The Leadership Academy: leadership program

Showing posts with label leadership program. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Are Your People Living Your Organization's Mission?

The preeminent responsibility of leadership in any municipality, governmental agency, industrial company or business organization is to craft a crystal clear vision and mission that is subsequently lived out each and every business day.

While your organization’s mission statement may be elegantly framed and bear a prominent placement on a wall in the executive office suite … Do the people in your organization actually understand what the organizational mission is? And do they know how to “live” it out on a daily basis?

Simply stated, do they understand their role in the mission and how to implement it?

Take a moment to carefully consider the following mission statement from a top Fortune 100 company:

Conoco-Phillips (a leading international petroleum company)

Mission: “As one of the largest publically held energy companies, our mission is to increase supplies to consumers through actions and investments that simultaneously build value for our shareholders.”

If you were an employee of Conoco-Phillips, you would no doubt find yourself hard pressed to understand in your specific job role “how” you personally make a valuable contribution toward the achievement and fulfillment of the company’s mission.

More than likely, you are going to have the distinct impression that your job is nothing more than to make money for the shareholders. So much for answering the question of every employee on the payroll… “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM)

As an employee, you might also be asking what “actions” am I supposed to take?

In stark contrast, consider the straight forward mission statement of Liberty Tax Service which is experiencing rapid growth and fully expects to overtake H&R Block as the #1 U.S. tax service by the year 2020.

Mission: “Set the standard. Improve every day. Have some fun.”

As an employee, understanding how you directly contribute to the fulfillment of the Liberty Tax mission, company success and personal success is fairly easy to grasp:

Set the standard. Know what you as an individual employee are capable of doing.

Improve every day. Continue to learn and improve, then set your own performance expectations a little higher every day.

Have some fun. Enjoy your work and the people that you work with.

It is certainly not difficult to understand which organization is going to have happier workers that are more engaged and more productive, while experiencing increased employee loyalty and retention.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of organizations worldwide regardless of their business classification or size, invariably craft mission statements that are wordy, vague, complex or overly ingratiating.

Of the Fortune Global 100 companies, perhaps the best mission statement of the lot comes from #27 Daimler Benz (Mercedes) which simply states its company mission is “To produce cars and trucks that people want to buy, will enjoy driving and will want to buy again.”

If your management team and front line workers are struggling to achieve your organization’s mission and goals, and your organization is experiencing continued employee turnover and lack of employee engagement...

Then you may have to look square into the organizational mirror and ask the prerequisite question… Are we merely advertising our mission as a statement or are we “living” it out every business day?

If you need assistance in bringing your organization’s vision, mission and people to life, we’re here to help.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

The Greatest Lesson He Ever Learned

Early in the burgeoning 20^th century, Bethlehem Steel Corporation CEO Charles Schwab had the occasion to converse with a management consultant who inferred that Schwab’s people needed to gain more knowledge about managing.

In response to the consultant’s remarks, Charles Schwab responded with the now famous statement “What we need around here is not more knowing, but more doing! If you will help us to do the things we already know we ought to do, I’ll gladly pay you anything you ask!”

Without the slightest hesitation, the management consultant immediately agreed to accept Charles Schwab’s challenge and then proceeded to assert that “In 20 minutes, I’ll show you how to get your organization to do at least 50% more.”

The advice which the consultant then provided to Charles Schwab was to do the following:

● Write down and prioritize your 5 most important tasks to complete in the next business day.

● Put the list in your pocket until tomorrow when you will take it out and start working on priority number one.

● Look at that priority every 15 minutes until it’s done.

● Then move on to the next priority and then the next one after that.

● Don’t be concerned if you only finish two or three or even one because you will be working on the most important things.

It is important to comprehend that as CEO of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Charles Schwab was handsomely compensated by Andrew Carnegie for his expertise and leadership abilities at the rate of one million dollars a year.

Subsequent to receiving the consultant’s advice, Charles Schwab stated that “this was the most profitable lesson he had ever learned.”

What exactly was this highly valuable lesson you ask? It was simply this:

The organization whether small or large that understands and executes on the power of focusing on priorities will progress and succeed.

CEO Schwab rewarded the management consultant with $25,000 for this sterling advice, which in the early 1900’s was a huge sum of money. Even more so, when you consider that it was for just a few short minutes of advice.

