Management

The energy you have to spend on what you want to do today and in the future is the total energy you generate minus the amount that’s lost to the dreaded energy suckers.

Let’s start on the supply side…

You do generate energy, quite literally. Of course we are not aware of this happening so we don’t think of it that way. But it’s true. Most of us have more energy than we need. It just doesn’t always feel that way.

Let’s look at the demand side…

Like some massive octopus in a schlock sci-fi film, energy attracts suckers. Energy suckers swarm all around you in a feeding frenzy and they will leave you with nothing if they can, because there’s another just like you around the corner.

The energy suckers take many forms.

Here are just some of them -

1. Bad Environment

Too noisy, too hot, too cold, too light, too dark, bad feng shui (don’t laugh – who likes sitting with their back to the door?)

I once had a client who said of one of her charges “she’s easily distracted”. She worked in an entirely open plan office with no baffles and 75 people standing up doing telesales. Easily distracted! She’d need to be comatose not to be distracted.

Get your “area” sorted.

2. Bad Relationships

Continuing to deal with people who don’t play the game fairly: who are aggressive, passive aggressive or passive. People who don’t have their Mum in the office, so they use you as a surrogate. People who wish to cast you as a major player in whatever mini-psycho drama consumes them this week.

The greatest things you will come across in this life are people, but not all of them. Some, I’m afraid, do not live up to the billing.

Kiss them good bye.

3. Bad Self-Management

Big no-no. From pretending you have goals to only doing what you like; the list of possible self-management failures is long, long, long. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result – madness as Einstein said. Fearing failure whilst understanding that fear of failure guarantees failure.

As Steve Jobs said (before he knew of his final illness) – “we are all going to die, so what is it you’re scared of losing?”

Manage thyself!

4. Bad Management

Not treating management as a skill to be learned (the real British disease).

I used to do chemistry. I’d make molecules. Sometimes I’d turn A into B into C into D….all the way to L (I think the longest piece of synthesis I did was 12 steps). If you do each step 80% optimally (which is very, very respectable in chemistry), what percentage of the potential yield do you end up with?

Answer: 6.9%.

That’s 93.1% of your potential down the pan.

Management is different but I hope you get my point.

Coarsely speaking in my world: RB x RS x RO = RL

(Rubbish Prospecting x Rubbish Selling x Rubbish Operations = Rubbish Life)

Get educated.

5. Rubbish Staff

If you have rubbish staff it’s your fault. They are the product of your management. The only exception is where you have a bad apple. But if they’re still around – it’s your fault. Key message – it’s your fault and when it isn’t, it’s still your fault.

6. Not saying “No”

Do not prioritise helping others ahead of turning your own goals into past achievements unless the other person is paying your bills or dealing with some other fundamental need that keeps you perky and…balanced. Even then…

7. Perfectionism…

…is simply fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of what you should really be doing and/or self indulgence dressed up in a Versace suit pretending to be a virtue.

Unmask this imposter before he has his way with you.

8. Being a Monkey Magnet

Perhaps the most nefarious example of 4 and 6 above. Someone else’s problem (monkey) is seldom yours. Make sure their monkey remains firmly on their back.

9. Not eating frogs

Do the worst thing you have to do today first. If you have to eat a frog, eat it. Eat it first.

If you don’t, it will gorge on your energy all day, making it bigger, and you still must eat it.

10. Failing to define the next step

If something’s on your mind and bothering you it’s probably because you have not defined the next thing to do; the next step. So this thing sits there poking you in the ribs every ten minutes until you address it.

So address it.

There’s more…being a pessimist…watching TV…I could go on. And on.

Most of us have huge amounts of energy but it’s a precious thing and massive sci-fi octopi in their myriad guises will steal it from us if we let them.

So don’t let them.

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There’s this guy I know. I’ve known him for about 8 years. He can be a bit immature sometimes. But most of the time he’s really impressive.

He finds time management, or personal productivity, really easy. For him it is not a discipline, or a chore, or any such hard work.

He just flows. He is effortlessly focused on doing his high-payoff activities – the key activities that will deliver his goals. He relishes them. He can spend hour upon hour on them and he never gets tired because he’s in the zone…that place where what you do is not hard work, it’s living…like playing the guitar, or driving a racing car, or whatever it is you can do that requires a lot of skill but for you is easy, almost effortless.

He suffers no distraction.

