Facilitation of full day interactive team development and planning workshop.
July 7th 2010.
20th Century Fox Marketing Team 2011 Planning Workshop
Presentation and facilitation of interactive half day workshop with 20th Century Fox Marketing Team:
2011 Financial Year Planning
“Working to Success”
Identifying what is required to achieve targets and ensure success. Included “Planning For Success” module.
June 8th 2010.
The Try> Apply> Fly Approach
A key part of mastering something is practice.
As children we understand this concept as we try time and time again to do the perfect cartwheel, learn to ride a bike, catch a ball or master a popular dance move.
As we get older, we recognize and appreciate mastery in others, and will often choose to step aside to allow other experts to show the way.
Although I am a big believer in recognizing and playing to people’s strengths and working to your own, it worries me to see so many adults defer or give up before they have given something new their best shot. A best shot can mean quality of preparation and at least a solid period of dedication in learning and putting into practice.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Outliers – The Story of Success”, he introduces the 10,000 hour rule.
The basic premise is that it takes 10,000 hours of dedication to your craft or skill before you are likely to really master or become a “superstar” at it. He also adds, to be a true Outlier, it probably takes 10,000 hours plus talent and a timing opportunity before you really make it into the Outlier league (those that truly stand apart from the rest of the high achievers).
The more involved I am in successful businesses or with people who have achieved success, the more the pattern for success and mastery of something is evident. And it is not just spending time (or 10,000 hours) working on something. It is more their approach. An approach based on continuous feedback, learning, finessing, trying and applying.
Stories shared by successful people often have the same theme: they tried, they learned, they applied their new skills, they tried again, and applied their learnings, until eventually they mastered what they set out to do.
Even when they achieved what they first set out to do, they went back to the same cycle of try>apply>fly to reach new heights.
Yes, they experienced fear. Yes, they experienced failure (often many times), but they all had the approach of continuing to try and not giving up until they succeeded.
Seems like an easy lesson for each of us.
You need to be happy to continuously Try and Apply to really Fly!
Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!
Is it this time of year? Are people so busy that the topic becomes such a key one to cover and to revisit?
I ask these questions because I note over the past fortnight there has been a marked increase in the number of articles around time and priority management. It feels like every business and management article or blog is covering this theme. No real new stuff, some very good stuff, but still there are a whole lot of words and opinions around what you need to do, how you need to think, what steps you need to take.
My preference is not to add much to this well covered theme… I have too much else I have prioritized to do first….but I can tell you simply the answer is in the following:
- YOU OWN YOUR TIME.
- YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MANAGING YOUR TIME.
- ONLY YOU CAN KNOW HOW BEST TO MANAGE AND USE YOUR TIME.
- DON’T LET OTHERS TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR TIME
- WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU ARE OFF-TRACK, REVISIT THESE AFFIRMATIONS.
There is one more thing to remember – you always have a choice – so please, no more time-wasting or excuses.
Plan for what you want to do and just do it!
Inertia – the biggest threat to progress
Years ago when I was studying for my HSC, my parents imposed a curfew. I was not able to go out unless I did 15 hours study a week. 
Fortunately for me they did not specify where I had to spend my time, so I focused a minimum of 10 hours a week where my passion lay – painting and art – and the rest to what I considered at the time as the boring subjects. The 15 hour study curfew became easy to meet and the targets I had for my social life were able to be easily fulfilled.
It was a great lesson around naturally pursuing the areas you feel passionate about. This time and effort I naturally skewed towards was also rewarded in me later winning a number of art awards. I easily connected that if you work and operate from a position of passion, it delivers you significant power to excel.
When you love something and love what you are doing, you naturally progress. You find things easy to do and easy to commit to. This principle serves you just as well in your working career as it will in your personal life.
I am sure you can validate this principle with your own examples.
Recall a time where you pursued something you felt really passionate about and it propelled you to success. Now reflect on how you felt.
You felt buzzed right? When you did what you love and you achieved the goal you were hoping for, you felt highly energized, invincible and ready for more.
This isn’t rocket science, so why do we sit for far too long in jobs or in situations pursuing something where we don’t feel that passion?
A number of people I know have communicated their unhappiness in their current situation.
They try to justify not doing anything by rationalizing away the risks of changing with the comfort levels of today. They know and can be strong at articulating what they would prefer to be doing, even going so far to identify the steps they need to take to get there, but still don’t go and pursue it. The longer they look for reasons to not move, the more the barriers to change seem larger.
