Category Archives: Productivity

March 5, 2012 · 5:55 pm

Are You Prepared for the Talent Shortage?

Key Concept ~ Competing for talent is always a challenge for small firms.  The competition for talent in the 21st Century is already accelerating.  Entrepreneurial startups may want to rethink how they attract, recruit, and retain talent going foward.

The global staffing firm Manpower Group™ issued their 2011 Global Talent Shortage Survey (Manpower Global Talent Survey 2011 PDF) recently in which they identified that 52% of U.S. firms are struggling to find adequate talent for open positions.  In all of the Americas only Brazil, at 57%, is experiencing a greater shortage of talent than the U.S.  I don’t know about you, but I find this to be quite a sad commentary on the state of competitive fitness in the U.S.  There are few signs the talent shortage is about to abate any time soon.  In fact, most executives are anticipating the opposite; as we continue to move further away from the Great Recession the competition for talent will continue to heat up.

So, what are companies doing in response?  According to the survey, not much. In response to the shortage of talent (particularly for technicians, sales representatives, and skilled trade workers…the top three areas of talent shortfalls) only one out of five companies is increasing their training and educational programs for their associates.  Only 6% are pro-actively working with local schools and educational institutions to help address the skill gap.  More companies (25%) are changing their recruiting strategy than are looking to change, or even evaluate, their approach to how they lead and develop talent.

What was really startling was the perception held by executives as to the level of impact not filling key openings in a timely manner has on stakeholders (customers, investors, associates, etc.).  Only one out of five executives surveyed felt not backfilling a critical, open position has a high impact on constituents.  The survey goes on to identify 43% of executives believe leaving a position open has little impact, no impact, or didn’t know if open positions had any impact whatsoever on stakeholders.  This certainly isn’t the impression I’ve been getting from the research that continues to emerge from companies like McKinsey & Co., Gallup, RogenSi, Martitz Research, and other global consultancies.  The disconnect this points to is nothing short of astounding.  Hopefully, entrepreneurs, who tend to be closer to the front lines of day-to-day business, recognize just how disruptive this can be for the associates that remain onboard.

We collectively seem to have very short memories.  It was just fourteen short years ago when we went through the last severe chase for talent.  I was running a global service business in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical sector for a major corporation at the time.  The dot.com boom was in full swing, and places like the San Francisco Bay Area, a hotbed for both the high tech and biotech industries, had an unemployment rate of around 1%.  Our own customers were aggressively pirating our technicians away from our business.  Technicians that required six months of training and education before they were fully capable of conducting their work within the highly regulated biopharmaceutical industry.  Even if I could find potential technicians worth training, the skyrocketing wage scale and cost of living in the Bay Area created remarkable barriers to backfilling.  It became so severe, we would dispatch technicians from as far away as Mexico City and New Jersey for a week at a time to support our customers in Northern California.

What’s coming next will make that talent shortage pale in comparison.  More than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every day.  This rate of retirement will continue for the next seventeen years!  Workers from the Gen X and Gen Y generations are simultaneously introducing an entirely different set of expectations regarding their careers.  They are far more mobile than their Baby Boomer predecessors.  They expect opportunities for professional development and a greater sense of purposefulness as part of their employment.  They witnessed leagues of loyal Boomers work for corporations for decades only to be callously displaced at the next downturn.  The typical length of engagement for these younger workers, the ones with the adaptive technology skills companies covet so dearly, is around three years.  Perhaps this is part of the reason companies are so hesitant to provide training and employ professional development plans?  I’ll hire it when I need it seems to continue to be the prevailing attitude, unfortunately, it may not be there when you go looking for it.

Many companies are holding fast to their slash and burn harvest mentality.  Of squeezing every bit of value out of fewer and fewer human resources.  Of expecting more and offering less in return.  The survey and research results of the past few years are clearly demonstrating the effect of this on the workforce.  The majority of workers are feeling over-burdened, disengaged, and apathetic towards their employers.  The social contract, one’s whose expectations were forged in the post-WWII era, between employers and employees is broken. Talent holds the cards now, and it will be talent that will renegotiates this relationship going forward.

This creates an opportunistic environment for entrepreneurs.  Create a better working experience, and the talent will very likely find your firm, however small, an attractive alternative to life in corporate settings.  As an example, my first national sales management position was with a small company in Massachusetts.  We were anything but an attractive employer for top, seasoned sales talent.  We were, however, a wonderful place for high potential talent to germinate, get a few years of real, business-to-business sales experience in the life science market, and move on to a top-notch gig with a major company in the sector.  I chose attitude, intelligence, and the desire to grow professionally over experience.  I chose to train my sales team to sell the way I knew, from my own sales experience in the sector, would work.  I knew going in, I had to catch the talent on their ascent, and provide them with the training and experience they needed to get to where they wanted to go.  I knew my place in the career food chain, followed this approach, and the team achieved exceptional results.  Each sales representative I hired was with us for just a little over two years and every one of them went on to six figure sales jobs with their next company.  It was a fair trade-off, everybody won because we had calibrated our expectations accordingly.