As timely as the advice given to CEO Schwab was over a century ago, it remains so to this very day.

The ability to appropriately identify and execute top priorities remains a core competency of 21^st century leaders. To this end, one of the key components which we teach in our premier leadership programs and workshops is that “Leadership is WAR”. Employing the W.A.R. analogy in the everyday business activities of your company or municipality is certain to help your organization and your people to accomplish more.

Work on the right priorities.

Achieve the right goals.

Remove the barriers that are impeding your progress.

While there are an immense number of focus points that your organization could choose to focus on in both present and future tense, the critical mass of potential success in business, industry and government rests with your organization’s ability to effectively wage W.A.R.

As your valued resource partner, we stand ready to assist your organization, its leadership and your people to both wage W.A.R., while assisting them to… Learn more… Do more… Become more.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Putting People Before Numbers

Over the course of my career I have had the opportunity to both meet and work with executives and business owners from a wide range of business genres and classifications. When I first sit down with them, I always pose the exact same question of them… “Why are you or your organization in business?”

With rare exception, their responses are always the same… “To make money”.

The answer is also much the same for nonprofit organizations, municipalities and government agencies. While the responses may be on the order of “To raise funds” or “To increase operating revenue”, the essence of the “why” remains basically the same, to make money. Nonprofits still need to cover their general operating costs and the cost of the services that they provide. Municipalities in like fashion need to cover their operating costs and the multitude of services which they provide to their citizens and visitors.

In our age of cutting edge technology and the ability to micromanage virtually every facet of our business operations, there is a higher degree of focus on crunching the numbers and managing the organization’s bottom-line than at any other time in history.

Yet, despite all of the enhanced tools that organizations have at their disposal to run their business operations, employee engagement is at an all-time low and employee turnover continues to be astronomically high.

Contrary to this general business trend, there are a select group of highly successful organizations from business, industry and government that have mastered the invaluable lesson of putting people before numbers.

What these organizations have learned firsthand over time is that if they continue to simply hire people to work for their organization’s money, their organization is going to continue to experience employee mediocrity, low engagement and turnover.

However, when they started hiring people who “believe” in what the organization believes in, their people willingly invested their blood, sweat and tears in a shared belief of the organization’s mission, purpose and goal objectives. These organizations subsequently experienced substantial increases in engagement, productivity, employee job satisfaction and improved customer servicing.

These organizations developed leaders who believe and practice the unselfish act of risking their own interests so that others may excel. With the acute awareness that people are naturally trusting and cooperative, these leaders purposefully chose to provide their people with a trifecta set of successors:

● An environment of safety in which to work freely and creatively.

● Devote their leadership abilities to the purpose of helping others to succeed.

● Provide a tangible vision and pathway to a shared belief of the future.

When people feel that their leaders have their interests at heart, the lookout for each other, work harder, collaborate openly, bring forth their best talents and innovate.

What you need to comprehend is that the peculiar outcome of this unselfish approach to doing business together is that these organizations ultimately “made more money”.

The questions that your organization needs to come to grip with sooner rather than later are:

How much longer are your organization’s leaders going to view leadership in the context of positions and titles, rather than a responsibility to the organization and the people who comprise it?

How much longer is your leadership going to fixate its primary focus on revenue generation?

And lastly… “why”?

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Being In Control

Take a moment to harken back over your career for a moment. How well do you remember your very first leadership position? Do you recall how unprepared you felt as you struggled to positively influence and inspire the people that you were responsible to lead?

If most leaders were to be truly honest about it, they would have to admit that when they were leadership greenhorns, they believed that leadership was about being in “control”.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of virgin leaders and veteran leaders still hold fast to this flawed belief of being/feeling in control. While it is sad, it is also never the less true. According to one Harvard Business Review article on the subject, little has changed over the past 30 years. Leaders being in control is far more a perpetuated myth by supposed leadership, than actual fact. Studies reveal that leadership’s control over performance outcomes amounts to a paltry 10%.

For leaders to actually influence people to the point of having a meaningful degree of control over their people and work outcomes, they would first have to have actual “followers”. And like their predecessors of the last century, 21^st century leaders (with rare exception) still don’t have them. All too many leaders remained immersed in the theatre of trying to appear as if they are in control, which is a far cry from actually being in control.

