Author: admin

It’s the Summer, although you wouldn’t know it, judging by the colour of my tan. Normally by now I’ve had at least three days in the sun going crispy brown, but this year I’d have just got waterlogged so have been unable to top up on the old vitamin D.

However, I have been able to review my plans for the year. We are six months into 2013 so now is a perfect time to ask:

What is going well?

What is behind schedule and for what reason?

What is clogging up my to-do list and needs to be dropped?

I started the year with six projects and have, after a review, dropped two through lack of progress. I have also congratulated myself that three of the remaining four have borne fruit. To be honest, I wanted to keep all six items on my list, but sometimes you have to be tough minded or you can just end up in a muddle. Knowing when to stop something is as useful a skill as knowing when to start – how often do you say ‘Stop! That’s enough!’

A review is also a great time to pause and congratulate ourselves on a job well done. I’ve won six pieces of work in the last two weeks, and all of them stemmed from a decision to focus my brand more on: ‘Richard Maun – Business Coach’. When we’re asked ‘What do we do’ it’s tempting to take a shotgun approach and hit as many targets as possible, but that approach loses out over the long term. We are always better focusing our brand on one key product/service/skill/niche because people can more easily remember us and therefore are more likely to refer us onto colleagues.

The same applies when we are planning – there is probably one key project that unlocks a whole box of follow-on projects. My key project for the first six months was to rebuild my sales process pipeline, as it had become a bit unloved and had stopped delivering. For the next six months I am going to work on……ah well that would be telling.

Over to you. What have you done well over the last six months? What do you need to drop from your to-do list? And finally – what is your key project or task for the next six months?

I’m off to complete my review. Have fun completing yours!

Next week: Mindfulness and sleep

Sssshhh….it’s time for some peace and quiet, because that is often where great thinking occurs. In the car, walking the dog, having a sunbathe (well, two of the three are likely to happen) …when we are quiet, and our bodies distracted, our thoughts tumble around and often spill out a great idea. Like a winning bingo-ball that’s popped up. House!

A recent programme on Radio 4 (All in the mind) talked about new research that showed group brainstorming activity doesn’t work. People often feel intimidated by their noisy/experienced/creative/pushy colleagues and instead of contributing, they sit quietly.

I recently attended a brainstorming session where despite there being an ‘anything goes’ approach some of my ideas were talked away by both friends and the facilitator and didn’t make it onto the white board …until I insisted that ‘anything goes’ meant just that!!

Censored brainstorming (which in my experience is the norm) is a waste of time and resources. Instead, we need people to feel safe, not be brow beaten by colleagues, and allowed to flex their creativity in ways that creates value. This brings us to the concept of the Silent Brainstorm. We have two options:

1) Hand everybody in the group a Post-It note and give them 2 minutes in silence to write down their ideas. Then stick the notes up in silence and give people chance to read them. In silence. Then give them a second round of 2 minutes of silence for more thinking, which will allow people to cross-fertilise ideas. We used this at Cranfield many times and it never failed to produce useful ideas.

2) Give people space. Instead of forcing them to be creative at the appointed time, give people the chance to go for a walk and to be reflective. Ideas can be pooled the following day. Again, the key is that people feel safe – nobody is allowed to ridicule or belittle ideas and ‘cutting humour’ is also not allowed. Saying ‘it was only a joke’ is a lie. It wasn’t, it was criticism dressed up as comedy.

Silence really is golden and if you want to harness the creative power of your team, then use a silent brainstorming approach and give people the space to think in.

Where do you like to think?
Who has good ideas and yet rarely speaks up?
When can you use silent brainstorming to help your business?

The choice is yours!

Next week: Review your plans