As the talent wars continue to flare up, take a step back and look at what you have to offer.  You may be pleasantly surprised by embracing a fresh perspective in what you define as talent and what you need in terms of experience.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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February 24, 2012 · 7:19 pm

An Entrepreneur’s Key to Attracting and Retaining the Best Talent

Yet another survey, the exact same message!  What is bad news for major corporations, opens the door for entrepreneurial firms to gain a competitive edge by attracting and retaining the best talent available.  The fact of the matter is, the most creative, intrinsically motivated, and engaged talent is also the most mobile.  Corporate environments don’t fit their skin, either.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at the research that continues to illuminate the leadership crisis in global corporations and the resulting associate disengagement levels.  If you’re mindful in your approach to leadership, strategy, and organizational culture, you could be a magnet for the best and the brightest!

The global consulting firm Six Seconds just published their 2012 Workplace Issues Report, “Insights on the People Side of Performance” and it is yet another significant piece of evidence that a new perspective towards leadership, teams, and organizational culture needs to emerge.  In the report, the three key findings were the need for identifying, hiring, and retaining talent; the thirst of employees for visionary leaders; and the absence of business culture that resonates emotional intelligence.  This report is in total alignment with the previous, recent research conducted by RogenSi, McKinsey & Co.®, The Gallup Company, Maritz Research, peer-reviewed research from Cornell, and the IBM CEO Survey of 2010.   I can’t help but wonder when leadership will get the message and finally move forward to embrace a transformational approach their employees are crying out for in survey after survey?

Talent is the key factor in our modern economy.  Without talent companies cannot create and market innovative products and services.  The key driver of value creation in the 21st century is the commercialization of intellectual property (IP).  The source of IP is human creativity.  Fully engaged, inspired, and creative human beings, working cohesively together, are the raw material of business.  Yet every single survey and research paper I’ve read over the past two years points to the exact same conclusion.  There is a critical leadership crisis in the business world today that has left employees feeling empty, used, and of little value.  Our own firm dug a little deeper into the flood of research and calculated that many firms are lucky to be getting a positive return on investment on approximately half of their payroll.  If Henry Ford had seen a 50% scrap rate on his raw materials how quickly do you think he would have addressed it?  Exactly.  Yet we continue to see transactional leadership continuing with business as usual.

The second key issue that surfaces in this report is the desire of associates to be led by visionary leaders.  People don’t come to work looking to lose.  They want to win, they want to succeed, and they want to feel like their a part of something purposeful and larger than themselves.  This is especially true for Gen Y and Gen X associates.  We can find very clear insights for our human need, our very human nature that is pre-programmed to embrace visionary, transformational leadership by looking at Dr. Jaak Panksepp’s research on Core Mammalian Emotional Systems.  These are constant, hard-wired emotions all mammals share and respond to accordingly.  Create an environment that cultivates fear (which is what transactional leaders do…light on the reward and heavy on the punishment) and you’ll get a very predictable emotional response; disengagement.  Cultivate an atmosphere that encourages seeking (which is what visionary, transformational leaders do) and you’ll also get a very predicable emotional response; engagement.  Engagement is a pre-requisite for creativity, the single most important leadership attribute identified in the IBM Global CEO Survey.  Seeking, our constant impulse to explore and make sense of our environment, is directed and coordinated, to a great degree, by the vision of the business.  We all want to know where we’re going.  Leaders that authentically leverages this core emotion accelerate accretive value creation; the whole is genuinely greater than the sum of its parts.  This isn’t theory, I’ve seen it work first-hand.

The final key issue, the absence of organizational culture that resonates with emotional intelligence, points directly to the solution!  Emotionally intelligent leaders (self-aware, self regulating, socially aware, and relationship driven) cultivate a mindful, engaging organizational culture in which people can flourish.  Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re seeing.  Leaders say one thing, and then their behavior indicates another.  This state of incongruity resonates throughout the organizational culture.  People feel this intensely and choose to go into survival mode, avoid taking any risks, stop creating, and simply try to stay off the radar.  Here’s a quote from a professional that was surveyed by Six Seconds that pretty much says it all, “We have abandoned all leadership training, in large part because upper management was frightened by the gap between information presented and their own leadership practices.”

We’re approaching an inflection point.  A time when the urgency to act will emerge.  For many firms, this sense of awareness will come too late, and they’ll find themselves just another footnote of history.  People misinterpreted Darwin’s theory of evolution.  It isn’t survival of the fittest, it is those that are most adaptive that survive.  We live in a time of accelerating, adaptive challenges and unprecedented volatility.  Transactional leadership, the status quo in corporate, is walking the same path of the Dodo bird.  Smart entrepreneurs recognize this, and leverage it to their competitive advantage.  Create a better culture, and the talent will come to you!

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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February 20, 2012 · 4:32 pm

The Problem with the Perpetual Pendulum in Leadership Thinking ~ Lessons for Transformational Entrepreneurs

Key Concept ~ Proponents continue to emerge that point to the fallacy of strategic planning in our rapidly changing world and that goal setting is somehow bad, in and of itself.  Here are some tips for setting, and more importantly achieving, stretch goals that will engage younger workers in entrepreneurial organizations.