When it comes to employees, they simply aren’t buying the theatre routine of their leadership and haven’t been for decades. It isn’t very difficult to connect the dots and see the correlation with the lack of employee engagement in present time. Workers at all levels have witnessed the absence of leadership buy-in, experienced every new flavor of the month program and felt the lack of value as individuals.

In considering the Great Recession and the years of its lingering aftermath, how may organizational situations literally got out of control? How many brick walls did organizations encounter that may have even threatened their very survival?

When a member of senior leadership steps forward during such difficult times and attempts to deliver a seemingly positive stem winding pep talk to reassure their people – how did their people actually view this all too predictable action?

While a handful of employees may have slept better that night, the majority of employees felt that it was either a theatrical act to whitewash what was really occurring or an outright act of deception to keep them in the dark.

Given that leadership’s meager ten percent control over performance outcomes is generally unable to contain or effectively correct the situations that placed it in jeopardy in the first place, the tendency is to dismiss the situation by making it attributable to the business environment, economic climate and the like.

This is where, when and how leadership typically fails to own up to and account for the fact that decisions were in fact made by the organization’s leadership which placed the organization into jeopardy in the first place and then secondarily failed to get the organization out of the jeopardous circumstance it created.

At a base level, there are two components which invariably translate into the myriad of leadership issues that organizations from business, industry and government are faced with.

People in leadership roles that have never actually had any formal leadership training.

People in leadership roles who aren’t sure what to do.

In working with a wide array of organization types and business classifications over the years, the same “true confession” story continues to surface again and again. It always goes pretty much like this…

“The more I progressed in my leadership training and development, the more I came to realize that I was a part of the problem and not just a part of the solution. This realization helped me to grasp the fact that my leadership style had been about being in control or thinking I was. Not only was I attempting to perform my own job, I was trying to perform everyone else’s work too. And if I was too busy to do their work, then I bossed them about how to do theirs in order to get it done right. When the problems inevitably arose, I blamed my people for the mistakes. Little by little over time, I retreated to my office, closed the door and endlessly wondered what to do.

I had become the ogre in the room who believed he was leading by control and command. As I have since learned, the people that I was responsible to serve as a leader simply showed up at the workplace every day and then left promptly on time. I gave them no reason to do any different. The fact was that I was treating them like worker drones instead of allowing them to utilize their talents, stretch their capabilities and feel safe to make an honest mistake from which we could all learn and grow.”

The reality of this confession story is that it is exists in every organization.

As your valued resource partner, we can readily assist your organization, its leadership and your people in changing this story to one where they… Learn more. Do more. Become more.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

How To Deal With Emotionally Charged Situations

As a leader, it is essential for you to have highly developed people skills, especially when it comes to dealing with “emotionally” charged situations.

In today’s pressure laden workplace, tension, stress and emotions lie at the heart of virtually every situation. Interactions in the Boardroom and management meetings have become as heated as the Friday night fights. When leaders allow their tempers to flare and their emotions to influence their actions, the outcomes are certain to send a negative ripple surging throughout the organization.

You need only recall former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford barreling over a City Councilor during a city council meeting or the recent Parliament brawls in Turkey, Ukraine and Britain’s House of Commons – To be soberly reminded of the impacts of humanity’s negative potential, even at the highest levels of leadership. When emotions run high, leadership will all too often falter, thereby impacting performance, productivity and morale.

The circumstance which I am referring to, serves as the basis for what the authors of the NY Times bestseller refer to as “Crucial Conversations”. As you have experienced, crucial conversations occur in personal life and business on a regular basis. These interactions range from conflict resolution, providing constructive criticism, policy and procedure, compensation, task assignments and differences of opinion, to name a few examples.

It is important to understand that there are three specific components that comprise crucial conversations, which consist of:

● The “stakes” are high (there is much at risk).

● Emotions run high (are emotionally charged).

● Opinions differ widely (lack of consensus).

In most situations, as can be readily understood, these crucial conversations and subsequent behaviors don’t usually fare well. Crucial conversations typically have a pronounced negative affect on personal well-being, organizational well-being and that of everyone else involved.

The unfortunate reality is that you find yourself in this type of conversational scenario on a regular basis. The salient question for you to answer as a leader is… “How can I remain in control of my emotions, while diffusing these crucial conversations?

As stressed by the authors of Crucial Conversations, it is necessary to be crystal clear about what is important in each given situation. This can best be accomplished by first determining what is “important” to you as an individual and as a leader. They suggest that you begin this process by answering the following questions:

● What do I really want for “myself”?

