Richard Booth

1^st issue is the economy. This has an effect throughout every part of the company. No wage rises. Spending controls.  Extra layers of reports. Increased work time and expected increased results.

Will our customers still be in business next week? Many big names and also many old names are disappearing from the market. The question is: were they going anyway as they stagnated?

Will the bank lend us money or support us? The money isn’t getting to business. That is the belief. Is it reality?

Will the customers pay? Payment terms are more controlled than ever before.How can I respond/ be one step ahead?

This is an unprecedented time. Yet, there are two types of businesses and business leaders. There are followers and there are leaders.

Followers follow the market and respond to what is happening around them. They are re active to the situation, making decisions after the fact

Market leaders are ahead of the market. They have to be a part of the market but it doesn’t lead them. The market is just another factor in what makes a business strategy successful or not. A good business leader plans for the future, lives in the present and learns from the past. An effective leader makes decisions which are outside of the box and which others have not tried yet. He/she is prepared to take calculated risks in order to gain from the benefits and rewards that follow. And if the plan does not work they change it. And they are prepared to scrap everything that made them successful if it doesn’t work anymore.

A key issue in companies is how to relate to their employees. At the beginning of the downturn I believed that companies would recognise that their employees are what keep them going as long as they are given the right path to follow by those above them. Mistreat them now and they will leave when the market improves. So we have to keep our whole organisation on board to the concept that we are all working together to a greater cause, the pain is shared by all and the rewards will be reaped at the other end when the market is better again.

Another key issue is morality and ethics. In a hard market there are two choices, to follow ones principles or two do “what it takes” to survive. An ethical company has longevity and happier workers. An unethical company makes short term gains but in the long run always loses.

So, action not reaction is the key to survival. It doesn’t mean changing everything but it means re-evaluating what we are doing to see if it is still working or not. During strong business times it is very easy to carry on doing what works, but it is in times of change and hardship that we see the companies that did not evolve dying and those who dared to be different surviving. The key factor is that those companies must not get so big that they lose sight of this mindset that got them where they were. Possibly Face book could be a good example of that in a year or two.

The words we use mean more than we mean by using them. Often we are unaware of the affect that words we use both to communicate with the world and ourselves (internal dialogue) have to a communication.

Some years ago I wrote with a colleague a small book  called My Little Book of Verbal Antidotes to help clients overcome some of the not so obvious traps that sometimes we put ourselves in. It is not that we necessarily mean to do so rather that we are not aware that the outcome may well not be the one we had intended.

Lets take the word “try” which is commonly used by many people. It is often used by people who cannot commit themselves and find it difficult to say ‘no’. You have probably heard someone say ‘try and call you later’ or ‘ I’ll try and get it for you’. The probability is that they did not make it. The idea was not to do something rather to try (attempt) at doing something. Comments like ‘I tried to call you but there was no time left’” or ‘It tried to find the shop, but I couldn’t see it’.

What comes to mind are the countless times at school hearing the teachers tell us all ‘you’ve got to try harder’. And that is exactly what we did. TRY. No more no less.

Try to the mind does not mean ‘do it’ after all if you meant ‘do it’ say do it. The problem in some ways stems back to childhood when we where told to “try harder” as if that was going to make the difference. In reality only about 1 in 10 escape this trap. And I might suggest that it would be wiser not to assume that you are the 1 in 10. Safer to change you words and know you are on the right track.

It is not only that you are unlikely to reach your objectives, it is also that you could exhaust yourself in the process. The instruction to the mind is straight forward. Exert yourself and put all your energy towards getting there. There is no mention of being there, of arriving, of having it.

Try is a time and energy waster. It just consumes our energy with little or no return. It is used extensively in some therapies when it is necessary to have the client fail at something that by so doing benefits them. That’s for another day. The object of this blog is to highlight the importance of keeping your communications and instructions clear to yourself and others.

It seems that the word ‘try’, for most languages, has the same negative affect with negative outcome. I might suggest that you analyse the word ‘TRY’ in another language and discover if it means ‘DO’. It is as simple as that. As Yoda said “there is no try, there is only DO.

It could be interesting for you to have a go at doing it for a day and notice what you notice as being different.

There are many such words that you may not realise are having a detrimental outcome to your intentions.

Thank you.  Can we bottle him

J.C. – Life Coach.

Often we can loose sight of the fact that both mind and body have been exhausted. It’s as if we are are not able to monitor the energy being consumed by the demands  made on our resources.  With our awareness distracted we are vulnerable to the dangers that lay in our environmental situation. The tendency is not to realise that our environment can seriously effect our state of being.

Being human includes the ability to synchronise how we feel with what is going around us.  This may make more sense if we consider how we feel when we go to the local bar when there is a celebration going on. People smiling, having a good time generally makes us feel good to be there. In the same way, when we are in an environment with an air of doom, we are likely to not feel good, yet we are not necessarily aware of the cause.

Take time to consider and plan to deliberately include activities that uplift and enthuse the mind and body.  Avoid allowing too much negativity to consume your life. This can lead to some people becoming accustomed to a state that mars the quality of life you once knew.

Something that does not help the situation is not getting a decent nights sleep. What can happen when we are tired and low in energy is that our ability to be aware and alert is seriously reduced. Sleep well and be sure that you are conscious of your  environmental demands and influences.

He made a significant impact on empowering my team to be a guiding force, and enabled everyone to focus on how they could achieve greater team working. This made much better use of my time from being a professional mediator to become a strategic thinker and more effective operational manager”

J. A. General Manager – Service Industry

T.C. – International broadcaster and Author.

S.S. – Author, Director sports company.

H.G. Managing Director – Hotel Furnishings