Business Sweet-Spots top 10

You know when you have a business sweet spot.  When you take a product to market and it just sells like hot cakes; when your management team hardly need to communicate, meetings fly by, and things just get done right, you are so on the same wavelength.

The vibes are right when you hit it sweet

We have been working through these and other "sweet spots" this year with clients and on my coaching blog you can find an article about combining this thinking into your SWOT analysis (you can read my other blog at http://coachingpartnership.blogspot.com/2011/12/sweet-swot-strategy-6.html).

Here are my top ten business sweet spots - a round up the reviews with clients in the last few months.

1. Personal flair
   Everyone has strengths - their personal "tap-dance", so to speak.  So often in business we find people focussed on process, risk and rule based approaches.  All good but do they take space and opportunity away from your people, preventing them from bringing you their flair?
   
   Remember Jim Collins exhortation, in "Good to Great", to work in the space where your passion and your skill touch the economic wheels of your business.  Our rule of thumb is that process is designed to speed up and perfect the chores, maximising the time available for people to do what needs to be done personally and that they are great at.
   
2. Special projects
   Where is the space in the routine of work for this flair to have a chance?  Special projects around improvement issues - with a few people drawn from across status, structure, and location, with real opportunity to fail and learn are fabulous for identifying leaders in your team.
   
3. Recruitment decision matrix
   Getting the right people into your team is such a crucial factor - this year's recruitment sweet spot has been working through the key attributes, running pareto to identify the top 5, weighting each relative to the others for importance and then grid ranking candidates as a super approach to improving recruitment accuracy.
   
4. Star product/service in the product portfolio analysis (ppa)
   To remind you, star products are those with high market attractiveness and where your business is strong relative to competition.  Maximise these and ensure you have pushed them as far as they can go, check in on them for lessons, use them to cross sell others.
   
5. Top Wildcat product/service in the ppa
   These are high market attractiveness, but your task is still to build your competitive strength.  Don't waste your time developing too many at once - ensure adequate "bat swing" is applied to ensure your best shot wildcats become stars.
   
6. Leadership beats process
   Process will get you so far and is essential.  Process is as much key to change as it is to being stuck - as it sticks routine activity into your business.  However, great leaders will always be able to draw more motivation and quality than process will achieve by improving feel good factor, learning and development of key people.   Leaders can layer processes and build businesses with great people.
   
7. Having the courage to discuss the cash
   Get the terms discussion out and clear at the start and then stick to it.  So much time is wasted mopping up after a sloppy start on your terms.  A clear winner of a sweet spot is having the courage to address up front your pricing and cash terms.
8. Double prices on the bottom 20% of your customers, and divert your time to the best 20% instead
   If you are working hard but not making money, look at your pricing and focus your market to the quality end.
   
9. Innovate with your best clients
   R&D/innovation that has worked best has been in the contract and with the clients rather than back in the board room.  Look to improve value right at the edge and you will very quickly hear what you need to do.
   
10. Leadership attribute matrix
    This is an essential point to end on.  The choice of investment partner and director team for a new venture is the essential initial condition for success.  So many businesses fail due to this team mix being wrong or going predictably wrong.  Mind-map the attributes you need for your crucial leadership team, select the top 5 or so and weight them relative to each other for importance and then realistically go through each partner/potential partner and rank them.  Take the problems seriously and talk them through.

A great investment and leadership team is the "business sweet-spot" I wish you for 2012 - with all the challenges, excitement and "rocks in the road" of business in the current economic realities you will find a close knit and capable team a real blessing for the next twelve months.

Feel free to contact me about any issues this raises for you.

Little failures

Here is a post about failure and risk.  Just what you all need!

I was reading Dawkins "the Selfish Gene" on the advice of a scientist friend and, well, it is a good and a compelling read.

Those gene sets that survive, do so through millions of machines and adaptations that failed.  It is almost as if it is the failure that is the crucial thing.   What I mean is, if the ratio of gene success is 1 successful adaptation for each 100,000 failures, then that tells you the "rate of failure" (ROF) in order to find success.  This is in the natural world, and I am not aware of gene's taking expert experienced advice.