He does not eat when in the zone. It’s not that he chooses not to. It just doesn’t cross his mind. There are one or two HPAs he is not comfortable doing, so he delegates them without hesitation and does so effectively. He makes it clear what he wants and when he wants it done (usually now) and he does not tell those to whom he delegates how to do whatever it is – he is only interested in the result.

All the small stuff sent to drag him off track is as nothing to this guy. He simply doesn’t see it. I was talking to someone the other day and they told me that sometimes when they speak to him he seems not to hear them. He doesn’t react. Or rather, he doesn’t react to them. This person told me, in all seriousness, that he thought the guy might be hard-of-hearing.

He’s not hard-of-hearing.

He doesn’t get distracted by email. The first email I ever sent him – it took him eight weeks to respond to me. Eight weeks. With a six word answer. Doesn’t he know who I am?

How does he do this?

How is it that for him, time management is not a chore, it’s the default? For him, dealing with all the nonsense in life is the chore. He is focused on the goal, knows what needs to be done, works like a demon, delegates like a machine, doesn’t sweat the small stuff and gets exactly what he wants, on time and in full.

For him it’s easy – he has a purpose statement. He blurted it out to me the other day. Well, in pieces, over the course of the day. It wasn’t well formed in his mind but because his purpose is so meaningful to him, wasting time on anything else isn’t an option. His purpose drives him, satisfies him completely. So why would he willingly spend any time on anything that didn’t serve the purpose?

I cannot tell you his purpose…

…but the form of it goes like this –

“The purpose of my life is to be……(put adjectives and nouns here),

and to..….(put verbs and nouns here),

so that..….(put the outcome you want here).

Here’s a (boring I’m sure, I’m just about to make it up) example –

“The purpose of my life is to be a diligent, attentive and effective teacher, and to practice and perfect my teaching skills, so that I am most able to help others to develop themselves and have a more fulfilling life.”

In fact it’s not so boring when I look at it.

Now if the idea of a life purpose freaks you…

…make it for the next 30 days. Or a year.

Today, this guy I’ve been talking about has such a purpose. I expect his will change and be different next year. But today, he has it, pure and true, and that’s why, for him, being effective is a walk in the park.

He’s only 8 years old, as you’ve guessed, but he’s non-trivial. And I’m not saying that just because I’m his Dad. Yes, I’m a biased observer, but it’s part of my purpose to help him stay on his purpose, whatever he defines it to be, because then he’ll find things a damn site easier, and a lot more fun.

There shouldn’t be lots of stuff on your mind. Having lots of stuff on your mind is like having someone tug your sleeve every 3 minutes.

The only thing that should be on your mind is the stuff you’re doing right now – the stuff that’s right in front of you. You should be “present”, in the moment, focused on what you’re doing. No sleeves being tugged.

The other stuff on your mind is stealing precious memory (think RAM) and is caused, I am afraid, by operator error. But as we’ve discussed before, the brain, although amazing, is tricky to use and there’s no manual.

The operator error is one of poor housekeeping. The operator has failed to do the hoovering and the tidying up.

The reason stuff is on your mind is because you have not managed it, faced up to it, dealt with it, scheduled it. Whatever you should have done you haven’t done it. The stuff on your mind is feeling neglected and is tugging your sleeve. Every three minutes. And you cannot hit it.

When your mind is like this there is a tendency to do what screams the loudest or is the easiest. That might be the right thing to do next, but probably isn’t.

So you get a double hit – the sleeve tugging makes it impossible to do your best on whatever it is you’re working on and whatever it is you’re working on is probably not the right thing anyway because you only chose it because it was screaming or because it appeared easy. Oh dear.

Our mind should be left alone to focus on the current, present task without any RAM being consumed by the sleeve tuggers.

So, what to do?

Take all of the stuff that’s on your mind and write it down on a piece of paper. For all the small stuff, diary an hour and just do it. Yes, I did just use diary as a verb. For the big stuff, decide if there’s anything you want to and can do about it. If there isn’t, just let it go. Kiss it goodbye, say sorry, accept it as part of the messiness of life – whatever you have to do to let it escape. And don’t chase after it.

If there is something you want to and can do about it, turn the issue into a goal. A SMART goal. Decide if you have the time to make this goal one of your current goals. If not, put it on a list of stuff to come back to later and make sure you do come back later.

If you do wish to adopt it as a current goal, decide on the next thing to do and put that activity in your diary. When the appointed time comes, do the thing, decide what the next thing is and put that in your diary. Repeat to fade.

You will have to do this housekeeping exercise regularly, maybe once a week.