When focusing on the fear of change and potential downsides, there is a great danger that the sense of “too hard” will set in. Or worse, you quickly move into a mode of accepting what you are not happy with, with a feeling of “this is good as it gets”. So you stay in something you are not happy with.
Yet we can all recall examples and look to people where a decision to change was made and it was pursued. Or perhaps you know someone or were forced to make changes through circumstances not of your own doing.
These changes and shifts in life often become the catalyst to move onto much greater things, greater than what may have first been considered. It is a powerful feeling when you have new opportunities, new ways of thinking, new ways of working, new ways of juggling life to pursue.
We look back and see that change as the greatest thing that happened to us. Change brings opportunity. Change brings great personal growth which helps us professionally.
More importantly change gives us an opportunity to tap into our passions. To find the things that once again excite us, energize us, propel us forward.
So don’t allow inertia to kill your progress.
Make the changes today to align what you do with your passions. At a minimum, the bigger the wave of change and the bigger the ride, the less likely you will have time to look back and you will enjoy the process of moving forward.
Take a step forward today and see how quickly your passion will carry you towards success.
Senior Women share the Benefits of Mentoring
Recently I was asked to support FITT’s Mentoring Program in the capacity of interviewer to help assess and match the right mentor to the mentee candidates.
FITT (Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications) run a dedicated Mentor program connecting experienced and senior women with up and coming managers and executive women within the industry. Mentors volunteer their time and range from CEOs, CIOs, COOs, Executive Directors and HR Directors to Senior Architects, Project Directors and Senior Business Analysts. These women are impressive – with significant achievements and scope of responsibilities and sit at the top of very well known top organizations in the technology and telecommunications space.
Mentoring generally refers to a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. It provides an informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support relevant to work, career, or to personal or professional development.
With huge gender representation divides in boards and senior management across all industries, this program provides a structured support process for these high-achieving women who are already at the top, to share their journeys, their experience and tips for overcoming any barriers with others still on their rising journey.
Ultimately it helps demystify the path, approach and strategies taken and is designed to help address gender imbalance and the question of “how do we get more women to the top”.
Although the mentees obtain great insight and knowledge through the program, the Mentor’s who operate in this capacity, also see the benefits.
Here are the main benefits of mentoring shared by these inspiring women:
- Rewarding – each Mentor recognized the great satisfaction and reward gained at a personal level when helping someone else learn, grow and develop their potential, their confidence and their skills. There were many “proud” stories shared of helping others through promotions, major projects and major decisions. Many previous mentor relationships had developed into friendships and mutually-rewarding business relationships where both parties felt they had learned much from each other and enjoyed the connection and history they had shared together immensely.
- Recognition – each Mentor could share a story of how someone had helped mentor them along their path to the top. They recognized the value in having a powerful role-model, someone to share their experience and wisdom and connected this to their own learning and support at critical times in their own career progressions. Mentoring was seen as a gift for helping them and it was now time for the gift to be passed on or as a way “to give back”.**
- Growing – each Mentor sees mentoring as an opportunity to grow themselves. By taking time out to help someone else, they recognized that they would benefit from self-reflection, from learning about someone new and their different experiences, from the language and skills you use as a Mentor. Often a mentee will push the mentor with their questions, suggestions and probing. These relationships were seen to be mutually sharing and beneficial.
- Motivation – each already had a passion for developing people, however mentoring others was seen to be motivating and re-invigorating to themselves. It helped them push themselves, to revisit their own strategies and challenges, to recognize the strengths in others and in making them more aware of their own strengths. It helped them revisit and retap their own drivers of what makes someone successful and more importantly what makes them successful. By taking time out to share experience and knowledge, it unlocked additional wisdom and energy to be applied in new ways.
Many of these women shared their challenges of being a woman in IT. It is wonderful to see so many of these women now providing real employment opportunities, creating flexible and supportive work cultures and in actively helping other women break down barriers and stereotypes.
I enjoyed the interview process immensely and commend these women for taking time out of their busy schedules to share their experience, knowledge and wisdom to help promote the next generation of women leaders.
There are real benefits in Mentoring others – and this is not just for women. So if you see an opportunity to Mentor others outside of your direct report lines, I encourage you to take the opportunity up.
Enjoy the growth, rewards and motivation that will be yours.
