Two words I thought I'd never write next to each other... an oxymoron if ever there was one!   However, take a look at this from Robbie Keane, the Liverpool benchwarmer.   "I'm not being big-headed but I've scored a lot of goals in the last 10 years and it's…

Someone mentioned today that there is opportunity in chaos... Seems like a sensible assertion. And there is opportunity for sure, providing your know what abilities you have to exploit that opportunity. It's been said that "chance favours the prepared mind" and these two ideas sit nicely together. Opportunity and the…

I was talking with a team we work with the other day and remarked how they were in a perfect storm. End of year mayhem to bring home the promised numbers, a change of leader, planning for 2009 to be completed and a really uncertain external climate. The perfect situation…

So I'm sitting on the stationary bike doing a warm down session after a half marathon on Sunday. It's a bike in a hotel gym though exactly the same make and model as the bike I use at my local gym. It's only a warm down session so I'm not…

Whilst having a rare flick through the FT the other day, we happened across a book review for "Managing to Learn Using The A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead" by John Shook. Not the most enticing of titles! However, the FT article was entitled "The…

When we're in circumstances that look and feel totally foreign, we can often conclude that we don't have appropriate skills to deal with what we're facing. That conclusion comes from seeing the situation as unique, unexpected, threatening and thereby difficult to achieve. In these instances we need to shift gear…

The concept of "next step thinking" came up last week in a conversation. This is all about focusing on being in the moment and being confident that you can do the next thing you need to do with complete focus and confidence. It seems that this is very important at…

Do you know that you will perform better when you are clearly focused on playing to your strengths, rather than focusing on how not to have your weaknesses exposed? Pretty obvious really, but there's a big assumption that everyone has their finger on the pulse of their strengths. In our…

Attitudes are contagious.... are yours worth catching? (Great line that we've seen attributed to Aussie cricket great, Steve Waugh, but I'm sure it came from somewhere else first!). Actually, do you even know your attitudes? If you're not fully aware of those attitudes, then you're probably not realising how you're…