Posts Tagged ‘Decision Making’

Worst Case Thinking

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

What’s the worst thing that can hap­pen? What if I don’t do well on this exam? What if he says no? What if I get turned down for the pro­mo­tion, or nobody agrees with me, or I lose every­thing I invested? What is really the worst case?

Worst Case Think­ing is a process that can aid those of you who find your­selves unable to take healthy risks. This sim­ple think­ing model can help you to over­come the neg­a­tive emo­tions that are birthed in illog­i­cal fear.

Over the years, this type of fear has come up count­less times in coach­ing ses­sions. I’ve seen Worst Case Think­ing help many in their lives and careers to risk more, expe­ri­ence more, impact more and grow more. Here is how it works.

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Posted in Discipline | 5 Comments »

Labeling Our Years

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

I don’t know if you are like me, but often, I find I am at a loss to recall the key lessons learned from past years.  Think about it.  What were the great­est lessons you learned in busi­ness or in life in 2005?  What about 2003? 

Labeling Our YearsOkay, lets make this a bit eas­ier. What did you learn in 2009?

One tac­tic that I have found use­ful is to label my years.  I do this while spend­ing a day dur­ing the Christ­mas break or right after the new year reflect­ing and plan­ning.  I review my Life Plan, Busi­ness Vision and Busi­ness Plan.  I spend time jour­nal­ing through the past year, and work to iden­tify any big lessons learned.  Then, once this is done, I use all this infor­ma­tion to give both the past and upcom­ing year a label. 

Here is what I mean by a label:  I iden­tify what my biggest focus points or new insights were dur­ing the year.  They are not usu­ally all that profound. 

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You Have to See the Whole Picture

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

If you were to call me and ask if I could fly out and meet with you on March 11th, the old me would pull up my CRM to see if that date was open.  If so, I would say sure, see you then! 

But what I could miss is that I was sched­uled to be at my daughter’s bal­let per­for­mance on the evening of the 10th, and that the fol­low­ing week, I am to make two major pre­sen­ta­tions.  Not to men­tion, this all comes after three very full weeks of meetings. 

The old me would have made a com­mit­ment to that date with­out assess­ing how it would impact me and those around me dur­ing that larger period of time.  Out­look was not good enough.

The solu­tion was to go back to a paper tool. 

Daniel's Yearly Fold-Out Calendar

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Posted in Priority Management | 4 Comments »

A Day That Will Change Your Life

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

BCE Life PlanningAs many of you know, I have spent the last 13 years of my career build­ing an exec­u­tive coach­ing com­pany. 

What my team and I get to do each and every day is to help busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als improve their think­ing, their abil­i­ties and their actions.  We walk our clien­tele through a model we call the Core Four, which is com­prised of four crit­i­cal ele­ments:  Life Plan­ning, Vision, Busi­ness Plan­ning and Pri­or­ity Management.

When we begin our jour­ney with a new client, the Life Plan comes first.

I believe Life Plan­ning is not just a strat­egy for life, but also for busi­ness.  Think about it for a moment.  What causes a huge per­cent­age of pro­fes­sion­als to crash and burn, or to just per­form at mediocre levels? 

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Posted in Life Planning | No Comments »