Everyone needs a measure of stability and predictability in their lives. It almost seems that we go through a never ending cycle of being confronted by change and the resultant disorder and confusion that comes with it, working like mad to make sense of it and restore some measure of order and predictability and then enjoying a brief respite before the whole thing starts again.

Sounds a little silly, doesn’t it? Yet, just imagine a situation where you knew exactly what was going to happen each and every minute of the day. There were no surprises, no problems to ponder and resolve, no challenges to overcome and nothing new to experience and learn. How would you like that constantly in your life? How would you feel?

BORED

Time would drag on interminably and you would become restless. Just think of the many time we have read of second generation rich kids who are given everything from a very early age and never have to struggle for anything.

How many of them ‘go off the rails’ so to speak. They turn to drink, drugs or even criminality. Why? Because they have no direction. There is nothing to achieve and so have no goals or aspirations. It seems that we humans have a need for direction and focus.

This implies that the current state of affairs is not necessarily ideal and that we must pursue some change in order to grow, develop and evolve.

Here’s a question for you. How do we measure the passage of time? By the amount of change that has occurred. If nothing is happening then time seems to drag. If we are busy doing things then time seems to fly.

Whether we like it or not, it appears that change is an essential ingredient for a full and happy life. In fact, it can be said that change is the only real constant there is in life. I have often said that you cannot master anything you do not understand and you cannot understand anything you are unable to learn.

What is the first step in learning? We must question, we must define and then evaluate the subject. Then we are engaged on the learning philosophy and so gain understanding.

Question 1: What is change?
Answer: Any alteration in time, place or circumstance.

Question 2: What is the best way to analyse change?
Answer: By compartmenting it into the various areas of life. For example:

• Personal
• Family
• Work
• Social
• Society
• World

It can be further compartmentalised into:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Spiritual

Question 3: What is the best way to decide on the impact of change?
Answer:

• Tolerable
• Overwhelming

Question 4: What is the best way to decide on the nature of change?
Answer:

• Positive
• Negative

It seems obvious that, unless you are a hermit and live in a cave on a mountainside you will experience change. That being the case we need to know how to cope with and manage change so that we may benefit and that others may benefit by our actions in response to change. When you stop and think about it, isn’t that the way society and civilisation is supposed to operate?

Let’s go a little further. Everyone needs some sort of focus in their lives. You could call it a goal or purpose; or, more accurately, a goal and a purpose. Now, any goal is a desired state, or circumstance or achievement. That presupposes that you are not “there” yet in terms of reaching that goal. The purpose is the reason why.

Therefore we all must undertake some sort of journey to reach the desired outcome. That then means a change of some sort from our existing circumstances. So, it would be fair to say we all have a journey we undertake as we go through life. It is a necessary function of living.

So, change is an essential part of life. It is through change that we grow and develop. Therefore we could describe our life as:

• We start out
• We experience change
• We learn
• We continue in an altered state towards our destination.

If we perceive our experience as negative we may, if we decide, end up further from where we wish to be than before. That is, we go backwards, we lose confidence and therefore are able to do less. Have you ever given up doing something because you lost confidence? It’s a terrible feeling.

The question is, how do you overcome negative change that threatens to derail your life in some fashion?

Firstly recognise that failure is an event. It is not you, but an experience.

Any experience is an opportunity to learn. How do you learn?

You question.

What questions do you ask?

• What happened?
• What did I want to happen?
• What can I do to accept that what has happened has happened?
• What can I do to change the situation for the better?
• Where do I start?
• Who can I get to help?
• What did I learn from the situation?
• What can I do to make sure I have a positive outcome next time?

Embracing change requires you to adopt a particular set of viewpoints.

• Whilst I may not be able to influence what has happened, I am responsible for my reaction to it.
• If I do not embrace change and do not change and adapt, I will become obsolete.

It has often been said that only the strong survive. In fact, it is those most adaptive to change who persist and win. The dinosaur was amongst the largest and strongest animals on the planet. Where are they now? They couldn’t adapt to climate change and perished. Yet ants have survived since the dawn of time. Why? They adapted.

In a less dramatic way, we must also adapt to whatever changes life throws at us, and continue our journey. If you look at it, we make many journeys in our lives, both personal and professional.

In sales, for example, the methods of selling have evolved and changed over the years. It used to be that a salesperson had to present, present, present and virtually bludgeon the customer into buying.

Not so today. Today we see the emergence of ‘consultative’ or ‘relationship’ selling. It is almost the opposite to present, present, present. Consultative selling recognises that customers are better informed and cannot simply be bullied or bamboozled into buying something. You have to explore what is important to the customer to establish their needs and wants and then try to match our product to those needs and wants.

There is finally a recognition that you cannot make up a person’s mind for them with any permanency and that the way to ongoing success relies on establishing and fostering relationships. A big change from the past sales thinking.

