Momentum enables progress. It provides the driving force to success so how do we harness it, right now, to help our organisation succeed?

This time of year people  start to get distracted and preoccupied with Christmas (unless you work in retail of course!) but in today’s troubled times, it is the very time where you can make a discernible difference and offer your customers greater value than your competitors. This short article and our support activities are designed to help you build commitment and take action towards this progress by building momentum.

What is momentum?

It is the power to develop at an every growing rate.

Momentum is about the small steps of many people building to steer significant change. Momentum builds confidence and becomes an ever increasing energy as people build motivation and pleasure in success.

Why is momentum important?

Today’s crazy world demands progress. If you remain still you fall behind… rapidly. But experimentation in business needs to be measured. Building momentum allows new ideas to be tested and risks taken by making progress in stages. Experimentation is the life blood of progress and momentum builds energy and commitment towards these plans.

“All progress is experimental.” -John Jay Chapman

What gets in the way of momentum?

It is easy for experimentation to be criticised or ridiculed by those less confident. Organisations often find responding to change tough going because we are all more confident with certainty. But those organisations who fail to change will die in today’s fast moving economy.

Momentum can come from anyone at anytime and the more people who participate, the more momentum grows. This article is sent to you, as a single individual to either start the process or link with others who have already started to help you and your organisation flourish.

Tips for building momentum

We have developed the 3 m’s for building momentum.

1. Create a movement - by being clear about your purpose, what drives you and your team, your goals and how you will know when you get there. This keenness of focus will provide a clear direction for all in your team and help you create a movement.

Try our short activity to help you with this

2.  Model – be the best role model you can be for progress in the organisation. Role models are looked up to, your team will be proud that they work for you (and not someone else!) and you are more likely to extend your own sphere of influence as people want to hear what you are doing and what you have to say.

Have a go at our short exercise to challenge whether you are the best you can be and if you need to improve it will help you make the necessary changes swiftly

3. Modernise

As you progress, the uncertainty can lead to challenge and confusion. Be aware of this and use every opportunity to help your team refocus on what is important. Keep momentum, it will be self propelling.

I have provided a short activity to complete with your team to help you do just that, right here.

Like these activities?

If you like these activities we have a toolkit for managers to develop themselves and a toolkit for managers to use with their teams - click here for more. You can buy on line or email me for more details  including volume discounts caroline@leaps-bounds.co.uk

Go… build momentum… now!

Last week people voted. Everyone was talking about who they could trust, which party really did have the best interests of the country at heart. The newspapers were full of it. The rhetoric from all parties was about trusting in them to deliver for us, the party manifestos and newsletters were all designed to encourage us to believe in them and their abilities, to trust in them to lead our country. I was lucky enough to be at an electric election night count. The reporters were buzzing and all of them had voted for the same man who was duly elected against the odds. These reporters were non partisan. We got chatting and I asked why they had voted for him. The said ‘we trust him.’  I asked, ‘how do you know?’ To which they all replied (individually) ‘because he listens more than he talks and he genuinely shows that he cares.’ Interesting that in short snippets of conversations, over a relatively short period of time, that was the criteria for some people. Clearly it is not as simple as just that. These behaviours attracted people to vote, but what do you think the impact will be if these behaviours aren’t demonstrated beyond the election? Isn’t this one of the reasons that so many people are disaffected? The same is true, not only in politics, but also in organisations the length and breadth of the country. Many of which have strong leaders, with vision and drive who share a powerful story of a better a future but when this is distilled into departmental actions, something is missing.

When we examine the losses many of us have experienced during this global economic recession one of the significant losses is surely the loss of trust. Many leaders in organisations fell short of the required leadership at this difficult time but all is not lost. Those leaders that are prepared to rebuild and acknowledge will make significant improvements in the performance of their teams.

So this week review how deep the trust is that your team have in you. Be that leader who reaches out, ask questions and listen more to what is being said around you. When you do, do it without judgement, excuses or criticism, allow people to talk.  Think about how you can use these elements to deepen your relationships, not just at work but also at home too.  As Stephen Covey says “nothing is as fast as the speed of trust”. If you want to grow and do it fast, trust is a great foundation.

If we reflect on the conversations about Bankers, their part in the recession and indeed in its recovery, what can we learn as managers and family members about decision making and how we can make the most robust and proactive decisions possible.

