January 18

Success: The trouble with goals…

Success: The trouble with goals…

This time of year is very much focused around goals, both business (for those of you focused on January to December) and personal. The New Year traditionally heralds in aspirations to tackle significant business challenges (grow revenue, develop new products, close opportunity etc.) or to deliver on individual aspiration (for example that promotion or improved health and fitness). However most people don’t consider some key elements that will affect if they will succeed against these goals, or not.

December 23

2015 – How successful were you; marks out of 10?

2015 – How successful were you; marks out of 10?

At the start of this year, I wrote a post about New Year’s resolutions and recommended that people shouldn’t make any. The reasons for this were pretty simple:

•Most people make resolutions because they feel they “ought” to
•If you needed to change your life, the time of year you set the goal is irrelevant

December 11

Lessons in life from LinkedIn

Lessons in life from LinkedIn

The two questions I am most often asked:
1.Where do I get the inspiration from, to post the articles that I write?, and
2.In a very busy life, where do I find the time to write?

These are great questions, as they are an opportunity for me to share some of my personal thoughts from a coaching perspective.

December 11

Success – ditch the top 10 lists

Success – ditch the top 10 lists

Have you noticed how many posts there are about the attributes of successful leaders and business people there are on social media? You’ll not be surprised to hear that there are huge numbers. They are often well written and accurate observations of how people have launched businesses, overcome setbacks, inspired others etc. in just about every field of human endeavour that you can think about.

November 12

Learning to succeed

Learning to succeed

Over the summer I was at a business network event and met someone who I will call Ed. He was very young, a little disheveled and looked like he had just got out of bed (his hair was all over the place, his shirt was un-ironed and hanging out). He was clearly out of his comfort zone and seemed quite overawed by the event.

October 15

Success: Relativity and the wisdom of Einstein

Success: Relativity and the wisdom of Einstein

Einstein gave his first lectures on general relativity, in Berlin, in November 2015. This was a seminal piece of work that centered upon gravitational attraction and how mass warps space time. This work led to all kinds of interesting predictions, such as the existence of black holes. In fact some of Einstein’s predictions have still to be verified experimentally, such as the existence of gravitational waves, but is still held in high regard as a theory that has continued to revolutionise our world view.

Einstein has also been credited with some superb social observations that are still as relevant today, as they were when he originally made them.

September 30

Are you headed for Success or Extinction?

Are you headed for Success or Extinction?

I had an interesting conversation with a business associate this week. They were relaying a story about an organisation that was struggling to deal with an issue that has materialised in their business. As it happened, I had drafted this post, and the conversation turned out to be the perfect illustration for what I was thinking.

September 16

Succeed tomorrow: The one thing you need to do today.

Succeed tomorrow: The one thing you need to do today.

A recent radio advertisement suggesting that you might be able to go back and change things that you regretted in the past, caught my attention:

  • un-booking that holiday from Hell.
  • Not going to the restaurant where you had that dreadful meal.
  • Repeating that conversation with you boss, without saying what you did.
  • Asking out that person at school that you fancied, but never quite plucked up the courage to do. Or whatever…

Going back to a past event and applying the wisdom that you know now is just such a fabulous idea.

August 7

Success: How will you be remembered?

Success: How will you be remembered?

Pick up any well-known Business Publication or look at any popular business blogging sites and you will find literally hundreds of articles about the ‘factors’ that make people successful. These are generally presented as new insights or thinking intended to help people to achieve more in their careers. How much of this thinking is actually new?