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You are here: Home / Archives for game changing

game changing

February 27, 2015 by Christine

Frustrated With Your Results? Check Out This Simple Mind Shift!

The Power of Choice

Shining your light often means digging deep into yourself and pushing past your barriers. Even when you think these barriers are outside you.

What do I mean?

Let’s look at three things I’ve heard people say this week:

  • “The market is just that way right now; what am I supposed to do?”
  • “Our Managing Partner is completely closed-minded. So, I just can’t influence him.”
  • “I just can’t sell. I wish I enjoyed it like you do. But I don’t, which means I’m always struggling to get business.”

These things were said by super-bright people, all of whom have big ambitions and big lights to shine, all of whom were frustrated about not making progress. Each of them believed they were relatively powerless to change things.

Now, I’m not saying that markets can’t be unpredictable, or that senior bosses aren’t sometime intransigent, or that some skills aren’t a ballsache to master.

What I am saying, however, is that, at every juncture in life, we have a choice about how we will deal with things.

Even when at first it might seem like we don’t.

Like Mandy Lehto says, inertia is an epidemic. It’s quite easy to sleepwalk through life at the relative mercy of your circumstances. Senior leaders and business owners are not immune.

Steve Chandler calls this way of being, the way of the victim. And he contrasts it to the way of the owner.

An owner is someone who owns their own spirit, energy and response in any situation.

A victim on the other hand see that forces beyond them dictate the direction of their life and the level of their happiness.

Owners use life. They are proactive. They come from a place of intention. They learn even from tragedies and mistakes. They allow life’s challenges to strengthen and build them. They choose what they’ll do – even if that sometimes means doing things they don’t like.

Victims infer that life uses them. You may hear them say things like “that’s life” or “life is unfair” in the process disempowering themselves even further than they already are. They do things that they feel obliged to do. There’s a lot of “shoulding”.

The vital difference is where they see the power lying for themselves and their lives.

Victims feel trapped by their personalities. Owners understand that, beyond their small egos they have limitless resource. They don’t say, “I can’t make this happen” like a victim would. They ask themselves:

“Who do I need to be to make this happen?”

And so they find the power within and beyond them to push through.

Of course, we can all morph from one state to the other sometimes, depending on what’s going on and how good our energy is.

Also, business and corporate cultures often have implicit invitations for you to play victim. Because for all their hype about change and transformation, they’re mostly invested in maintaining the status quo.

Watch that!

The key thing is always to remember that you have choice. Deciding to be an owner isn’t something you have to work at. You can make that choice at any time; in any moment.

When my examples switched their mindset from victim to owner, the results were profound:

  • “The market is presenting some challenging opportunities that I’m going to figure out and get on top of.”
  • “Knowing that my boss is that kind of guy, I need to show up differently in my relationship and conversations with him, so that I can serve him better.”
  • “I’ve decided that I’m going to learn to love selling – even if it kills me!”

You have a choice about how you turn up to life. On what you’ll focus attention. And who you’ll be in the face of this or that opportunity.

As you decide to get your beautiful bright light out into the world, how will you choose to turn up? Who will you decide to be?

Filed Under: Inner work, Self Development, Success Tagged With: game changing

October 22, 2014 by Christine

What I Got From Creating My Blog (and Why I’m Closing It Anyway)

STOP!It was a blast.

While, five years ago, I still had a traditional site here supporting a traditional consulting business, it felt like a liberation to go off and create a somewhat more contrarian offering called A Different Kind of Work.

But today, as I unveil the fundamental recreation of my core business here, I’m pulling the curtain down on it.

Look, it was a lot of fun and I got a heck of a lot from it:

I got some clients from it which, after all, was a core reason for creating it.

I made some great connections – either through the blog itself, or from its social media outposts.

It totally forced me to upskill myself in the geek technical skills department.

And the writing I did there, not only allowed me to produce some great pillar posts, it also enabled me to learn a whole lot about myself. As a coach. As a writer. As a person.

