I was recently talking to one of my team members about his role and he was discussing the current levels of stress he's feeling on a new project and asked me how I deal with stress myself. I thought it would make a good article, but I should say that I do not consider myself an expert on all things stress, but I have successfully managed to reduce my levels of stress over the years through my choices, my work habits and ability to reflect and move on from stressful situations.

Stress really affects people in different ways, and we all have differing "stress profiles" based on our personality, experience, training and everything else going on around us at that moment.

Stress is a factor in many health-related issues and should be taken seriously, an article at webmd.com lists; heart disease, worsening asthma, obesity, and diabetes among their 10 serious stress-related health problems. Ultimately, you need to take personal responsibility for making decisions to reduce or remove stressful situations from your day-to-day life. Sometimes those decisions can be the hardest types but will lead to a more harmonious and fulfilled life for you and your family.

This article is going to be a little different from others, but I think it will be fun to write and may be useful to people considering a switch to Chrome OS. I have watched the progression of Chrome OS over the years with interest. It has always been a compelling story for me to consider transitioning from desktop applications to cloud-based web applications.

My previous roles have relied heavily on desktop applications, especially when talking about development & productivity tools such as Microsoft Office.

When my laptop died on me I resisted purchasing a new laptop for a handful of reasons;

Getting started

Things were really easy to get up and running, just enter my Google account details and I was away. All my bookmarks and extensions were set up quickly and I had most of my tools available to me. Further, many of the web apps I already used just worked as you would expect.

The Wins

 Everything worked seamlessly for those aspects of my workflow and productivity that was on either Google services or native web apps like; Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Atlassian and general browsing

The Learning Curve

There is a learning curve, just getting familiar with gestures and navigating the operating system did take a while but once I was comfortable it was easy and natural. It really feels like a tablet and desktop had a baby haha.

Chrome Profiles

Probably the biggest adjustment for me was that I use Chrome profiles for different purposes. I have profiles for personal use, profiles for Change Fox, profiles for more serious engagements (especially when they are using GSuite). With Desktop versions of Chrome I am able to have different windows open for any of the above-mentioned purposes and flick between them as needed. Now there's pros and cons to this, there are times when I'm trying to focus on one task and I get interrupted by another window.

The Positive

This has led me to get more disciplined with my "time blocking" aka "pomodoro technique", and that's been amazing for my productivity and sense of effectiveness and efficiency.

The Alternative

One alternative or solution to this problem (if it's considered a problem) would be installing an independent browser but I will resist doing this unless it becomes an ongoing issue.

Slack is kind of mehh

I use Slack extensively for a number of my engagements and unfortunately, the web app just doesn't stand up to its Desktop cousin. I tried a few things to try to find the best experience from; web app, android, and even setting up Linux and deploying Slack for Linux. Slack for Linux was the best overall experience until I tried to do a Slack Call and realised that they are yet to complete mic support within their Linux VM. Further compounding this issue, the audio quality was pretty bad via the web app so I will have to see how this plays in the future, but even worse I can not screen share while using the web app. This does pose a risk to my complete switch over to Chrome OS for work.

The Frustration

 Slack for Android is a pretty terrible experience on desktop/tablet mode, the Linux version is lacking video and audio (mic) support for conference calls & the web app does not have great audio quality and no screen share makes it half a solution to a complete problem.

The Compromise

 For now, I will need to use the web app because my teams use Slack for conference calls throughout the day but won't be able to screen share. I may run both the web app and Linux version in parallel at times but I want to avoid this if I can.

Office 365

If you're using Office 365 the web apps have come a long way over the past year or two. If you're a heavy spreadsheet user though, you're likely to struggle with their being several limitations to macros and developer level tools. Outlook for Android does a serviceable job as a mail client although the web app is more feature-rich. MS Teams is great to use in a browser but if you prefer desktop apps you're going to find this transition challenging.

The Good

Web apps have come a long way but if you're using Office 365 for your organisation it may be tough or expensive if you start to subscribe for additional applications like Visio or MS Project online.

The Dream

If you're commited to ChromeOS and you're in a position of power within your organisation, then Google Suite is probably going to hold up better in your migration. This is likely to be extreme for most organisations though.