I was speaking with the vice president of training and development at a medical device company the other day about our integrative approach for professional develop.  She is an avid horse fan, and expressed the value she sees in the linking of our experiential learning workshops with horses to our Accretive Coaching Process™ to spark a shift in perspective, explore adaptive solutions, and engrain sustained, creative thinking.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been directed that all of our training and development programs be migrated to computer based training,” she commented.  ”But stay in touch, everything changes every 18 to 24 months.”

Her comments brought me back to my days in corporate when I had witnesses this seemingly perpetual swinging of the pendulum of leadership’s thinking towards innovation, structure, strategy, well, in fact, pretty much everything.  It was almost binary in nature; if not this, then that.  When that would fall short, a new group would come in, and immediately begin to move the organization back in the other direction.  Sound familiar?

I’ve come to realize that this cyclical thinking, that never breaks us out of our well worn path, is rooted in our tendency, as Westerners, to continuously look out there for solutions that are in fact waiting to be discovered, quietly beneath the surface within ourselves.  If only we’d find the courage to take a hard look in the mirror of self-awareness.  This is why we built our process on the emerging research from the neurosciences, performance psychology, emotional intelligence, core emotional systems, quantum physics, and individual learning styles.  More and more, the research from these fields, especially from the neurosciences, and yes, quantum physics, supports our approach.

The latest pendulum swing is pointing its nebulous finger at stretch goals.  That’s where the fault lies, in our corporate obsession with establishing, and most often missing, organizational (and personal for that matter) goals.  The research coming out of our leading business schools, is attempting to make their case that obsessive goal setting damages organizational culture, erodes intrinsic motivation, distorts risk evaluation, drives unethical behavior, and is one of the primary reasons for the endemic associate disengagement crisis.1 Another earlier report from the American Psychology Association states  ”The optimally striving individual ought to endeavor to achieve and approach goals that only slightly implicate the self; that are only moderately important, fairly easy, and moderately abstract; that do not conflict with each other, and that concern the accomplishment of something other than financial gain.”2  I can’t help but come away with the impression that what this study is suggesting is less accountability and lowering the bar is the key to performance.  I do agree with the fact that goals should be in alignment and should reflect positive intention that expands beyond simple financial gain.

The pop psychologists, books like “The Secret” and the self help gurus have helped push goal setting and vacuous visualization to the point of foolishness, so I can see what prompted the good intentions that I’m sure prompted much of this research into goal setting.  Please remember, research begins with a hypothesis, in this case, that goal setting in and of itself results in missed targets, bad behavior and poor performance, and then sets out to prove the theory.  This can lead to myopic perspectives that lose focus on other variables that may also be in play.

Here’s where I think this research misses the target.  Goal setting, in and of itself is essential in aligning and moving an organization forward.  Especially in these times of unprecedented volatility and the acceleration of adaptive challenges organizations will continue to face in the 21st century.  What the research didn’t take into consideration is the prevalent, transactional leadership mindset that is setting the goals.  Transactional leadership is dominant, and operates on the 20th century premise of reward and punishment.  It’s almost Pavlovian.  Hit the goal, and you’re rewarded, miss the goal and you’ll be punished.  This, and the culture of fear it cultivates, is what drives the negative outcomes, not the goal setting.

Now, what if we were to actually rethink our fundamental approach to leadership, and migrate to a transformational leadership style?  An approach that leads from a perspective of serving those we lead.  A mindset of developing and supporting the professional and personal growth of those we are charged to lead.  An inclusive, transparent, and congruent approach that is inspirational and is the key to cultivating creative thinking, discerned risk taking, and adaptability.

I’ve witnessed this firsthand while in corporate.  In the 1990s, I had P&L responsibility for a global service unit operating in the pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment market that I had been charged to launch.  I was able to start from scratch, hire my leaders, and recruit our own technicians, and create our strategy.  Even then, I was a transformational leader, doing so more out of instinct than anything else.  It just felt right, and had always served me, my associates, and the company I was working for at the time quite well.  Our entire company had a stretch goal of growing revenue by 25% that year.  Now that’s a s-t-r-e-t-c-h goal!  Ours was the only unit that hit the target.  The rest of the company did not do as well, but none of us received our bonuses, even the ones that had performed, because the entire company missed the goal.  What do you think that did to the morale of the truly engaged associates in our business unit?  This also points to the inevitable problems transformational leaders will have operating under transactional leadership paradigms.  Eventually, you’ll be undermined.  Younger workers thirst for transformational leadership.  They want growth in experience and learning, and when they don’t see this and feel this, they walk.

In my real-world experienced opinion, the research on goal setting is flawed because it is assuming other factors are not in play, and the fundamental environment is functional.  But nevertheless, they found the statistical information to support their hypothesis.

Here are my five key tips for setting and achieving performance goals:

1.) Before you do anything, re-evaluate your leadership philosophy.  Transformational leadership is critical to success in the 21st century.  Creativity is key, at every touch point in an organization.  Creativity cannot emerge in a transactional leadership environment.  Transaction leadership leverages our core emotion of fear rather than encouraging our core emotional desire for seeking.

