Category Archives: Productivity

October 9, 2012 · 9:17 pm

Listen to Terry Murray and Ravi Rao, M.D., Ph.D. Discuss the Importance of Emotions in the Workplace on Patricia Raskin’s Positive Business Show

I had the privilege of appearing on Patricia Raskin’s Positive Business Show last Friday afternoon where we were joined by Dr. Ravi Rao, author of “Emotional Business – Inspiring Human Connectedness to Grow Earnings and the Economy”.  Dr. Rao is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and received his neurosurgery training at Harvard Medical School, brought his brilliant perspective to the conversation.

You’re welcome to listen to the podcast below!

© 2012, Terry Murray.

© 2012, Patricia Raskin.

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October 4, 2012 · 2:36 pm

Terry Murray to be Recurring, Regular Guest on Patricia Raskin’s Positive Business® Show

I’m very excited to announce that I will be an ongoing, regular guest on Patricia Raskin’s Positive Business Show, starting this Friday.  On tomorrow’s program, we will be discussing how companies can leverage intrinsic goals and values in balance with traditional, extrinsic goals and values to engage and inspire today’s modern workforce.  The program will air live this Friday at 4:30 p.m., E.D.T., on both syndicated terrestrial radio stations and streaming via the internet (please click on Patricia Raskin’s Positive Business Show for more information).  You’re also invited to join in the conversation by calling (888) 345-0790!

Historically, companies have focused almost exclusively on leveraging extrinsic goals and values.  Things like money, image, and status are used to motivate employees.  Research demonstrates that people that are consumed with the pursuit of extrinsic goals are less happy and as a result, less healthy, creative and adaptive in their work and lives.  This is a major contributor to today’s endemic employee disengagement crisis.  Three independent research studies indicate approximately 70% of employees are cognitively and emotionally disengaged with their employer.

Extrinsic values reflect powerful aspects of culture.  What one culture values above all else, another may simply dismiss.  The same is true from generation to generation, even within a single culture.  Workers from Gen X and Gen Y are seeking an entirely different experience from their careers compared to members of the Baby Boomer generation.  Trying to leverage the homogenous, extrinsic, shared goals of a past generation ring hollow in today’s multi-cultural, multi-generational workforce.

The beautiful thing about moving toward intrinsic goals and values is they are universal to the human experience.  Intrinsic goals include personal and professional growth, authentic relationships, and a desire to be of service to others.  Research demonstrates people that pursue intrinsic goals are measurably happier than those chasing extrinsic goals.  Why does happiness matter in the workplace?  Well, it is not so much about people being happy at work as it is people being happy with their work.  That’s the key to engagement, the fundamental prerequisite for creative thinking, innovation, and adaptability; the mission critical drivers of value creation in today’s Idea Economy.

I hope you have a chance to join us tomorrow!  It should be a fun and lively conversation.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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June 4, 2012 · 6:20 pm

Terry Murray Discusses the Strategic Imperative of Creative Thinking in Business on the CBS Radio Network

The need for creative thinking has moved well out of R&D and marketing departments.  The speed and dynamics of today’s economic world require adaptive solutions to unprecedented challenges at every touch point within the organization.  I recently had the opportunity to discuss how to go about cultivating the type of organizational agility successful companies require in the 21st century with Walt Shaw on the CBS Radio Network.

You’re welcome to listen to the interview on the player below:

© 2012, Terry Murray.

© 2012, CBS Radio Network.

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June 1, 2012 · 1:49 pm

Why Small Firms Can Win the Coming Talent War

Key Concept ~ I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal the other day that revealed a remarkable level of stupidity being practiced in business.  In the article, “Software Screening Rejects Job Seekers“, Wharton School professor of management and human resources Peter Cappelli shared his insights into the jobs market and the implications today’s hiring procedures have on attracting and recruiting talent.

We’re hearing it all the time now.  Companies are continuously complaining that they can’t find the talent they need to fill open jobs.  Professor Cappelli decided to look into this situation and came up with the following conclusion; “The real culprits are the employers themselves”.  While the recession empowered employers to be exceptionally picky in their selection of job applicants another factor is at play; screening software is now used by major corporations in the hiring process.  Once again we see corporations running to technology to attempt to solve a human-centric challenge…looking out there for the solutions to today’s competitive challenges rather than being a bit more self-reflective and looking within for the answers.  And simply put, it doesn’t work.

In his upcoming book, “Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs”, Professor Cappelli reveals some striking examples of just how dysfunctional the hiring process has become.  One HR executive told him that, just as an experiment, he anonymously applied for an opening in his company.  He didn’t get through the computer screening process.  In addition, he witnessed managers piling on requirements to the point that nearly nobody on the planet would meet their expectations.  Another example of the mind-numbing stupidity being played out in corporate hiring environments is a company that received 25,000 applications for a basic engineering job.  The HR department reported that no qualified job seekers applied for the position.  Really?  One engineer reported that he was told that his background was perfect except for one thing; his last title didn’t match the title of the position in the company. A title which was unique to that company.  Worst of all, the vast majority of job seekers never have the opportunity to engage with a human being in the application process.

