Categoría: leadership

Concentration & performance

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Some of us have spent the last months working from home. Suddenly, there was a change of scenario, far from the office, colleagues, coffee breaks and interruptions that led us to increase our performance. Quiet times at home allowed us to concentrate much more on what we were doing. But after a while, performance, or at least the same level of concentration could not be kept at the same level.

Some of the experiences shared by those who have been working from home are to have seen reduced their ability to remember what they read on a document, worse notes taken, less focus capacity, the solitude of mind overload (no colleague with whom to have a coffee with to just distract our minds), …

Concentration and making the best of our time comes easily when we are able to establish different spheres in our lives. When everything has to be in the same place, there is no where else to go or no options when it comes to communication, it is pretty difficult to focus, to isolate ourselves from the outside noise.

A change of setting is always a good thing, it forces and, at the same time, allows us to give again our best.

Rehearsal vs improvisation

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If you ever have the opportunity to speak in public it is highly probable that you prepare the event in advance. First by writing a script, or at least some notes so to be able to follow the story you wanted to tell. Then, some visual support in case it could be useful or to help the audience to follow your words. With that you expect to have the best possible speech because any good presentation, requires time, interest and attention. You don’t want to leave out any important thing, sharing what is key. So you script your speech, then search for some good images and data to accompany your words. Finally, you rehearse it again and again. It doesn’t guarantees that nothing will go wrong but it will help if any issue comes up.

The other way to face a speech is by starting the other way around, with the data and images and then building the speech. No visual as help or support but as the roadmap to follow. Your speech will adapt to whatever shows on the screen. Well, in that case you must be confident that you know all possible data, that you master the topic or at least you master acting. If anything goes wrong you will need a full set of skills to come out of it successfully.

But, you can also just leave everything to improvisation. Or maybe the situation itself leads to you a not possible to prepare situation. Then, rely on your knowledge and skills, they will be highly useful.

So any time you have the opportunity to prepare a speech, meeting, .. every time you need to say or not to say (to measure your words) use it. Write the script (agenda, main topics), the visuals (what you want to share, how do you want to dominate the scene and not let the scene dominates you), and your talk (rhythm, words, pronunciation).

And once in action, slow down. Moreover if you will not be using your mother tongue. It will give you time to think and react avoiding gaps, mistakes and later on self regrets.

Improvisation is not a good companionship when being in public. It doesn’t matter if it’s a company event, a meeting or a speech.

Us and our memories

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How many things we have learned that seemed imposible, nonsense, useless, hard time more than anything else? School, home, family, friends, work, partners have been and are our learning’ playground.

The Who we are today is the result of adding experiences, trainings and decisions.

  • We went through a tough time, we had an incredible time
  • We meet amazing people
  • We succeed, we failed
  • We learned how to calculate objects volume, distances, … physics, maths, chemistry
  • We had an job we did not like, a boss we could not bear
  • We have learned what we like and we don’t
  • ….

Life is like a river and we can either watch the river flow or we can learn to swim diving into it. If you just look at the river flowing, you will have not learned anything, just letting everything go, repeating the same mistakes, unable to go further incapable to apply learnings as you only memorized them to pass the exam, to put a “check” on your day on that difficult moment. But, when you learn to swim, you are able to use what you have been through in order not to repeat mistakes, to be able to swim in other waters.

Memories will always be there, in a “that instant recall” or “deep inside of you”, how did that instant, that moment, transformed you.

Unfortunately we can not chose the things we want to happen to us, but we can learn, we have that ability. Will you just waste it? Will you be the sum of many things or just a sequence of happenings?

Creative thinking: do you have it?

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Take me to the moon

One of the several approaches to creativity is the proclivity to engange in creative thought. And a rough definition of creative could be “the ability to design something new and useful at the same time“ (J. Peterson).

From an individual perspective, when we say we are creative thinkers it has to be because the ideas we come up with suppose something new and useful at the same time, that we are able to build far away from the average thinking. The thing here is that we need to be sure that the rest of the people are able to understand our proposal. If we are not able to involve them with our approach we will have a hard time, even being the most creative person in the world. How useful can be something if no one else can understand what it is for?

When we are a non creative person what happens is a a threshold issue. If someone shares with us an idea, that will trigger off some others in our minds, but they will be highly associated to the original one, pretty close to the first one.

Now, imagine a group of people. We ask them to think individually, writing down solutions for a problem or building from a first idea tossed to the group. The percentage of non creative people is higher than the creatives. so, in the case of a group, we might end up with similar conclusions, results when gathering all answers. Maybe, some ideas of the list could be disruptive, but those would be the less. But when there is fluency (No judgment, open mindset, …) in a group/team it is highly probable that shared thoughts might sparkle brilliant ideas into others mind. These co-activated ideas will be quite distant from the original ones. The initial individual threshold has now been expanded.

We are not obliged to be creative as individuals (and what it means drives to another post), we just need to get the right partners in the room. Diversity ensures that we have different approaches. Completely outsiders-of-the-box (Creative thinking) bring brilliant and different ideas while non creative ones bring the achievability (Creative achievement) can achieve bringing in to live something new and useful.