Here are just a few things I have been thinking about:

1. Go with your gut feel if you sense something is going to happen, take action immediately – read Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Blink’. This will help you understand more about how and why intuition is an important part of the decision making process. You can get this on Amazon and also look at the reviews here http://bit.ly/cErAVb
2. Plan for tomorrow and not just today and remember to add a contingency
3. Remember for those of you who are managers, that even though we are clawing our way out of the recession, your staff may still be anxious – communicate widely about any changes that are taking place in the company and help them see how they are valuable to you and the organisation
4. Members of your team may have been deeply effected by the recession – perhaps a partner or family member has lost a job, perhaps their level of debt is too high and perhaps they are begin chased by creditors. You need them to focus whilst at work so do whatever is in your power to help them. The first step is to notice subtle changes in their attitude, energy and focus and to ask gentle questions to determine if this is a problem for them
5. Rather than focusing on stopping using post its and closing down spend start asking a new set of questions that help the business to thrive. E.g. “how can I get £5 value out of every £1 I spend?”

And for you personally, some additional thoughts:

1. Budget, budget, budget! Go to www.moneysavingexpert.com great savings and templates
2. When you buy things go for quality goods that will last.  Buy the best that you can, it’s likely to last longer
3. Save first for what you want rather than buy on credit that may be difficult to pay back later. If you still want it after you have saved for it, it is likely you will enjoy it more and certainly appreciate its value more
4. When buying presents for close family or friends who are under 18 always give a cheque it’s a double whammy they can’t spend it immediately and it encourages them to think about saving. (they might think you are boring but trust me when they are older they will thank you)
5. Always ask for a discount.  I negotiated a 40% discount on an item I really wanted recently. Another item I got a 25% discount. All because I asked. Don’t be afraid to ask – you have nothing to lose

http://leapsbounds.whitespacers.com/insights/freereport/

This has been one of our most commented on threads and its been great to see the development of the topic.

I was then sent a link to a video of Dan Pink speaking about the Surprising Science of Motivation – by our ‘online guru’ Carl Jeffrey and it has inspired me this morning to STOP WHAT I’M DOING AND SPREAD THIS MESSAGE FURTHER!

Dan Pink now proves the conflict that there is a mismatch between what Sciences Knows and What Businesses Do when it comes to motivating staff.

No longer can we continue to use external motivators to boost our team members performance, we must develop the internal motivators so they want, need and boost their performance for themselves.

The new model talks about encouraging three things:

1. Autonomy

2. Mastery

3. Purpose

I encourage all of you to watch Dan Pinks very engaging talk about the scientific proof that building internal motivators is the best way forward for our businesses to increase and enhance productivity (it will take you about 20 minutes to watch and digest so get yourself a cuppa). Please pass this link on to anybody you feel would benefit!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y[/youtube]

I’m a customer who has experienced World Class Service from a call centre advisor who’s got the internal motivators to do the best they can and it makes a massive difference! So help me spread the word and encourage managers to use the new model!!

Enjoy!

p.s. Thanks to Carl for passing this on!

Carly

With all this talk about the credit crunch, with some banks making money and some banks still losing money, house prices up, house prices down it got me thinking about the need to continuously plan, do and review.

Both at home and at work the need to keep doing this now more than ever, why? Well we live in an ever changing world, at work things change from moment to moment, at home it’s the same because we spend more time at work then we do at home it naturally feeds from one to the other.

I’ll give you an example both my wife and I are self employed and my wife’s contract comes to an end in 2 months time so last weekend we decided to do a review of our finances and applied a “just in case” scenario and this covered things like:

· contract does not get renewed

· unable to find another contract

· fall ill and unable to work for 6 months

Did we have enough to make sure we could get through and the answer was Not Enough!

Just to give you some background we are pretty good at planning our finances and the last time we reviewed them was back in March. The interesting thing was having reviewed it last week we were still able to slash 20% off our monthly budget to go towards our “just in case” fund. So for example we have declared the month of August as a “no spend” month apart from essentials, did we need to have a glass of wine every night with our meal-but we can have a glass with our meal at the weekend. Cook meals at the weekend that can act as leftovers during the week-a curry a few days later are soo much nicer – if you ask nicely I will email you the recipe. Now we are spending all of August at home we have made a list of the things we were going to sort out around the house that have been in storage in the attic and will put any good stuff on ebay or gumtree and sell them.

