Business Planning Process
My long-term CEO executive coaching client, Raj Khera of email management company MailerMailer, shares his very effective business planning process in this video.
Where did the time go? Your mind lost it.
Americans today have plenty of time for leisure, says Professor John Robinson. Robinson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland and Director of the Americans’ Use of Time Project.
What [Robinson] does not dispute is that people think they have no time. “It’s very popular, the feeling that there are too many things going on, that people can’t get in control of their lives,” he says. “But when we look at people’s diaries, there just doesn’t seem to be the evidence to back it up. It’s a paradox. When you tell people they have (more…)
SunGard CEO practices what I preach
I was thrilled to read in today’s New York Times the comments of $5B SunGard’s CEO, Cristóbal Conde. He shifted his management style several years ago after reaching the limits of the very methods that had brought him near the top.
Early on, I was very command-and-control, very top-down. I felt I was smart, and that my decisions would be better. I was young, and I was willing to work 20 hours a day. But guess what? It (more…)
Time & Chance
I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
Click here for more posts on luck.
3 Rs of Dispute Resolution
Disputes are inevitable any time you are working with people to produce significant results. What is not inevitable is dreading or delaying the confrontation required to resolve the conflict. Here’s how to get it over within one conversation.
My 3 Rs of dispute resolution are:
- Relationship,
- Responsibility, and
- Request
RELATIONSHIP: Early in the conversation, state plainly the quality of the relationship you want to have with the person. Invite the other person to declare their intentions, too. A client once said to me, “I hope when we’re through negotiating this and we (more…)
Handling Complaints
I was near the desk at my health club when I overheard a woman ask the attendant if anyone had found a book she had forgotten earlier. The
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attendant said she had seen it by the exercise bikes, but now it was gone. The member said, “If you had brought the book to ‘Lost & Found’ I would have it now.”
The attendant explained, “I thought if I left it there you would find it when you came back.”
“Isn’t it the policy of the club to place property in this bin behind the desk?” the member insisted.
“It was only out for a minute. I would have moved it if you didn’t come for it soon.”
Strategic Intuition
Experts develop deep domain knowledge that often allows them to exhibit a “sixth sense,” said ChicagoBooth professor James Schrager. … Strategy may be poised to be the next field revolutionized by the same concepts that have made behavioral economics and behavioral finance hotbeds of new ideas.
It all flows from University of Chicago PhD and Nobel laureate Herb Simon, who introduced the concept of bounded rationality that states that people don’t consider all alternatives as they decide most things, only a subset. The way we choose that subset is often the secret to how well–or poorly–our decision will turn out.
Simon indicated it took about ten years to be really good at something. Once there, you develop an “intuition” about how to make decisions. Simon believed these intuitions, although seemingly appearing from nowhere and often without conscious thought, are patterns you’ve previously learned. It is these patterns that can be of most use to strategists.
Top Executive Coaching: Who, Why, What, How, When, & Where
Introductory Video
If you have thought about getting a coach, I suggest you start by clicking here to watch my eight-minute video. I cover the most common questions of potential clients. The video is available in HD, so don’t hesitate to click the button for full screen.
For those who prefer reading to watching, here is (more…)
Add Some Fun
Maybe your business could make serious money by adding fun?
Twitter Log XV
I use Twitter to share brief daily messages. You can have them delivered to your cell phone by text message (SMS) or view them when you visit your free Twitter web page. Create a Twitter account and “follow” TonyMayo.
Here are my recent tweets (messages):
Self-respect is worth more than anything gained at its expense.
Sadness is a healthy reminder to acknowledge a loss.
Appreciating satiety is the ultimate luxury. Recognizing “enough.”
Great coaching from a sign in a casino, “You must be present to win.” A post on meditation for executives is here.
An executive’s job is to make a good enough decision with not enough information. –Tony Mayo
Why your company must grow–or die. See the chart here.
Prior tweets are here, at Twitter Logs.
___
© 2009 Tony Mayo
Coach as Nudge
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
–Walter Bagehot
Founding Editor of The Economist
in Physics and Politics, 1879
My job as a coach is to get you to do what you do not want to do, so you can be what you want to be.
–Attributed to Tom Landry
NFL head coach
Perverse Incentive Compensation
Paying for performance seems like an all-purpose principal. Daniel Pink argues that it is not.
From TED: Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.
Coaching vs. Advice
There is an important difference between coaching and advice.
• Coaching is listening to and standing for a person’s greatness and the expression of their possibility while inviting the client into new ways of being, seeing, and speaking that will support his or her intentions.
• Advice is telling someone to take an action consistent with the advice-giver’s worldview, paradigm, opinions, interpretation, assessment, standards, etc.
Each has its place, but are most valuable when clearly distinguished. For example, to say, “I have an opinion about what you should do in this situation,” is a responsible way to give advice.
Also on this blog, How to Work with Facts —and, Opinions a video by Tony Mayo
Recording Meetings and Podcasts
The problem is that consumer recording equipment is unshielded; cell phones, fluorescent lights, etc. radiate energy that can induce a current that becomes noise. My solution is to use professional equipment with laptop recording software. It is more money and trouble, but the quality is very high.
Step 1: Get a mic mixer for the PC, so that you can use professional mics. I prefer the ones that plug into the USB or FIREWIRE port so that I can bypass the internal sound card. Others connect to the “LINE IN” jack of your sound card, if it has one (not the computer’s MIC jack).
I no longer use the M-Audio MobilePre USB – 2 Channel USB Mic Preamp with XLR and 1/8″ Stereo Miniplug Mic Inputs
I changed to the Lexicon Lambda just because it works under Vista and Windows 7 (and, WIndows 10).
At my desk, I prefer the four microphone mixer, Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver MX10XU
Step 2: Buy an appropriate mic. If the mic does not (more…)
Chronic stress damages brain. Relaxation heals it.
…chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating. … regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled, while, conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed.
Behaviors become habitual faster in stressed animals than in the controls, and worse, the stressed animals can’t shift back to goal-directed behaviors when that would be the better approach.
I call this a vicious circle.
—Nuno Sousa, MD PhD
Life and Health Sciences
Research Institute
But with only four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls, able to innovate, discriminate and lay off the bar. Atrophied synaptic connections in the decisive regions of the prefrontal cortex resprouted, while the overgrown dendritic vines of the habit-prone sensorimotor striatum retreated.
–Brain Is a Co-Conspirator
in a Vicious Stress Loop
NYTimes.com
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