Now, for many, many years I’ve witnessed the hiring process being driven by risk-aversion.  Companies tend to hire the person that is least likely to fail rather than the one that is most likely to succeed.  It’s the equivalent of playing not to lose, rather than playing to win.  But what we’re seeing now makes that behavior look remarkably progressive.  The professor also points to the need for greater investments in education and training, on the part of the employers, to meet their shifting needs.  The mindful investment in human beings is mission critical in today’s economy.  Organizations must become learning organizations. in order to stay competitive.

While this trend is bad news for job seekers, it is excellent news for small, entrepreneurial firms.  The myopic approach of large companies is missing out on great talent simply because they didn’t formulate their resume with the proper keywords.  This is another example of the Industrial Age mindset still dominating Corporate America.  People are more than their resume.  Character, creativity, inter-personal skills and emotional intelligence are difficult to communicate on a one page resume.  These intangibles, that are proven to be the key drivers of success, are only revealed through relationship.  By meeting, or at the very least, speaking with a potential candidate.

Big companies have long enjoyed intrinsic advantages over smaller competitors.  This remarkable misstep opens the door to a more level playing field.  In the 21st century, talent will be the deciding factor on who wins and who loses.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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April 29, 2012 · 8:39 am

The Strategic Imperative of Inclusive, Creative Organizational Culture

Key Concept ~ In our series on the three key elements for accelerating successful startups, here’s the third in a series of excerpts from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”.  (Note:  A special thanks to my readers for your patience in the the updates on this blog site.  The team’s been in Missouri for the past ten days conducting a series of training exercises with psychologists from the VA and with local veterans to launch Warriors in Transition in the Southeast Missouri community).

~ Creative Culture

While leadership is paramount in orchestrating the creative visualization of an enlightened strategic planning process, it is the propagation of culture that will carry an organization forward to scalable heights (or lows; it cuts both ways) that resonate far beyond a single personality.  It is much like the relationship between a gardener and their garden.  The gardener may be capable of inspirational work, but it is the garden that inspires.

The traditional definition of organizational culture is the shared values, norms, artifacts, and embraced behaviors of an enterprise.  This is a somewhat superficial definition that historically has proven to poorly serve leaders attempting to drive performance or organizational change.  At best, it places culture at the periphery of the company, as if it is a side effect of the mission.  At worst, by referring to culture as an artifact, it infers that the culture is a coincidental by-product or relic of the organization.

In reality, culture is the vibrational resonance of the collective consciousness of the organization.  This immediately changes the way we think about culture.  It is no longer a by-product of what a company does but a powerful force that affects everything and everybody involved in the business.  The frequency of cultural energy is self-generating and perpetually regenerating.  When we drop a pebble into a pool we cannot alter the ripples that move continuously outward without disrupting the entire pool.  It is leadership’s role to drop the appropriate pebbles, at the appropriate time, knowing the resonance will expand beyond their immediate control.

For nearly a decade working as a strategic consultant with life science and medical device start-up enterprises I began to notice a common challenge shared by these companies.  The vast majority of these companies emerge from intellectual property cultivated in academic settings.  As these companies are formed they bring along members of the research staff and are often lead by a scientist, physician, or engineer that first developed the technology in their laboratory.  It is an exciting time reflecting the natural progression of organizational evolution, but this progression requires substantive, adaptive change at the very heart of the enterprise.

Unwittingly, these entrepreneurs bring along the academic culture from whence they came.  The culture that was ideal for the nurturing and early cultivation of their intellectual property is ironically very poorly suited for the business environment they are attempting to enter.  This is exacerbated by the nature of their technology and the critical demands of customers, regulators, and investors in the health care and pharmaceutical research markets.  The mission has changed (moving from creating technology to commercializing technology) yet the emerging organization clings to their historical culture, usually quite unaware of the risk this is about to introduce to the nascent company.

I’ve observed that these start-up companies are often unaware of the imperative need to quickly migrate from an academic culture to that of a business oriented culture.  This naiveté is a leading contributor of failure in early stage companies.  It is not the technology that fails; it is leadership’s inability to recognize the significance of culture and the fundamental importance of creating and cultivating the culture necessary to meet the high expectations of their target marketplace.

But why is this?  These are quite often remarkably gifted intellectuals capable of remarkable discoveries, insights, and performance.  It is a facet of business dogma that culture is a by-product of artifacts, shared values, and attitudes rather than the actual energy of the collective consciousness of the organization.  It is not peripheral; it is concentric to the very essence of the organization.

The academic culture to which they cling isn’t bad; it is just as it should be in the early, creative stages of intellectual property.  It simply no longer resonates with the frequency the evolving organization needs to successfully connect with customers in a commercial environment.  The very nature of the enterprise has evolved and it is leadership’s responsibility to anticipate and ignite the new energy and intention necessary to fulfill this new mission.