So how does this relate to business-well it’s a good opportunity to look at your plans more regularly rather than leaving them., have you thought about all the “just in case” scenarios so that you, your team, department or business are as prepared as possible.

Good luck with your planning, doing and reviewing and let us know how you are getting on.

Dilesh

Some useful websites:

www.moneysupermarket.com

www.comparethemarket.com

www.moneysavingexpert.com

www.businessballs.com

www.ebay.com

www.gumtree.com

A n extremely artful coach, Jackie Hutchings from Footdown asked me yesterday “What’s one thing that I could give you that would make a significant difference right now?” wow what a question! But also what a simple one. It cut direct to the heart of the conversation. And you know what, it made me think, prioritise and ask (and she gave it to me!) That single question drove new behaviours in me all day that positively impacted on every action I took.

These types of questions, push people to think because they do not automatically know the answer. We have professional, capable people all the way through our organisations, its time to release control and encourage the ideas to flow. Try some of these.

1. Questions to change perspective
“What would Obama/ Redgrave/ Jim Collins/ your mum do?” Encouraging others to think about someone they respect and how that person might handle the situation.
2. Questions to develop a framework for a solution – encouraging others to consider what success would be like “Who needs to be happy with the result?” “It’s now 6 months in the future and we found the solution. What would that success look/feel/sound like?” “What are the critical concerns that we’d need to address  ensure a positive outcome?”
3. Questions to check in on resources – Resources are one of the key inhibitors. People feel automatically that they don’t have enough resources so they do nothing. Try asking “If we could adjust the tasks people do to make room for this, what would need to change?” “How would you solve this challenge without any additional money, time or people?” “If you knew the answer, what would you say?”
4. Questions to challenge assumptions – make a list of all the things you ‘know’ about the current situation. Then play devil’s advocate “How do you know that can’t be changed?” “What rules would need to be broken to make a change to this?” “What would be the worst that can happen if we do break that rule?” Now this doesn’t mean you can break all the rules – some of them can’t be broken, but ,by challenging some of your assumptions you will be able to drive deeper thinking that will help you find the answer.

These questions are great for development of individuals or strategic decision making. We often don’t use them because we are conditioned to apply factual questions and factual answers. It will take new discipline and new habits but we urge you to take this list and try them next time you have a significant challenge to solve and notice the difference.

The key to driving progress is to ask a different set of questions. Try some of these in your next management meeting and notice what differences in responses you get.

This blog today was inspired by a blog on the Chartered Management Institute’s blog “Tackling GroupThink” http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=50359613&gid=22310&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fblog%2Emanagers%2Eorg%2Euk%2Fpost%2FTackling-groupthink-5541%2Easpx&urlhash=PHnw&trk=news_discuss

Information on 6 thinking hats by Edward DeBono can be found on www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm

Information on Footdown can be found on www.footdown.com

When people are faced with bad news like the economy what do they do? Well some people do start running around like a headless chicken in the hope that just something, anything, of the many things they start will stick and make a difference. Others simply bury their head in the sand and hope that when they come up for air it will have all been a bad dream. Yet others, and these are the people on whom the development of our world has been built, others, dig deep and become the most resourceful they have ever been.

Andy Murray last night was one of these people. He faced Wawrinka who desperatley wanted to win and was prepared to do whatever it took to achieve that goal. There were times when many thought that he was going to suceed but what did Murray do – he dug deep. Murray constantly adapted his play from calm, speed outing ground strokes to, angular back hand killers with a little drop shot thrown in here and there. Now many people will agree it wasn’t his best game and his opponent was outstanding on the night but he wasn’t prepared to lose. Throughout the game he demonstrated his mental toughness. How many times after a poor shot late in the game did you see him mouth the word FOCUS? How many times did you see him clench his fist in his Murrayesque anchor – he drew on the tools he knew he needed to get him through this game.

So how do you apply this lesson to your business right now?

As a professional in a professional industry you know that success leaves clues and you can draw on these lessons to help you succeed.

1. FOCUS – they say that what you focus on is what you get so what will you focus on? Visualise what success is for you – what do you see, hear and feel – capture that picture then translate it into actions. What are the actions you must take to get the results you want?
An example. A client of ours wants to enhance their culture to encourage ownership and service. They say “it’s not only about sales, why does everyone think it is is?” Yet what do they measure? Sales, that’s it. So everyone focuses on what is being measured rather than the verbal message. The lesson – if you want something to happen make sure that what you say and the way you behave is completely consistent. Think back to your visualisation of success and challenge yourself about whether your actions today are completely consistent with that picture? if not change them! It really is as simple as that.
2. Anchors – anchors come in many disguises. Some people have an action or movement. Sometimes it is called a power move. Others have daily discplines – this is the one I want us to focus on right now. What 3 daily actions can you dig deep to complete every day that, if completed each day will significantly improve the effectivneess of your operation?