I won't be programming

While technically I could set up my Linux VM with a development environment, unless you're shelling out $1500-2200 for a high-end Chromebook, your specs will lack the memory and storage to be running multiple projects concurrently. This gets even worse if you're working on mobile app projects with the size of the Android SDK and the resources it uses to run and compile anything. The thing is at those kinds of prices you could get a better spec'd Windows or Linux laptop or desktop especially with the recent AMD processors smashing it on low budget, high spec'd laptops.

The Problem

It's pretty simple, software development is not even close to a viable use case for Chromebooks right now, they are just not built and spec'd for this purpose with the current generation of Chromebooks.

The Solution

I will continue to use my desktop for any resource-hungry tasks like development, but for a real developer if you are looking for anything more than a secondary device then I would encourage you to stick to Windows, Mac or Linux.

Other things that came up

Outside of the above details, I hit a couple of other challenges along the way but did manage to find solutions or workarounds to most of these.

Balsamiq

I use Balsamiq, a wireframe and mockup tool quite a lot within the context of new software feature development and visualisation. I had previously bought (and upgraded) my desktop license but the Chromebook/Linux versions are experimental and required a lot of messing around (installing Wine, a Windows emulator for Linux).

So I played around and decided to trial the cloud version available for Google Docs (approx. $5/month) and it was good. I may even switch to this version fulltime instead of upgrading my license again.

Screen Capture & Basic Image Editing

The inbuilt screen capture tool on the Chromebook is nice but it lacks some features that I use regularly in tools like Snip & Sketch and ScreenToGif which are both great tools for taking screenshots and marking them up, or creating a quick gif to share with a team member when you find a bug and need to show what happens without full video capture. Further, I missed the simplicity of using Paint.net which is one of the best graphics tools around for quick editing, cropping and other basic requirements.

Like I said the default screen capture tools on Chromebook are workable, and I combined that with tools like pixlr, an online photo/image editor, and it well enough but I did find myself missing the simplicity of Snip & Sketch into Paint.net and then into Balsamiq or Slack as required.

In truth, any aspect of your life can be “hacked” to be more effective and productive including; personal, professional or social.

Irrespective of your position in the organisation; your time is the most valuable asset that you have, both personally and professionally.

Don’t forget that; time is the one thing that money can’t buy!

These tips/hacks can be applied to your life in general, how is going to be dependant on how you live and work but first…

Let’s agree multitasking is bs

Multi-tasking is a myth, research shows that it simply doesn’t work regardless of gender or declared ability to multi-task.

We can literally only focus on one thing at a time and every time you switch your focus from one thing to another, there is a cost for;

deciding to switch > switching > focusing > deciding on what you need to do > getting it done

So now that’s out of the way, let’s get started with 4, simple to implement productivity hacks!

# 1 Task Batching

This is the process of reviewing your work regularly and batching tasks that are similar in nature, that being;

• common knowledge or skills required to complete them
• shared resources that are required to assist or work with

Switching between tasks that are different in nature, like analytical vs creative vs administrative, has been shown to have similar “switching costs” than trying to multi-task

#2 Know When to Shut it Down

One of the biggest killers of productivity is hitting the “a wall” and not being effective. Some signs this is happening to you;

• finished reading or writing a passage or email and not remembering what you wrote or read
• eyes glazing over while looking at your screen or work

If this is happening, shut it down, do something creative, active or just fun for 15 minutes and come back refreshed, energised and ready to smash that troublesome task!

#3 Commit to a Daily Top 3 Tasks

Nothing helps productivity than building momentum through the setting and successfully completing tasks that you have committed to.

Every morning review your tasks and commit to completing a TOP 3

#4 If / When / Then statements

The premise of this hack is that our minds work best through the power of association, even subtle ones.

Does “I’m going to lose weight!”, “I’m going to quit smoking” or “I’m going to study” sound familiar?

Evidence from multiple research studies suggests that the issue with these types of goals or statements is that, even considering a persons own drive and motivation levels, success rates are relatively low

The issue comes down to one simple but important, psychological factor;

We rarely associate our goals with a specific event!

Meaning, we have no psychological trigger to remind us of our goals and therefore encourage us to action them

The if / when / then principle has been proven to increase the likelihood of success significantly, in fact in one study, 91% of people who used an if-then statement stuck to an exercise program, versus 39% of non-planners

So IF / WHEN I set personal or professional goals THEN I will use the if/when/then approach

So in summary: To Get Hacking

1. Batch your tasks
2. When you’re being ineffective – shut it down and refresh
3. Commit to your daily top 3 tasks
4. Use if/when/then statements for your actions, goals & objectives

What do you think? Let me know!