One of the reasons culture may be perceived as an allusive, almost amorphous issue may be due to the fact that it is rarely discussed during the early stages of company creation.  There are so many urgent and demanding issues organizations face as they struggle to establish traction and stability in the marketplace.  Culture always seems to take a back seat in development.  From my experience, it is only when culture becomes a problem that there is a conscious effort to address the situation.  By that time it is like trying to turn around an aircraft carrier traversing the Suez Canal.  The constraints of the business make it a formidable task that no one wants to get in front of in order to resolve.

Another reason business culture tends to take on a seemingly uncontrolled life of its own is the lack of focus on culture in the development and execution of the strategic plan.  It simply isn’t a traditional core focus of senior management and it can be a difficult area to measure in an objective manner.  Perhaps industrial companies operating in the twentieth century could get away with ignoring this strategic imperative, but contemporary enterprises leveraging intellectual property for value creation can no longer afford to avoid the importance of culture.

The propagation of a creative, healthy culture begins with the expressed intention of authentic leadership.  Associates take their cue from the words and behaviors of their executives.  If leadership expresses a predatory, win at all cost philosophy, the behaviors of the organization will follow suit.  Nowhere is the old adage of reaping what one sows more accurately reflected than in the creation of organizational culture.  When associates buy-in to the vision, intention, and strategy, a corresponding, positive energy begins to resonate throughout a business.  As a business grows in size, the outer bands of this energy are subject to the laws of inertia.  A body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion.  This is why culture demands attention early in the developmental stages of a business.  Once the initial, framing forces are unleashed they are very difficult to modulate.

The traditional definition of culture references shared values; this warrants a bit more discussion.  Culture is affected by the shared, living values of an organization.  There are two types of living values in a company; explicit shared values and implicit shared values.

Explicit values are best reflected through thoughtfully crafted Vision Statements and Mission Statements.  These formal articulations define who we are and where we’re going.  Unfortunately, these formal statements are often another area of peripheral focus, especially in emerging organizations (we’ll discuss creating powerful Vision and Mission Statements in detail in Chapter Six).  Explicit values are also reinforced through the language and focus expressed in standard operating procedures.  This emphasizes how we will act in the daily conduct of our business; how we will treat our customers and stakeholders and resonate with the sense of responsibility we have to those working around us.

Explicit values are almost always highly positive in their intention but they can be dramatically tempered by the implicit values of an organization.  These are the unwritten rules of a company and these unspoken values are capable of derailing the finest intentions.

Implicit values often emerge from ego and therefore are frequently based in fear, insecurity, and the desire to perpetuate positions of power.  Unwritten rules can cover a wide spectrum of acceptable and non-acceptable behaviors in a company.  Expectations of dress, informal lines of communication throughout the hierarchy, subtle power influencers, and the evaluation criteria of performance are prime examples.  I’ve even experienced environments where the exercising of vested stock options was perceived to be a career killer by senior management!  This certainly wasn’t written anywhere, but it was clearly understood by everyone.

The example we’ve probably all experienced at one time or another is the existence of a good ole’ boy network in a company.  The existence of such cliques are, by definition, exclusive, rather than inclusive.  They disenfranchise talented associates and propagate office politics.  Such cliques often display passive-aggressive behaviors that exist only to serve the ego and selfish desires of individuals in an organization.

The consistent display of authentic leadership helps ensure the alignment of implicit values with organizational intention.  This makes sense as authentic leadership is not rooted in the ego.  Authentic leadership also cultivates empathy throughout the culture, a powerful and binding force of positive intention.  We’ll explore this in more detail in Chapter Eight.

It is impossible to parse out any one of the three key attributes of transformational performance.  They are all intertwined in the tapestry of the organization and require continuous attention over time.  With these concepts as our backdrop we can now begin to discuss the step-by-step process to transform your organization or lay the right foundation for your startup endeavor!

© Terry Murray, 2012.

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April 12, 2012 · 12:41 pm

Igniting Your Entrepreneurial Fire

Key Concept ~ While the cacophony of social media,  cloud technology, mobile apps, etc., continues the dominate the business landscape, the core fundamentals for success remain the same.  Over the next three blogs, I’d like to share the fundamentals I learned over my 25 year career in both corporate leadership roles and in entrepreneurial settings.  Your success will greatly be determined by three critical elements.  These next three blogs are an excerpt from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”, which was cited in the March edition of the academic Journal For Economic Literature for its contribution to thought leadership and the field of business management.

Creating transformational performance is like igniting a fire; it requires three fundamental elements.  A fire requires a source of heat, fuel, and oxygen in order to burn.  Transformational performance requires authentic, conscious leadership (the heat), a visionary strategic plan (the fuel), and a creative culture that fully engages the entire workforce (the oxygen).

While transformational performance cannot occur without all three elements, the quality of leadership will greatly enhance or diminish both the ascendance and long-term success of a business.  The intensity of its energy and the clarity of its intention can emulate that of a paper match or an acetylene torch.

