Upgrade Your Talent Pipeline to a Talent Community

Upgrade Your Talent Pipeline to a Talent Community BLOG: Author: Amanda Lewis | Source: HCI | Published: 2 days ago In the current war for talent, leaders are facing a new set of hiring and engagement issues. There is a lack of loyalty among current employees. The average length they stay in their current role is two years. Industries are also converging and seeking the same type of talent. Folks are working longer, retiring later and there is a sea of new graduates seeking employment at the same time. Add to these challenges the fact that competitors are guaranteed to be talking to your top talent right now. Organizations must figure out a way to engage their employees while keeping potentials interested. Successful, global organizations like Autodesk, Disney and Pepsi are using Talent Communities to do this and create a predictable talent pipeline. People are naturally social and conversational, so building relationships and communities is pivotal. People want relationships with people, not faceless companies. Talent Communities humanize your organization. In a special webcast, Neil Griffiths, Global Practice Leader of Talent Communications & Employer Brand for Futurestep, will show how building relationships with key talent before you need to hire them, strengthens your overall employer brand and enhances employee engagement from day one. He will provide insight into the difference between talent communities and traditional talent pools; how technology is driving passive candidate engagement strategies; how talent communities can deliver value to global workforce planning and how to measure and quantify the impact of talent communities. http://www.hci.org/lib/upgrade-your-talent-pipeline-talent-community ============================================================================= Talent Communities: Beyond the Hype Community: Talent Strategy Track: Talent Management Strategy & Execution WEBCAST: Presented By: Neil Griffiths | Webcast Airs: July 24, 2012 Bringing your employer brand to the attention of top talent is vital in the race for the most sought after candidates. But if they choose to engage with you, how do you hold their attention? Enter talent communities – one of the best ways to build a relationship with the right people before you need to hire them until the day that you do. Talent communities enable you to enter into relevant conversations with key talent – conversations that might never otherwise take place. So the question is, is your organization at the forefront of strategic talent communications, or are you falling behind? Neil Griffiths, Global Practice Manager for Futurestep’s Talent Communications and Employer Branding practice, will dispel the hype around talent communities and provide insight into: The difference between talent communities and traditional talent pools How technology is driving passive candidate engagement strategies How talent communities can deliver value to global workforce planning http://www.hci.org/lib/talent-communities-beyond-hype

Would You Follow Your CEO Into Battle?

Would You Follow Your CEO Into Battle? BLOG: Author: Shane York | Source: HCI | Published: July 12, 2012 For those of you who think employee engagement is just another program to slash when budgets or other circumstances prevail, you’re making one big, costly mistake. Employee engagement is life changing. It generates financial and organizational performance, it creates a culture that attracts and retains talent, drives innovation and customer growth, and it doesn’t have to cost a dime. Today’s engagement strategies have evolved into key elements that actually generate financial growth. By providing employees with autonomy to work on projects that interest them and giving them more collaborative and networking opportunities to develop new ideas, you not only motivate and excite your workforce; you are driving business goals. What does it take to develop a culture of engaged employees? Give them what they want…what we all want! Leadership that is both transparent and communicative - leaders with integrity who encourage trust and are able to connect employees directly to their contribution towards the organization. A career development and learning plan that adds useful skills and allows employees to support and actively contribute to the learning process. A culture with values we identify with and are proud to represent. Here’s a question: How much do you really trust your direct manager and CEO? Would you hesitate to follow them into battle? Do you have confidence and faith in their strategies, but more importantly do you believe in them enough to put everything on the line? That may be extreme, but there are many people who would say yes, and honestly I’m one of them. I also know every member of my team feels the same way. Establishing trust, allowing for creative freedom, communicating our value to the company, and providing transparency into the workings of the organization brings the kind of loyalty you can’t buy with a raise or promotion. Being human doesn’t hurt either. At the end of the day we’re all “people” with families and obligations; being appreciated and treated with respect by the people who lead is the very first step to establishing trust and engaging your workforce. Everyone aspires to more… doing more and being more. Empowering your workforce with the skills they need to succeed, meaning the skills they want, is a hat trick that works every time. When