But before I get into this topic, I get that developing a business idea and growing your organisation to success is hard work, but over the past few years I have witnessed the work ethic of business owners and especially the past few weeks I have engaged with a number of organisational leaders within the startup space, and it is amazing how many of them talk about working 16-20 hours a day in one breath and then talk about being rundown, hospitalised or generally unwell the next and fail to recognise the direct relationship between these two topics.

In fact, I have met in the past two months, three startup founders who have worked their way into a hospital bed recently (I won’t name & shame, you know who you are!) and I can assure you, their businesses did not grow whilst they were laid up in bed recovering from working inhuman hours the weeks before.

Even myself, about a week ago I had a terrible nights sleep and it got me thinking at the time about work vs life balance and the influence it has on not only your effectiveness as an organisational leader but also on your own health. See my post below;

When I hear people “bragging” about how many hours they have worked I always think to myself, “what are you happy about here? Do you think that working longer hours says something positive about you?” and in my recent interactions with startup leaders I have challenged people with questions about how scalable the current scenario is for their business and their personal lives.

How much growth can you expect in your business when you, as the CEO or manager, are having to work so many hours? What are you, as a leader, doing to resolve these clearly inefficient and ineffective business practices?

I’m sure there’s a certain element of leaders feeling that it makes them feel needed and important to those around them, but in truth, it is a curse on the organisation. It says we do not need to innovate, we do not need to think outside of the box and get better, and probably it says that personal health and life balance is not important to the leadership within the organisation. Now can you imagine what your team members would think of this? What kind of organisation culture are you developing?

I get it, I get it, I can almost hear the eye rolling as some of you read this, really, I get it! Sometimes you need to get in, get your hands dirty and handle tough situations to ensure the best outcomes for your customers and staff BUT again is this approach scalable on an ongoing basis? I have pulled all-nighters because something horrible went wrong with a project. I have gotten into the trenches with my teams to help however I could. But these are absolutely exceptions to the rule, and I can assure you that as a team we would reflect and agree on how to correct the decisions, behaviours and actions that led to the problem.

So I am happy that you’ve stuck with me this long, at this point, I challenge you, as leaders in your organisations, to ask the tough questions of yourself and your team (but it absolutely starts with you!), to ensure that you are working effectively and have a personal life at the same time, because in the end if you work your life away, doing long hours and I am sure, achieving some measure of success, but never actually LIVE YOUR LIFE, then what is the point really?

What do you think?

Observe, measure & keep measuring

Observation & measurement are both important aspects of leadership. You should be observing team behaviours, body language and other factors such as attendance. These are likely to be indicators of team health and satisfaction, and where issues are identified you should take the initiative to engage and seek feedback from your team members.

SMART Objectives

Smart objectives or targets with “smart criteria” are important because they are proven to improve personal and team performance because they are easier to understand and to know when they have been done. The acronym represents targets & objectives that are;

• Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
• Assignable – specify who will do it.
• Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

Be consistent

Creating and maintaining highly effective teams is not a short-term, once off initiative. You need to define your approaches and be consistent across your organisation. Nobody should be exempt from your initiative and organisational values, from CEO down, every body should be held to the same standards and nobody is excluded from being called out for failure to adhere with agreed organisational norms, nobody!

Identify if it is a team or individual team members issue

The first step is to identify where the issue really is in the business and we can do that by asking some pretty simple questions;

• Is the issue related to the team, their dynamics or group norms?
• Are the results from the team overall below your stated expectations?
• Do the group norms not align with your organisational values?

If you answer yes to any of the above then the issue is related to the team itself, and you must then reflect further on your own leadership (re-read my previous post?) and look to implement initiatives that are designed to change the team culture… read on!

So it is a team issue?

Break the cycle

Sometimes the answer is a simple one, quite often it is a matter of understanding why they are not motivated or how they feel about themselves, the team and the organisation. An open conversation about these types of things may give you the insights you need to positively shift the teams’ attention and focus to be aligned with your expectations. Further, it may give you honest feedback about how realistic your expectations actually are.