The quality of the strategic plan will influence sustainability and growth; it can take the form of seasoned hardwood or half-rotted pulp.  The final element, culture, can fan or extinguish the brightest leadership and the most thoughtful strategies.  Like oxygen, we cannot literally see culture, yet it is the air we all breathe.

~ Authentic Leadership

Leading a business requires a strong and unflinching sense of responsibility for the associates who depend upon your wisdom, integrity, and stewardship.  Their livelihoods, dreams, and aspirations are invested in your guidance.  This is a sacred trust.  Associates trust that you will do your best to ensure the health and vitality of the business.  The stronger their level of trust in your leadership, the more willing they will be to fully invest their time, energy, and enthusiasm in the success of the endeavor.  The level of authenticity a leader expresses in their daily interactions with people and in how they address challenging situations will have an enormous impact on execution.

Authenticity may sound like an unusual word to describe leadership, but its meaning reflects several key characteristics that are critical to successfully leading human beings.  There are three primary definitions of authenticity in the dictionary; the quality of being authentic, trustworthy or genuine, and the displaying of undisputed credibility.

The quality of being authentic begins with being true to one’s self.  This quality emerges through self reflection and inner exploration and infers an active awareness of one’s consciousness.  The complete spectrum of who we are physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  This includes being in touch with, and trusting in, one’s own intuition.  We’ll explore the role of intuition further in Chapter Four.

At times, being true to one’s self isn’t easy.  It can test our moral courage.  In the late 1990’s while serving as the vice president of sales and marketing for a highly acquisitive life science company I experienced this conflict.  I found myself confronted with having to decide whether I would lead with authenticity or “go along to get along”.

Shortly after our company purchased a small manufacturing concern we found ourselves with two mid-level executives with overlapping responsibilities for managing our European sales business.  One was from our organization and one arrived with the acquired company.  The president of our company had sidestepped a decision on realigning responsibilities for two months.  The new executive was very political and focused much of his efforts and energy to develop a social relationship with the president, inviting him to play golf and entertaining him at his home.    After more than a year of diligent work on the part of our director to build our business in Europe the ambiguity began wearing on his emotions and productivity.

The situation left me uneasy at what I felt was inherently unfair.  At the very least, our director deserved a word of clarification on the issue.  Finally, on a Friday afternoon preceding our director leaving on a scheduled trip to meet with our European partners (who would be looking for direction and clarification as well) I felt compelled to address the situation with the president.  My inquiry infuriated the president who proceeded to lash out verbally.  I took some lumps and expended significant political capital, but my authentic concern for my direct report resonated throughout the sales and marketing organization, building trust and resulting in measurably marked improvements in sales performance.

As the years progressed, I began to realize my sensibilities of leadership didn’t correlate with what I was consistently experiencing in Corporate America.  While my performance was frequently lauded by my superiors, I would eventually find myself at odds with the status quo.  Somehow, my presence made my fellow executives uncomfortable.  Our intentions didn’t match.  I eventually came to the realization I didn’t belong in this environment and made the decision to strike out on my own and start a business focusing on coaching entrepreneurs on leadership, strategy, and business process.  In discovering and following my authentic self I now work from a position of service that has created the greatest joy and satisfaction I have ever experienced in my life!

The second definition of authenticity is “trustworthy or genuine”.  Trust is an energy that flows in a circular orbit.  It cannot move in one direction without returning to whence it came.  Some people allow themselves to trust more readily than others, but once trust has been broached it is often nearly impossible to mend.

Cultivating a trustworthy environment dispels people’s fears and calms insecurities.  It enables people to function in the moment without worrying about the repercussions of making an honest mistake.  The legendary salesman and early leader of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, was once quoted as saying, “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

Sometimes we learn more from our mistakes and allowing for the occasional mistake without the anticipation or fear of punishment builds trust.  Trusting associates empowers people to work from their heart which draws upon the energy of positive intention.  It opens the door to passionate engagement and reveals the hidden workforce lying quietly just beneath the surface in many businesses.  Creating an environment that encourages mature, thoughtful risk-taking delivers returns that far exceed any potential losses.

In the context of our discussion, the definition of “genuine” refers to being from the original stock or lineage, of being a genuine human being.  This implies we see each other as universally and energetically connected as a single entity of creation.  In doing so, we are able to express empathy for one another as easily and openly as we are able to care about our selves.  The resonant power of empathy consistently expressed by leadership cannot be overestimated.  It conveys genuine concern and respect for an associate’s well-being.  In doing so, it lowers barriers and engages the heart as well as the mind.  It is something we all can relate to.  Ask yourself, how much more are you willing to do for someone that genuinely cares about you?