2.)  Don’t start with the goal, this is metaphorically putting the cart before the horse.  Start by exploring your firm’s vision and intention.  Are they in alignment?  Is it a shared vision and do your associates feel the positive intention of that vision?  Does it resonate congruently throughout your organization and your marketplace?  Now co-create the goal with inclusive, associate participation and use these parameters as a guiding factor.

3.) Once you’ve embraced the goal, which is truly only a projection of your vision lying somewhere over the horizon, create a detailed approach to bring the steps necessary to achieve the goal into the present day.  This isn’t radical in thought, it is classic GOST planning.  Goal ~ 3 to 5 years out; Objectives ~ measurable performance gates, in terms of time and other tangible criteria, to be achieved in the current fiscal year that move you towards your Goal; Strategies ~ initiatives that will move your people towards the achievement of the Objectives; and Tactics ~ the day-to-day, week-to-week action items that will implement your Strategies.  This builds presence, focus, and engagement in the moment, the only place we can ever influence anything.

4.) Take a hard look at your organizational culture.  Is it still in its transactional state or is it pulsating with possibilities.  This is why our firm focuses on aligning and optimizing Authentic, Transformational Leadership, Mindful Strategy, and an Engaging, Creative Organizational Culture.  Miss one element and high performance is extinguished.  The best visionary seeds will fail to germinate in depleted soil.

5.) Educate, coach and empower associates to grow as they move forward.  A study published in the Harvard Business Review® cited research that indicates a dollar spent on advertising created two dollars in revenue but each dollar invested in education resulted in forty dollars in increased revenue.  In addition, a research study published in the Journal of Public Personnel Management found that training improves the productivity of management a little over 22%. The integration of training with professional coaching improves productivity 88%.

Why is this important to entrepreneurs?  If you embrace these five elements, goals will be met and the creativity the CEOs in corporations so desperately desire will emerge…tipping the competitive advantage (the talent of your associates) of your small company over big corporate.  The key is to leave transactional leadership behind and embrace the new mindset of transformational leadership.  If you want to engage and inspire the Gen X and Gen Y generation, your up and coming workforce as well as your emerging marketplace, you need to leave the leadership paradigm of the 20th century behind.  This perspective is as antiquated to them as telephones mounted on a kitchen wall!

1.) “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting”, Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman, Harvard Business Review, February, 2009.

2.) “The hazards of goal pursuit. Virtue, vice, and personality: The complexity of behavior.”, L.A. King, C.M. Burton. Edward C.Chang (Ed),. xxvi, 189 pp. Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, 2003.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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January 24, 2012 · 7:27 pm

There’s No Secret About it ~ There’s a Conscious Path for Success!

Key concept ~ I was participating on a LinkedIn discussion thread from the Leadership Think Tank group and a gentleman posted a pitch for his program for success using the Law of Attraction and “The Secret”.  Well, you can imagine how lively this discussion became!  Now, I’m a big believer in the role the human spirit plays in business success, but books and programs like this always feel a bit predatory to me, offer no real value (spiritually or otherwise) and take advantage of emotionally and financially vulnerable people.  We’ve invested more than three years canvasing the research from the neurosciences, Emotional Intelligence, Applied Behavioral Economics, consciousness studies, quantum physics and performance psychology to unearth what’s truly at play, just below the surface, that explains much about human behavior and relationships.  During the discussion, one woman confessed she’d been trying to follow this supposed secret, was still failing and asked for advice.  Here’s what I had to offer:

1.) Examine your vision within the context of your intention. What does your vision look like? Now what does your intention feel like? Are they in alignment? If they are, if your vision of where you want to go and want you want to do aligns with a positive intention of being of service to others, and resonates within you, it will resonate with others as well. Either way, other people will feel your intention.  Applied Behavioral Economics demonstrates 70% of economic decision making is emotionally-driven, with the remaining 30% based in rational thought.  How people feel about you is highly influenced by how you approach and engage them, which reflects your intention.

2.) Conduct a Self-Assessment from a position of elevated Self Awareness. This is the first step in cultivating Emotional Intelligence (self awareness helps build self management skills). Examine your strengths, weaknesses, and core competencies…your unique gifts and talents you were born to share with the world. This will help bring clarity of purposefulness and identify areas for personal and/or professional development.  Entrepreneur…know thyself!

3.) Conduct a Market Assessment (or needs assessment in the case of a nonprofit or personal life plan) by first following your intuition. Allow yourself the freedom to openly explore your possibilities and opportunities using lateral thinking as opposed to vertical thinking.  Creativity, by way of intuitive insight (that aha! moment) is non-linear in its very nature.  Linear thinking disengages us from the way our brain draws correlations between data, our experiences, and the environment.  At this stage, if we’re too attached to a projected outcome we might walk right past the greater opportunity without ever seeing it!

Allowing yourself to wander freely will engaged your higher functioning brain as well as the neural network of your heart (the heart has more than 5 million neurons just like the ones in your brain, and science is showing us they’re just as active). This will also engage your enteric nervous system, the neural network of the gut. Our enteric neural network has more neurons than our entire spinal column. These embodied neural networks connect to our basil ganglia through the vagus nerve. When we reconnect with our embodied intelligence centers we can begin to do, what Christian de Quincy says, “Feel our thinking”*. You see, the basal ganglia is an ancient part of our brain. Because it evolved so early, it has no direct neural pathways to our linguistic center. It speaks to us through feelings…through emotions (remember the Self-Assessment from a place of higher Self Awareness?  This is where it comes into play as well).

