Harvard researcher Shaun Achor has demonstrated through his various studies that happiness does not necessarily come from success. In fact he goes as far to suggest that it’s the other way around. It is only by being happy that you can achieve true success. So if this is the case, how does one become happy in the first place?

An interesting study conducted by Michael Norton from Harvard Business School proposed one possible solution. His hypothesis was that money can in fact buy happiness. Read more »

To what degree does the way you behave with another person influence how they subsequently behave towards you? Parental research would suggest that kids very often demonstrate many of the same characteristics of their parents. But even beyond this there is also an innate human behavior that will “fight fire with fire”. Another way of putting this is that perhaps you get what you deserve.

So what happens when you translate this to leadership and more specifically the behaviors of leaders? In the Read more »

How do you get the most from your people? Billions of dollars are spent annually on an infinite variety of training programs in pursuit of answering this question. It is still one of the elusive components to running a business that owners and leaders struggle with.

Clearly when a new person is hired some fundamentals need to be put in place to attain an acceptable standard quickly. Let’s call this standard “functional” and once this is achieved the following basics are typically in place:

Skills, experience and Read more »

When an individual is first hired there is typically some form of orientation to familiarize them with the company, its values and mission, polices and what is generally expected. They might also get to meet other staff and members of management and from this they slowly get a sense for what is the culture of the organization.

However the bulk of their training is more skills based. What are the tasks associated with the work they have been assigned to? What are the expectations associated with that? Whether this is classroom based or on the job they become Read more »

During the recent US Masters Golf Tournament it was hard not to be struck by the many similarities the game of golf has with business. The golfer is the product, they hire people such as agents and so many of its subtleties are quite metaphorical for many aspects of entrepreneurship. Above all every golfer would testify that this is a dream come true; they love playing golf, they are good at it and they get to do it full time as a career.

Business Lesson 1: Work at something you are good at and love doing (why not?).

Read more »

As human beings we have a basic need for being part of a system. In the context of Maslow’s hierarchy, given that the physiological and safety needs are being met, love and belonging provides the basis of the next level need. From the moment of our birth we are part of a family and then this evolves into neighborhoods, friends, school mates, church affiliations, sports teams, etc. All of these directly or indirectly provide a feeling that others care and that we are part of something Read more »

For anybody familiar with the Toyota Manufacturing System, Lean Manufacturing, or Kaizen Events, the “5 Whys” should be a pretty familiar tool. It is used as a diagnostic for digging deep into what might be the root cause of a particular problem. The rationale behind this is that the more you dig the greater the understanding and therefore the more likely a successful outcome.

Simon Sinek in his Ted Talk in 2010 challenged people that when positioning your product or service don’t lead with what you do Read more »

Lawyers and Journalist pride themselves on the ability to be able to ask the right questions; whether it is the testimony of somebody in the courtroom or the next breaking story. However within both of these situations it’s not always about the truth or doing what’s right for the person being questioned. In fact the person “in the firing line” is often but a mere pawn in a bigger game in the primary pursuit of somebody else’s agenda. So who is supposed to be the real beneficiary of questioning?

Read more »

Each year corporations spend millions of dollars on various forms of professional development and the seemingly never ending debate ensues in terms of, what is the return on investment? For a long time this has always been difficult to determine because the benefits are not obviously tangible and most often cannot be expressed in financial terms. I suppose it’s akin to putting people “our most important asset” on the balance sheet. Alas that hasn’t happened yet either.

So in the absence of any financial accounting mechanisms employee engagement surveys have emerged as an objective basis to assessing the Read more »

As a developmental methodology, coaching has emerged as a very effective set of skills and tools that is not “flavor of the month” and continues to have a positive impact on individuals and organizations. Why is that? The simple reason is that these skills are practical, relatively simple in understanding and, quite surprisingly, common sense. Unfortunately however they are not a natural default setting for most people. We prefer to speak rather than question or listen, we consider primarily our own perspective, and we typically think of ourselves before others. Whilst this is not all Read more »