Several years ago I was engaged in a strategic planning project with an immersive learning company.  They focused on teaching empathy in health care environments in response to malpractice lawsuits.  The financial exposure the risk of malpractice introduces to insurance companies, hospitals, and physicians’ practices has resulted in extensive, scientific research into the reasons why people sue.  We tapped into this research as part of our planning process and what we discovered was very surprising.  It turns out people sue based upon how they feel they were treated after a medical error had occurred and not directly because of the error itself.  Patients and patients’ families that were treated with empathy were significantly less likely to sue.  That’s a powerful statement.  In the midst of experiencing one of the most severe health and emotional crisis humans may encounter, empathy was the balm that soothed the intensity of a catastrophic medical event.  Imagine the power empathy can have in an everyday business environment!

The third definition of authenticity is “undisputed credibility”, which emphasizes the importance of being impeccable with your word and ensuring the consistent alignment of your actions with your words.  Walking the walk and talking the talk.  In the noble words of St. Francis of Assisi, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

One of the fastest ways to disengage a workforce is for leadership to display behavior that is inconsistent with their words.  It conveys the existence of double standards; one for associates and a separate, privileged set of standards for executives.  If you want associates to perform at a high level then live, work, and consistently display that level in your own behavior.  Keep in mind it is human nature to remember the missteps.  You can be consistently credible 99% of the time but it will be the one time you are inconsistent with your word that associates will remember.

Another powerful, yet often overlooked attribute of authentic leadership is the ability to sense and respect people’s boundaries.  Hierarchical leadership has a tendency to create boundaries that run in one direction.  Actually, they are more like barriers than boundaries.  Barriers that create a set of expectations that govern behavior and one-directional communication that are meant to sustain authority and control.  Projecting a lack of respect for the boundaries of subordinates causes emotional barriers to be erected.  As emotional barriers come up associate engagement goes down.  Conversely, enabling the creation of healthy boundaries engages associates’ sense of worth and creativity.

People need to feel secure in their own space; this extends to emotional and intellectual space as well as physical space.  When people are able to create and maintain a container of self their creativity will blossom.  When physical space is constrained, such as when cubicles are used for workspace, fostering healthy emotional and mental boundaries is even more important to fully engage associates.  Authority figures that roll over these boundaries lead people to freeze up and withdraw, working while keeping their heads down to avoid further transgressions into their comfort zone.  Giving associates the space to think and, at the appropriate time, to simply be, engages the imagination and the heart.  The consistent expression of authentic leadership will rapidly reveal previously unseen opportunities for the organization.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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April 3, 2012 · 3:49 pm

The Three C’s for Small Business Success in the 21st Century

Key Concept ~ We’re all looking to succeed and grow our businesses. We’re also all well served to keep this simple statement in mind:  Creativity creates cash-flow.  The challenge is learning how to lead for creativity advantage; whether you’re a sole entrepreneur or running an investor-driven startup.

I know, it’s a bit redundant.  I could have just as easily written, creativity cultivates cash-flow, but I really want to emphasize the strategic imperative of creativity in today’s, and more importantly, tomorrow’s global market.  This accelerating driver of value creation offers both challenges and tremendous opportunities for small business.

If you don’t see yourself as actively in the global marketplace you may wish to look again.  Just yesterday I was speaking with a client, who is located in Hawaii, about her next steps for her new startup.  We both concurred that it was time to launch a blog site, to cultivate engagement and open the door for new relationships to emerge, yet she saw this as a cost impediment cost.  I told her I knew of two or three very reputable companies in India (whom I met on LinkedIn because of my own blogging and social media strategy) that can customize a WordPress site for her in a matter of days and at a labor rate of $10 per hour.  What was once a $3,000 to $4,000 cost of doing business is now a few hundred dollars because we’re all in the global marketplace.

This represents a creative solution to what was once seen as an impediment.  This is just an example of the type of creative thinking that is now necessary at every touch point throughout our organizations.

On the opportunistic side, this growing need for creative, adaptive thinking for competitive advantage is easier for a small firm to cultivate and leverage than for our large competitors.  The prevalent leadership style in big business is still well entrenched in the transactional approach to leadership of the last century.  They are often diverse but rarely as inclusive as they could be or should be, for that matter.  The proof that this approach to leadership no longer is appropriate for our business climate is evident in the endemic employee disengagement crisis.  Seventy percent of employees are cognitively and emotionally disengaged with their current employer (for more research statistics on just how badly transactional leadership is out of alignment with employees, please click on the slides throughout the pages of the Igniting Creativity in Business blog site).  Without engagement, there is no creativity.

Small businesses, on the other hand, can more readily embrace and act upon a fresh approach to leadership and strategic planning in order to cultivate and sustain an engaging, creative culture.  Two things must happen in order for this competitive benefit to emerge.  First, we, as entrepreneurs, must decide to embrace and support this new perspective towards business culture and associate engagement.  Second, we must hone our leadership skills to the same level of granularity as our technical skills.