You will be amazed at how this frees up your mind, your RAM. You have made an intelligent decision about what to do and it is in process – the next step is in the diary. There is no more you can do. You are in control. You have self-managed. And you have freed up the greatest thing ever seen in the universe – your mind – to actually focus on the things you have decided merit focus. A great resource used wisely by a skilled operator. It’s not a guarantee of success, but it’s pretty close.

What would you like to stop thinking about today?

I hate to admit this but a month or so ago I got myself a bit log-jammed. I mean I couldn’t decide what I should be doing in my work. I don’t mean I had a bad afternoon. Or a unfocused day.

This lasted for days. More days than I care to admit to. Quite frightening really.

During which time I messed around. I shuffled some papers. I did all the easy stuff.

I had three big objectives yet I couldn’t knuckle down to any of them. So I did nothing (of importance). I am quite shocked at this because I should, and do, know better. But the logjam happened none the less. Like a football player losing form. I guess it can happen to the best of us.

“Physician, heal thyself” I can hear you all bellow.

Fair comment. So I did. And this is how I did it:

I coached myself. Well I’m supposed to be a coach so I coached myself.

I took myself through a classic coaching process coupled with some extra bits that work and some stuff from goal-setting best practice.

What was important was I gave myself the time to go through the entire process. It was like a system reboot. It wiped clean my confused and addled brain. I was like new.

I’ve put the process into a Word doc for you (click on the image above to get it).

If you’re feeling a bit log-jammed, frustrated and feeling as if you’re not really focusing on the most important stuff, have a look at the document. But you’ll need at least 30 minutes, maybe a bit longer. But it could well be the best thing to do right now.

It really worked for me. The process got me to focus on priority number one (funnily enough, not the one I thought it was), and define and take the first step. And a lot more.

So I’ve now got a major goal achieved and I’m just about to start on the next one. The logs are all flowing down the river again.

Coaching – I love it.

The success of a venture, from the smallest marketing idea to an entire new business venture, depends on a lot of things, of course. One of them is speed of implementation.

Simply getting out there and doing whatever needs to be done quickly is of critical importance.  There is only so much you can do mentally (all non-action is mental). You cannot plan-do-review if there’s no doing.

So why do we sometimes implement so slowly, or even worse, not at all?

A number of reasons –

1. Knowledge Gaps.

Management is not about gaining total clarity before acting, it’s about hitting the 80/20 sweet spot where 20% of the money and time that could be spent in preparation is spent yielding 80% of the achievable clarity. Then management is about execution, with a beady eye on the risks.

2. Perfectionism.

Waiting for the perfect moment to act. This is silly because there is no perfect moment.

However, there is the optimal moment. The moment when, allowing for the imperfections of life, conditions are propitious. Even sub-optimal may be OK. Sub-optimal does not mean “destined to fail”. It just means things could be better but things can always be better.

3. Fear of Failure.

I believe there is no species on earth possessing the ability of us humans to talk ourselves out of action. What causes this fear?

It is, simply, doubt. Or uncertainty. We have doubt and uncertainty because we are intelligent. We see overwhelming confidence in others as naivety, or worse, stupidity. Our analytical brains cannot help but have doubt, to see the uncertainties.

So accept doubt for what it is – a marker of intelligence, and then use that intelligence to act anyway, despite the uncertainty.

The higher the speed of implementation the quicker you will be successful. Doing stuff gets results and results allow you to fine tune and get better results. Isn’t it wonderful that we get better at something the more we do it? Wouldn’t it be strange if this was not so?

It is also true that the higher the speed of implementation the quicker you will fail. This doesn’t sound good but it is good. Not everything we do will work. If we implement quickly we will see failure coming earlier and then we can stop or change tack with minimal loss of money and time. The alternative is that we implement slowly and it takes years to find out what we have been doing isn’t getting us to our destination. And the price of that is colossal, in money and, critically, time.

So, how to implement with real pace, with real speed?

Well of course there’s all the usual management best practice that I bang on about all the time like getting everyone’s motivation sorted out; planning – sufficiently detailed while avoiding perfectionism; setting goals and deadlines; defining your high-payoff activities and using blocktime to leverage this most precious of resources etc etc etc etc etc.

These “outer game” tools and techniques are good.