● What do I really want for “others”?

● What do I really want for the “relationship”?

After you have honestly arrived at answers for these three questions, take a few more moments to answer this final question:

● How would I choose to behave if I really wanted these outcomes?

Authentic leaders learn how to use this process to bridle their emotions for the greater good of all parties. Their ability to generate positive responses to these questions, helps them to reframe their attitudes about crucial conversations while taking personal responsibility for how they were initially feeling and reacting. Resultantly, calmer mindsets ensued which provided a more constructive foundation on which to engage the conversation.

A leader’s ability to become better grounded and appropriately focused, ultimately sets a more positive tone for the crucial conversation which thereby assists other participants to also engage with a more positive and expective approach.

The development of right attitudes, self-discipline and effective communication are essential competencies for leaders who want to remain in control of their emotions while handling and diffusing crucial conversations.

As your valued resource partner, we can readily assist your organization, its leadership and your people with the developmental training and processes that will help them to… Learn more… Do more… Become more.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Leadership In Conflict

Issues of conflict arise within an organization week in and week out. The important question is… How effective is your leadership in dealing with and then resolving these situations?

Leaders who fail to appropriately master conflict on their watch ultimately permeate the tension and stress in their organizations while hampering their own careers. Interestingly enough, many leaders actually feel more courageous and internally settled when it comes time to confront the issue or individual that is at the forefront of the conflict.

Often times, leaders who are confronted with an issue involving conflict actually find themselves conflicted about how to handle the issue that is facing them. This self-confliction invariably results in approaches that yield ineffective outcomes… for example:

They assert their authority and attempt to win regardless of the impact it may have on others. In the process, they fail to consider “what might work” for the others involved.

The leader assumes a parental state in dealing with the conflict which results in them fault finding and then blaming others for their potential shortcomings. They may find them self looking down over the rim of their glasses, possibly pointing their finger at others and uttering things such as “You should have…”, “Why didn’t you…” or “If you hadn’t…”

Leaders may have developed the habit of viewing situations solely from the perspective of their world and consequently lack the appropriate empathy to consider how the conflict may be affecting others that are involved in the situation.

The leader may react impulsively to questions, rather than take the appropriate time to think matters through and provide a skilled and articulate response.

Leaders may avoid being honest regarding how they feel about a given situation. In some instances, they may even resort to emotional outbursts in order to mask the negative feelings which they may harbor.

If the leader is not cognoscente enough to maintain appropriate respect for others at all times, then there is a high likelihood that they will inadvertently lead others to feel that they don’t respect them.

Leaders often tend to add to the process of over analyzing the issue at hand, rather than effectively focusing on the creation and implementation of an appropriate solution.

It is ultimately every leader’s responsibility to engage conflict situations with a “constructive” approach that will bring clarity to the situation, identify critical issues, stimulate strategic thinking and foster creative resolutions.

The Leadership Academy… Changing the way organizations and people work, perform and live.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Putting Life Back Into Perspective

When the world gets out of kilter, daily life generally seems to follow suit.

The recent events of the downing of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine and the Israeli conflict with Hamas have certainly added to life’s tensions for many concerned peoples around the world. Clearly, there were already ample things on the world stage and here at home in the U.S. to be plenty concerned about.

When it comes to worry and stress, people tend to lose touch with what it is in life that they have the ability to control and those things over which then have no control what so ever. The reality is that the virtual majority of what you have stress about will never come to pass in the first place. Moreover, you wouldn’t have any control of the circumstances even if they did some how come to pass.

There are times when the world around you is full of uncertainty and life’s future prospects look gloomy. When this occurs, you need to find a way of putting life back into perspective.