Some suggestions include;

• Team discussions – present expectations vs actual outcomes and ask them, in a constructive way what you can do as their leader to help them succeed
• Thorough, constructive retrospectives – again this comes down to the presentation of results to the team and open discussions about how to improve
• Restate expectations clearly – sometimes a reset, as in, forget the past, let us start again based on new rules of engagement is important
• Individual discussions – pull each team member aside in an informal setting (over coffee?) and talk to them about the team and their own performance, again the emphasis here should be what they need from you to succeed

Implement change

If after trying to break the cycle your team is still not delivering, it is time to force a shift by implementing change. At this stage, we’re still talking about team or organisational level change though as it is not yet clear that it is an individual team member issue.

You can implement change in too many ways for me to cover in this article but some examples include;

• Trigger a reset the stages of team or group development – add a team member (who you know to be a positive, energetic and influential person within the organisation (or hire specifically for this purpose)
• Review and implement process changes – look at how people are working to determine if a change would influence the team positively e.g. implement agile or 360° feedback
• Make your SMART objective reporting public – look to show scorecards and leaderboards to promote positive behaviours and working habits
• Provide additional training – consider soft-skill training like Leadership or Productivity Hacks (both of which I offer through my engagements)

At this point, if the team is still not performing and you truly believe you have set them up to succeed it is time to start considering that it is an issue with individual team members (and their potential effects on those around them).

So it is an individual team members issue?

Is their role right?

The first thing you should check when starting to evaluate an individuals impact on team performance is whether they are actually doing the role that they agreed to when joining the team. Just because there is a need for a shift in role for an individual to meet business requirements, does not mean that every team member will be happy with that change. In fact the best team members are those who will work with you on these types of needs, however, everybody has their limits.

When I conduct exit interviews there are two common themes, especially with technical roles;

• I want to use newer (read: higher value) technology and/or methodologies
• I want to take on new challenges

While it is not always possible for every team member to be hired for and use the newest products, technologies or methodologies, I see many organisations hiring for the newest, but actually having their teams using the oldest.

If you are in the process of transitioning from an old tech/methodology then communicate that upfront and ensure there is a roadmap to get there that individuals will be involved in. If you are hiring for maintenance of a legacy product, state that upfront so there are no nasty surprises.

If you identify team members in this position, try to identify more appropriate projects or teams for them to be a part of. Otherwise, be direct about the future of their role and let them make the choice about their continued involvement in the team.

Encourage higher volumes of feedback

Feedback is the key to learning and development and as such, it is important to build a culture that encourages feedback across teams and the organisation. An annual performance review is the most common form of feedback but it lacks the context and frequency to drive continuous improvement across your organisation.

Some approaches to explore for your team include;

• Development planning – all resources should have some form of a development plan in place. These should contain; future career direction, educational/training requirements, key performance indicators and goals
• Monthly informal catch-ups – grab a coffee with your team members and ask them how they’re going. Come prepared with information and statistics about their individual performance but this should not necessarily be the focus of these discussions. Take the time to understand what other factors may be impacting their performance; their personal lives, their personal goals and ambitions, their health and fitness. Don’t do it in a creepy way of course but these are all factors that will influence them and their working life. You should also take this time to review how they are going with their development plan and what help they may require from you to ensure they succeed
• Implement 360° feedback – this approach is particularly useful because the core principle is that performance data is captured by those closest to the person being evaluated. That is that each team member is evaluated against common metrics by their manager, their team members and importantly themselves. This type of feedback method has great value but can take significant time to set up and implement.

Still not working?

If after all of this your team is not performing then, as a leader, it is time to start making hard decisions. You need to recognise that your responsibility is ultimately to the organisation and the teams, not the individuals. If there are toxic personalities and team members, then it is your responsibility to manage them out of the business.

I see many executives maintain relationships with team members who are not performing to expectations because of a sense of responsibility to “do right by them”, and while that is admirable, I would always challenge them to focus that energy on those who are “doing right by the organisation”.

This is obviously a really hard topic but if you have gone through the steps in my previous post and then this one too, and you have team members who are still not performing, then I believe you can hand on heart state that you have really set them up to succeed and tried multiple approaches to correct their behaviour and performance, and it is probably best for all parties to move on from the engagement.