But maybe there’s a few elements of the “inner game” that need addressing –

• Motivation – drill down really far into the “why”; the “reason for action”. This requires real insight and honesty and rigour but when you crack it it will power you straight through to your destination.
• Learn to see doubt and uncertainty as your friends, without whom you would be very, very lost. They are signposts towards what risks we need to manage, not excuses for inaction.
• Subjugate your ego – everything and I mean everything is secondary to the achievement of the goals. This means that you should get out of the way. Get off the critical path. Delegate and outsource until everyone’s eyes water, and don’t allow anything to be held up or delayed because someone is waiting for you to do something and you haven’t got around to it. Don’t worry – when you are successful everyone will know it was you in the driving seat.

We all make decisions all the time. And we are very rational. Are we not? We make rational decisions. This is called utility maximisation by economists. Economics is not called the dismal science for nothing you know.

This is how we make decisions: we look at all our options and we decide the relative likelihood of each actually occurring. Then we look at the value each option gives to us. We then synthesise this information and we make our choice. This is rational decision making.

However, what I have described is how a computer algorithm might make a decision. But we are not so clever. Or should I say not so rational.

We especially do not make decisions like a computer when there is a gain or a loss involved.

Two economists, Kahneman and Tversky won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for their work on what they called Prospect Theory, which describes decisions between alternatives where there is a risk involved.

Their studies showed that people are much more sensitive to a loss than to a gain. This is true to such an extent that people are willing to take on board serious risk to avoid a loss. For example, people sell shares when the stock market goes down, and they continue to pour money into something that they have put money into previously when they really should just walk away.

It was Warren Buffet who said that “losses gain twice the emotional response of gains.”

People are risk-averse (i.e. they play it safe) in relation to gains, but are also loss-averse (and will gamble to avoid losses).

Makes no sense at all.

Here’s an experiment – people were asked to imagine they were scientists and they were working on an outbreak of a nasty disease which was expected to kill 600 people. Two different programmes to fight the disease have been proposed. The first group of people were asked to decide between these two programmes –

A: 200 people will be saved.

B: there is a one third probability that 600 will be saved, and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved.

In this case, 72% of the group favoured programme A.

A second group of people were asked to decide between these two programmes –

C: 400 people will die.

D: there is a one third probability that nobody will die, and a two thirds probability that 600 people will die.

Now you will see that A is the same as C and B is the same as D. It’s just that the first choice (A or B) is framed as a choice between gains and the second choice (C or D) is framed as a choice between losses.

In the second case, 78% of people preferred programme D. Their preference has been reversed by changing the frame from gain to loss, although the options are essentially identical. Hmmm…

So, why care about this?

Well, marketers have us sussed and they use this to their advantage.

Would you rather get a 10% discount or avoid a 10% surcharge? It’s the latter, because loss-avoidance trumps a gain. Hence the often used phrase “sign-up by the 17^th or you will lose…”, or “offer ends Sunday…”

Prospect theory explains both why we act when we shouldn’t (usually to avoid loss, i.e. in selling shares when the market goes down) and why we don’t act when we should. In fact, the more choices people have the more likely they are to do nothing. And the more good or attractive options there are, the worse the paralysis. And the longer the decision is deferred, the less likely it is that a decision will ever be made.

For example – one study asked people to complete a questionnaire for a decent reward: some were told the deadline was 5 days, others 21 days and a third group had no deadline. Results: 66% returned within the 5 day deadline, 40% in the 21 day deadline and 25% where there was no time limit. And it wasn’t because they forgot.

So if you find yourself with decision paralysis, consider this –

• Not to decide is itself a decision. Procrastination must be killed!
• Think of opportunity cost, i.e. doing nothing may be more costly than doing something sub-optimal.
• Play devil’s advocate – challenge assumptions and consider the issue from scratch, not where you are today because what’s already invested is a sunk cost. You cannot get it back no matter how much more love and money you throw at it.

It’s amazing when you first become self-employed. There’s lots of time. The days are long. This is not because you have nothing to do. It is because you have no trivia to do. The trivia has not had a chance to build up. All the emails, voicemails, post-it notes and things on lists.

I got a sneak peek into this some years ago. I had been out of the office for a month. Yes, a month. I had something to do. I did not look at email. I made no phone calls. No one was to contact me unless there was an off-the-scale emergency that ONLY I could deal with (difficult to imagine what that might be).

No one called.

Having done what I had to do, I was travelling home by boat. I was looking out of the porthole in my cabin as the vessel pulled out of the dock and I realised my mind was blank. Not blank = stupid. But blank = blank sheet of paper. There was no noise. No lists. No squawking. No “can you just…?” No “have you got a minute?” The trivia had melted away. I had been working for 15-odd years and I had never experienced this before.