Thinking about the underlying themes I was reminded of Napoleon Hill's commendation for each of us to have "the opportunity for applied failure", and of course Eddison's "I failed my way to success".  (If I have failed here in my quotations I am sure I will learn about it quickly!)

From a business point of view, Dawkins' billions of "gene machines" that dry out and die away unable to keep up with the changes in their world, are rather like the business failures that happen each day.   That's the metaphor at one level.  When you read the statistics on business failure, it's a pretty off-putting metaphor.

And yet although each failure contains a back story of some pathos (and some somewhat worse than getting a low grade essay score at school!) each also points towards success.  The key things here are to avoid allowing the negative connotations of the word to demotivate you, and to mine down to the learnings within each failure.  

What are the little failures?  What are the little learnings?

I am sure you are starting to get the drift of this post.  In my business experience, it is the ability to fail, without having to stop, that has taught me the most, probably because the immediate successes, few and far between, though welcome, were often surprising.  Hard won successes taught me things I was able to re-apply with similar effect, and keep in my kit bag of useful tools for life.

Napoleon Hill, unlike Dawkins, calls for unusual and compelling belief in order to create success.  He noted that most people don't have anywhere near enough belief to be successful.  I think he was right.  Most people are afraid of failure.  Fight or flight are fundamental reflexes.  We teach fear of failure from the first day.  Many cultures punish failure.  It's not a surprise that many people struggle with entrepreneurial-ism and have a reflex to blame others when failure arrives.   The blame game tends to suppress innovation.

Most new business ideas, whether a start up or just a new product or project, start in the mind; with an idea.  Then a huge amount of belief in the idea and the ability of the thinker to sustain them through the failures along the track.

With belief, available effort and gold are needed to sustain activity.  Like a scientist, entrepreneurs should then go looking for failures.  Small scale, obvious and quick are the best sort!  However any failure will do, and is just another fence knocked down on the way towards success.  Failure is interesting.   Like risk, the possibility of failure and consequences are one way in which we come to know life, and they keep us alert and sharpened to the possibilities.  Good marketing people tell you to do a limited but real test; the same idea is highly valued in new IT implementations, and in any profit and change projects.  Plan, do, check, act is an effective cycle that embraces failure in its design.

My post this week is designed to make you think about your organisation's approach to risk and failure.  Is the balance right?  In what areas so you need to reduce failure and in what areas do you need more?

We are all happy to think about return on investment, a calculation based on risk and return.  Perhaps one way to think about failure more positively is to develop an ROF, or "return on failure" measure.

Find your trade secrets

A client and I were discussing IPR and valuation recently over a pint.  The gist of it was this: in technology businesses a lot of know-how is created over the years.  Some gets used regularly, some gets lost a little bit, some is made deliberately and plenty comes about accidentally.  Frankly this applies to any processes that add to productivity, protect margin and enhance customer value, not just biotech or technology innovations.

In business valuation, the basic valuation is a complex mix of profitability, profit strength, timing and market interest.  Profit strength is about margin and sustainability and there are a number of ways to look at it - evidence can be seen in the stability of results, customer defection rates, product portfolio management and product development capability, etc.

Buyers can be very attracted to visible business strengths - for example easily controllable income flows (this can be model related or through contracts).  Intellectual property comes in many shapes and sizes; when it is technical know how, if it can be shown to be commercially valuable, then for the right buyer, the price will go up.

A big problem for CEO's is to know exactly what the lab has got in its kit bag.  Another risk is that, when know how is not fully recorded, it gets lost if key people go.

So here is the upshot:  An IPR matrix.  We thought it would be great to do this and let the lab or IT development team show their value.  Maybe you could encourage collection through bonuses.  It's a simple idea.