Kill your darlings

But here’s the thing…

I think there comes a point for many creations when they’re done.

I could plow on with it. I’ve tried to. ADKoW has been a darling of mine. But as Stephen King and others have said about writing, you have to know when to kill your darlings.

And I’m pretty through with it.

Plus, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about things at a deep level this year. And while so much of what I wrote on ADKoW was rule-breaking in it’s own way, it was all delivered in a kind of “tips and techniques” kind of way. And I no longer believe that the kind of approach cuts it any more.

That’s because I am starting to see that people and their businesses don’t need more tips. They are swamped with tips. Just look at the blog posts on any of the big business or personal development sites. There’s no end of suggestions on how to hack just about anything.

Consider too the way that most coaches and consulting companies work with their clients. There’s just an overwhelming mass of advice, information, tools and solutions out there.

What I’m starting more and more to get is that people come with the ability to solve their own problems. And that my job is increasingly is to help people see beyond the superficial. To dig deep. To understand their own fundamental psychology and indeed how everything actually works.

To take stuff OFF of people’s minds not add to it.

So that they can be more effortlessly themselves in whatever it is they’re doing.

Core business

But there was something about the essence of ADKoW that I don’t want to lose. I loved the freedom I felt it gave me to say what I wanted, without having to imagine that I needed to be careful of offending any corporate clients or bill payers.

I loved its ability to put stuff out there that was a little unorthodox.

There was – is – an audience for what’s different, edgy and contrarian in business. People often gave me the feedback about ADKoW that, in a world of noise and bollocks, it was refreshingly different.

So that’s not going to disappear. But what I have decided to do is channel that whole vibe through everything we do here.

Day to day

What that means is that, day to day we’re helping business people get clear about what they want to achieve and why they want to achieve it.

Then, helping them – basically – get out of their own way as they set about trying to deliver on their goals. With a clear mindset, and a good understanding about the real source of things like creativity, innovation, resourcefulness, and resilience, great performance becomes a lot less like hard work. And the results speak for themselves.

Feel free to read more about the specific service offerings that the business delivers by browsing through some of the pages on the site.

Honestly? It’s kind of what we’ve always done had we not been – for whatever reason – so apologetic about it.

Bigger picture

Underpinning all that we do we have a piece of emergent thinking which we’re calling Keeping It Real. It’s brand new and we imagine that we’ll use this philosophy as the foundation for a variety of forthcoming programs and workshops. You can see more about Keeping It Real here.

Emerging clarity

So, there’s a big creative shift going on here and, frankly, who knows what that will mean for websites or web presence in the future.

For now, however, what I’m clear about is that ADKoW has served its purpose and that we’ve reinvented things back here “mothership”.

And we’d love it if you’d come along with us for the ride as stuff develops.

So, be sure to give us your email address here and we’ll share content and news with you as we go along.

Filed Under: Change, Entrepreneurship Tagged With: authenticity, entrepreneurship, experimenting, game changing

July 8, 2013 by Christine

What Andy Murray Can Teach Start-Ups About Success

The message for Andy Murray has always been clearWhat Brit wasn’t proud of Andy Murray yesterday?

He’d come back from being the runner-up against Federer in the same tie last year and, not only did he beat the world’s number one, Novak Djokovic, he did it in 3 sets and put an estimated £1.6m in his bank account as a result.

Not too shabby, eh?

And, if you’re either just starting a new business or are aspiring to do so, here are some lessons I think his example offers:

Own your ambition

Murray was playing tennis from about the age of three. Ten years ago he won the US Boys’ Title. After which he said: “I think I have got a chance of going all the way in tennis and that’s what I want to do.”

So, he’s had ambition from the get go, and if you’re starting out in business, or have already, learn from his example.
What would you love to achieve? What would it mean to you to achieve it?

Get a great team around you

Murray was doing okay. By 2006 he’d succeeded Tim Henman as the most successful British player, and he’d won some tournaments, including the San Jose title.