Do not forget that “often the hardest decisions are the most important to the success of your organisation”, unfortunately, leadership is not all fun and games, kicking goals or realising your vision for your team and organisation.

When I talk about team compositions, you must recognise that any significant change to a team changes that teams composition and the dynamics. That includes, for example;

• Adding a new team member
• Removing a team member
• Promoting a team member
• Demoting a team member
• Other factors that may shift the balance of power

These factors can reset the stages of team or group development as described by Tuckman.

So if you’re ready to reflect on your own leadership and team management now, here are a handful of factors to consider!

Set clear expectations

This sounds like an obvious thing to say, but from my experience, many leaders expect a high level of “common sense” – but as you have probably heard before; common sense, is unfortunately not particularly common.

I am in no way suggesting you outline every possible scenario or situation, you need to have trust your teams talent, experience and knowledge while having a level of assertiveness to ask questions when it is needed, however, you need to ensure that they understand various aspects of your organisation and the task they are performing.

Organisational values – how to behave

Organisational values provide your team(s) a baseline and focus on making the appropriate decisions in scenarios that they find themselves in.

Policies and procedures – how to work

Policies and procedures give your team a framework from which to work from and refer to at times when organisational values are not enough.

Further, you should put emphasis on self-documentation of common scenarios and processes so that there is consistency across your organisation and team members.

Task detail – how to deliver

Getting into the specifics of the task details, such as understanding stakeholders, timeline expectations, expected quality, challenges and risks are important. Often, however, the most critical aspect often neglected is context. What does this task, you are asking them to deliver, affect your customers and your business?

The first two are relatively self-explanatory but task detail is one aspect I would like to talk about in more detail, especially the context.

If your team understands the importance of their work in relation to your customers and your business, they are more likely to make better decisions. This context that I speak of could and should include answering the below questions for your team members;

• How will it improve or change your customer’s experience with you and their satisfaction in their job?
• How much revenue is this task likely to generate or money is it like to save?
• What is the impact and cost of missing the agreed timeline?

A team member who has been provided with the above information is going to; have the appropriate mindset and values to make effective, appropriate decisions, and the context for why this task is important and what it means to all stakeholders for it to be delivered on time, on budget and to expected standards and quality. That is a great start to set your team member up for success.

A simple to understand example of this is where delivery of work that will add a monthly amount of revenue to your organisation. Delays in delivery not only has an affect on revenue and cashflow, but there is an opportunity loss, where your resources could have been working on other paid work.

Give your team the tools to succeed

Tools can be considered a broad definition within the context of setting your team up for success. The above-mentioned values and knowledge could be considered the first “tools” for your team members. However, we should expand on this to include a number of other “tools” including;

• Critical knowledge and training – for hard-skills this is common of course, you wouldn’t ask a plumber to fly and plane and you wouldn’t ask a pilot to perform surgery. I strongly suggest you do not neglect soft-skills too when considering your professional development toolkit. Think about soft-skills such as productivity & leadership as examples of education/training that could have a significant impact on your teams’ success.
• Visibility and relevant data – give your team visibility to the highest level of business data possible, including where appropriate financials. Allow them to easily see how a project’s progress and momentum and how their tasks will impact on that.
• Actual tools – consider if your team have the right tools or software to work effectively to meet your expectations. Do they have a way to manage their tasks and collaborate with their fellow team members?

Support your team throughout

Again, I am not suggesting and micro-management or hand-holding here, but you as a leader should be on the lookout for both internal and external factors that may be impacting your team members and either be actively shielding them from them or resetting your expectations based on these unexpected influences.

A great example of this within the context of a software development team is when there is an active project ongoing and there is a critical issue that pulls resources off the project temporarily. You, as their leader, need to understand that this impact will affect delivery. If you can deflect those interruptions to other resources without impacting the customers’ experience then you absolutely should do so. If that is not an option, why not take the initiative to communicate your understanding that this interruption may impact on the project.

If you haven’t already introduced effective feedback loops into your teams, you should absolutely do this. This is a great way to express your support and encourages you to implement changes to your teams work life, many of which cost little and have huge impacts on job satisfaction and productivity!

Ask them regularly how they are going (I prefer to do this via monthly coffee chats) and ask if there is anything that they need your help with whether it be related to the expectations and tools we mentioned above, or anything else.