Most entrepreneurs are technical experts in a particular endeavor.  In service industries, it is this expertise that is often the entrepreneur’s stock and trade.  Scientists, research physicians, engineers, inventors, consultants are all technically expert in their fields.  Because of the way we are educated and trained, the further we go, the more technically specialized we become.  The trade-off for this level of focused granularity of knowledge is breadth.  The breadth of skills, both technical and subtle, that effective, authentic leaders need going forward is only growing.

Rarely are entrepreneurs exposed to much in the way of leadership development, so we often follow the patterns that were placed before us.  But those patterns are not working.  McKinsey & Co. issued a major study of 5,560 senior executives last summer and only 1% scored excellent in five of eight key competencies.  Ninety percent scored below average.  What’s so discouraging is the competencies they are testing for are not necessarily the competencies leaders need in the 21st century.

The takeaway from creativity creates cash-flow is simple.  Even if you’re servicing a local market, you’re still in the global one.  If you don’t think you are, just ask if your competitors are leveraging rapidly emerging, creative, global capabilities?  Embrace the opportunities these shifting tides afford small business owners.  Finally, invest in your own leadership development.  Remember, it’s been demonstrated that a dollar invested in advertising delivers a two dollar return, but a dollar invested in education delivers a forty dollar return.  For entrepreneurs, they themselves are often their best investment.

© 2012, Terry Murray

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March 28, 2012 · 12:28 pm

The Transformational Entrepreneur Cited in the Academic Journal of Economic Literature

For Immediate Release – March 28, 2012 -

Terry Murray’s groundbreaking book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Business Breakthrough Success” was recognized and cited in the peer-reviewed, academic Journal of Economic Literature’s March 2012 quarterly issue.

Performance Transformation, LLC™ (Venice, FL) announced today that their founder and Managing Partner’s book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur”was recognized and cited in the academic Journal of Economic Literature for its contribution to professional business literature and thought leadership.

“We received the unsolicited notification letter from the Journal last week,” responded Mr. Murray. “It was both humbling and exciting at the same time.  I’ve been working on the business side of the life sciences, medical technology and health care sectors since 1988, so I have an enormous appreciation for the diligence of peer-reviewed, academic journals.  As a business executive, and not an academic, this is a distinct honor for my book to be recognized for its contribution to the field of business and economic professional literature.”

The Journal of Economic Literature is published by the American Economic Association (AEA), a professional organization of economists, academics, and business thought leaders with more than 22,000 members.

“My executive career has spanned some truly remarkable changes in the global business landscape,” added Terry.  ”Historically, there’s always been a lag in leadership, strategy and organizational philosophy in response to market shifts in value creation.  I entered the biotechnology world during its infancy.  This was the beginning of the knowledge-based economy and coincided with the boom in personal computing.  Yet the methods, perspectives, and philosophies we were trained for in business school all emerged out of the Industrial Age.  We literally had to discover a new approach to business as usual along the way, but it is only today, some 25 years later, that the strategic imperative of human creativity in business is beginning to move into the mainstream.”

“The Transformational Entrepreneur” will also be indexed in the American Economic Association’s internet database, EconLit, which is accessible at libraries and universities around the world, as well as to licensed institutions and AEA members.  The electronic bibliography indexes over 120 years of economics literature from around the world.  The database complies professional journal articles, collective volume articles, working papers, dissertations, and books of note on the subject of economics and business practice.

“The shift in the source of value creation truly began in the 1980s, but information technology bridged the productivity gap for thirty years, masking the need for a change in the approach to  leadership, strategy and organizational development.  By the turn of the century it was already beginning to hit a point of diminishing returns, right at the time the explosively disruptive power of the internet began to take off.  Even old world industries are doing business in ways they never could have anticipated ten years ago,” commented Terry.

Mr. Murray went on to say, “Perhaps because I was immersed in the knowledge-based economy for so long I saw the need for a more human-centric approach to business.  Research scientists, physicians and engineers, and their creative talents, are the raw material for value creation and competitive advantage in this new era of business.  You cannot lead creatives the same way we once managed assembly line workers.  Two years after I began writing my book, the IBM Global CEO Survey exemplified the perspective and approach I was writing about at the time, reporting that creativity and the ability to cultivate creativity throughout the workplace was the single most important attribute CEOs are looking for in future leaders.”

Terry’s book was published two months after IBM released the results of their bi-annual survey in December of 2010.

About the author ~ Terry Murray is an author, speaker, entrepreneur, and professional business advisor/coach with twenty-five years of progressive experience in strategic development, executive leadership, and the deployment of highly profitable business teams. His work with Fortune 1000 and startup companies has directly contributed more than $1 billion in market capitalization growth throughout his career.

He is the founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation, LLC™, a professional and strategic development firm focused on igniting breakthrough performance by optimizing and aligning authentic leadership, mindful strategy, and an engaging, creative organizational culture.  The company’s evidence-based programs and pragmatic approach employs their proprietary Accretive Coaching Process℠.  This innovative, developmental process integrates concepts from published research in the neurosciences, emotional intelligence, performance psychology, quantum physics and Applied Behavioral Economics with Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning.