Step 1:  get the team to list all their unprotected intellectual property and know how.
Step 2:  table it out and in column two, link it to the products or processes that are impacted, live or canned (indicate this, so that great technology is not lost as products that it has powered but that are retired don't mean it is lost)
Step 3: describe what it does, and the key benefits
Step 4: where the files are kept and crucially
Step 5: any protection actually in place - patents, designs, trade marks
Step 6: finally go through and assess on a 1 - 10 scale, its commercial power (potential or known)

If you haven't got this in place or something similar, do it now rather than leaving it to chance when you're ready to exit.  Make it a key document during your routine product portfolio planning review.

I'd be keen to hear any thoughts, and shares of other "know-how" recording systems you all have in place.  Paper or wiki, locked away or shared.

What is so soft about "soft skills"?

"Soft skills", normally counterpointed against "hard skills" - with the latter defined as "occupational requirements".  There are other versions.

Jimmy Carr, speaking on Radio 4's "Museum of Curiosities" this week said [sic] "words are magic, and I'm like a drug pusher except the drugs are endorphins and they are in you - I just know the words that unlock them.  I say a series of words, and you get a dose of pleasure!"  Perhaps a typically "Carr" way of putting things, but all the same, rather a nice explanation.

Words are magic, in that they bring with them memories and meanings of great complexity.  I object therefore to the use of the word "soft"!  It can imply lots of things, which perhaps are not intended to be negative, however negative implications are included.  It can imply "easier", "unprofessional", "non-essential", "weak", "woolly", "undefined".  Etc.  You get my drift.

And yet, in my own business, the so called "hard skills" only take you to qualification.  As a general rule "occupational requirements" are about 20% of what the team need to gain real ability and impact.

Many firms will adopt a thoroughly strict attitude to the "hard" training provision.  It will certainly be done professionally and there is rarely hesitation in investing in anything seen as "hard".  How easy it is to be the "hard men" of training - with repetition, practice, assessment, and qualification; it echo's the successful models of our schooling.

Use of the word "soft" is a problem because for many, I believe, it primes the mind to think differently.  Typically, soft skills training is done in a very different way (suggested by the soft adjective?) in workshops, in one day sessions, with limited objectives, with limited practical application, without a course, without a test, without a measured outcome or qualification.

In my own firm (and I hope in many others - certainly in my clients) when we have overcome this attitude it has paid off big.  I like to ban the word "soft".  Training is training and I want to see it done professionally.

I am not really interested in buying a one day "people skills" training session, because I know from my own professional training skills that in order to create applied learning any programme needs the seven learning principles:

Feedback
Active learning
Repetition
Meaningful material
Multi-sense approaches
Over-learning
Primacy and recency

(E-mail me for expansion on any of this)

There are plenty of studies that show that skills practice, and moving from learning to teaching, rapidly increase the uptake of learning, and its move into long term recall.   This is what leads to changes in behaviour and real changes in approach.  In my own experience, the jeopardy of assessment  and qualification really heighten attention.  There are other ways to get high attention and learning - for example presentation to the group at the end of a learning process forces the learning to be used and demonstrated, even if no exam is present.

We did it at school!  Why should it stop for work?

Managing people for performance, selling, mentoring, coaching skills, presenting, leading, delegating, prioritising, planning, creative thinking, product development, managing a large workload, commercialism, working in a big team,  being a effective executive (director, partner, ceo), coping with major and difficult decisions and high levels of stress, managing the internal state for effect rather than being bowled along by life and emotion, writing and communication.  These are essential skills for life and for business.

The people who move to high levels of impact in an organisation are a long way ahead of their core technical skills, and most get there through the training of real life and experience.  They are largely unsupported by the wealth of highly professional experience and best practice material out there to get the improvements more quickly and more professionally.  There is a tendency to grab bits of insight from here and there in a haphazard way.  This is especially true of the small business sector.

A final reference to "soft".  If "soft" primes the mind to respond in a certain way, and the focus, motivation and goals of your team at the outset are an essential preparation component for successful trainings, why would you tell them to prepare for a "soft" day's work?

Run back over your training programmes.  Which skills are essential to your success?  Identify the top three and put serious and assessed programmes in place to develop your essential skills programme.   Put the soft stuff in the bin!