Take this opportunity to also restate or set additional expectations for your group and team members, so that they are always clear and fresh for everybody involved.

Let me know what you think below in the comments!

It is unfortunately a fact that if we don’t take control of our own habits, attitudes and processes we all can have them; bad days, or weeks, or even months, when it feels that no matter how hard we work, we just can’t break a negative cycle or get on top of the sheer amount of work we have. It is events such as this that coined quotes such as “expect the best, plan for the worst”.

Commit time to work breakdown

One of the most intimidating factors, when you have a pile of work, is looking at the sheer size of the work involved. It’s important to spend time, upfront, to break that work down to manageable pieces that can be delivered on a daily basis. Meaning you should not have tasks that are going to overlap days, each piece of work should be achievable in a reasonable period of time because the productivity impact of not achieving anything meaningful on a day is huge.

Breaking down work is a principle of project management (known as WBS or work breakdown) and can help you to not only better understand the time that a task will take, but also to better plan your future task commitments. Let us consider that you have been tasked with producing a brand, spanking new sales presentation. This is not going to be a simple, 1hr change, so we should break down the work into more manageable pieces and plan for them, as such;

• New Sales Presentation
  • Define scope, stakeholders and expected outcomes
  • Define presentation structure & sections
  • Develop the presentation
    • Introduction
    • Section 1 (TBA)
    • Section 2 (TBA)
    • Section 3 (TBA)
    • Thank you

Using each bullet point as a unique task you will be able to;

1. Understand the total effort required to greater accuracy and as such not add additional pressure to other tasks and their timelines
2. Plan pieces and successfully deliver work each day/work period

Research indicates that successfully completing work or tasks improves motivation and productivity, meaning you will get more work done and achieve better results overall.

Ensure you balance the types of tasks you are prioritising

Balancing the types of tasks you are prioritising is also another way to achieve better productivity and improve motivation. This involves ensuring that you are prioritising a balance of tasks that you enjoy or inspire you vs those tasks that you may not look forward to as much but still need to get done. The ratio of such balance needs to be reflective of organisational priorities of course but you should, at a minimum, allocate an hour a day to tasks that will make you feel good about what you’re doing. You will find that by taking this approach, the “others” won’t feel like such a burden or point of frustration.

Reflect, learn and move on

Take time, as you progress through your balanced, manageable tasks to reflect on each item as you progress towards relieving the business pressures you’re facing to ensure that you are doing everything you can to avoid such a situation again. What could you have done differently to avoid this pressure? Did you fail to plan effectively? Did you fail to identify, mitigate and avoid a risk?

I always say to those people I’m working with, “I have no issue with anybody making a mistake, I have a huge problem if they make the same mistake multiple times” and you should take the same attitude.

Another consideration is that you should try not to dwell on events that you can no longer control.

Reflect, absolutely, dwell and revisit the frustrations, what is the point?

Consider external assistance – even if it is short-term

If it really feels that you are lacking support, consider reaching out to an external resource for assistance. Somebody to help put things into perspective, potentially help you break down your work, plan and execute it effectively. An external resource, such as myself, can also help you to develop more effective processes for planning and risk management to help your entire organisation in the future.

I also offer educational sessions that expand on some of the above approaches to implement productivity hacks and effective strategic planning and execution processes for your organisation.

I may look to talk about other related “hacks” in the future but today I will start with a phenomenon known as “if/when/then statements” or “if/when/then plans”.

The premise of this theory is that our minds work best through the power of association, even subtle ones. When we give ourselves a goal or task, usually we do so in very simple terms;

“this year I’m going to lose weight”, “I’m going to quit smoking” or “I’m going to study “

Evidence from a high number of research studies suggests that the issue with this is, even considering a persons own drive and motivation levels, that success rates are relatively low. How many new years resolutions have you kept? The research conducted, suggests that associations or links are critical to preparing our minds for effective action.

Associations or linking is, in fact, so important that people are two to three times more likely to achieve a goal if it is effectively associated with a specific cue. In fact, almost shockingly, in one study, 91% of people who used an if-then plan stuck to an exercise program, versus 39% of non-planners. That’s crazy right?