** You may be interested in reading this article on returning the gift of experience. Read more>
Speaker & Leadership Development Facilitator for NSW Red Cross
Emma will be keynote speaker and facilitator of an interactive leadership development session for NSW Red Cross Youth Advisory Committee.
Emma will be addressing “How to lead a project team to success” and will be looking at communication, negotiation and management strategies, skills and styles and how they can be applied to ensure solid engagement within project teams and the wider community, and how by applying focus you can achieve your desired outcomes.
The team will benefit from an interactive learning session which will be conducted Saturday 10th April 2010.
For further information on Emma’s keynote speaking and leadership development modules and how they can enhance and progress your people and organization’s development and growth, contact Emma at emma@emmalorusso.com
Preparing your 10 second sound bite
Are you like me? Do you love words? Love a clever turn of phrase?
Do you have a favourite quote? A favourite song lyric? A favourite movie line?
What about a favourite brand tagline? Like Nike’s ‘Just do it’? Or Apple’s ‘Think Different’?
There is some paradox for the lover of words. Because the volume of words is not nearly as valued as the meaning of those words.
The real art and appreciation is in delivering the maximum meaning in the fewest words possible or as better described by Mark Twain as “a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense”.
Keeping your points succinct makes it easy for others to hear, to hold, to consider, to repeat, to remember, to action. The longer it takes to communicate the point, the more likely your words will be lost – competing with other noise, activities, word associations and meanings that can be personally attributed.
Increasingly our communications are being compressed into bite sized chunks. Whether it is TV, radio, video, voicemail, a quotation attributed, a headline or article referenced, a 140 character post on Twitter or 421 characters on Facebook , we are being asked to scale our communication into succinct points. How do you turn those restrictions into opportunities?
It takes active discipline and focus to communicate something a in few words so that it is meaningful and powerful. If you can also make those words memorable and repeatable, you have just unlocked one of the keys to success.
With every opportunity to communicate, we need to take time and plan in advance how to better utilize the small chunks of space that we have. Hence before you are under pressure, take the opportunity now to stop and think about your 10 second sound bite.
How can you pack the most punch into a few words?
How would you answer the question of “What do you do?” or “What do you want to do?” in 10 seconds? As a leader and manager you must also be able to clearly answer the question of “Why are we here?”, “What is my role?” and “How can I help?” in the same bite sized chunks.
Consider today what other questions or opportunities you have to communicate something where the impact of those words matters to you or your business.
In business and most of our personal interactions, every question requiring a response should be considered as having been asked the question “Why should I care?”. Treat the next 10 seconds as the most important in ensuring that they will.
By communicating what you want someone to understand and action in a 10 second sound bite, you may surprise yourself at just how effective you can be.
Pythagoras, the Greek Philosopher and Mathematician said “Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few “. Just like maths required back in highschool, you need to practice Pythagoras theory – just this time as he applied it to words. It is an essential skill if you are in leadership, marketing, sales or any role that requires communicating with others.
So perhaps I should finish this article with the message I have tried to convey using my own 10 second sound bite:
”When it comes to effective communication – keep your words simple, succinct and clear. Chunk them into 10 second sound bites. Only then can they be used and re-used to powerful effect”
Networking: a ticket to fast growth
We are taught from a very young age to embrace our differences. That we are unique and there is no-one else like us.
Each of us offers our own set of experiences. Although we can share certain experiences with others, it is the collective group of experiences that makes us unique – from the order and era we are born in, to our own journey of work, education, friendships, gains, losses and experiences.
Although we may be intelligent, resourceful and successful on our own, it does not necessarily mean we have all the answers or that the conclusions we make are the only conclusions possible to make.
As a consequence of the uniqueness of us as individuals, lays an opportunity to continue to exponentially add to our experiences and knowledge by engaging with others.
By engaging with other individuals we can tap into a wealth of many other unique set of experiences – challenging who we are, what we think and what are additional opportunities for learning and growth.
Make networking a priority – whether it is through friendships, associations, professional groups, or informal or formalized networking events. It can open you up to an extensive and infinite amount of new experiences, ideas, knowledge, skills and wisdom. And because each engagement with each person you meet is the sum of two unique individuals with two unique set of experiences, then the outcome and value it returns will be different and new with each single connection.