I hope this post inspires you to rethink the process you are running to develop yourselves and your teams.  If you are already there, post up a note and let us know what you do.

A game of two halves

"Part of me thinks it's a great idea."  Says the MD, looking pained, and you know there is a "but" coming.  "But another part of me thinks: it's just not us.  I really don't know what to do!"

Looking at the mirror
he was just not sure of the
rollkneck sweater 

I often wonder why there are disputes at work.  Sure some are about principle, but and over time my feeling is not many are.  I have gradually come to the conclusion that there are three main sources:

• People are over-challenged and panicking.  Response: attack!
• People are under-challenged and bored.  Response: attack!
• People are responding to being attacked (now or in the past).

Read up on Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi and flow to see one source of these ideas

Perhaps each of these is allowed to continue because of a lack of leadership.  I know many leaders who become demotivated and dissaffected by constant competitive arguing among senior colleagues.

Bored professionals creating and becoming absorbed by arguments and personal drama!  That's one way to up the level of personal challenge!

Perhaps it's not the source though.  Perhaps I am being too cynical.

Over the years I have begun also to realise that when I am helping organisations that don't have argument issues, the rows are still there.   They are just inside the head of the MD, rather like the character quoted at the top of this blog.  No-one to argue with?  Argue with yourself!

If you recognise this kind of internal dialogue inside yourself you are recognising my point too.

As a coach I have learned to treat statements about "parts" seriously and found it to be a very useful approach.  What I mean is:  treat it as real evidence about how the client works on the inside.

Professor Robert Winston's "The Human Mind" surveys fascinating material on multiple personality, revealing it is within all of us not just those with psychosis!  Epilepsy sufferers, are sometimes treated by having the connection between the two halves of the brain severed, to prevent the fit spreading.  Careful experiments afterwards found completely different personality expressions living in each part of the brain.  Each part would give a different answer to a series of questions and be oblivious to the answers given by the other half.  For example, one part wanted to be a pilot, the other a lawyer!  Read up on alien hand syndrome - genuine problem not just an Michael Caine horror movie!

If you are interested to follow through on coaching resources, I recommend Virginia Satir.  You can find some great stuff from her on YouTube and plenty of literature.

The coaching point is to realise that this is indeed true and these "parts" are genuine, fully thought out, different attitudes or personalities.  Just like an argument with two different directors, fully understanding the purpose and source of each internal "Part's" opinion is a good way to start trying to resolve the differences.  You may find this a little hard to believe, but just think back to the last time you were truly stuck on a decision.  You will probably find, there were two (at least) opposing forces slugging it out inside you, leaving you unable to move forwards.

So, what's my point?   Where there is lasting disagreement there is energy being wasted, and the organisation will be prevented from achieving its full potential.  Disagreement on strategy among leadership is particularly damaging. 

The same is true for the individual.  Internal debate can be useful, but more often it is debilitating and demotivating, and gets in the way of both personal success and happiness. 

I look out for incongruence like this and help get it resolved.
Resolution usually leads to an improvement in organisation and personal performance, and the chances of success rise.

If not a game of two halves, it is a game of at least two Parts!  The real messages here to business leaders reading this: 

1. Check your arguments.  Are those with others because you are anxious or bored (or attacked by someone who is?)  
2. Check on the inside next.  Are your arguments still going on?  If this is true for you, it is also true for your team and perhaps it is worth working on your self-knowledge as much as you work on understanding your team.

Make sure your arguments are strategic - balanced, about principles, helpful.  Don't just argue because there is nothing better, or too much to do!

Lasting Happiness

The pursuit of happiness may not, for some, be an obvious focus of a business blog.  After all, the psychologists often refer to the constant lack of happiness and satisfaction as being a characteristic driving force of entrepreneurial spirits.  Equally, entrepreneurs are not known for failing to commit to an idea.  Indeed they often commit so well that their failures are legion and titanic.  Their chances of significance through action despite fears (see my previous post "insignificant") are rarely hindered.