employees feel they’re growing and becoming more valuable to the organization, they become inspired and energy levels increase - they want to take on more work because they’re personally involved in the success of the business. People also want to connect with an organization they’re proud to work for, organizations that do good philanthropic work, or connect with the local community, provide services and products that are deemed the best, or are rewarding to be associated with in some way. Feeling good about your organization leads to feelings of pride and gratification, this attitude is critical to so many organizations as it’s also communicated to your customers and has a direct connection to client satisfaction and retention. What about disengaged workers? These are workers who are already checked-out or are just keeping their job until the next one comes around. Keeping the disengaged on staff is much more costly than most organizations realize. The Gallup Organization estimates the low productivity of this group costs US companies between $243 and $270 billon dollars annually. This makes sense when you think about the Conference Board study, which found that highly engaged employees outperform their disengaged colleagues by 20-28%. A study by Serota Consulting also found the share price of organizations with an engaged workforce rose by an average of 16% versus the industry average of just 6%, so clearly an engaged workforce equals good business outcomes. The disengaged will cost you more than money; these workers try their best to also demotivate other employees. You know these people – the ones who complain and are constantly negative, trying their best to make everyone as unhappy as they feel. Indeed misery loves company and no one wants people they can commiserate with more than the disengaged. Can you save the disengaged? Probably not, but you can turn around the unhappy workers who are talented, motivated but find themselves in the wrong job or with the wrong manager. Everyone agrees employee engagement is a good thing… but how do you actually pull this off? What are the tools you can use to instill trust, happiness and the organizational performance that comes with employee engagement? How do you kick-start the engagement process while creating a culture of learning and innovation the drives substantial financial returns? Learn from organizations that have been through the fire and come out the other side. The HCI Employee Engagement Conference was designed specifically to offer practical, no-nonsense advice, strategies, trends and brilliant case studies. Listen as the Hay Group explains their research into the disengaged and what you can do to counterbalance this caustic group. Learn from Nike as they outline the tools they use to facilitate an engagement plan designed to engage managers, and to teach them how to better handle high potentials. Get and insider view into how Hulu and IDEO have created a human centered organization based on employee well-being and the wonderful successes they’ve had with this strategy. Join us in Seattle this September 10-12 and hear inspirational case studies, get the strategies, and learn about the most effective tools you can use to drive employee engagement in your organization. Last Comment: July 12, 2012 by Joy Kosta, HCS, SWP | comments (1) Tags: creating places of engagement, engaging & enabling employees for company success, leadership strategy, employee engagement, engaging performance, talent leadership, strategy, 2012 employee engagement conference, conference Login or register to post comments July 12, 2012 Joy Kosta, HCS, SWP says: inspiring blog, Shane... thanks! speaking of inspiring, HCI members may want to check out the approach of the Global Institute for Inspiration http://www.giinspiration.com/ they drill into engagement with a research-based fresh approach, because if one thing matters more than engagement, it's inspiration-- if you've got inspiration, and can design that into your culture and competencies, everything else falls into place! http://www.hci.org/lib/would-you-follow-your-ceo-battle

Using HCM Analytics to Drive HR BLOG: Author: Amy Lewis | Source: HCI | Published: June 25, 2012 Over the past few weeks, HCI and its research and online talent communities partner SAP, conducted a survey of HR and business leaders regarding their human capital management (HCM) analytical practices. In the coming months, a new report will be published, highlighting the most interesting and relevant findings on how talent management measures, analyzes and shares this information. In the mean time, be sure to check out this Executive Insight video that HCI has released from the executive members only vault on the "road signs" of workforce planning. Data are nothing more than numbers on a page (or smart phone) if not used to drive improvement. In this video, Peter Howes, Vice President at SuccessFactors, discusses the common pitfalls of trying to effectively implement a workforce planning strategy and the use of data in this process. Peter will be joined by Vanessa Sailor, Vice President, LoB HR Marketing, SAP AG and Debra D’Agostino, Editorial Director of Thought Leadership at Oxford Economics in an upcoming webcast on the business imperative of human capital analytics. In the webcast, the presenters will discuss new research in this area and share how the use of analytics can improve an organization's ability to drive HR efficiency, business impact, and business strategy.