Now, validate your intuitive discoveries through concrete market research of the actual conditions that exist (or in the case of conducting a life plan, review your constraints). Are your intuitive assumptions validated by real world conditions?  Unleashing your intuitive abilities will bring you places you might not have thought of cognitively.  It can also reveal insights you may not have seen before (note the word “in-sights”).  Look inward before looking outward!

4.) From this higher place of awareness, state your Vision and Mission. Examine how you and others think and  feel about these statements. This will help you build competencies in social awareness and relationship management, the next steps in cultivating Emotional Intelligence. Ask yourself, does what I’m trying to accomplish resonate on a cognitive and emotional level with others? This is a fundamental principle from Applied Behavioral Economics. If you cultivate positive emotions in others you create engagement and build rapport. These are the first steps in developing authentic relationship.  When properly communicated through aligned language and congruent action, this will accelerate your journey towards success!

5.) Articulate your Goals, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics.  Now is the time to set your Goals (3-5 year visionary statements), Objectives (tangible achievements that you can measure this coming year), Strategies (the methods you will employ to achieve your Objectives), and Tactics (the daily steps you must take to implement your Strategies). This is a form of creative visualization that will help cultivate presence…focusing your energies and activities in the now, the only place we actually physically exist and can take action. While your Goals are over the horizon, each successive planning step pulls you and the manifestation of your vision closer to the present, where you can take little steps every day that contribute to a cumulative effect.  When this emerges within aligned teams, it is accretive, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  That builds momentum!

If you do this, with positive intention, I think you will see some remarkable progress in achieving your dreams. This is the essence of my book, which goes into much greater detail, includes planning exercises, and provides examples of where I’ve seen this done to create remarkable success. Success on your own, heart-centered terms.

Test drive it on a small item first, to see if it works for you. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Best of luck!

* From the book, “Radical Knowing – Understanding Consciousness Through Relationship”, Christian de Quincy, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 2005.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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January 8, 2012 · 6:47 pm

Why eLearning and CBT are a Waste of Time and Money for Small Businesses

Key Concept ~ Developing the professional skills and adaptive capabilities of your associates is mission critical in today’s hyper-competitive markets.  The expense of traditional and innovative learning solutions is driving the emergence of elearning and Computer-Based Training as a seemingly cost-effective alternative.  Yet this is proving to be a false perception.  A body of research is emerging that demonstrates traditional, passive learning methodologies are highly ineffective.  Changing the delivery mechanism from a traditional classroom setting to computer based training may save money, but it still isn’t money well spent.

I came across a fascinating report by Emily Hanford earlier this week that reveals some startling findings regarding traditional educational methodologies.  Some twenty years ago, a professor at Arizona State University, Dr. David Hestenes, published a series of articles revealing that his first year physics students’ test scores were endemically stuck at an average of 40%, semester after semester.  When Professor Eric Mazur, a physicist at Harvard came across these articles, he saw a correlation to his own students.  It wasn’t his teaching style that was lacking, as he consistently scored very high in student feedback.  It was the traditional approach to learning, the classical classroom lecture, that was falling short.  What he realized was while his students may be memorizing formulas, they were not creating the active neural networks necessary to apply the concepts in the real world.

Fellow physicist Joe Reddish at the University of Maryland noticed the same low ability to apply the lectured information conceptually.  In Ms. Hanford’s article, Reddish pointed to a basic test question regarding Newtonian Physics that was consistently on his exams:

“Two balls are the same size but one weighs twice as much as the other. The balls are dropped from the top of a two-story building at the same instant of time. The time it takes the ball to reach the ground will be…”

a.) about half as long for the heavier ball

b.) about half as long for the lighter ball

c.) the same amount of time for both

Rather than simply tell them the answer, he took them out for a bit of experiential learning.  Going to the second story of the physics building, he dropped two balls of identical size, but with different weights, with his students watching from ground level.  The students observed that both balls hit the ground at the same time.  Why?  This phenomena is explained by Newton’s Second Law of Motion and his discovery of terminal velocity (due to the interplay of air resistance and gravity, objects in free fall on Earth accelerate to a constant rate of descent of 128 feet per second squared).  Take away the force of air friction, by placing the same two balls in a vacuum, and the one of greater mass will reach the ground first.

Now, nearly every physics student is familiar with Newton’s Second Law of Motion.  It is taught in High School.  In the article, Professor Mazur observes the test results of physics students at the end of a semester demonstrates their conceptual application and understanding of these fundamental concepts only improves by an average of 14%.  This has now been demonstrated through the testing of tens of thousands of students for conceptual application.

Hestenes also observed that the traditional classroom lecture approach is effective for about 10% of students; those that are capable of independent learning.  He is quoted as saying, “Students have to be active in developing their knowledge.  They can’t passively assimilate it.”