But in truth he was neither Mr Muscles, Mr Calm or even Mr Likeable. Nor was he winning the big name titles he was hungry for.

Late December 2011, ending his fifth year in a row as world number 4, he hired Ivan Lendl as his coach. Alongside Lendl, he has Jez Green, his fitness coach, and Dani Vallverdu, his hitting partner. Working with them, he has made adjustments to his fitness regime and his game. Adjustments that have allowed him over time to develop his strength and his composure. And his results.

Meanwhile his PR people, Louise Irving and Matt Gentry, have been helping him get the word out on who he is in a different way.

And his mother Judy, who in the beginning taught Murray how to play, and girlfriend Kim are also never far away.

As the leader of a start-up, it’s often tempting to bootstrap and invest as little as possible in its support and development. But is that the right move?

Sure, it might be if you just want to do okay. But if you don’t want to leave success to chance, think about who else you need to surround yourself with.

Who is going to teach you things beyond what you can do right now in a way you can leverage for results? What other talent do you need to invest in?

Understand and embrace your competition

To win Wimbledon, Murray had to take on a number of other excellent players, including the world’s number one. In fact over the years he’ll have been watching how they play in order that he can match and indeed beat them.

There’s sometimes a concern in business that competition is bad. But it’s not. It’s good. It shows you there’s a market for what you’re doing. Imagine Murray was as good as he is and yet no-one else was playing?!

So, don’t be afraid or your competition. In fact, go find who and what it is, and what’s great about it. What are they doing that’s making people buy them? Then figure their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Things you can exploit and develop. Then, go do it.

Don’t let disadvantage or hard times psyche you out

Murray was a child at school at the time of the Dunblane massacre, managing to hide as sixteen other kids were killed. And if that’s not big enough shit to deal with, his parents divorced when he was young. When he hit his glass ceiling in 2011, he could have – and may have – blamed it on any number of things. But he didn’t. He lived in the present, took a day at a time, and built himself and his strength.

I sometimes hear from small business owners who aren’t doing so well or are having a bit of a wobble that “it’s alright for others” whom they imagine to have had privileged backgrounds or cushy upbringings. But Murray proves that bad things can happen to you and that you can still win through.

So, if you’re talking yourself down because life has been cruel, change your tack.

The past is the past. You can do nothing with it. But you do have today. Use it.

Slow down to speed up

It was wonderful to watch Andy play yesterday. There were times when Murray was ahead and yet Djokovic looked like he could get back in the game, and where Murray needed to be sure to win. He could have, on serving and returning, acted quickly and tried to close the game down. Instead he slowed things down.

He took time to gather himself around his service. Played long volleys.

Being patient, he won the game.

There’s a temptation too in business to do things quickly. To close the sale. Agree the deal. But sometimes moving too quickly means we end up with sub-optimal results. The design that would have been just that bit better had we given it another few days. The client who doesn’t really match our brand values and who sucks our time or erodes our profits.

Quieten your mind

This has got to be the single biggest improvement I’ve seen Murray make over the last year. A year ago, Federer had him rattled, and didn’t we know it. He was grumpy out there on Centre Court. You could almost see him beating himself up as he made one unforced error after another.

Yesterday, he was so much more composed.

Sure, he was losing points. But I had the sense that he wasn’t making anything of that. So, he was just losing points. He was not – at least viewed from the outside – interpreting from that that he was a loser. And, then, turning himself into a loser.

He lost points, yet kept going. His mind seemed more quiet and he stayed in the flow of the game.

In business, it’s easy to get rattled if things go wrong. Especially if we’ve spent a lot of time learning the skills, or developing the competence to be able to do whatever. But skills and competence are only part of the picture. The ultimate business success game is won or lost in your mind.

What does Andy Murray teach you?

So, those are the things that occurred to me.

But how about you? What does Murray teach you about running your own firm? And how will you implement it?

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship Tagged With: entrepreneurship, game changing

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