How to Recall an Entire Book in 5 Minutes or Less Have you ever read a great book, and after only a short period of time could recall just one or two ideas from it? It is very frustrating – and it happens all the time. But there’s a way to avoid forgetting what you have read and, if you do, instantly refresh it in your mind. Reading Goals, Cheated The key to reading effectively is to be fully engaged in what you are reading. Underlining, questioning, taking notes – these all help – but there’s one single element that is essential if you want to read effectively: you need to know what your goal is. This is standard advice, and is indeed a good one. But if you want your reading to be truly effective and long-lasting, you need more than simply a goal: you need a very specific and tangible one. Take, for example, a book such as Getting Things Done. The goal “to get more organized” would be good enough – but just as a generic goal, not as a specific one. A generic goal may be enough to motivate you to start reading a book, but won’t be truly effective by itself to keep you fully involved while reading it. We need something more concrete. The problem is that we only know the specifics of a book after actually reading it. So what should we do as we want to set a specific goal beforehand? We cheat. I’ve found that one of the most effective goals to set when reading a book is to commit yourself to create a mind map of it. This will serve as a specific goal that you can use for any book. Yes, having a “general-purpose specific goal” certainly feels like cheating, but you won’t believe how effective it is. It will really help boosting your reading comprehension; and the best part is that you’ll have a book summary you can revisit at anytime. Contrary to regular book summaries, due to the specific properties of mind maps, you’ll be able to review it at lightning speed, quite often at a single glance. Top 3 Benefits of Mind Mapping a Book 1. Boost Comprehension While Reading Being sharply focused on creating such a specific deliverable as a mind map will get you 100% engaged in your reading, guaranteed. Moreover, every time you reach for your mind map to add more information, you’ll be looking and recalling what’s already in there. In fact, this constant reinforcement works so well, it usually takes months before you need referring to the mind map again. 2. Quickly Review the Entire Book Anytime This is when mind mapping really shines when compared to other note-taking techniques. It is absolutely amazing what happens when you look at a mind map months or even years after you created it. It is like rereading the entire book in just a glance. When you first read the book using this method, you did it in such an active manner that by just quickly scanning the mind map brings you all the memories from the book – even the ones you didn’t include in your mind map. In fact, the neural connections formed are so strong that even the emotions you felt at the time often resurface. And with such a personalized and handy summary, you really don’t need more than 5 minutes to review it. 3. Distill the Real Substance of the Book It is not rare for long books resulting in small mind maps. By creating a mind map, the real content of the book becomes evident. Not everything in a book is straight to the point: authors (validly) use repetition, stories and examples to build and elaborate important points. All you need to do is use standard mind mapping features to reflect that importance: use bold, write your topics in bigger letters or different colors. With your personalized mind map, you’ll be able to trim all fat while keeping the relationships and the relative importance of each topic intact. Tips to Get Started Keep the Flow Avoid reading and creating the mind map simultaneously, as that will disrupt your reading flow. Circle, underline and take notes while reading, pre-selecting the important concepts and passages for your summary. This intermediary step not only keeps you in context and engaged in the book, but also makes it much easier to quickly create your mind map once you read the relevant parts of the book. And by doing this, you’ll have yet another content reinforcement in the process. Sleep on It Try not to work on your mind map right after reading the book – let your mind chew on what you have read for a while first. Doing it the next day is a good rule of thumb. If you read every day, a good way of doing it is by working on your mind map for yesterday’s topic right before today’s reading session. Also, try not to get your reading too far ahead of your mind mapping – you’ll lose the benefits of repetitive reinforcement and feel overwhelmed if there’s too much content to add in a single sit. Use Dual Bookmarking Instead of using just one bookmark, use an extra one to indicate up to where your book has been mapped. I also recommend using colored Post-it flags, so you won’t need to worry about your second bookmark falling while you’re reading. Try It Won’t reading books with this method take much longer than usual? Sure it will – but what’s the point in leafing through several books, only retaining a tiny amount of their content – and only for a short period of time? If you’re just reading casually and you feel this method is overkill, you are probably right – don’t force yourself to use it, by all means. But if you get your hands on a great book – and there are so many out there – please give mind mapping a try. You won’t regret taking these extra steps to make your books really last in your mind. To check out a mind map created using this technique, please see One Small Step Can Change Your Life or Never Eat Alone. http://litemind.com/how-to-recall-an-entire-book-in-5-minutes-or-less/

