Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Secret's Out!

Walt Disney once said, "People often ask me if I know the secret of success and if I could tell others how to make their dreams come true. My answer is, you do it by working."

"Working." Wow, what a concept.

Most people have heard of the old Bible saying, “You reap what you sow?” at some point in their life. Larry Winget, 'the pitbull of personal development', explains the problem best saying, "Most people aren’t reaping much these days because they haven’t done any sowing".

I Googled "books on the secret of success". It came up with 47,500,00 entries! That doesn't seem to me like there's much of a secret.

Here's the real "secret" of success . . . work harder, faster, smarter, and better. That will be $29.95 please.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Don't Fight It

Don't fight CHANGE. It happens. It must happen in order to grow.

You can try to ignore change, but it doesn't stop it. You can try to stop change, but you're just fooling yourself. You can try to insulate yourself from the effects of change, but that's just speeding up career death. You can't fight change and expect to be successful.

Watch out for these 7 warning signs of change resistance. You're:


  • still using the old rules to play the new game.


  • ducking new assignments.


  • trying to slow things down.


  • working hard to control the uncontrollable.


  • playing the role of victim.


  • hoping someone else can make things better for you.


  • absolutely paralyzed, like a deer in the headlights.
A good leader makes responsiveness to change your PERSONAL mission. Be a Change Leader!

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Buck Starts Here

I'm presenting a corporate program on change tomorrow and in my research and development I found a very interesting "chain of excellence". It comes from, my fave, Disney.

Disney's Chain of Excellence goes like this:
Leadership Excellence -- Cast Excellence -- Guest Satisfaction -- Loyalty & Financial Results.
Every level is dependent on another. You can't have Cast Excellence unless you have Leadership Excellence. You can't have Guest Satisfaction unless you have Cast Excellence. You can't have Loyalty & Financial Results unless you have Guest Satisfaction.

The thing that really stands out after looking at this model is that you can't have any of the three levels unless you have the first - Leadership Excellence. This isn't where the buck stops, it's where it starts!

Leadership development and succession planning should be a top priority for all organizations.