"The Jelly Effect" by Andy Bounds

One of my colleagues has been reading "The Jelly Effect" by Andy Bounds this week and it has some great pearls of wisdom in it. They include:

 

* Never compare your inside to somebody else's outside. Because you'll always lose" Marie Mosely

* There are only two things customers are interested in. If they know with 100% certainty that they will get the AFTERS they require, they will buy

* The grass isn't greener on the otherside. The grass is greener where you water it.

* Customers don't care what you do; they only care what they're left with AFTER you've done it

* When networking "Be interested (in them) not interesting (about yourself)

* "Do or do not. There is no try". Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

We're currently busy marketing our latest event. It is the The Resolution Revolution.

Mediation Seminar

I attended a mediation seminar on Saturday last in Letterkenny Donegal and came away with the following learning points:    

* In most employment cases a mediator should escrow an agreement giving parties time to seek professional advice before signing an agreement.

* It's advisable to ask all parties for any notes they have taken for you to destroy after a mediation has finished.

* A good mediator should hold onto a closed mediation file indefinitely afterwards

* "Professional advice" is a better term than "legal advice" for it wider and encompasses medical and business advice where necessary as well as legal

* Any person shadowing a mediator should be referred to as an assistant rather than an observer. Co-mediators are just that and share responsibility and liability equally.

As always we're busy devising more employment law seminars

Change Management Issues

At the moment the company is researching change management issues and have discovered a lot of mistakes that caused failure. We noted five common mistakes:

                                                        

Mistake #1:  Lack of skills and resources - change does not happen through goals and exhortation alone. Like any business operation, It also calls for the right skills and resources, Organizations often simply fail to commit the necessary time, people, and resources to making change work. Paradoxically, successful behavior change often demands the very skills the change Is trying to create. 

Mistake #2: Not enough leadership - several leaders focus too much on management and too little on leadership.

Mistake #3: Ignoring current corporate culture - when people in an organization realize and recognize that their current organizational culture needs to transform to support the organization’s success and progress, Mistake 3change can occur.

Mistake #4: Not envolving the employees - leaders must actively involve the people most affected by the change in its implementation. This will help ensure employees at all levels of the organization embrace the proposed changes.

Mistake #5: Lack of communication - change management communications need to be targeted to each segment of the workforce. It should be delivered in a two-way fashion that allows people to make sense of the change subjectively.


We're currently busy marketing our interview rooms for Northern Ireland

Young Leaders Conference

The Young Leaders Conference was also one of the courses my colleague attended to two weeks ago. It was all worth it and she learned the following important points:

1.       Vision was again reiterated at this course, the importance of sharing the vision.

2.       Make a decision and stick to it – even if you know it will mean people may dislike you for it. If it needs to be done, stick to the decision and carry it through.

3.       Taking risks – a good leader should not be afraid to take risks – whether they be good or bad.

4.       Power of psychology/ persuasion. Think about how you put a suggestion forward. Say for example you have 5 ideas and there is one in particular you would like the person to choose. Place it at number 3 in the list. Research shows that the choice at number 3 is most likely to be chosen as by then the person feels they know what you are talking about and are drawn to number 3. If you have 4 ideas, still put it at number 3 and if you have 3 ideas, make up a first or fourth and place it again at number 3. (David Meade)

5.       Don’t hide away from the bad stuff – don’t bury your head in the sand and pretend it will go away when there are problems, deal with them head on even if you know the outcome could mean change.

We're currently busy marketing our Inhouse Training for Northern Ireland

Common Purpose - Passion and Resonance

Passion and Resonance was the second topic discussion in the course, "Common Purpose" which one of my colleagues attended to last week. She got some helpful learning points from the discussion:

• "Without passion, you don't have energy; without energy, you have nothing. Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion" ~ Donald Trump

          Communicating a business’ passion:

-          Engage in conversation with our customers through our website/ Twitter/ Facebook

-          Think about the content, be creative.

-          How is it we want staff to communicate?

-          Be strong, honest, true and accurate

• "Passion and purpose go hand in hand. When you discover your purpose, you will normally find it’s something you’re tremendously passionate about" ~ Steve Pavlina

• "Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion" ~Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

We're currently busy marketing our seminar rooms for Northern Ireland

David Meade's Insights

A colleague of mine attended a course two weeks ago hosted by David Meade. She got 5 helpful important points from the conference:
 
1.       Power of positive thinking – being told you are terrible at something will make you worse at the task, being told you are good (even when you are not) will make you perform better as you believe you are good at the task (research carried out by team of ballet dancers who were asked to play basketball. They were then randomly selected and told some were good and some were terrible at playing – even if they were really good. The ones who were told they were great outperformed the ones who had been told they were terrible).
2.       Awareness – when given a task be aware of the other things going on around you. It is amazing how you can miss the most obvious thing because you are so busy focussing on the task in hand. 
3.       Know when to take a risk – David Meade relayed the story of how he took the chance and left his University job to start a career doing Mentalist TV work. On his first appearance on the Stephen Nolan radio show, he was expected to be “car crash radio”. His determination and desire to succeed proved otherwise.


We're currently busy marketing our interview rooms for Northern Ireland

Common Purpose - Broadening Your Vision

One of my colleagues underwent a lot of courses last week and one of them was entitled "Common Purpose – Broadening Your Vision". She learned 5 important points from this course:

1.       Heard from Peter Dixon from Phoenix Gas, provided a very interesting insight into how a business needs a vision in order to achieve results. Results cannot be expected without the vision behind them. 

2.       Baroness May Blood also demonstrated how humour and humility can take you far in life.

3.       Heard from Baroness May Blood, truly inspirational woman who clearly had a vision for what she wanted to achieve and showed the energy and determination to match it.

4.       The day itself raised questions on our own visions – do we have a personal vision? and do we know what the true vision of the organisation we work for is?

5.       Paul Rooney from PWC gave an interested session on Leadership and who he looked to for leadership and vision both in his career and personal life.

We're currently busy marketing our seminar rooms for Northern Ireland