Executive Search: The 4 Top Tips for Fit

Executive Search: The 4 Top Tips for Fit BLOG: Author: Lisa Anderson | Source: HCI | Published: 1 day ago You've likely all been there before; a senior employee in a leadership role exits your organization, leaving you scrambling for a replacement to make sure the ship stays afloat. In the best of cases, succession planning provides for an internal solution while other situations call for an extended search process that includes both internal and external candidates. If you're in the market for a new C-suite member or an individual to help guide your burgeoning firm, you're hardly alone. The good news: 25 percent of companies anticipate adding new executive positions this year, according to CFO magazine. And more good news: only a microscopic 2 percent are continuing cutbacks in management that began during the recession in 2008. While you're feeling good that others are also creating new executive roles, you also realize this likely means you have more competition. As a result, it can be helpful to keep in mind the lesson from The Beatles and "get by with a little help from my friends." Executive search firms can play a critical role in identifying potential talent, providing exhaustive accounts on a specific number of prospective candidates, promoting your company in a positive way to potential candidates and securing access to top talent. As you collaborate with these executive search firms, Bloomberg Businessweek offers some astute tips to make the most of the engagement: 1. Sell your company's overall package. Odds are, your group of candidates has been inundated with potential offers from other companies, so while you're listening for the best pitch from the potential candidate, be sure you are also an enthusiastic interviewer and sell the unique benefits of working with your firm. 2. Remember the background check. By all means, an executive recruiting firm can and should handle reference checking for prospective candidates, but you should be sure to play a role in the actual background check. This could include reviewing databases of criminal records or educational credentials, according to the publication. 3. Onboarding is key. Why do approximately 40 percent of external executive hires fail within their first 18 months on the job? There may be plenty of answers, but one sure thing you can do to try to reverse this trend is establish an effective onboarding program. Clearly laying out the expectations through an orientation program can help to prevent prior mistakes and make it easier for the new executive to learn how to fly, on the fly. 4. Offer closure to all interviewed candidates. Interviewing professionals for executive-level roles in your company is a significant event for both you and the candidate. Keep this in mind even for those whom you do not select for the position, and work with your search partner to give them the courtesy of "closing the loop" with constructive feedback and any insights you are able to share. You want to leave a positive impression no matter what, and chances are this took a significant commitment on their part. You never know who they know and what they’re going to say about interviewing with you. Think of it as marketing, because it is. With 58 percent of executives admitting to updating their resumes in the past few months (in a recent ExecuNet study), it's clear that job security remains a major consideration. By fully immersing yourself in the executive hiring process as well as leaning on the services of an executive search firm, you can lower attrition and keep your company on the right track. Join Ron Hetrick, Director of Labor Market Analysis at Allegis Group Services on a webcast discussing why organizations can't find the candidates they seek. Lisa Anderson is Managing Director/Business Development for Allegis Partners. Before joining Allegis Partners, she spent several years partnering with clients across diverse industries, including media/entertainment, financial services, retail, technology, consumer packaged goods, professional services and hospitality.She currently leads the Women’s Leadership Council at Allegis Group Services and is on the Board of the Strategic Leadership Forum of the Carolinas, and a member of the HR People and Strategy (HRPS) and International Association for Corporate & Professional Recruitment (IACPR). http://www.hci.org/lib/executive-search-4-top-tips-fit