A great example of a sales organisation not adapting to change was a retail chain called Waltons. They had a large team of travelling sales people who would call on homes and present ‘specials’ to the housewives. They would also collect the account payments.

The stores themselves only accounted for about 40% of the revenue. Over the years more and more women went to work and sales decreased due to this social change. Waltons poured more and more time and effort into the travelling sales force and didn’t realise until too late that they had been made redundant by social change that they had not adapted to.

On a personal level you must recognise that your environment is continually changing on every level. Just look at the internet and the phenomenal growth of recent years.

As a sales professional, or in any occupation, you must continually upgrade your skill, knowledge and ability if you want to keep up, must less progress in your life.

You must be prepared to experience change willingly, be prepared to change what you do and continually learn to be successful in life and living. No longer is change simply a sequence of events. It is almost an avalanche as the rate of change increases almost daily.

Be flexible, be willing to learn and experiment. Above all, be willing to experience.

Life is, today, a journey to be experienced, to reset your journey in the light of changed circumstances and to press on to success. Your success will be determined by your willingness to be flexible and determined.

If you look at it, no change is negative. Certainly you will experience losses in life. It is inevitable. But no great achievement has ever been attained without challenges and losses. I don’t subscribe to the word loss.

Whenever life kicks me in the teeth I pick myself up and try to recognise the opportunity to learn that has just presented itself to me. Every experience, positive or negative is an opportunity to learn, to grow and progress. Successful living is about making progress towards your goals.

It is interesting to note that the best way you can achieve your goals is to help someone else achieve theirs. As you give, so shall you receive. That sounds almost like a religious sermon. It isn’t, it’s just an observable fact of life and living.

You expand your sphere of influence to the extent you assist others. You win respect, admiration and you will evolve into a leader.

Embrace change, you may even grow to like it. You will certainly grow and develop as a person as you do.

Is the Boss a good coach?

Recently I was asked by a director of a large transport company to do some coaching with one of his senior managers. This manager was of the autocratic mould and had difficulty in relating to the female members of his staff. Oh, the department was very efficient, but internal communication was not ideal and there was an implicit rift between the radio room staff and the telephonists. As a result, there was some tension and service levels suffered accordingly.

I had a preliminary meeting and I questioned him on his history of management and gave him feedback that some of his staff felt a bit neglected. His response initially was to the effect that it had to be some of the women and all they really had to do was what they were told and everything would work out.

He also commented that he had worked many years ago at another, much larger company and they had simply instructed staff to do as they were told. I asked him why he no longer worked there and his reply even made him smile when he realised what he said. I quote, “The culture was rotten, no one listens. I couldn’t stand it.”

I questioned him on the basis of the similarities and differences between the old place and now. I then asked him to consider what values from the old place he might be carrying onto his current position. He said he would consider what we had discussed.

I was contacted by his senior manager the next and was asked to be careful of what I said to the other manager as he was apparently very upset at what he thought I was inferring. The senior manager said. “I don’t want to lose him.” My reply was, “If he doesn’t go to the next level of managing his people you will probably lose him anyway. Have faith, I know he will embrace the change.”

Within a week I had a further meeting with the manager in question, let’s call him Brian. Well, Brian had gone to each of his female staff and apologised for not communicating more directly with them. He also set up a weekly meeting with senior telephonists and a senior radio operator, appointed a telephonist’s supervisor and written an open letter asking for suggestions on how they could do it better.

He was a new man. No longer tense and unapproachable, he was warm, open and truly concerned with his people. He said to me. “I had a good think and realised that if I wanted the department to change for the better, I had to change. It’s so much easier now that I don’t feel I have to do it all and that I can rely on my people.”

Brian now comes in every morning and goes around, personally greeting each staff member and sharing something of himself. He truly has started on the road to be a servant leader. I’m proud of him and simply wanted to share his success with you.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

One of the people said he sometimes got to the office after a weekend and he had so many messages and “things to do” that it was 10am and he was simply stopped. And he hadn’t achieved a thing. I asked him how he prioritized what he had to do. He replied, “That’s the problem, they’re all important. I just end up stuck.”

I laughed at first, untill I realized he had a real problem. I asked him, “do you try to do more than one thing at a time?” He puffed out his chest and replied, “I am great at multi tasking.” I politely inquired why then did he have a problem. He said it wasn’t “his” tasks that caused the problem, it was other people’s.

He is a sales manager who believes in being a servant leader. Then I realized what he was doing. He thought to be a servant leader he should take on all the problems of his people and solve them, as well as the customer requests that seemed to bombard him on all sides.

I asked him to list the problems and tasks and their origin. That is, who they came from. THe old 80 – 2o rule soon became evident. Most of the problems and tasks were not his. I said, “Why don’t you take each of these tasks and assign it to the person it came from?”

You should have heard all the reasons why it couldn’t be done. “It’s quicker if I do it myself,” “I’d be letting them down,” “I need to make sure it’s done properly,” etc etc.

