We cannot change our lives if we persist in doing or accepting largely the same and hoping for a remarkably different and improved result.
We cannot change our lives if we persist in thinking or talking about making changes but not doing what must be done.
Sustainable change and improvement requires BOTH thinking differently and doing faster.
Whether it is in your business or personal life, what are you thinking and doing now that will dramatically improve your conditions in 12 months time?
Why are you feeling overwhelmed?
Are you actually overwhelmed by your own choices or those of others?
What do you have control and influence over, and what must you accept you don’t have neither control or influence over?
My observation is that a great many people are ending the year having thought long and hard about that “bargain” in your personal and workplace relationships.
New year promises are irrelevant unless there is absolute accountability and a reward (holiday, house move, career bonus etc.) that accompanies any proposed change.
Clients want confidence that what both of you agree must happen can realistically happen in their desired time frame. Yet 75% of professional advisers in my experience create a lack of confidence in their clients, consciously or subconsciously, with their weak language (opaque value, questionable credibility, fear of losing the sale, accepting “I’ll get back to you” follow-up responses).
In 9 out of 10 cases when confronted the adviser thinks it is the client, who is the problem (procrastinating), not their own shortcomings!
If you are seeing a pattern of delays right now in your sales pipeline, and want to dramatically improve, start by looking at your own language and behaviour. Would it encourage you to make a decision now or wait and see?
If you continually protest at the absence of time, money or fairness in your relationships with others, you’d help yourself by asking “why?” before venting on others if you really want improvement.
I observe some people really don’t want to improve their situation but they do want others to feel and be impacted negatively, by their pain. As if their life will be immediately better by seeing others subjected to the strain they are feeling. What I term the “doom loop”.
You have two choices, understand the “cause” of your frustration and get expert help if you cannot fix it in 30 days or remain in a never-ending spin cycle. It is your choice.
Do you sense that the collaboration you are discussing with a potential partner has turned into you bending over backwards, and your relationships, to conform to their highly rigid policies, processes and procedures? If so, you are almost certainly looking at a “partnership in failure” much as you might convince yourself of the exact opposite or the potential rewards on offer. Move on.
If your sole contribution is for the audience to see your eyes flickering and your lips moving but not to hear any ideas of value that demonstrably improve, not harm, the situation – keep quiet!
If you doubt this wisdom, listen to the political points scoring and whining at the actions of political leaders but the lack of substantive alternatives.
Boxing has a referee, to not only protect the participants but the interests of the judges, audience, sponsors, broadcasters and so on.
Webinars have a moderator, to do the same.
When the moderator fails to intervene to stop a “talking head” from sucking all the oxygen out of the room, hitting the “leave” or “knock-out” button, as I call it, is the listener’s most satisfying option.
If your metric for keeping your advisory clients happy is the production of a report that takes 4 weeks post-consultation, your clients are either excessively tolerant or what you have to report is really not very important.
Why cannot you provide your client a high-level summary in 48 hours or less? After all 80% of a client’s need for expert insights are almost certainly met in your summary, not the full-blown report.
I find that the government, arts and education sectors are the least likely to grasp that “speed” is an equally important determinant of a client’s success as “quality”. Call it the triumph of bureaucracy over success.
If you cannot accomplish the key business priorities within a 40 hour week, there is either something wrong with the way you are doing the role or the role is poorly designed. Which is it?
We are cutting back our in-person interactions where we have potential to pass on knowingly or unwittingly the virus to our more vulnerable family, friends and others in our local communities. That is a healthy position to take for a low-frequency, high impact risk such as coronavirus.
Where we remain hunkered down, intimidated or “awaiting the all clear” in our businesses, for many of us that is an unhealthy position. Our competitors are assertively moving forward, creating new ways to adapt to the present and future. Convincing ourselves we cannot build relationships, attract prospective buyers without physically being in front of them or make the investment in our own self-development, is really an act of self-denial, and self-harm.