How to Learn (Almost) Anything

How to Learn (Almost) Anything This is a guest post by Glen Allsopp of PluginID. Have you ever read an informative book, only to later remember just a few main points — if anything at all? The problem might be that you’re using one of the least efficient ways of learning available. The Cone of Learning I remember back about 7 years ago when I was taking music lessons at school, there was a poster on the wall that really grabbed my attention. To be fair, it wasn’t difficult for a random object to attract your gaze as our Scottish teacher at the time didn’t have much in the way of keeping you interested. The poster outlined the different ways that we remember things and how different activities increase our chances of remembering something over others. Image Credit After doing some research, I found that the contents of that poster were based upon the work of Edgar Dale back in 1969. Dale looked at the most effective ways of learning by teaching people similar material in different ways and noted the ability to recall the information after the teaching was finished. Today, many of you may know this as the Cone of Learning, but beware: although the cone is in fact based upon the results of Dale’s research, the percentage figures were never actually cited by Dale, and added by others after the initial investigation. Even though the Cone of Learning that became widespread contains erroneous figures, it does represent a guideline for the most effective learning techniques that the human brain is able to acquire and store information from. Based on the research we can see that: The least effective way to learn something is to listen to a lecture on the topic or read information about it. The most effective way to learn something is to teach others and use it in our own lives. The Cone of Learning suggests why you are more likely to remember parts of a movie than you are from a book on the same topic. A film uses audio and visual aspects that the brain is more likely to store and hold available for recollection (memory). Learning Almost Anything After we discard the erroneous percentage figures, we still must take the cone as just a guideline — one which is subject to change depending on the learning style of the student or the studied subject. Different aspects such as what you want to remember and how often you put it into use will greatly impact how well you remember something. That being said, other things equals, the cone is a great guideline to follow to better imprint something to memory. On that note, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the best ways to use the Cone of Learning concept, and apply it to an everyday example that we can relate to. The example I’m going to use in the following tips is looking at the best methods you could use to learn what yoga is and remember the necessary positions that are used. Give a Lecture. Although receiving a lecture is one of the worst ways to remember what you are being told, giving a lecture is one of the most effective. You could go into any college or university and offer to give a lecture on the topic of yoga and the many positions that are used. Write an Article. If you have a blog or a website you could spend time putting together an article on what yoga is all about and the movements that are often used in this meditative practice. Additionally, you could also create images to be used on the site to help explain the certain actions involved. Make a Video. Even if you don’t have your own blog or website, there are plenty of video portals such as Youtube and Metacafe that will allow you to upload your own videos for free. This will be effective as you can teach in the lecture format but know that you are instructing to a potentially worldwide audience. Discuss with Your Friends. One of the easiest teaching options that you have available to you are the members of your social circle. Wherever appropriate, bring up a topic you would like to discuss and share your wealth of knowledge on it. The more people you can discuss it with the better your ability will be to remember it in the future. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of ways you can discuss it online using the likes of online forums, twitter or even niche social networks. Do it Yourself. It’s no use trying your best to teach others about Yoga if it’s something you aren’t interested in and don’t do yourself. If you teach people the importance of controlling their breathing, then when you are performing Yoga in your own time… make sure you are controlling your breathing. Whatever you would teach others, you need to make sure you are implementing yourself. There are certainly more ways that you could look into teaching others and applying things into your own life. From holding classes in your house to simply creating an audio file of you speaking, see how you can apply teaching about your subject to learn more about a topic. Exceptions to the Rule As with most things in life, this