For more information, please visit http://ignitingcreativityinbusiness.com.

© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.


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March 22, 2012 · 9:49 pm

The Correlation Between Coherence, Flow and Productivity

Key Concept ~ Most entrepreneurs share a common attribute; a burning sense of urgency.  While intrinsic motivation is critical for someone striking out on their own or stepping up to launch and lead a startup business, some balance is required as well. Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, and how we regulate our own energy, focus and activities has a bearing on long-term success.

If you’re an entrepreneur you’re probably fairly familiar with eighty to one hundred hour work weeks, juggling multiple priorities concurrently, and literally living your business at times.  If our own fire in the belly isn’t enough motivation, the constrained resources, limited bandwidth, competing priorities, and competitive pressures of leading a startup quickly remind us…there’s always work to be done.  The question is, what happens to our productivity, our ability to creatively leverage our vision, business acumen and experience for the benefit of the business, when we simply find ourselves running too hard?

We all do it at times.  I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a habitual offender.  It started in college.  I launch my first company my junior year at business school and would commonly work sixty hours a week while going to college full time.  By my second semester I scheduled all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which in my mind, left a complete five day work week for the business!  I was the classic young man in a hurry.  I did the same thing in corporate, working eighty to hundred hour weeks, flying 100,000 miles a year, and not taking a real vacation during a five year stretch.

My wife kindly forwarded an article to me last week that referenced a host of research studies, some going as far back as 1914 (Henry Ford conducted internal research on productivity, costs, and labor hours), all demonstrating how rapidly human productivity declines after working for eight hours a day or more than forty hours a week.  Winston Churchill recognized this during the war and devised a clever work schedule to maximize his productivity and meet the demands of the Prime Minister fighting the Axis powers on a global front.  He would rise early and work until mid-day, at which time he would go home, take a bath (while giving dictation to his secretary sitting just outside the ajar door), and then a long nap.  He would then go back to work until late into the night.  He was also known to have commented there’s never a good time to take a vacation.  Take one anyways.  And he practiced this even during the darkest years of the war.

The research referenced in the article made a pretty strong argument, and I’m not one to argue with Mr. Churchill, but there was still a part of me that was thinking, yea, well how do you explain my success…it was directly associated with my effort, right?  My wife kindly reminded me that all of our company professional development programs and workshops are based upon peer-reviewed research.  She then added, “Ignoring research on productivity wouldn’t be very authentic, would it?”

So I took the weekend off.

Let’s face it, sometimes a forty hour work week is impossible for us.  But at what cost to our productivity?   One thing is for certain, entrepreneurs would be well served to cultivate emotional resiliency in order to maintain our own optimal level of productivity.  This is a core focus of our programs and workshops; the cultivation of competencies in emotional intelligence.  Building our self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management skills places us onto the path to self-mastery.  There are actual, biological underpinnings that we can positively influence, for ourselves and those around us, that directly effect our productivity as well as our health (another critical factor, entrepreneurs can rarely afford the time to be sick).

Those capable of self-mastery, of mindfully engaging their emotional landscape (internally and externally), experience multi-dimensional benefits.  First, they experience the physiological and psychological benefit called coherence.1   Coherence occurs when the oscillatory systems of the body (i.e. heart beat, respiratory rate, blood pressure, brain waves) synchronize and become entrained together in frequency.2  Coherence improves physiological function on a biochemical and metabolic level.  We all know that unhealthy levels of stress have a negative impact on our immune system and the health of our heart.  Being in a state of coherence is believed to have the opposite effect.

Achieving coherence also has a positive impact on cognitive ability.  When we are fully engaged and enjoying what we are doing we enter what renowned researcher and psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as flow.  Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research looked into the psychological state of a wide variety of professionals operating at peak performance.  When they were fully engaged, focused, and enjoying their endeavor, their biochemistry reflected an increase in cortisol (from the hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal, or HPA axis) which brought them to a place in which they were taking full advantage of their cognitive and/or physical abilities.  If the HPA axis shot past this point due to stress, adrenaline and cortisol levels continued to rise and performance rapidly diminished.  His work proved that a person’s emotional state is a governing factor in cognitive and physical performance.

Still another benefit of coherence is its effect on our ability to positively engage and motivate those around us.  When we express empathy for another being, entrainment of each person’s physiological rhythms ensues.  Research conducted by Drs. Levenson and Gottman at UC Berkeley observed this phenomena between spouses.3  Research conducted by Carl Marci at Harvard University documented similar results of coherence and physiological entrainment between patients and psychotherapists during expressed moments of empathy by the therapist.4  When people connect emotionally we actually connect physiologically as well.

All of these things profoundly effect our productivity as entrepreneurs and leaders.  We’re all different, but cultivating the self-awareness to see when we’re pushing ourselves past optimal flow can help us self-regulate and maintain our productivity by taking our foot off the gas, even if for a moment.