A few months back when I was at the neighborhood branch of my bank, I observed something on my bank officer’s desk that really caught my attention. It was a simple list of perspectives about life that I found very reassuring. I’m sure that Miss Judy would approve of me sharing them with you:

The Greatest Joy ………………………………………….. Giving

The Greatest Loss ……………………...…Loss of Self-Respect

The Most Satisfying Work …………...................Helping Others

The Ugliest Personality Trait …………………….…..Selfishness

The Most Endangered Species ………...…..Dedicated Leaders

Our Greatest Natural Resource ………………...…….Our Youth

The Greatest “Shot In The Arm” …………….…Encouragement

The Greatest Problem to Overcome ……………...……..….Fear

The Most Effective Sleep Remedy …………...….Peace of Mind

The Most Crippling Failure Disease ……………….……Excuses

The Most Powerful Force In Life …………………….... ……Love

The Most Dangerous Pariah ………………………….A Gossiper

The World’s Most Powerful Computer …………...……The Brain

The Worst Thing To Be Without ………………………….…Hope

The Deadliest Weapon …………………………...….The Tongue

The Two Most Power-Filled Words ……………………….”I Can”

The Greatest Asset …………………………………………...Faith

The Most Worthless Emotion …………………………... Self-Pity

The Most Beautiful Attire ……………………………..…. A Smile

The Greatest Gift …………………………………...…...Kindness

The Most Prized Possession ………………………….…Integrity

The Most Powerful Form of Communication ……….……Prayer

The Most Contagious Spirit ………………………….Enthusiasm

The Most Important Thing In Life ………………………...….God

When I consider this amazing list, I am reminded that while life is hard enough, you need not add to it by being hard on yourself. Life is short… best that you not hasten the process by worrying yourself to death. Scripture reminds us that there will be trials and tribulations, war and rumors of war. What you are experiencing today is nothing new in the grand scheme of life on planet earth.

There is a lifetime of abundant living in the list above, if you would simply employ these perspectives. Choose to take charge of those aspects of life over which you can exert some degree of control. Beyond that, take time to smell the roses, spend time with friends and family. View more sunrises at the beach, more sunsets from the mountain top and take more barefoot walks in the park.

Most of all, learn to enjoy the process and live life to the fullest… for time is fleeting.

Lastly, one final thought from an author unknown… “The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it.”

The Leadership Academy… Changing the way organizations and people work, perform and live.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

The Leadership Gap

Does your organization have a fail-safe leadership development and succession plan firmly in place?

According to a recent study by the Deloitte University Press, it is highly likely that your organization is caught in a “leadership gap”.

86% of the organizations that were surveyed stated that leadership development and succession planning in fact constituted an “urgent need”. However, only a mere 13% of these organizations held the conviction that their organization was doing an effective job of preparing for their next generation of leaders.

The critical challenge that H.R. departments find themselves confronted with is how to address the differing leadership needs throughout the various levels of their organization. In one regard, performance oriented millennial candidates seek a fast track to meaningful leadership roles.

On the other hand, mid-level leaders require enhanced opportunities to broaden the scope and depth of their abilities as a precursor to future leadership advancement. When it comes to senior level leaders, it is imperative that your organization maintain a serious commitment to mentoring its younger generation of leadership candidates. Senior leaders must be able to transcend generational diversity while freely sharing their experience and inherent knowledge of the organization, its nuances and potential pitfalls.

It is also critical for the senior level and executive leaders to demonstrate their buy-in to the leadership development and succession planning process. This tier of leadership needs to be actively involved and thoroughly engaged in grooming future up and coming leaders.

Additionally, your organization must comprehend that succession planning encompasses every level of your organization and extends far beyond its top executives. Attrition, competitor recruitment, injury, health issues and death far out number retirement as a consideration with respect to leadership succession.

The retirement or sudden loss of a competent leader not only creates a void, it directly impairs the functionality and continuity of the organization’s leadership dynamic. At the heart of the leadership development and succession planning issue lies the realization that qualified workers will in time succeed their supervisors, who will in turn succeed mid-level managers, who as well will succeed your organization’s senior executives.

A crucial key for successive leadership development and succession planning is the cultivation an appropriate mindset on the part of every member of your organization, from the organization’s boardroom to its boiler room.

Leadership is clearly the #1 talent issue of organizations globally. Business, industry and government find themselves hard pressed to develop leaders at all levels of their organizations.

The Leadership Academy… Changing the way organizations and people work, perform and live!

The Lack of Readiness

Do you and your organization constantly find that you are scrambling in an attempt to complete projects on schedule or meet other deadlines on time?

During my recent attendance at a high profile training event, I had the opportunity to observe a wide variety of people and organizations scrambling to get their act together at the very last minute. In one instance, I watched as the person who was responsible for arranging the catering for a three hour social event received a phone call 45 minutes into the event from the host facility informing him that all of the food which had been contracted for had already been consumed by the attendees.