isn’t going to apply to every single person, every single time. For example, from my research into this, it is claimed that autistic people are much more likely to learn from visual images rather than trying to teach someone else or do it themselves. Also, I know many people who have a strong preference for auditory learning over visual, for instance. Additionally, as stated, the figures in the cone are to be used as a guideline, some people will have a high success rate at learning through teaching others while for some it may not be as successful. Generally, look at the ones which are deemed to be the most effective and try the ones which work best for you. So, what are you going to do to improve your learning now? About Glen Allsopp Glen Allsopp writes in order to inspire, awaken and motivate people into being who they want to be and living the life they want to live. You can learn more about him at his Personal Development blog. http://litemind.com/learn-anything/

10 Best Ways to Harness the Power of Questions

10 Best Ways to Harness the Power of Questions “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” –Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize Winner) Our brains love questions. They have the power to engage us and to shift our mindsets. They drive knowledge and growth, and fuel both creativity and critical thinking. Here are 10 ways to ask questions more intelligently you can start using today. 1. Questions for Creative Problem Solving One of the most effective ways to approach any problem is to ask questions about it. The greatest thing about questions is that your brain automatically starts working on them as soon as you ask them. Not only that, but it’ll keep working on them in the background, when you’re not even aware of it. For an initial set of more than 50 sample questions you can use in just about any problem, try the SCAMPER technique. Another effective technique you can use is asking why until you get to the core of your problem. 2. Questions for Shifting Your Perspective to a Problem Just like it’s useful asking questions about a problem, so it is turning the problem itself into a question. We know that properly defining and stating problems is essential for great problem solving, and framing problems as questions is one of the techniques that can definitely boost your effectiveness as problem-solver. In general, statements trigger our brains’ logical and analytical skills. Many times, they encourage you to try and reach conclusions as soon as possible. Questions, on the other hand, trigger our brains’ imagination and creative thinking skills. They encourage you to take a more exploratory approach, which tends to foster a whole new set of insights. For example, try changing a problem statement such as “Ways to Improve My Life” into questions such as “In what ways can I improve my life?”, or “Is there an opportunity for improving my life here?”, and check how it feels. 3. Questions for Directing Thinking and Debate Questions guide and direct our thinking process. Depending on the situation, it might be more useful to ask “open”, or “expanding” questions: they elicit new ideas, opinions and grow possibilities. Examples include “What are your thoughts on this idea?”, and “Can you think of other usage scenarios?”. On the other hand, sometimes it might be more productive to ask “closed” or “narrowing down” questions: they converge focus, direct thinking, and bring discussions to a more objective, “down-to-earth” level. Examples include: “What are the tasks that need to get done?”, “How much will this cost?”. The idea is to purposefully use different kinds of questions at different times to consciously drive your thinking process towards the most productive direction. 4. Questions for Education and Leadership Great teachers and coaches know that true learning can only happen when students think by themselves. Questions are a great way to stimulate thinking — and, if used skillfully, work vastly better than just dumping knowledge into someone’s head. Instead of simply showing concepts and solutions to students, teachers can use questions to instigate collaborative exploration: ” What would happen if we increased the angle here?”, “How would it behave without air resistance?” and so on. Also, questions work not only for teachers, but can be extremely useful in business environments. In corporations, for example, leaders (formal or not) can, by asking questions and guiding people to think for themselves, encourage shared pride and ownership of the solutions generated. Typical questions include “What solutions can we see here?” and “What do you think we should do?”. 