I was in a block of pure, clear time. I had no worries or concerns of any kind. No pressures. I was amazed at how slowly time moved when there is no noise.

There are two massive benefits to being in a block of uninterrupted time.

The first benefit is obvious. A big block of time allows us to focus all our energy on the significant issues that face us. And how well we deal with these significant issues will pretty much define what we get out of life. Think of this as the chance to score a goal.

The second benefit is maybe not so obvious. The distracted mind is much less able than the clear mind to convert chances into goals. And the piles of trivia that build up, even if we push them to the side during the blocks of time we schedule for the important stuff, steal some of our brain’s bandwidth, because you cannot truly put them out of your mind.

You know what it’s like when your PC slows down because you’ve got too many applications open. The majority of the applications are not actually being worked on but their very existence requires you to commit some resources to them and as a consequence there is much less capacity for the important stuff. And when a chance arises, you kick the ball over the bar. Because you were thinking about something else.

So what we need to do to score more goals is to:

a) create lots of chances and

b) turn them into goals more often.

We can create more chances by scheduling as much of our time in big blocks (at least 3 hours) as possible to work on the big stuff.

Second, we can convert more of our chances into goals by minimising distraction. The best way to do this is to throw all this rubbish into a bucket, or write it all down on a piece of paper and only give it attention once a day, for as short a time as possible. I’d say 1 hour per day.  In this time, deal with all your email, all your phone calls, all your post – everything. In an hour. You may need more, depending on the nature of your job, but don’t give this task more time than it truly merits. Give it what it merits, not what it wants.

And accept that after the hour or so is up, there may be some of it left undone. That’s OK.

There is no point in being ready to score if you never get a chance – so schedule the blocks of time to create the chances. There is no point in creating loads of chances if your neck-top PC is so pre-occupied with trivia that you cannot score.

I may never again attain the fabulous blankness I had on that shiny day in that boat, but there are lots I can do to get pretty close, and stick that ball in the back of the net.

A short Pearl this week as I’m off hitting some golf balls in the gorgeous Ayrshire countryside. Ah Ayrshire…birthplace of Robert Burns.

“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!”

He’s clearly talking about 360⁰ FEEDBACK. This is the process whereby your leadership skills are assessed by all those around you, not just your boss. So your team get a say. And your peers. And all your stakeholders. 

It can be enervating but, for those who are big enough, enlightening.

This is an example of the type of questions your boss, peers etc would be asked about you: click here for a wee look – 360 degrees.

What do you think they’d say about you? Because they’re already saying it! Go on, don’t be a timorous beastie.

I used to watch a man with an impressive title work a room full of clients. He could get round the room of fifty or so people in considerably less than an hour. He would approach a small group of people and stick out his hand, identify himself and say “what do you do?”

Great question. What do you do? The answers were usually job titles. I’m Director of Flimflammery. I’m Senior VP of Dissembling. I’m Declining Products Manager (this one is actually real, I promise you. Imagine it – “Now Jenkins, we’ve noticed that you’ve been selling rather a lot of Crapolene X5 this year. I hope you’re not expecting a bonus…)

The really interesting question is not “what do you do?” It’s “what are you really good at?” “What is your Big Skill?”

It takes some significant hard work to develop a Big Skill. Instead, it may be tempting to take the easy road – be a jack-of-all trades. But Pollack was right when he said “life is hard if you live it the easy way and easy if you live it the hard way”.

So what is your Big Skill, or what could it be?

When considering this question, there are three little tests to help you decide if your Big Skill is really big and, indeed, a skill. You don’t need to get three out of three. I’d say the pass rate is nearer two out of three.

Here goes -

1. Your Big Skill gives you potential access to a wide range of markets.

Many people want your Big Skill. You are not limited to the Isle of Mull seaweed husbandry sector – you can deal with other islands and other plants.

2. Your Big Skill makes a major contribution to the perceived value of your products and services as seen by the customer.

Aahh…perceived value. One of my favourite couplets. Your Big Skill places you right at the heart of business – generating perceived value. The key word here is perceived. The customer sees it and values it. If they don’t see what you thought was value (usually because they don’t value it) then it isn’t value.

Ask yourself this – “if I didn’t exist, would the customer notice?”

3. Your Big Skill is not easily imitated by your competitors.

Your Big Skill takes a while to develop. It has breadth and depth. It is tangible and meaningful. Copying it is not easy and only the best could do it and most won’t try.

How did you score?