The first thought that popped into my head was my old Boy Scout motto “Be prepared.” Undoubtedly, some valuable lessons resulted from this unsettling experience. It also serves to raise the question… How prepared are you, your organization and your people to meet your responsibilities?

Sadly, most organizations and their people simply don’t deal with tomorrow until tomorrow. The problems that occur, the important details that fall through the cracks and the failures that they experience, are invariably due to a lack of readiness.

There is a direct relationship between readiness and responsibility. Dietrich Bonhoeffer stated it this way… “Actions springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”

Quite often, what you do (or don’t do) speaks louder than any words that you could ever say. The same is true of your organization and its people. In reality, while you can shoot from the hip and hope to hit something, appropriate action requires advance planning if you are truly going to hit your mark and ultimately obtain the desired result outcome.

In the circumstance cited earlier, the failure to properly fact find and plan resulted in a number of undesirable outcomes. Following below are a few of the more obvious and costly outcomes from this situation:

The attendees went from being served the good food to having a lengthy break in service, only to eventually receive mediocre substitutes in place of the originally announced menu.

Overall event satisfaction by the attendees was diminished in the process, which could ultimately affect registration signups for future events and potential revenue for same.

Clearly, the host organization had to endure the embarrassment also resulted.

The catering chefs and staff were greatly inconvenienced by having to unexpectedly perform addition work which was not on their schedule for that workday.

The host organization lost its ability to negotiate in a timely fashion for these additional services, which resulted in having to pay top price for the extra food preparation and service.

As a result, the host organization wound up being considerably over budget due to its short sightedness in planning.

Post event organizational meetings to assess “what went wrong and why” resulted in a significant usage of man hours which further resulted in lost productivity.

The lesson to be garnered from this circumstance is that there is simply no substitute for thorough planning. Rest assured, that even with proper planning, unanticipated things may still potentially occur. However, rock solid planning will not only better prepare you for a successful outcome, it will help you in identifying potential pitfalls and problems for which you can then develop a contingency plan (which will further assure you a likely successful outcome).

In the words of one of my early mentors, “Plan your work… then work your plan.” When you heed this sound advice, you will find yourself, your organization and your people adequately prepared and ready for the responsibilities for which you are collectively and individually accountable.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Achieving Your Organization's Best

In his groundbreaking work “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill stated that “what ever the mind can believe… it can achieve”.

There are many lessons to be gleaned from Napoleon Hill’s straight forward perspective. True reality is that from where ever you are at this very moment, you can travel to any place in the world. The only prerequisites that are required is having the “want” to and the “belief” that you can.

The same holds true for your organization and every other aspect of life. Simply stated, you can not achieve a single thing unless you first believe that is genuinely possible. Moreover, you must also hold the earnest belief that you, your organization and your people have the talent, skills and capability to achieve the objectives and goals that will take the organization where it wants to go.

This is the very essence of what “potential” really is. Your organization’s vision and mission represent the mental picture of what the organization has the potential to become. As individuals, your people have dreams and goals that they want to achieve in life which are in like fashion how they view their personal potential to grow and achieve.

Perhaps no single individual personifies their belief in what was possible and what they were capable of achieving than Thomas Edison who quipped that he had found over 2,000 ways how to not make a light bulb. Clearly, Edison’s belief was well founded and remained undeterred. While Thomas Edison predated Napoleon Hill, as the expression goes “great minds think alike”.

Thomas Edison also observed “If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves.” Yet, depending on which research report you read, human beings on average only utilize a maximum of 10 percent of the actual potential.

As I so often point out… your organization and your people have both the capacity and the very real need to accomplish more and become more than they presently are.

All too sadly, the human species has allowed its creature comforts, pleasures of modern life and its constant craving for entertainment to result in a stagnant state of complacency that now prevents the vast majority of people and organizations from stretching themselves to new heights of achievement.

Cartoonist Charles Schultz was a master at assessing human behavior and then depicting it with a touch of humor in his Peanuts comic strip. In one of his more serious moments he observed that “Life is a 10 speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.”

If your organization is ever going kick it in gear and advance to the next level of its potential, then you are also going to have to believe for the “best” your organization and your people have to give on a daily basis.

Performing at your best requires that you live up to your true potential as an organization, as a team and as individuals. This means having a clear picture of what your organization and people can and want to become.