We all have ideas, but are they truly different, or just average? What about you, reader? Are you a creative thinker?

We do not have a problem

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When you continuously challenge yourself, your environment, how things are done, how does the world work, .. You probably see fixable stuff everywhere.

Organizations are made by people, their knowledge, skills and attitude. The oriented-to-change or to improvement organizations&teams are always looking around, searching for things to be fixed, anything that can be improved by doing differently. Processed that are obsolete and needs to be adapted to a new reality or even better, to be created as there is nothing that can cover the gap. They act proactively. They always see an opportunity, a puzzle / problem that can be solved. The usual answer to How are thing going will be: we could do better.

The oriented-to-resolve organizations&teams happen to be on the other side of the room. They look only to fix what’s broken, only taking action when a PROBLEM is on the table. And when it does, when the problem is visible, it’s usually because it has become important, big, visible. It’s the outcome of adding many issues to which we didn’t pay much attention to, they were too small to be considered. The usual answer to How are things going? Will be: we don’t have any problem.

Well, continuous improvement permits us to avoid big problems or difficulties and be ready for the next challenge. And this is mainly a matter of attitude. The tools for changing will come after.

Because, if we don’t have a problem…. we have a problem.

Don’t get too comfy

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You got comfy because you had performed that task a thousand times. You are an expert. If business keeps as usual, nothing could go wrong. Sure? Maybe you could stop paying attention to details, boredom leading to no longer caring about giving a 100%, taking things for granted and focus not being where it should be. Lots of possibilities to make mistakes, wrong calls.

Or it could be that you are used to that comfort that training before practicing brings to our soul. The known path already walked by others is explained to you. The only thing needed here is to learn, apply your background knowledge to find the improvement opportunities and put them in place once you have learned how to handle the day to day.

Or what if, in business as usual you could always trust your guts like surfing the waves of a familiar sea. The one you love, the one you are used to and in which you know when you can get creative and when you can not. Where you can read in the environment.

Or, you know that family and friends are just around the corner and although you love spending time with them sometimes you just want to go home, get comfy in your sofa and have a drink or relax after a hard, long day. In the end, they will always be there.

But, things never stay as we want them to stay, sometimes it’s progressive, sometimes the world is turned upside down overnight. We need to be ready for change, always. Be sure of what we do or think but leaving a tiny space for questions, hesitations. Be sure that nothing is written on stone and maybe you will learn the hard way, by doing.

The only thing for sure, is that every opportunity counts, to be with yourself, to be together with your friends, your family, to learn something new, to go for that extra mile, …

Don’t wait too much for the perfect wave, to enjoy each moment and minute, to get the best from yourself. To think different. To change. Do not get too comfy, everything could just change overnight and catch you off guard.

I am aware of my comfort zones, the topics I love to read and write about. So, will do my best to replan my route, to enlarge my horizon. Thank you for helping me to achieve it.

Wolf, sheep and cabbage game

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There is this mind game. There is a farmer that visits a market and buys a wolf, a sheep and a cabbage. On his way back home, he needs to cross a river. On the boat he can only carry himself one of them to the far bank of the river, so here is the thing. How will he make it? f left unattended together, the wolf would eat the goat, or the goat would eat the cabbage.

Sometimes we feel like facing unsolvable issues. But is nothing else than a matter of time and patience. We have tones of problems, tricky decisions, … we lack of patience and time to dedicate to them.

Well, in the end some things can only turn into a mind game. Find the time, let patience help you.

It all depends on how you look at it

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Damn it! You forgot to move your car and now you are stuck in that village. Oh no! You missed that flight after running half a marathon across the airport.

Whaaat? Can’t be possible, you packed everything up and then… you forgot it at home, too late too far.

The food is weirdly sweet.

The hotel does not look as in the pictures, so what.

We are not talking about critical, unbearable situations. In fact, if you look at it through the weird funny glass, after a while you will have some good laughs. Do not stress. Relax, you were not in danger, nothing bad happened.

There are so many other things to worry about… and we can not carry too much anger or frustration. We need our best smile and mood to face real life problems, not tiny bumps.

Smile, it’s Christmas time. Enjoy these days. Miss who, not what.

Making things better

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When we become too confident, we loose the rope, we tend to relax. And, time out needs to happen, but not in the middle of something. If you lower your gard while on duty…things can get difficult.

And when that happens, what will you do? Will you invest the effort to make it better? Will you go back on track? or will you just complain and allow it to get worse?

We need to trust ourselves with making things better, we slipped but we can get back on track. Let’s do it, don’t just walk away, it was not about me, it is no longer my problem.

Anything we invest in (studies, relationships, business) it’s worthy. It means commitment. So if things get a bit tough, a bit ugly the only important and urgent thing is to fix it.

If we do not try, we will not be able to find out if it was worthy (and it might be).

Around the corner

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We don’t know what we will find, what is awaiting for us just around the corner.

We just know how we did react to the last bump, or success, or challenge,. We just know how faced life yesterday.

We, simply do not know. We just can expect to be prepared to respond, we have the right support with us. We will overcome whatever is waiting for us.

We must be positive, make sure we are ready, think that it will be nothing else but good stuff. Do not be scared. Just be prepared.