In the work context, here’s some Big Skills you may have -

Leading – generating a compelling and deliverable vision. Easier said than done. A Big Skill.

Managing – getting results through people. Simple as that. A Big Skill.

Marketing – finding people who are interested in your value and telling them about it, nicely. A Big Skill.

Intellectual property – maybe you have a database that allows you to generate insights for your clients, or you know the solution to a perennial problem, or you have some methodology that gets a great results, or you are an “expert”…all Big Skills.

Selling – closing deals. A Big Skill.

Operational excellence – making and delivering great products and services. A Big Skill.

All forms of development – R&D, Product/Service development etc – this is about meeting an unmet need. I put entrepreneurialism in this box. A Big Skill.

You may have one of these Big Skills on your business card but your business card is not you. So, remember the three tests: does your Big Skill…

Allow you access to lots of markets?

Deliver loads of perceived value?

And is it…

Difficult to copy?

Some of you may recognise the Big Skill as essentially being the Core Competency idea of Hamel and Prahalad, which is now about twenty years old. They applied it to the corporation. I think it is useful at a personal level as I’ve got this bizarre idea that corporations don’t have skills, big or otherwise, but I think most people do.

I’m so rubbish at golf. Came 94^th out of 96 last Saturday. Aarrgghh! (I take some solace from the fact that there were twelve bad boys and girls who failed to return their scorecard, presumably because if it isn’t recorded it never happened, right?)

I am not scared of failure. I have got used to it. As the American golfer Tom Watson famously said – “if you want to double your rate of success, double your rate of failure.” I must be getting pretty close to a major breakthrough as I have upped my failure rate significantly.

So, how do you double your rate of failure?

Well, there are two forms of failure –

Failure through action…

And…

Failure through inaction.

Hmmm.

Let’s take the first one first:

Failure through Action

This is absolutely forgivable. We do stuff. We review what happens. We make changes because we didn’t quite get what we wanted. Simple. What happens if someone – you’re boss, loving spouse, yourself – gives you a kick up the backside because you didn’t get the exact results you forecast? Well you could be forgiven for avoiding getting things wrong again by swerving all challenging stuff as it comes to you. This is bad.

Or you could just jab a pointy stick in your tormentor’s eye and say “there is no failure, just results I didn’t want, you numbskull.”

The more stuff you do the more you find out what works and what doesn’t. And provided the mistakes are stopped early, the learning can be extracted from them at low cost. This works in marketing. It works in most fields. Fail quickly and cheaply and you quickly build a huge reserve of knowledge on what does work. There is no success without failure. But you still need to manage risk of course. No failure should be bigger than it has to be. We should not be fearful of failure, we should be fearful of the absence of failure because that’s symptomatic of inaction which takes me nicely to …

Failure through Inaction.

This is insidious as it is often invisible. Fear of failure tends to be more focused on action: doing things and failing, rather than inaction…not doing things and failing.

Now clearly if you are observably not doing something you should be doing you will get pulled up for it. And rightly so. Where failure through inaction is at its most dangerous is when the inaction is about failure to behave in a certain way. I’m using “behave” in its neutral form – how we conduct ourselves. Nothing to do with “bad” or “good” behaviour.

I’m talking about staying inside your comfort zones: that mental straight jacket that we all have. And not taking managed risks. Not having the difficult conversations. Not reflecting and making changes. Becoming stuck in our ways. Keeping the song inside us.

Looking inside ourselves and taking the right actions may well make us and they are very unlikely to break us. It really is an asymmetric bet – the upside is bigger than the downside. If you place a small number of bets where the upside is bigger than the downside you make a bob or two. If you place hundreds of these bets, you get rich…

Of course there are risks but when you are considering doing something a wee bit “out there” ask yourself – what’s the worst that can happen? Could I get back to the pre-action reality or am I irredeemably lost at sea? How can I de-risk this?

And here’s a great question – “What’s the risk in doing nothing?” People often think doing nothing has no risk. This is seldom true.

So here’s my challenge to you for this stupidly short week. It’s in two parts –

1. Stop doing something that you thought would give you a benefit but simply isn’t. I’m talking about ACTIONS that may be difficult to stop but are FAILING and therefore should be stopped).

2. Start doing something that may take you forward. Trial it and see what happens. I’m talking about ACTIONS that may seem difficult but might help you SUCCEED. Manage the risks. Do it for a short while and review. Then make changes if necessary, and keep going.

There is no failure. It’s just feedback. And we need feedback don’t we?