1.)  R. McCraty, M. Atkinson, “Psychophysiological Coherence”, D, McCraty R, Wilson BC, eds. Emotional Sovereignty. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, forthcoming.

2.)  R. McCraty, “The Energetic Heart – Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People”.  Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, CA., 2003.

3.)  R. Levenson, A. Ruef, “Physiological Aspects of Emotional Knowledge and Rapport”, In: W. Ickes, ed. Empathic Accuracy, Guilford Press, New York, New York 1997.

4.)  C. Marci, “Psychophysiology and Psychotherapy:  The Neurobiology of Human Relatedness”, Practical Reviews of Psychiatry,  2002; 25(3).

5.)  M. Iacoboni, “Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons”, Annual Review of Psychology, 2009.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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March 12, 2012 · 10:00 pm

Performance Transformation Launches Igniting Creativity in Business

PR Newswire – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Performance Transformation, LLC™ (Venice, FL) announced today the launch of their new professional development programs and workshops designed to cultivate creativity in the workplace.

“We’re very excited to bring our innovative approach into the marketplace,” said Terry Murray, Founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation.  ”Regardless of your industry, creativity thinking is now a strategic imperative for cultivating and sustaining competitive advantage in the 21st Century.”

In fact, the 2010 IBM Global CEO survey identified the single most important attribute CEOs are looking for in future leaders is creativity and their ability to cultivate creativity throughout the organization.  However, a peer-reviewed research study conducted by Cornell University  and published in The Journal For Experimental Social Psychology identifies a disconnect.  The research identified a heretofore unseen bias in business.  High potentials that display creativity are often sidetracked on their way up the corporate ladder.

“The accelerating complexity of the global marketplace we’re currently experiencing is unprecedented,” adds Mr. Murray.  ”Creative thinking can no longer be relegated to the R&D or marketing functions.  It needs to be present at every touchpoint throughout the organization.”

More than four years in development and validation, the Igniting Creativity In Business series of professional development programs and workshops are entirely based upon peer-reviewed research from diverse, scientific disciplines.  Research findings from the neurosciences, emotional intelligence, biochemistry, Applied Behavioral Economics, Core Mammalian Emotional Systems, performance psychology, creativity research, Kolb’s Adult Learning Style Inventory, and quantum physics have been integrated into a multi-dimensional, innovative approach for sparking creativity and innovative thinking.

“For the past four years we’ve been focused on developing and delivering programs and workshops that align and optimize leadership, strategy, and organizational culture,” states Terry.  ”Our baseline programs, first released in 2010, Transformational Leadership, Adaptive Team Building, Igniting Breakthrough Sales, The Emotionally Resilient Nurse, and Warriors in Transition set the foundation for the next evolution in professional development.  When we saw the results from the IBM Global CEO Survey a year and a half ago we realized we had identified the fundamental elements necessary for promulgating creativity in business.”

In the past two years, more than a dozen research studies and surveys have been released by global consultancies, universities, and leading institutions all pointing to the growing disconnect between leadership and employees.  Economic volatility and the global recession contributed to this issue. On a macro level, more than 70% of employees are disengaged with their company.  Trust in leadership is at an all time low (10%) and fear dominates many organizational cultures.

Terry goes on to state, “Fear kills creativity.  It is part of our Core Mammalian Emotional System.  When we promote fear as a motivating factor, we get a predictable response; disengagement.  When we promote another of our part of our Core Mammalian Emotional System, seeking, we also get a predictable response; engagement and creativity.”

Today’s multi-cultural and multi-generational workplace provides significant opportunities for devising and implementing creative solutions to challenges and opportunities alike.  It does, however, require a fresh approach to leading, planning, and delivering a culture capable of engaging every human perspective in the business.

“Creative thinking requires both divergent thinking and convergent focus,” added Terry.  ”Diversity of perspectives, coming from diverse people is key.  Inclusion of diverse perspectives has never been more strategically important for companies than it is today.  The other key element for creative thinking that is often overlooked in business is novel stimuli.”

Performance Transformation delivers novel cognitive, emotional, and psychological stimuli through their proprietary Accretive Coaching Process℠, which can include Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning workshops.  The carefully crafted, ground-based exercises with horses introduces a novel, neurological response triggering the development of new neural pathways.  This approach, followed up with a rigorous educational and coaching process helps professionals shift their response to new challenges away from conditioned thinking into an exploratory, neurological response.

Terry concludes, “The challenge is to first promote the formation of new neural pathways in the individual through the introduction of emotionally, cognitively, and psychologically novel stimuli.  To break out of the wheel worn paths of conditioned thinking.  The brain is very conservative with energy, so it has a tendency to follow the path of least resistance.  Developing new neural pathways takes more energy than following established ones.  The more practiced we are in developing new ways of thinking, the easier it becomes to respond to unprecedented challenges in creative ways.  We then work to help client organizations connect and amplify the nodes of though throughout their company.  This approach to cross-pollinating organizational thinking is the key to success going forward.”

© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.

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