Optimists outsell by 20+ times

For me, though, there is something powerful to learn from some of the traits of happiness.  You only need to read a bit of the research on it to realise that working on happiness can create resilience, enthusiasm, motivation; all great characteristics for the hard knocks world of business.  Dr Martin Seligman, psychologist and leader of the positive psychology approach, also points to the wellness benefits of lasting happiness.  I think it goes like this; just because you are relatively happy does not mean you will live longer, but on average happier people appear to lead longer lives.  There appears to be a strong impact of a positive mental state on health.  Shocker!


We all seek happiness for our clients.  We help them move away from problems, we help them gain advantage, we work hard to ensure they love the service and if it goes wrong deal with complaints positively and quickly.  Intuitively we work for the happiness of our clients.   The same advantages must therefore accrue to ourselves.  Another persuader about giving the present happiness debate serious consideration is this:  unless you know how to be happy, how can you truly bring happiness to those around you: clients, team, family and friends?  And why should any group be treated differently?


Seligman gives some great guidance in his book "Authentic Happiness", and on the linked website www.authentichappiness.com, on how to work on personal happiness, and unless you are ranking yourself right up there at a 10 as you read my note, its certainly worth having a look at this.

Here are some of my favourite personal tips:

1. Use dreaming to find your happiness cuesRemembering times when you were at your most happy can give you important clues specifically as to what it is that makes you happiest.  
2. Power and actionRange of freedom to act is relative, some have more, some less.  All of us have some range, but not all care to believe so or to use it.  Take your power, such as it is, and like Andy in "Shawshank Redemption": become proactive in your own interests.
3. Authenticity
   This is the last thing some of you will think of for happiness.  "What?  Be the real me?  You are joking!"  Fair enough.  We all have capacity to learn and grow.  What I mean here is that if you spend most of your time doing things that are not the real you, running a life that doesn't suit you, that very difference will be a strain.  Returning to the real you as much as you can, will raise your happiness levels.
4. Accept yourself
   Kind of related to 3 but not the same, this point is about acceptance and is very tough but thoroughly cathartic.  You are who and what you are and you are doing your best given your knowledge and circumstances.  You always have!  Sure you can learn, and you are learning.  Accept your past, your failures and successes, your physical and mental shape and STOP judging yourself so harshly.  Think of all the things you are unhappy about with yourself.  What a great deal of energy you spend on these.  Let go of them, and give yourself a break!  It won't stop you striving but it will allow you to choose to improve (or not) rather than it being an obligation.
5. Nurture your hopefulness
   This final thought is fundamentally connected to the idea of freedom of action, because hopefulness is such an enabling state of mind.  Hopefulness allows possibility.  Possibility creates motivation.  Motivation can lead to action.  Action creates outcomes.  Action is possibility into creation.  As you create, your freedom of action is increased.

I hope you find these interesting to ponder.  A little more detail on the dreaming point.  Here's how to do it as an end note to my blog.

Dreaming to find your happiness cues

Happiness is a surprising state.  Sometimes it sneaks up on us unexpectedly and we suddenly realise, "Wow, I had a great time today."  Then back to normal life!  


Pick three occasions like this and dream yourself back into them fully.  Go right back in your mind, and re-experience the whole thing; the colours, the people, the smells, the energy.  For each one, when you are done, write down (use a mindmap!) all the features you can recall and compare each statement.  Look for the common features.  Then check: are these normally present when you are at your happiest?  With luck you've found 3 or 4 attributes you are exhibiting, people or experiences that are present for you that are key to your personal happy state, and to look for and use in the future.


I'd love to hear some feedback on this rather creative and intuitive coaching tool.  When you have them it is simple enough to run through a mental checklist of other happier times and see if these items were also present.  If you can do it, it is now a matter of your choice as to whether you incorporate them (at least to some degree) other walks of your life.  Try it.  If it works even a little for you you will be encouraged to do it more and everyone you influence will benefit from your renewed and enriched contentment.

