ATTENTION DECODED

  *photo by J.O "Teamwork makes the dream work!" If your reaction to this mantra is: "Oh great...that's helpful....Considering MY team consists of mostly ME" You are my target audience for this post. Even if you have a team... If you are ultimately the decision maker, you may still find yourself feeling like the fate of your business rests solely on your shoulders. And it's true... the final decisions you make are the ones that determine end results. So the trick is making the decision making process a methodical one. Even perhaps an uncomfortable and frustrating one... Let's tell the truth about making the BEST decision: The process is brutal! Some of the best products that hit the market start at a much different place than what they look like in the end. How does a perfect solution or product get to that point? The answer: A strict adherence to consulting multiple perspectives. The best solutions are usually the result of a melding of ideas that...

(self-talk is important.  On your road to being great at communication don't forget to acknowledge yourself too!) Dear Self, You don't have to worry about someone "taking our place". As long as we keep welcoming challenges and looking for problems to solve we almost can't go wrong. There are not many other people willing to do that. You are a hero for always trying to improve yourself.  Don't compare us to other people. Compare us to our-self and how much we learned and grew since last year. In fact take it easy on us from time to time! No one is perfect. We can't control everything ALL the time. Let's stick to us being the change we want to see in our field and in our world. We can control that. I know our best is good enough. I think the trick is sticking to what we are best at and surrounding ourselves with people who can help us with the rest. Stop talking about how "we are not getting any younger" Who is ?! I know, I know......

The rules of competition fade when the competition gets personal . Competition yields the best results when people compete to deliver a fair deal to the consumer. A win-win. This is true because ultimately the consumer makes the rules so long as they have options when choosing products and services. And now more than ever... they do. The goal should always be to create a win-win situation for you and your consumer. Showing the customer a clear win-win scenario by being your partner will give you the best odds for being "picked". With that in mind, you must constantly gauge what is going on in a situation to determine what tactics should be implemented to ensure everyone involved wins. You should always ask yourself: "what tactics should I use in this situation to be picked?" "What are the facts concerning resources and demand for those resources.?" The fewer the resources, the more cooperation you want to display. The more abundant the resources, th...

In the professional world... "Us against them" situations rarely start out that way. Most of the situations we find ourselves in have a goal of mutual success. A win-win result is always better for the longevity of business than its arch enemy,the lopsided "lose-win" situation.  And mutual success is something we achieve through equal effort and cooperation. "Us" makes its division into "us against them" when two or more parties assume different or contradictory viewpoints about the same situation.  At this point, communication becomes a challenge and sometimes stops all together. "us against them" is a viewpoint issue. often occurring when we make assumptions about the cause of another persons actions. The division of teams, deals, corporations and any relationship rarely occur because of one isolated incident. More often, "us against them" as a perspective develops from a slow unwinding where a single loose thre...

It is not possible to zoom though life as a human with out encountering one or some of these habits. Moderately engaging in these habits is not likely to send your career spiraling... But it is important to recognize bad habits and minimize them as much as possible.   Habits that threaten success:  Not Listening:  Not listening to the concerns and direction of other people is career suicide. No one is "so good" that they don't need "anyone else" to be successful. Have you ever heard a person mid- rant say: "I don't need anyone I only depend on me"? What an unfortunate mindset... Unless you are you are the only consumer of your product you will always need other people.   Not Listening is where so many people drop the ball and it is a terrible habit. Proving you have listened is the easiest way to build trust and respect.  Confirm what a person tells you by repeating what they said in an effort to make su...

There are all kinds of things that make other people happy. Happy people are happy to tell you what makes them happy if you ask. But if you find yourself looking at the things that make other people happy in the hopes they will infect you with the same bliss… You may find that you are immune to their particular strain of happiness. Do you want to know why they say: “and just when I stopped looking for happiness I found it”.? They say that because adding and looking for something else almost never works. Happiness happens when we focus less on what we need to add to make us happy… Happiness is a side effect. A positive side effect that happens by eliminating what we know for sure does not make us happy. Spatially eliminating things and people who hurt us. Making values based decision that YOU are more important. Subtract negative things from your life ... Don’t add things to fix a lack of happiness. Psychologically it has been proven ...

If you find yourself at the top of your game or really hitting a good stride... You will need a way to be your own source of sustainability. The more success you achieve the less resources you will find on how to stay there. Resources are slim because few people have figured out how to get to the top, much less have be able to stay there. Reaching and staying at the top of your game requires some honesty about what staying power is. People at the top and those who want to be there all eventually wonder: How is it possible to keep up with this good pace without eventually losing momentum? In life it seems inevitable that if we find ourselves in a peak that a valley is sure to follow along and bring us back down. Why is that an almost universal premonition? Conditioning.   We are conditioned by every experience and observation that has left an impression on us. This behaviorally based motto of: "nothing lasts forever". A motto that gets us through difficult times by ...