The Power of Connection
Business today has come to rely on technology for so much, but we can’t rely on it for everything. Technology helps streamline and make easier sharing and collaboration of data, but it doesn’t replace the emotional connection of conversation. Beyoncé, Oprah and The Rolling Stones recognise the importance of connection. Whilst technology can distribute their music and message to a global audience, these performers recognise nothing beats the experience of a live concert to create connection. It binds those present. It creates community and a shared experience that is multi-sensory and dimensional. Feeling connected and part of a community via …
What’s changed for you?
The last few months have required stepping out the box and getting creative. New and existing clients and connections have reached out with a view to sourcing programs, ideas or tools to help support their teams both in the transition to work from home, and to keep them engaged and productive as we move back into the workplace. Some of the ideas I’ve pitched to clients didn’t fly, but others have and have expanded, not just what my team and I can offer clients, but have ripped apart any limiting pre-conceptions about how we serve our clients and community. The …
New Normal
Interesting perspective in this Forbes article. In my twenty plus years as a corporate speaker trainer and educator, I have seen a lot of trends. Companies spending millions of dollars on customised solutions that do not achieve the financial benefits promised in the business cases sold to boards and executives. A colleague of mine, Dave (thanks Dave!) once told me, people want the “ab-cruncher” solution to their problems. In a time poor world, individuals and organisations want the outcome of the ab-cruncher, the six pack wash board stomach, but many aren’t always prepared to make the time, or put in …
Don’t be Scared!
So many of people are afraid…. they are afraid of making mistakes! In business and in life we have long been conditioned not to make mistakes. That making a mistake is bad. But what if we instead of viewing them as mistakes, we viewed them instead as learnings, I know that metaphor has been around for a long time, that’s “there’s no such thing as failure, it’s simply learnings. Thomas Edison when asked about his failed attempts at perfecting the light globes has been said to have answered that he did not fail, that in fact he had merely identified …
Change is Inevitable
We can either go with the flow or swim against the tide. As we start moving back to what will become our new “normal”, you can put your head in the sand hoping things will look like the way they were. The saying is it takes 21 days to create a habit and 21 days to break one. Enforced lock down forced teams to create new habits. Some of them good, some of them bad and some….well time will tell. What happens next matters. As staff return to work, managing engaged and connection, in person virtually or blended is going …
The right place at the right time.
Often clients have staff who participate in several programs with similar content. With so much information available today, we can’t possibly retain everything. Sometimes we need to hear something two or three times before we make the connection to how it can help or perhaps the first time they heard it, they didn’t have a need and now they do. It’s not that they don’t pay attention, it’s just there’s so much for all of us to sort through, often what’s important isn’t obvious, there are no red flags waving ‘Hey, you need to remember me’. Sometimes we need to …
You’ll always find someone on the phone at parties
In 1978, Jona Lewie released a song called You’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties! I think today, it that song would be You’ll always find people on the phone at parties! I went to a friend’s house recently to connect with someone who was visiting for a couple of weeks from overseas. There were about 15 people there when I arrived, sitting around, chatting, having a few drinks and eating some snacks. During the evening, I was totally surprised by the number of people who, when pings sounded from phones, reached into their handbag or their pocket …
Demand vs Demanding
Sometimes we over complicate things. I see it when I work with clients. They spend hours trying to come up with a complicated formula to complete a calculation when all it needs is a hyperlink to a cell containing the result they need. Sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. A reply all instead of a reply to just the sender. All of this takes time and energy. A quick check of email can end up taking 45 minutes out of a day responding to questions and enquiries that often don’t progress your agenda which can leave …
Don’t over complicate things
A client reached out to me wanting to discuss a formula to feed information from one worksheet to another. It should be “easy” (for me) they said, but they had struggled for two years to find an answer before reaching out. Once I understood what they needed, they really didn’t need a complicated formula, in fact they just needed to combine some copying and pasting techniques to cross check data, something most users of Excel could do if they knew the process. Sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. Next time you think a complicated formula is …
What’s next?
I was recently asked where I think technology is going in the future as it relates to productivity. What’s the next BIG thing? For many, the buzz is around AI (artificial intelligence), my thoughts, however, are closer to home. Rather than adding MORE stuff, in my opinion, the greatest gains are to be made in increasing productivity and efficiency with the things we use every day. When we focus on adding more stuff, all we do is add another layer of complexity. With more to learn, interpret and integrate into our already stretched activities and workload. Adding more without strategy …