If you’re familiar with the research of Dr. David Kolb on adult learning styles, this comes as no surprise.  While conducting research at M.I.T., Dr. Kolb discovered and demonstrated the Learning Style Inventory. Adults learn using two or three of four fundamental learning modalities: Experiential Learning, Reflective Learning, Modeling & Correlation, and Trial & Error.  It’s not an accident that passive assimilation isn’t included in his work…because it doesn’t work.

I’ve been around long enough to have been an executive during the first wave of automating business processes with technology in order to cut costs.  We quickly learned that automating bad process doesn’t improve the process.  It only accelerates it, often accelerating poor performance outcomes as a result.  We’re witnessing a similar rush to automation in the professional development and corporate training sector today.  Anyone that attended the most recent national conference for the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) experienced this firsthand.  The technology prophets were everywhere, attempting to demonstrate how their software and their cloud were the cost-effective solution to every learning challenge companies are experiencing today.

Automating a failed approach to learning to computer-based platforms does cut costs.  But at what price?  In today’s economy, the commercialization of intellectual property, kindled by human creativity and cohesive team work, is the driver of value creation and competitive differentiation.  I’m willing to bet we’ll see the same results I lived through in the early 1990s.  Accelerating passive learning through automation will likely accelerate passive results.  Ironically, Newton’s Law of Inertia may metaphorically apply to the conventional wisdom in many organizations.  Inertia is defined as the tendency of objects to resist change in their state of motion.  This seems to apply to the long-held ideas surrounding professional learning as well.

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, the level of thinking that created a problem is not the level of thinking necessary to solve it.  When we examine the evidence, it becomes painfully clear the time is long overdue for a new level of thinking about business training and professional development.

© 2012, Terry Murray.

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January 3, 2012 · 11:00 pm

The Emotional Contagion of Positive Intention

Key Concept ~ How we engage potential conflict is a conscious choice.  Here’s a simple little example of how positive intention can dissipate the emotional rage of an amygdala hijack.

We live and work in highly stressful times.  How we choose to be can have an enormous impact not only on what we do but how we are perceived.  The holiday break allowed for some reflective time, and I made a conscious decision to fully embrace a little goal I have…to reflect the perspective of what the Buddhist call a bodhisattva.  The translation literally means enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva), but it also refers to a lay person (as apposed to a Buddhist monk) who joyfully embraces the sorrow of the world.  Well, I had my first chance to put this into full practice today!

I live in Florida, which means we’ve just experienced an explosion in seasonal population.  Traffic quadruples, and one must keep in mind our snow birds don’t necessarily have the best vision or reflexes.  I went out to run a couple of errands this morning and found traffic tied into knots due to a fender bender on the main drag of my town.  Unconcerned, I re-routed my journey using the back roads and went about my tasks.  As I was pulling into a shopping plaza that has a notoriously confusing parking lot a car raced up from behind me, right to my tail, and sounded its horn.

Knowing that the traffic in this parking lot moves in fits and starts, not to mention the pedestrians meandering their way through the moving maze of cars, I was concerned this driver might rear end me if I were to stop quickly.  Now, I spent six years working in Boston, where driving is a competitive, mean-spirited, full contact sport, so I have been conditioned to respond cautiously to road rage, even if my own temper responds automatically (that’s the amygdala hijack…part of our ancient survival-driven brain that responds blindly to perceived threats).

As I entered the access road to the parking lot, the traffic stopped entirely due to a delivery truck and the gentleman behind me decided another lay on the horn would surely clear the congestion.  I thought to myself, what a wonderful opportunity to walk my talk!  I popped out of my vehicle and approached the man’s car as he stepped out to greet me (perhaps greet isn’t the most accurate word here).  Shifting into full compassion-mode, I asked the man, “Are you okay?  Do you need any assistance?  I thought you might be trying to signal me for help.”  I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a scowl fall off a person’s face faster.  He was instantly perplexed.  I could almost see the thought patterns and synapsis in his brain begin to fire in a totally different direction.

The man fumbled to respond to this sudden inquiry of compassion, “Ahhh…no, I’m okay, my wrist slipped onto the horn.  Sorry!”

Smiling, I responded, “Good, I’m glad you’re okay!  Happy New Year!” and got back into my car just before the traffic opened up again.  It made my day!  Instead of engaging in potential conflict I chose a few words of concern and compassion and the situation was instantly diffused.  It was such a simple choice.  Had I allowed my own Core Mammalian Emotional System to take control of my response, I would have experienced a negative cascade of heart-eroding biochemicals that would have shut down my higher thought processes and focused my entire being on what my ancient brain perceived as a potential threat.  Research shows these states can last for hours, totally derailing our creativity and productivity. Making a conscious choice not to do so, left me feeling light, fully present, and calm.

The next time someone comes at you with anger or frustration during these stressful times, whether it is at work or anywhere, I highly recommend trying this approach.  Joyfully embracing the sorrow of the world has its own rewards!

© 2012, Terry Murray

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December 14, 2011 · 5:22 pm

Sixty Unexpected Business Lessons Learned Along the Way

Key Concept ~ As entrepreneurs, we all learn lessons we may not have anticipated when we embarked upon our journey.  Here’s a thought-provoking list of the unexpected lessons sixty different entrepreneurs learned as they engaged in their marketplace.