Insignificance

Looking around at the world, consciousness on some level appears to be innate; most living things interact, respond to feedback, have some level of awareness applied to a self and non-self.  Even the planet appears to have a sensitive feedback response system.   Yet when gazing at interstellar objects, the effects of awareness are hard to see.

A meteor has no thought for its trajectory, smashing into whatever lies in its pathway with unthinking force.  Some interactions are at full force and both objects forever changed, some are weak and not much moves.

unhindered potential

The nearest analogy to every day life I can think of is the moment you whack into an open cupboard door (standing up into it seems to be the worst).  Because you don't see the obstruction, there is no thought in your head to hold back the power and soften the blow.  You stand "through it" and the hit is immense, painful, dangerous; it sends you spinning.

People and ideas change us forever

Some people and ideas are like that too.  You probably only need to pause for a second to be able to think of a few people or ideas that sent you spinning on a new course.  Perhaps it was the ideas that those people brought to you.
These entanglements are significant for us.  They can be destructive of past ways, past structures, but even then there is a positivity to them, as they often help us break from things that have become stuck and release the next phase of our short lives.   Characterised by the strength and openness of the interaction, a willingness to speak freely and honestly, whether painful or not, and by strong emotion; whether they then stay with us or not, our lives are forever changed and at some level we are always connected through our histories.


Why are some people like this?   What is it about the entanglement that makes such a difference?

A colleague in our strategy team was with a couple of clients, talking about shared futures, about significant things.  She was a delighted suddenly to hear one say to the other "Ten years ago you sold x side of the business. You know it seems stupid that I have never said this, but why did you do that?"  Ten years of inhibition.  A "why" that was hidden but not lost.   Finally surfacing into the light it can be explored and answered and potential for change arises.  Who knows what happens next, but until that moment of disclosure, change was not possible.

There are many reasons why your "truths" stay hidden inside you.  Only you can know.

Hidden secrets sap energy

Sometimes you hide them from yourself - ignoring that nailed down box of secrets, not even pretending it's not down there - it's just so well hidden that you don't even see it yourself.

Sometimes you know there is something amiss, but it's a mess of feelings and pictures and really hard to put it into words.  It can feel overwhelming, at times, and some are overwhelmed with anxieties and frustrations almost "leaking" out, often over odd and small things.

With a sense of safety and acceptance, both of these stages can be worked through.  But even then, saying in words to yourself a deep and significant truth, that you are hiding from, is a hard thing to do.

Saying it out loud.  Now that's a toughie.  Even on your own in the car with the music right up!  Try it.

Saying it to the right people, without "losing it", in the right way?  No way!  Right?

The problem is, with hidden truths, unspoken fears and unframed anxieties, held fearfully or even unconsciously we lack significance.

Unlike the travelling meteor, arching freely across the skies, living with joy and potential, this process of inhibiting is contagious and all sorts of things are also held back.  Its like, because something has to be said but is locked in, many things get locked up with it, and not even the easy stuff can be said because that way leads to the locked box.

Think about it.  Are you conscious that your fears of disclosure or of pain hold back your power when you need it?   Rather than going for a goal ahead of your end line, bursting through the barrier with all the energy of a mile still to go, you slow up as you approach the key moment, all too conscious of the risks.  Literally all too self conscious so that you self-inhibit and take your power off at the moment it is needed?

Consciousness is such a wonderful energy, faculty, power.  Refined consciousness in humans is seen in many forms - and empathy is one of them, the appreciation for the feelings of others, care for how we affect them.

However, it can also hold back the real you.   Take some time this week and consider all your relating and your relationships, all your roles, all your goals.  Mentally mark up those where you are marking time.   What is it that you need to admit and forgive yourself for?  What needs to be expressed?  What inhibition must you now release to regain your power and move on with living?

My point in this blog is not to encourage a dangerous freedom, nor to a follow any particular polemic.  I have noticed in myself over the years that my desire to lead and to speak has been every day inhibited mainly by stuff which could be dealt with or which was plain nonsense when I worked it through and took the plunge.