Take 5 minutes to help yourself build that inner resourcefulness that will ensure you are not the headless chicken but instead you are the one who can dig deep and turn things around! And do you think Andy Murray can win Wimbeldon? Well who knows but you know what, wouldn’t it be outstanding if he did. So let’ sput this into practice for Andy this week – focus on him winning and let’s all  just get behind him and support him on the way rather than crticising him for standing up and being counted – Go Andy GO!

Situation 1 – “I am sure you were told that you would have that service within the hour,….. I know that you wanted it for something specific but I can’t help the weather can I?…… No you can’t get a refund, we aren’t based in the UK and therefore UK contractual law is not relevant”

Situation 2 – “I can’t make that decision and no no-one is around who can make that decision for you, call back later please”

Now, we all know that now is a time when customer acquisition would be nice but keeping hold of your customers is the basis for survival. In both of those situations the customer was lost to that company. At what cost?  These types of couldn’t care less comments are not going to be isolated. How many careless calls are driving your customers away, simply because your staff don’t care.

It doesn’t really matter why the Agents said these things, the fact remains that they did and whilst it might be quite true in the second one that they are not empowered to make that decision, could it have been handled in a way that encouraged the customer and made them think twice about leaving? Of course it could.

What concerns me is that in our current economy we need everyone to step up and seek out ways to help, not to add to your customer’s problems or make feeble excuses. These replies are not about skill. They are all about motivation and care for your customers. At the moment response’s like this are killing your company.

Rather than telling you why we think this is being allowed to happen now and what to do about it, I want to open up the debate not just to Contact Centres but to Retailers and Hospitality – in fact anyone involved in customer service and to customers too by leaving you with our current favourite quote and to use this as a thought provoker about how to create a service culture within your business. How can you apply this principle according to Dr Seuss or how would you like your suppliers to apply this principle for your benefit?

“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
– Dr. Seuss

Caroline

As somebody who’s both completely engrossed in performance arts and also loves a bit of reality TV, I’m in front of the TV with my cuppa cocoa (or glass of wine) ready to watch Britain’s Got Talent every evening…

Now, unless you haven’t read any newspapers or watched the news over the past month, you will all have seen or heard something about the phenomenon that is Susan Boyle.

For those of you who haven’t, here’s a quick overview:

• She’s a choir singer from Scotland
• Turned up at the early auditions looking a little less conventional than other auditionee’s (nowhere near as dowdy as some are making out, but perhaps dressed for comfort in her own skin, not to gain attention, like other auditionees)
• Mr Cowell asked her who she aspired to be, and she replied ‘Elaine Paige’ to which he rolled his eyes as if to say ‘Yer Right’
• She Sang
• She Sang with Passion
• She Sang Beautifully
• She had Presence
• Everybody Listened
• She Captured Hearts from all around the world
• She had serious YouTube hits
• She was put on a pedestal
• She was predicted to win

On Monday, Susan sang in the semi-finals, and once again gave a beautiful performance of Memory (Originally sung by Elaine Paige – her idol). Her performance was amazing, considering the huge amount of pressure she must have been under due to the hype surrounding her.

She won the viewers vote.

The next day and throughout this week so far there have been less positive comments and the positive hype is now tainted with ‘Susan Boyle was not as good as her first song and is she overrated?’… how quickly things can turn.

Now, I still think she’s amazing, and she has gone up even further in my esteem by the way she has dealt with the hype, stuck with it, and delivered an amazing performance… fingers crossed she wows us again with another amazing performance in Saturday’s Final… Good Luck Susan from all at Leaps and Bounds.

This has made me think about us as managers and leaders in today’s downturn…

• In this economic down turn how are we going about spotting talent within our businesses?
• Do we build up the hype and deliver, or are we in danger sometimes of hype hype hype, then not following through our actions?
• How much do we set up the talent in our businesses for success – and reward them for sticking with it, even when the road gets rocky?

What does this mean for us as managers and leaders of today?

Thoughts on a postcard please!

Carly

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