Cultivate GREATNESS | Personal Development

There are a numerous approaches to brainstorming, but whichever approach you use, there are several key factors which make the difference between a successful brainstorming session and a mediocre brainstorming session.

State your challenge correctly. In order to get the right ideas, you need to ensure that you are giving the brainstorm session participants the right challenge. Otherwise, you could end up with a lot of ideas which do not actually solve your problem. To learn more, download Dr. Arthur Van Gundy’s article: The care and framing of strategic innovation challenges (PDF document: 537kb)

No squelching! Squelching is when you criticise an idea or a person contributing the idea. Squelching can be obvious, such as “That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard!” or subtle, such as “you’d never get the budget to do that.” No matter what the form, squelching does two terrible things to a brainstorming session. Firstly, it makes the person who contributed the idea feel bad. As a result, she is unlikely to contribute any more ideas to the session. Even if her idea was not a good one, it is likely she would have had Read the rest of this entry »

I find it particularly disheartening when I hear someone refer to a persons success and achievements as simply luck. Or even worse… dumb luck.

The word luck implies that the person had very little to do with the positive outcome they are currently enjoying. In fact, it even conjures up the idea that someone that is enjoying their success could have as easily achieved the result from doing something as simple as going to the local store and purchasing a lottery ticket and hoping for the best.

The reality is that “luck” in and of itself in virtually all the cases of those where one might define a person as being successful had little if anything to do with it. Very often, the exact opposite is true. Read the rest of this entry »

Once in awhile, a film comes along that opens your eyes in powerful ways. For me, the most recent movie to do this was “Cinderella Man.” If you haven’t seen it yet, I’ll give a quick overview without giving away anything important to the story line.

James J. Braddock was a boxer in the 1920’s and 1930’s, during the Great Depression. With employment opportunities so limited during that era, boxing was the primary means for Mr. Braddock to provide for his wife and three children. But even that was touch and go, and he had several difficult years just struggling to survive.

After a streak of bad luck, he was given a second chance to make a comeback, and he took full advantage of it, fighting with all he had. Yet, he still had Read the rest of this entry »

I joined the army with a high school friend, and we were thinking about joining at the same time, and get the same job. In theory, this would have been a killer time… but I was offered the opportunity to go to California and study Spanish. So I joined the Army, and went to Basic Training as an E-2 Private as a 98C Linguist Interpreter. My friend went to South Carolina Basic Training to become a Bradley Tank Mechanic. [if my memory serves me correctly]

So, off I went to Basic Training on my mentally handicapped brother William’s 9th birthday, August 22nd. And he cried and I cried and he cried… and we cried… and the parental units cried, and there I was… off to join the military as a blubbering crying idiot.

Well, I went down to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri and finished that up and made some great buddies, some of which I still Read the rest of this entry »

We don’t often think about the powerful effect our words and actions can have on others, but every now and then, the universe decides to show us.

This week, I had a profound experience at my local supermarket. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and the store was crowded. So much so that I almost didn’t go in when I saw the parking lot full of cars. I was tempted to leave and resume my normal weekday shopping schedule the following week, but since I really needed groceries and was already there, I figured I might as well get it over with.

As I made my way through the crowded aisles, I passed a man who looked familiar. I paused, pretending to read the label on a can of cat food as I observed him with occasional sideways glances. He seemed to hold a place of importance in my memory, though I couldn’t quite grasp when or where. After several minutes, I caught a remembered whiff of chalk dust and a nostalgic echo of his voice booming out across a quiet classroom, and it all came flooding back to me. He was Mr. Blaise, my high school Creative Writing teacher!
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If you gather 100 experienced leaders together to share with you their most important secrets for success, you probably wouldn’t hear a lot of academic theory or jargon. Instead, this is a good idea of what you’d hear:

1) Put ethics first. If you make unethical decisions for short-term gain, you will lose in the end. Let your principles guide you in the many decisions you must make regarding business practices and people. You will regret it if you don’t.

2) Surround yourself with the best people you can find. If you are able to attract the brightest, most dedicated, most talented people, they will move your organization forward. Leverage their skills, ideas and creativity… your people are your greatest asset.
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This is a technique that sounds a bit silly when you first hear about it (and doesn’t seem at first to get much better as you read on) but WORKS, which is what counts, if you apply it to your life. The idea is to “open” a Confidence Bank Account for yourself. Bear with me on this!

We all feel at times that our confidence could be at a higher level than it is, whether that is in the moment or over a period of time. By using a CBA, we can build our confidence back up to where we would like it to be.
The principle behind the idea is this; every time you do something, big or small, that adds to your self confidence, you make a deposit into your CBA. As you start to do more and more actions that give you confidence, your CBA begins to grow.
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Let’s put to rest the fallacy that success, in sales or any profession, is due to luck, chance, and/or hard work. There is nothing further from the truth. Think about it, you and I both know people who work incredibly hard, putting in long hours, they may even have two jobs, but they are not consistently (if ever) successful. Hard work certainly contributes to success, but hard work alone will not make you top-flight in your industry. Is success due, then, to luck or chance?

After years of study, in a multitude of industries, I have come to the conclusion that success is an absolute science. In other words, there are exact principles of thought and action that all top performers universally and consistently exhibit.

Let’s examine seven of these principles more closely: Read the rest of this entry »

Some folks are good at creating relationships, some at creating money. One thing I’ve always been able to do easily is create wonderful jobs for myself. Over the years, I’ve taught this skill to many of my clients.

Here’s how: Rather than concentrate on a specific position at a specific place, think more about what elements you’d like to have in your job.

See yourself working. Visualize yourself doing whatever it is you want to do If you are not sure what you want to do, ask yourself things like: Do I like working with people or alone, do I want to be in an office or outside, do I want to work with computers and electronic equipment, or with people? Or both?
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Okay, I stumbled upon a great article. The Million Dollar Savings Club, by Bryan C. Fleming. He began this journey to save $1 in three piles every day. One for Investing, Savings, and one to give away. Read all about on his blog.

“Every Fortune begins with $1”. What a true saying. I know a lot of readers simply are unable to start saving money. I suspect it’s because saving 10% of your income is too daunting a task. So we’re going to have some fun.

I’d personally like you to join my “Million Dollar Savings Club”. What is the club? It’s a way for us to learn to save money together. Here are the rules: Read the rest of this entry »