5. Questions for Creating Conversation and Empathy Questions are the glue of empathetic communication: they energize and enliven conversations, inviting people to participate and to share insights and opinions. When you use them properly, people feel included and listened to and, therefore, will be much more likely to engage in meaningful and productive conversation. Lately, I started noticing that many discussions are, in fact, more like simultaneous monologues: instead of listening, each person is just waiting his turn to talk. Simple queries such as “How can I help?”, or “Did your son get better since last time we talked?” are the easiest way to show that you’re listening, and that you honestly care about what’s being shared with you. 6. Questions for Critical Thinking Skillful use of inquiry is the cornerstone of critical thinking. Again, it’s only through questioning that we can truly think by ourselves — instead of blindly accepting whatever we’re told as the right thing to do or the only acceptable answer. When I say ‘skillful use of inquiry’, this does not mean necessarily getting fancy: oftentimes, it means being playful and “thinking like a child”. Great critical thinkers don’t get embarrassed to ask seemingly naïve questions: these are usually the most effective — as well as the ones snob intellectuals are more prone to overlook. As an effective initial set of questions to use, it’s hard to beat the famous 5Ws (what, where, who, when and why). “Where did you see it?”, “What are the causes of it?”, “Why is the emperor naked?”. 7. Questions for Shifting Your Focus Reframing self-limiting situations as questions has long been celebrated as an excellent way to instantly changing the way we feel. Suppose you’re feeling down but, even so, you dare to ask yourself “What am I excited about?”. At first, you’ll get irritated by the question. However, if you put honest effort in answering it, you will indeed find something worth feeling better about. And that’s not denial: it’s just shifting your focus. Also, disempowering statements such as “This is impossible!” increase your stress and prevent you from searching for solutions. Turn it into “How can I make this possible?” or ” What’s good about this?” puts you back in the driver’s seat and direct your focus on solutions. 8. Questions for Inspiration, Goal Setting and Action A great way to set goals is by asking yourself “What if…?”. This question alone has the power to direct our imagination to create a vision for ourselves — and then spawn the thought processes that help it become reality. A technique I use to think about “higher-levels” goals — as well as roles and areas of responsibility — is to turn them into questions. Statements may work fine for to-do lists, but I find that for thinking about the big picture they’re overly dull and uninspiring. For example, suppose that you identified ‘Health’ as a general area that is important to you. Now, one way to track and assess progress under that area is to think generically about this label “Health” and what actions you can take. Contrast it with the much stronger alternative of turning it into a question: “How can I improve my health today?”. Thinking that way motivates and primes you for action. In fact, it’s so strong that it’s hard not to take action, don’t you agree? The same holds true for goals and even lower-level projects: the goal “Get 10 new customers by the end of the week” may be what some call a SMART goal, but “What can I do now to get a new customer?” is the one that motivates action the most. 9. Questions for Self-Reflection As powerful thinking tools that they are, questions can help you examine your life and help you get in touch with your inner self. They work very well with standard self-reflection techniques, such as many forms of journaling. A great exercise is to create a list of 100 consisting only of questions — the questions that matter the most to you at the moment (these can range from “Where did I left my keys?” to “What’s my life mission?”). From that list, narrow it down to ten or twenty items, creating your own List of Great Questions, which you can revisit often to reconnect with the pursuits that really matter to you. An extension of that technique you may want to try is taking each of those questions and journaling about them, devoting a journal entry for each question, just like in the Topics du Jour technique. This gives you the opportunity to focus your attention on each question at regular intervals. 10. Questioning as a Way of Life Developing the habit of questioning is perhaps the greatest hallmark of highly-developed minds. I believe that questioning is the ultimate tool to stimulate thinking and, as such, it’s hard to dispute the usefulness and importance of cultivating this habit. But how do we develop the habit of questioning? The answer, just like everything else in life, is practice, practice, practice. Always carry a notebook with you and keep writing questions down as they come to you. Question everything. Become comfortable with unanswered questions. Don’t see them as problems, or as a necessary evil in your way to answers. Welcome them. Play with them. Your brain will thank you. http://litemind.com/questions/

Boost Your Brainstorm Effectiveness with the Why Habit

