Competence
Everyone in your company should have a scorecard, said Colan. And it doesn’t have to be high-tech or wait for your next ERP implementation. Use scratch marks on a wall if you have to. The point is that each employee should know, when they take an action, that it’s going to change the numbers on their scorecard.
A big part of competence is accountability, said Colan. And “ambiguity is the Achilles heel of accountability…. We have to be way more specific than we think we need to be.” He demonstrated this by asking the audience to fold a piece of paper, tear off a particular corner, fold it again, tear off another corner, and repeat. Even though his directions seemed clear, most people’s papers looked nothing alike at the end.
Even a simple sentence such as “I’ll get right back to you,” needs to be more specific, said Colan. Is that “I’ll get right back to you after this call?” After my next meeting? After lunch? Before the end of the day? Specificity needs to become a habit,” added Colan.
Passion
Here is where entrepreneurs thrive, said Colan. “This is the ‘Why?’ question and it’s the most important one you can ask. It’s the motivator.”
Rituals are key to igniting passion, said Colan. And every company has rituals, whether the management realizes it or not. What time to people come in and leave? Who eats lunch with whom? Do you have daily huddles or weekly meetings? For leaders, the goal is use to ritual “to build a bridge between today’s task and a brighter tomorrow. You can’t do rituals for rituals’ sake. They have to have a purpose.”
“People need to understand the difference they’re making,” said Colan. “How do we improve? Why do we exist? The ‘why’ question is much harder to answer than the ‘what’ question.”
Source: http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/3-keys-to-entrepreneurial-success.html
At Johns Hopkins Medicine, as at many organizations, we take nurturing the next generation of leaders very seriously. But we’ve found that some people who seemed promising as up-and-coming leaders didn’t turn out to be effective in that role, despite what had been stellar careers up until then.
To be sure, this is an unusually demanding environment for leaders, not only because of our high expectations for performance, but also because we expect most of our leaders to have an impact on multiple realms, including health care delivery, research, education and administration—including health care environments outside the U.S.
Plus, having raw leadership potential is by no means a guarantee of success—it just earns a position in the starting gate. In most cases where we found leaders running into trouble, they were actually wrestling with particular challenges that are unique to leadership roles.
The good news is that these challenges can be overcome, especially for organizations and would-be leaders who learn to anticipate these potential traps. Here are the five biggest leadership traps we’ve identified:
1) Focusing on technical skills instead of leadership skills. Candidates for leadership positions often come to the fore by virtue of being very good in some sort of specialized role. At Johns Hopkins they are usually outstanding clinician-researchers or administrative managers, but they could be from any part of the organization. Those skills can continue to come in handy in a leadership role, but they’re not the key skills needed to succeed as a leader. Effective leaders have to loosen their reliance on the skills that have gotten them this far, and develop a new set of skills, such as setting a vision and inspiring others to drive toward that vision, needed to effect organizational change.
2) Not seeing the forest for the trees. Being the leader of an organization requires confronting what might be a large set of challenges, each of them associated with a great deal of information, be it related to operations, finances, marketing, organizational structure, and much more. It’s easy for managers who are moving into leadership roles to be overwhelmed by trying to deal with all of them. Successful leaders take only the most important information from all of the components and synthesize them into the big picture that is the proper focus of a leader.
3) Jumping in too quickly. When someone has earned a leadership position, his or her first instinct is often to act. Jumping right in doesn’t always fail, but it often does. For one thing, people are typically apprehensive about what a new leader might do, and might be apt to view any immediate action as abrasive and ill-thought-out. For another, understanding the true nature of the challenges facing an organization, and of the people who will be implementing the solutions, usually requires time. It’s worth taking that time, and easing into decisive action rather than leaping into it.
4) Trying to get everyone to think the same way. A leader sets the vision, and picks the team to implement that vision. It might seem that the best team is one in which everyone has the same style, approach and understanding of the problem as the leader. But in fact, a team’s strength often comes from a diversity of these elements. If the team perfectly reflects the leader’s thinking, then he or she will be much more prone to going down the wrong path with no one to point it out or bring to bear different approaches and perspective.
5) Not playing the long game. The team has to get measurable results in a reasonably fast time frame, and part of a leader’s job is to hold the team to that. But leaders have to be much more patient with their own progress. If they’re doing their jobs as the setter of organizational vision and driver of significant change, it might be many months or even years before they see the real results of their efforts—and things may well get worse before they get better. That can mean that in the short term many people think they’re not being successful, and become impatient with the apparent lack of results. If the right vision is in place, leaders need to be thick-skinned and trust their decisions, or no one else will. It doesn’t mean the vision is right, but if it’s wrong, it’s trouble no matter what—so faith is important, even during those times when others hesitate to offer it. It’s one of the qualities that separate leaders from followers.
