A professor walks into a lecture hall and glances around at a packed house of students typing away on screens. As the clock indicates it’s time to get started, she clears her throat and asks everyone to put their laptops away before class. The students all freeze, looking at each other with incredulity. This must be some sort of joke,...
Last December, I met up with a group of awesome people in Laguna Beach, CA. We ran along the beach together. Shared personal stories that made us laugh and cry. Ate some good food. Even spent time volunteering for local organizations. No, this was not a vacation with my oldest friends — it was the Aha! semi-annual company meeting. And...
Don Yaeger has received his fair share of inspirational advice. As someone who has spent his career studying high performers, first as a sports journalist and then as the author of numerous celebrity biographies, he has had firsthand insight into the lives of some of the world’s greatest professionals and what makes them so successful. But of all the tips...
After fiddling around with my work-frame concept last weekend I’ve thought a bit more about my own performance improvement…. by which I mean how I get better at what I do. I want to get better not because I don’t think I’m good enough (although I did for many years) but because I’m alive, growing and developing in so many...
Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon in the 1950s when he began noticing a strange pattern among his patients. When Dr. Maltz would perform an operation — like a nose job, for example — he found that it would take the patient about 21 days to get used to seeing their new face. Similarly, when a patient had an arm...
Some years ago, we worked with a director of a multinational pharma company who’d been receiving poor grades for engagement and leadership effectiveness. Although he tried to change, nothing seemed to work. As his frustration grew, he started tracking the time he spent with each of his direct reports — and every time he received bad feedback, he pulled out...
We had a fantastic start to the day yesterday with Dr Michelle Dickinson presenting at our Breakfast Event. There is more to come when we share key points of the session however here is a teaser “Under the theme of ‘Re-wiring Our Future’, what we heard most clearly were messages that included ‘Take risks: if you win, you will be...
Modern laziness The original definition of lazy was about a person who avoids hard physical work. Too lazy to dig a garden, too lazy to organise a working bee or too lazy to clean the garage. The modern lazy person also avoids emotional labour. This is the laziness of not raising your hand to ask the key questions, the laziness...