In the spirit of sharing my experiences, here are my top 10 tips for turning networking into growth:
- See each potential meeting with someone as an opportunity to learn something new
- Gain more from networking and all people engagements, by approaching with a learning objective – be clear about what you want to learn and consciously stay positive and open to new ideas, concepts, partnerships and approaches
- Put yourself out there – networking is about you sharing something about you and asking someone else something of value or interest about them. The best outcomes are when there is value being exchanged on both sides
- Have a quick pitch ready that explains who you are and how you help others, this can also open up new opportunities for you
- Find or create networks of people who interest you or are people you admire and feel there is something you can learn from – time is limited so maximize your use of every single event you have to be at, and prioritize others that you feel there would be value in
- Set a goal of meeting and learning one new thing from someone new each and every day. And continue to regularly meet with those where there is mutual gains in sharing ongoing experiences, successes and challenges
- Choose carefully what you will commit to in terms of follow up. Never commit yourself to someone or something if you have no intention of delivering or know it will be difficult to do
- Don’t wait to network. it is important to build a continuous and frequent networking engagement model. People often wait or see networking as a chore or difficult to do. However you never know when you need to call on a relationship or need to leverage new ideas, so keep these continuously warm and fresh.
- Seek not just opportunities and learnings about what to do, but also key learnings about what to avoid. As US Admiral Hyman G Rickover said “It is necessary for us to learn from others’ mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.
- Be genuine and never pretend. This helps you find likeminded people and they you.
See Networking as a ticket to fast growth.
The more new people you can meet, the more opportunities for growth you are creating. It also makes for an exciting and easy way to stay energized so you can achieve all the things you want to do in your life.
Igniting motivation to drive your success
I used to think there was no great secret to being self-motivated.
All you needed was to really want something big enough to oversee and breakthrough any obstacle that you may consider too big or too hard that would stop you from getting there.
Pain? No problem.
Sleep Deprivation? No problem.
Tightly balance friendships, relationships, work commitments? No problem.
As it turns out we often want much more than what we have today. And to get what we want, we need to meet the many challenges we seek or that life throws at us.
Often the challenges are plentiful and come with competing priorities and timeframes.
Recently and due to many things on my “really want” list with many things on my “challenges and competing priorities and timeframes” list, I needed to revisit what really ignited my own motivation.
In talking to some clients about what keeps them motivated, and through observing others who excel in cycles of continous progress and achievement, I spent some time considering how best to ignite motivation and keep it fuelled. Here is a list of things I concluded:
- Visualization of success – Articulate and visualize what success means to you. The more real it feels, the closer you will find yourself to realizing it.
- Clarity of goals to achieve your definition of success – if you don’t know what you want, you won’t get to where you would like to be. If it is not clear to you, it won’t be clear to others preventing others (and yourself) from helping you get there. Spend time determining what it is that defines your success and bring clarity to the goals that fit your vision of success.
- Define your plan and prioritize your steps to get there – once you know your goals, spend time developing your plan and identifying the best strategy to get there, break it into bite size steps that progress and propel you towards your goals.
- Regularly revisit and plan your time – break your goals down into chunks, then into monthly, weekly, daily tasks. What needs to be done? How much time do you need? Set deadlines that correspond with the work required to get there.
- Enjoy everything you do, make what you do fun and make it stimulating – If you recognize you are not effective late or night or at the 3.00pm afternoon point – add something that reenergizes you to break up your day eg choose meditation, a walk, listening to music, going to the gym, or talk to someone that interests you and indulge in what makes you passionate
- Be inspired by others – learn, read, hear what drives them and helps them be successful & emulate success
- Use visual references to help keep you focused – this may be pictures, graphs, quotations, a ‘to-do’ list with lots of ‘done’ ticks. Feel empowered by visually seeing the progress you have made
- Celebrate milestones – determine what milestones should receive a reward. Make sure that reward is pleasurable to you. Celebrate and enjoy progress and achievement along the way.
Taking time out to review what is required to achieve your goals is critical and probably the best investment in setting the environment and foundation to leverage your self-motivation from.
Most importantly when you are in the thick of doing the everyday, ensure you keep your head up long enough and your eyes on the bigger goal to avoid being bogged down in the detail of today.
As Henry Ford once said “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal”.
Author’s Note: I wrote this article as a way to reenergize and keep myself focused and motivated on my own goals. I did this by revisiting what was important to me and what works for me. What works for you may be entirely different. Would love to hear your strategies for igniting your personal passion and drive.