Boost Your Brainstorm Effectiveness with the Why Habit If you’re stuck trying to find ways to achieve a goal or solve a problem, there’s a quick analysis tool that can put you back in perspective and save you hours of frustrated brainstorming. It’s as effective as it’s simple: all it takes is asking ‘why’… Finding Your Motivation Behind every goal you set or every problem you’re working on there’s a motivation. Even though the reasons we’re doing something are usually clear, next time you’re brainstorming solutions for a challenge you’re facing, take a few seconds and deliberately ask yourself: “Why do I want this?” Knowing your motivation is the most fundamental step before taking any action; after all, if you don’t know the reason for doing something, why do it in the first place? While this may seem blatantly obvious, the truth is that we often don’t consciously clarify the reasons for our actions beforehand. Suppose you have the goal “Get more customers to my business”: —“Why do I want to get more customers to my business?” —”To increase sales” you may say. Don’t try to be particularly clever about your answer: just give the first and most evident reason. While you may regard “to increase sales” as the most obvious of the possible answers, consciously bringing it to light accomplishes a lot: it gives you a fresh new perspective about your challenge. That simple answer gives you an entire new dimension of brainstorming possibilities: if what you really want to accomplish is increasing sales, you don’t necessarily need to get more customers — What about making bigger sales each time? What about making your customers return more often? Focusing too narrowly on a goal or problem without understanding your underlying motivations prevents you from coming up with many creative and effective solutions. Motivation Comes in Layers You can extract full benefit from this technique by realizing that your motivations are layered: each motivation is a way to fulfill a higher-level one. To find out upper levels of motivation, all you need is to keep asking ‘why’. In our example, the exercise could unfold like this: —”Why do I want to get more customers to my business?” —”To increase sales.” —”Why do I want to increase sales?” —”To expand my profits.” —”Why do I want to increase my profits?” —”To retire earlier.” —”Why do I want to retire earlier?” —”To spend more time with my family.” Working the motivation ladder in this manner is a great way to find the perspective you’re more comfortable working with. You may be paralyzed about “getting more customers”, but brainstorming ways to “spend more time with family” may be much more appealing to you. The trick is to find the motivation layer that resonates better with you and then work from there. When you purposefully think in terms of motivations, problems become multidimensional: you can always choose more effective approaches to get unstuck immediately. More surprisingly, each level of motivation can bring you new insights that may drastically change the direction you approach your goal. In the example above, consider the high-level motivation “to spend more time with my family”: blindly tackling your lower-level motivation of “getting more customers to my business” may force you to spend even more hours at the office — which is the exact opposite of what you really want, isn’t it? 5 Main Benefits of Asking Why There are many more reasons why considering your motivations can make all the difference in a brainstorming session. Here are just a few: 1. Multiplying your Creative Output If you were stuck with only one goal to go after, now you have many more to choose from: that means that if you could accomplish it in a hundred different ways, now you can do it in five hundred ways or even more. 2. Bringing a Sense of Purpose Even if you end up choosing the original challenge you had at hand, you’ll now work on it with a clearer purpose in your mind. This may give you just that extra enthusiasm boost that you need. 3. Spotting Misalignments Just like in the example of discovering that ‘getting more customers’ really meant ‘spending more time with family’, you may find that a lower-level goal is misaligned or conflicting with a higher-level motivation. In this case, simply drop your lower-level goal and approach your objective from a higher-level one instead. 4. Finding broader solutions Brainstorming at higher levels of abstraction can give you solutions that encompass multiple areas of your life and address many issues in a single blow. 5. Uncovering Personal Values and Mission If you keep climbing the ‘why ladder’ as high as you can, you’ll notice that soon enough you’ll inescapably uncover your core personal values — and ultimately your life mission. This is an extremely simple and practical “bottom-up” approach to understanding what really matters to you. It’s a Habit We’re so used to just spitting out solutions to problems that, more often than not, we just get into auto-pilot mode — forgetting to connect with our underlying motivations. But asking ‘why’ is nothing more than a habit. In fact, it’s so simple and effective that all you need to do is to just get started. http://litemind.com/boost-brainstorm-effectiveness-why-habit/