My point therefore, is just to say that a life of greater significance is a choice that you have.   The connections may not seem obvious and logical, but by not exploring what is unexpressed and what seems at times inexpressible, are you choosing a less significant life?

It feels right here to finish by saying that when at my best, when I hit my stride, or my "line and length", I am rarely self-conscious.  I need my self-consciousness to point out risks, dangers and be wary of the needs of others.   I have to ensure self-consciousness is "on" for the right reasons, and to check, when it taps me on the shoulder, that it has spotted a genuine risk and not just a ghost.

Are you energised?

I am a great believer in leadership energy.  

A key aspect of leadership is taking the group forwards - whether it be in business, in sports, in other walks of life; it is the leaders who have the vision as to what is needed next and create the energy and motivation to get it done.

I like to think of leadership as the "job description" you write for yourself, rather than one you are given.  I have also heard it called the "worry work" by clients.  I guess we know what that means - the issues and ideas that need attention that you worry over until they are done - whether it is 3 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning.

This brings me to the theme of this blog - energy.

Your energy as a leader is essential to your community.  Often energy is shared by a number of people, but if the leaders' energy is low it is likely to affect things more significantly.  This is because energy can be contagious and "energising" for those around you.  If you are in charge, you will give the lead and even your energy level is shared by your team.

So how do you ensure, if you are doing the "worry work" and waking up at 3am with it, that it is not your anxiety that becomes shared?  How do you keep your own head clear and your confidence high in face of all of the barriers and risks you might face?

Here are some tips to keep you energised for the upturn in 2011


Physical fitness can help reduce anxiety


Physical discipline
Make sure you look after your heart and circulation.  The key areas to focus on are regular exercise leading to deep breathing, and good eating routines.

Even a brisk 40 minute walk each day will improve your clarity of thinking and energy.  It does this by driving more oxygen into the system, and creating positive hormones; both are beneficial for energy.  Over the longer term, cells can adapt to higher levels of exercise and improve energy production generally.

Pay attention to your eating times.  You should be able to notice that your energy gains or wanes depending on how and what you eat and drink.  Paying a little more attention to this will help you work out how to manage a gain rather than exhaustion.

Choose food that maximises your energy!

My own energy cycles through the day.  After 45 minutes of intense work, a short break is a great idea and if I follow this I am much more productive.   If I work without stopping, over days and weeks, I get constitutionally tired.  Constant unrelieved stress like this can be very bad for long term health.    If I start the day with exercise of some sort I am much clearer and more decisive and feel more positive regardless of what is thrown my way.




Choose to play to your strengths
Discipline over what you do during the day will also have a major impact on energy and productivity.  You can probably identify pretty easily those tasks/activities where:

• Your energy increases
• You lose a sense of time
• You feel fully absorbed
• You are challenged to use your experience and skill but not so much that you feel out of your depth
• It feels more like the real you

Honesty here is the hardest thing, because, in business in particular, sometimes tasks or roles that do the opposite of the above bullets seem to command status, power and higher pay.  No doubt you can identify parts of your role that you hate but just cannot bring yourself to give up.

The reality is (and I am sure with a bit of thought you will recognise this), that your impact will be far far greater by focusing on those activities that are of most value to the firm and at the same time give you the bulleted list above.  With a bit of thought I am sure you could adjust your focus towards energising tasks and you will see the benefits provided the tasks that you let go of are capable of being taken up by a colleague (if indeed they are really needed).

For those chores that cannot be delegated or shared, adapting the way you approach them (e.g. what you think about while you do them, or what environment you create to do them in) will bring you back into a higher energy and more productive mode .  Even chores can be made more pleasurable with a bit of thought.

Find your top five strengths from the stengths survey on http://www.authentichappiness.com/ and then think about using them when you are engaged in your least favoured tasks.  You may well see improvements.

None of these suggestions will of themselves help you deal with the most significant challenges.  However, a better habit of energy, over time, can build your love of life and your energy reserve ready for the times of higher challenge.  Perhaps this will be just enough and certainly your colleagues and family will appreciate the reduced anxiety and increased chillout factor.