Did you snap at a colleague who didn’t get her work done? Or did you miss an important deadline, messing up a coworker’s project timeline? When your mistake affects someone else, here’s how to make amends:
Source: Harvard Business Review – Management Tip of the Day
The role of professionals in society, like the role of companies, is shifting. As professionals, we are increasingly aware of the critical role we play in society and the responsibility to ensure our talents are accessible not only to those that can afford them. It is time that in addition to assessing the responsibility of companies, we take a hard look at professional social responsibility.
To that end the Taproot Foundation has generated the first ever professional social responsibility (PSR) ranking for “office” professions (e.g. not doctors or teachers).
TAPROOT PSR RANKINGS BY PROFESSION
The PSR by profession provides broad insight into the relative responsibility of professions regardless of their employer or employment status. Professionals on average donate five hours per year with lawyers leading the pack at over 25 hours.
This ranking is created based on US Census data on hours of pro bono services provided per member of each class of profession.
TAPROOT PSR RANKINGS BY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES FIRMS
One of the best ways to measure the responsibility of professionals is by measuring the commitment to pro bono service by professional services firms. These professional services firms set the expectations for their profession.
Tier One (5%+)
Design Firms
Tier Two (2-5%)
Law Firms
Architecture Firms
Management Consulting Firms
Tier Three (1-2%)
Advertising Firms
Public Relations Firms
Tier Four (0.5 – 1%)
Technology Firms
Human Resources / Talent Development Firms
Market Research Firms
Tier Five (Under 0.5%)
Accounting Firms
As there is no consistent and reliable data on pro bono service at firms, Taproot has generated these rankings based on our over a dozen years working in the field. The numbers associated are the estimated average percentage of billable hours done on a pro bono basis.
When it comes to being interviewed, many candidates naturally are nervous, thinking over what questions they’ll be asked and making sure they are selling themselves in the interview. And similarly, the people doing the interviewing often forget that they not only need to be sold on the candidate but they also need to sell the role they’re hiring for. I’ve found more often than not, candidates neglect to “interview the company” they are meeting with and find out whether the organization is a good fit for them.
The fact is, our greatest and most valuable asset is our human capital. The way we invest that capital is up to us, and it is a responsibility we should not take lightly. Why invest your greatest asset in a company that won’t give you the best return? This is not about compensation at all; it is about the ability to do one’s best work and grow as a professional. A bad decision on investing one’s skills can lead to the biggest loss, which is unrecoverable – lost time! My grandfather used to remind me always that “time and tide” wait for no one. The opportunity to do great work that is lost because of a bad decision is too big to not take seriously.
In the end, you have to manage your career objectively. When you go on an interview, you need to interview your hiring manager and assess the company you are about to bet on, just as seriously as they’re interviewing you. Then very thoughtfully make the best investment of your talents.
Taking a new job always presents a risk – you are coming out of your comfort zone where you presumably have a certain level of security and influence. But a new role often presents opportunities to stretch yourself, make new connections and expand your knowledge. And most importantly, contribute to your industry at a greater level. When you face these decisions you have to have a clear vision on how you want to invest your stock.
To find out how the potential employer will invest in you, ask questions that get at the heart of what you’re looking for in your next role. Determine if the hiring manager has a clear and specific vision for the role. Is there consistency around the true north of the organization amongst all the people you are talking to? Is the company or team structured in a way that you can learn and grow? Are they asking insightful questions, or regurgitating generic interview questions that don’t really let them know what you’re about? You have to dig deeper about the role and structure to find out if this job will make your stock rise over time.
And don’t forget – the interview starts the moment you arrive in the parking lot. Look around – are the people engaged? Excited? Are you seeing employees passionately discuss topics, or are they closed off? Pay attention to the little cues you see while you’re there to get a sense if this would be a place that will raise your stock. And always research the company in great depth before you make your final decision. Read analyst reports, browse their job site, look at age of open jobs, find those in your extended network who may have insight into the company culture. Just as you wouldn’t invest your money in a stock without researching it in great depth, don’t invest your human capital in a company without a lot of due diligence.
Learning the skill of interviewing a hiring manager will in the end net you the best opportunities in your career.
How can you get any work done when you’re in meetings all day? You can’t. But instead of griping, be more discerning about which meetings you go to. Before saying yes to invitation, ask yourself, “If I was sick on the day of this meeting, would it need to be rescheduled?” If you answer “no,” then decline the meeting and try one of these less time-intensive alternatives:
Source: Management Tip of the Day, Harvard Business Review
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Inspirational leaders have charisma. People want to hear what they have to say and do what they advise. But can you learn to be inspiring? Sure. Here are three things you can do to build your charisma:
Source: Harvard Business Review – Management tips of the day |
MESA POST *មេសា* 