I was recently asked by business strategist and best-selling author, Carol Roth, to contribute to a blog exploring unexpected lessons entrepreneurs have learned as they engaged in their marketplace.  Ms. Roth just posted the blog, which you can read here.  Like most lists, I think you’ll find several points for reflection on your own experiences and perspective.  For me, the unexpected lesson was the role the human spirit has in driving breakthrough performance.

I’ve found that by keeping an open mind, being present, allowing yourself to follow your intuition and then validate it, and detaching ourselves from specific outcomes (which are often projections of our unconscious mind), we can often discover success on a level we never anticipated.  This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t diligently plan for our success; it is imperative that we do so.  What it does mean is when we engage our marketplace with authenticity. When we operate from a place where our vision and intention are in alignment, remarkable opportunities will begin to unfold.  Our human spirit provides us with the creativity, resiliency, and adaptability entrepreneurs need to survive and eventually thrive.  It is as natural a part of human beings as emotions, cognitive abilities, or our senses.

I hope this list of unexpected lessons triggers some self-reflection on your own experiences.

© 2011, Terry Murray.

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December 6, 2011 · 3:50 pm

“Screw Business As Usual” ~ Sir Richard Branson on Embracing a Transformational Approach to Business

Key Concept ~ Sir Richard Branson, Founder and President of Virgin Group®, just published his new book, “Screw Business As Usual”.  In his book, the iconoclast entrepreneur identifies the global shift in attitudes towards businesses and explores how doing good and doing well as a business can be a force for positive social and environmental change.

Last year at about this time, we were diligently working on the final touches for “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart, & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success” in order to meet our publication deadline in February of 2011.  After more than twenty years of executive engagement, with corporations, investor-driven startups, and as a strategy consultant, and three years of writing, rewriting, and editing, we were almost ready for press.  Writing the book afforded me the opportunity to express a business philosophy that had evolved in a broad landscape of industries and companies over a substantial period of time.  A philosophy that goes beyond traditional business practice to fully embrace the human continuum in the workplace.

My eclectic background enabled me to see many businesses from a variety of perspectives, which eventually brought a certain clarity as to what drives business success or failure.  I came to realize the key to success, both now and in the future, lies in an organization’s ability to fully engage their associates and customers by aligning and optimizing their leadership, strategy, and organizational culture.  In doing so, an organization mobilizes and unleashes the creativity, adaptability, and resiliency that often resides just below the surface in many companies; in the heart, mind, and spirit of each human being that works there.  When this occurs, an accretive, collective, organizational consciousness emerges that creates a momentum all its own.

This isn’t woo-woo conjecture.  One of the key tenets of Quantum Physics is Non-Locality.  Through experimentation, quantum physicists have been able to demonstrate repeatedly that electrons can make a quantum leap across space and time without the benefit of a signal.  This quantum fabric, if you will, interconnects everything.  At the sub-atomic level, energy, matter, and even information don’t behave in accordance with the Newtonian physics of gross bodies, or what we see everyday in our reality.  These subtle bodies, of which we can place consciousness, follow the laws of quantum possibilities.  There is an inter-connectivity and continuous interplay occurring constantly that we can barely conceive.  Mystics speak to this, quantum physicists do so with their equations, and entrepreneurs and business leaders can tap into this perspective as well.

When we become aware of our inter-connectivity, a new empathy can emerge.  One that elevates our perspective, our consciousness to another level. When we lead from this higher consciousness, our authentic, transformational leadership combined with mindful strategy and a creative, engaging culture will ignite breakthrough performance.  Doing good is good for business, and this is the main theme of Mr. Branson’s new book.  He points to a new consciousness emerging around the globe.  One that is shifting expectations towards businesses that will demand an appropriate, competitive response.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Mr. Branson’s interview with Forbes discussing his book:

“Now as we’ve moved into this new radical age of transparency fueled by social media, people all over the world are demanding that business reinvents itself and becomes a force for good in the world. The entrepreneurs and businesses that will thrive are those who will embrace this new “age of people” and make sure that they listen, learn and deliver to all their stakeholders, including Mother Nature.”

This resonates with the intention of Transformational Entrepreneurship.  One in which the vision of doing well intersects with the intention of doing good.  Make no mistake, this is the coming wave in business.

I highly recommend this book!

© 2011, Terry Murray

 

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December 5, 2011 · 5:34 pm

Stoking the Fires ~ Sustaining Your Intrinsic Motivation

Key Concept ~ Walking the entrepreneurial path is very similar to undertaking The Hero’s Journey.  It is fraught with risks, confronts you with the unknown, and on many levels, it is a path you must walk alone.  During our most challenging times we must dig deep within to find the strength and courage to persevere.  Feeding and sustaining your intrinsic motivation can help you maintain your focus and energy on achieving your goals.