A final warning

Watch out for over-heating your team!

Too much energy can be overwhelming!  Sometimes those you meet who are on a constant high are actually rather tiring to be around.  That's certainly true of me at times - I can be pretty intense.  What I have found to be of use is to pay much closer attention to those I am with and manage my energy accordingly.  It may sound weird, but it is certainly possible first to match the energy of your group.  Do this well and you will synchronise with them.  Then when you raise your energy the group will often follow you up!  It takes a bit of practice, but it definitely works.

Keep energised and enjoy your R&R, and your whole team will reap the benefits.

Do you love your work too much?

I have been reflecting on the toughest issues to influence as a business coach.   Common barriers affecting high flyers include; insufficient strategy, fear of action, poor decision making, low self-confidence, beliefs that do not support success.  However, each of these is relatively easy to spot and there are good ways to work on them to get an impact.

Perhaps the hardest to deal with is loving work too much - where positive intentions collide and the appearance of success in every area distracts the executive from realising there is greater potential entirely missing from the picture.  The specific issue is personal success combining with highly positive attitudes to a range of tasks and not seeing what is not achieved but could be with a different approach.

Here is your high flying CEO; Monday morning.  She picks up the weekly priority list; done the night before (good start).

1.  Read final documents and prepare for final meeting for an acquisition by a top client, really me, love the technical detail and cut and thrust of negotiation, big money on it, tick

2. Cashflow nearing overdraft limits, read partner debt lists and do the rounds with the weaker guys, getting their actions going to bring in some cash, helps the firm, uses my courage and persuasion skills to the full, tick

3. Strategic review preparation; need to read Gladwell's book, and review the market research, talk to the board about the key issues and prepare the ground for Thursdays strategy session.  My experience counts, great fun and vital for our future, tick

4. New client presentation, best fun, I'm really good at it, need to show I can still top the new business chart, tick

5. Property issues to be addressed, where will we go next at the fast growing Manchester office, complex negotiations, lots riding on it, I have vital views on how the practice offices should locate and look, tick

6. Our plans are to double with acquisitions, I have no likely firms in the viewer, need to identify partner to help target and start the process, must be me as I have clear views on the ideal target, tick.

7. Senior and capable colleague having a wobble, offers in from competitor, personal persuasion needed!  Tick.

Great at everything, loving all of it; sound familiar?  It's all good for the firm so what's the issue?

I am reminded of the scene in Band of Brothers - the episode was "the Breaking Point", the scene is the attack on the town of Foy, breaking out after the siege of Bastogne.  Colonel Winter's men are led by Lieutenant Dike, who makes mistakes, leading to casualties and a faltering attack.  Winters had risen to lead his company, loved his men, was a great field leader.  Seeing the problems he rushes forward, and is harshly called back by his commander.  "Winters, get back here, your place is on the line, not in the attack!"  Winters replaces Dike with Spiers in the heat of action and the attack goes in successfully.

Of course Winters could have led in the attack.  But his commander knew only Winters had the experience of his men and battle to manage the overall campaign and unfolding situation.  If distracted by close action, or worse taken out by chance or failure, the whole campaign might fail.

The point of experience is constantly to challenge yourself to have the greatest impact and focus.  Who is forcing you to take a step back and stay focussed on a simple list of your greatest strengths?  My own coach is fond of encouraging an annual "garage sale" of tasks.  Half must go - and each year the half on the fire sale are things that are more impactful than the last year's list.

What are the consequences of giving in to all the pleasures of their high performance ability?

What is the practice or firm missing that it could have by now, but for their distraction?

Why is there no succession of tasks that should not be top of their list, but do need high skill?

What growth could have been achieved had they focussed on increasing activity around their top three skills and replacing resources for the remaining tasks?

Wise CEO's and partners seek to surround themselves with people cleverer than they are.

The hardest thing to get people to realise is that when there appears to be nothing wrong, it is their great capability that might be the biggest barrier to their potential.

Do you love your work too much?  Are you too good to benefit from coaching?