So coming back to the same three goals I suggested above;

“this year I’m going to lose weight”

as discussed, you are much more likely to succeed if the goal is associated with a cue so let us agree that to lose weight you need to, firstly, eat more healthily and secondly, go for regular runs. We should instead phrase our goals in the following ways;

• If I am going to eat fast food then I will eat a healthy salad instead
• When it is Tuesday or Friday morning, then I will run to work

“I’m going to quit smoking”

applying the same principle we should rephrase our goals as such;

• When I feel the need to smoke then I will eat a carrot stick instead

“I’m going to study “

and again, we will rephrase our goal;

• When it’s 7pm then I will study the course curriculum

This slight change in phrasing helps to associate or link your goal and the emotion behind it to a specific cue or situation and remind you of your goal and the emotional reason that you made it in the first place.

What is really great about this hack is that it costs you no more time than setting any other goal. So it doesn’t even hurt you to give it a try, in fact let’s set our first if/when/then goal now;

“When I set personal or professional goals then I will use the if/when/then approach”

Imagine if you achieved two to three more of the personal and professional goals that you set yourself. Think of the things you could achieve, the heights your career could reach and importantly the personal satisfaction you could have in yourself.

Good luck and let me know if you realise a significant improvement in the results of your goals and objectives after applying this approach!

I read questions like “Is it worth doing an MBA?”, “Should I get a degree?” and “Do you need an MBA to succeed in business?” and I see responses that range from “worth every cent” (usually graduates) to “what a waste of money!”.

Other than the vagueness of such questions in relation to individual situations, I feel that a lot of people get confused about the difference between “education” and “learning”.

Does everybody need an MBA? No
Could everybody gain knowledge and/or skills from an MBA? Absolutely!

You see, good leaders, great CEOs and world-class innovators display some common personality traits, one that always stands out to me is a desire or even a personal need to continually learn.

The below is a summary of some of the types of learning that you should be considering for your personal and professional development.

Academic Education / Higher Learning

Education is (rightly or wrongly) associated with universities and professional qualifications (PMI, CPA, CA etc), and provide a means of learning a solid baseline, sometimes very theoretical or academic, set of knowledge and skills. For me, my MBA not only taught me many new things in relation to leadership, business strategies, marketing, financial management and much much more. Further, it validated much of my existing approaches and ideas about business, strategy and team building, even if I didn’t know the name of the principle or theory I was applying.

In the end though, academic education is just one type of tool to learn. Without an ability to apply this knowledge it is not going to help your organisation or you develop as a professional.

Reading

Reading is one of the most common ways for people to learn; reading about other peoples successes and failures, reading about new approaches to business and personal problems, and reading about the everyday lives of those that may be your current or future customers and reflect on how this new insight or knowledge could be applied to improve your own organisation or job.

The insights you gain through reading can truly help you to challenge yourself about your approaches and mindset and leads to better decisions in your own business and personal life.

Tutorials, YouTube and Online Training

The web has a vast source of information available of course, many of these can be found via a simple google search, and even better, you should be able to get the basics of a new set of knowledge for free on sites like YouTube. Even advanced courses are usually available but there are resources available through paid online training services like TED & Udemy. There are also free online training packages via Alison where you get a certificate and all.

Personal & Organisational Reflection

Personal and organisational reflection is another tool that great leaders use to learn from a situation and make corrective actions or improvements each time they cycle through a process.

Is there a single type of “learning” that will make you a great business person or leader? Of course not!

The real question that people should be asking is “what combination of learning tools should I use to grow?”

Coming back to the question about the value of an MBA, it does not automatically make you an exceptional leader or great team member. It does not automatically increase your value to an organisation. It does however provide you with knowledge, tools and methods, that if executed effectively, will help you to become a better leader, a better team member and lead to more organisational success. I do however firmly believe that what will get you over the line professionally, is going to be applying a combitation of the methods discussed here.

I’ve met people with 3-4 degrees, who couldn’t run a project or execute on a strategy to save their lives. Conversely, I’ve met people who (like me prior to my MBA) had no degree or formal qualifications, but got things done, and got things done well.

For me, my MBA studies was an amazing experience and I have learned so much from not only the course material but those amazing people that I work with throughout my 18 months of study.

So do not get yourself confused between the need for formal education and the need for continuous learning. Since my MBA I have read countless articles, methodologies, books and engaged with many leaders at various organisations and communities that I engage with, and importantly I’ve learned from each and every one.