Spring comes at an odd time here in Florida.  Now is the time we begin to feel cooler weather, lower humidity, and flowers burst into color all around us.  Our streets and shops are filled with tourists and snow birds, relaxing and enjoying this glorious time of year here in Florida.  When you combine this with the fact that my office looks out over the water, and through an open window at that, it is easy for me to find myself in that same mental state we all found ourselves slipping listlessly into each spring during our school years.  I find my eyes closing as the breeze wafts over the bay, the migratory birds nesting and swooping amongst the Ospreys circling as they fish the waters below.  Our local Bobcat wanders along the shoreline on occasion, the sight of which drops my shoulders as I exhale a calming breath at the wondrous, natural world, just outside my window.

It has been a vital year for us.  One filled with workshops spanning from Florida, to Colorado, to Montana, and Hawaii.  A year that saw the publication of my first book, the launch of two blog sites, and the production of numerous videos, not to mention the substantial growth in the number and quality of our entrepreneurial coaching clients.  The temptation at this time of year is to simply head to the beach, roll out the towel, and settle in for a long, winter’s nap in the warm sun.  Unfortunately, the rest of the world moves to a different rhythm.  This is the planning time of year.  The time of the year when our firm must be firing on all cylinders in order to position ourselves for our work in 2012.

Inevitably, we all experience this at some point.  When we just want to relax a bit, taking our foot off the accelerator, and coast for a while.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of us entrepreneurs cannot afford to do so, especially at crucial times during the year.  So how do we rekindle the fires that burn within?  No flame burns eternally without a source of fuel.  For entrepreneurs, that fuel is our intrinsic motivation.

When my embers begin to burn low, I remind myself why I took this path in the first place.  First and foremost, I want to make a positive difference in the lives of entrepreneurs.  I want to help accelerate their success and hopefully make a small, but substantial change in the way we do business.  Through my work, I try to illuminate a better path towards success.  One that benefits the greater good while providing opportunities for sustainable, business success.  There’s a movement afoot, quietly gaining momentum for this perspective in the world.  In fact, Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, LTD®, just published his own book, “To Hell With Business As Usual”, calling for the same perspective to emerge.  Not simply because it is the right approach to take, but because it is good business!

Second, I want to be able to have the flexibility, on occasion, to sit and stare out my window at this time of year.  So even when I find my mind wandering a bit and I struggle to stay the course, I remind myself as to the reasons I chose this path in the first place.  We can get so busy, so immersed in our drive to move forward, that we can lose sight of the good and positive impact we’ve had during the course of the year.  Take a minute to reflect on this, and remind yourself why you decided to become a Transformational Entrepreneur in the first place.  It will help stoke the inner fires that sustain your efforts towards the realization of your goals.

And every once and a while…go to the beach.

© 2011, Terry Murray

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November 21, 2011 · 7:54 pm

Can Transformational Entrepreneurs Achieve Life/Work Balance?

Key Concept ~ Starting your own business can be life-consuming.  There’s always something more to do, another fire to extinguish, another opportunity to capture.  But what are the long-term implications when entrepreneurs abdicate their personal time?

As we work through our Strategic Planning process for 2012, and specifically on our Competitive Landscape assessment, we came across an interesting perspective.  One of our more traditional competitors in the Leadership Development field released a video in which the President of the company empathically stated leaders must recognize they cannot ever achieve life/work balance.  He added there was no way to delegate, assign, or plan one’s work well enough to have personal down time with one’s family.  In addition, he commented that leaders have to learn how to serve their families from the office and the business from their home.

That’s quite a statement and position to take.  One I’ve lived first-hand during my executive stints in Corporate America.  Eighty to hundred hour work weeks, along with more than 100,000 air miles per year, was typical during those years.  I was willing to invest whatever it took to succeed.  Prior to migrating to the startup world in 2001, I went five years without taking a real vacation.  I received one hell of an eduction, but it was an expensive one personally.  Even Winston Churchill said, “There’s never a good time to take a vacation.  Take one anyways.”  If one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century saw the importance of self care, even during a world war, shouldn’t we heed his advice?

One of the concepts we teach during our Transformational Leadership Workshop is the bio-physiological state called coherence.  The research behind this very positive condition, triggered by our biochemistry in response to our emotional state, indicates the critical nature of this phenomena lowers stress, improves communication and engagement, elevates self and social awareness, kindles empathy, and delivers presence and rapport.  It also brings us into a psychological state called flow.  Research by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi indicates when our emotions are positively stimulated we enter into this state of high creativity and performance.  Dr. Csikszentmihalyi studied athletes, musicians, scientists, and other professionals and was able to document optimal performance when in this state of flow.  His research also demonstrated that if the stimulation went beyond the optimal level, performance would fall off precipitously as stress emerged.

As a leader, and perhaps more importantly, as an entrepreneur, practicing self care is mission critical for top performance.  As entrepreneurs, it doesn’t count to just show up and walk through the motions.  We must be fully present and engaged.  The quality and focus of our work is of greater significance than the amount of work we accomplish or the amount of time we spend at the office or on the road.  Our performance evaluation is driven by results, not politics or somebody’s opinion of us.  When we, as entrepreneurs, abandon self care, we unconsciously move away from being able to sustain coherence and attain a state of flow.

I think I side with Mr. Churchill on this one.

© 2011, Terry Murray.

 

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