I simply said, “If they don’t know what to do, SHOW THEM. Your job is to get the people to get the work done. Then you can focus on what you have to do. He looked at me doubtfully for a moment then grinned. “Does that mean I don’t have to do it all myself?”

I replied, “You can multi task and each action will suffer because you do not give it your full attention. Simply DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW!”

The big lesson for me was that I realized that I am just as guilty as he was sometimes and I have resolved to help others take responsibility for the actions they are responsible for and, where necessary, show them how to handle the situation. But they handle it, not me. What a relief.

So, if you want to be super productive, simply, DECIDE WHAT TO DO – DO IT NOW – DON’T DO ANYTHING ELSE. If you follow this rule your tasks will melt away and you will be on top in no time.

Try it.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

He was certainly trying hard, he was always on the telephone or on the road. He was seeing as many people as he could, but nothing seemed to be going right for him. The prospects were interested, yes, “I’ll call you soon” etc. Nothing seemed to work.

I had a one on one interview with him and quietly asked him when the trouble started. He had great difficulty pinning it down. At first he said it was just bad luck and he was just having a bad run. He felt all he had to do was keep going and it would turn out okay in the end.

I said to him, “If you keep on doing what you are doing you will keep getting the result you are currently getting. We have to isolate what the outness is.”

In my experience, if a consultant has been sucessful and then goes into a trough (assuming others are still being successful) then, logically, the consultant has stopped doing something that was working.

We humans have a penchant for gaining a level of knowledge and understanding of a skill, knowledge or ability and automatically assume we know it all. We then, for some obscure reason (I actually know the reason, but that is for another discussion) alter our successful set of actions to “do it better.” On most occasions we crash.

It’s not that we necessarily do something wrong, we simply LEAVE SOMETHING OUT. WE OMIT A SUCCESSFUL ACTION.

I found out (eventually) that he had changed his way of sourcing sales leads. He shifted to a ‘more efficient’ method. He stopped cold calling and simply drove around his area and recorded company details so that he could telephone later for an appointment.

He stopped ‘presenting the body’ and so missed an opportunity to more exactly qualify the possible lead and develop rapport with the receptionist.

As soon as I identified what he had omitted his eyes widened and he said. “You know, it was two weeks after that that the slump started. He grinned and looked across at me. “I won’t have that problem again.”

We did many more things in the two days and, overall, much progress was made. We looked at the DVD on managing fear and applied it to the sales situation and, to my delight, a couple of the guys realised the application of managing fear in personal situations.

But it was the discovery of what the consultant discovered about what he was NOT doing that stuck in my mind.

He told me he had the best time.

Guess what, so did I.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

His name is Aleks and he is a Sales Manager. I have trained and mentored him for a while now and we have a really good relationship, not only professionally, but we have a deep regard for one another as individuals.

We were talking the other day about one of his consultants, in particular the progress he was making in developing a can do attitude. The talk drifted to Alek’s own challenges in recent times. A couple of years ago he was diagnosed with cancer.

He fought it and won. All trace of the disease had disappeared. Last month, after one of his regular check ups a trace was found. It was too small to do anything about yet. So he has to wait a while and then have another operation.

This guy is amazing. After his last bout he lost a considerable amount of weight. He laughed when he told me about the weight loss, as he needed to lose the weight. Then the weight started to come back on.

He is now on a fitness program and strict diet and is looking fitter than I have ever seen him. He is dedicated to the welfare of the people who work for him and they are just in awe of him and his work ethic.

Anyway, the conversation got to his last diagnosis and I asked him how he felt about it. What he said just blew me away. It went something like this.

“I know plenty of people who are a lot worse off then me. I at least know the challenge I face. If I am told I have twelve months left, look out, it’ll be the best twelve months I can make it. In the meantime I simply live my life each day as it comes and try to do the best I can for as many people as I can.”

Then his last comment almost brought me to tears. He said, “After all, aren’t we here to help each other?”

I have spent many years trying to communicate just such a message to the people I train and coach, but the simple dignity of this young man far outstrips anything I could say.

Aleks, I am proud to know you and call you friend.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

We were speaking on a wide range of topics, not all of them concerned directly with work. In fact we were discussing wine and I gave him some tips on how to taste wine properly to really savour the taste.

He commented to me that he had always thought wine was just a drink you had with dinner. Now he really appreciates what wine is. It struck me that he wasn’t only talking about wine.

I started speaking about really living life rather than being concerned with everything other than what was happening now. I said to him, “The only time life occurs is NOW.” If you worry about what you have to do tomorow, or worry about what has happened in the past, you miss the opportunity to really experience life as it happens.

At the end of the evening he was in an extremely relaxed mood (it wasn’t just the wine) and being very expansive. He told me he realized how much he had missed out on by being preoccupied.

He said to me, “Ollie, from here on I will focus on what I am doing now. Tomorrow will come when it does. I need to live now.”

I believe he now has the answer to burnout. Relax and live life now. A very interesting dinner.

Ollie Lind