Trust is not a nice-to-have. It’s your edge.

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Trust is not just a feel-good word. It is the backbone of every high-performing organization. Without it, even the best strategies fall flat. With it, teams move mountains.

Too many leaders talk about trust as if it’s a soft, secondary value. It isn’t. Trust is oxygen. Without it, your culture stagnates, your performance lags, and your results fall short.

Here’s a real-world story to make the point.

A national technology-based service company acquired another firm with adjacent services to expand their offerings. On paper, it made perfect sense. The acquiring company was a leading brand in the commercial sector, while the acquired company had a strong reputation in government affairs. Their services complemented each other. The market was pushing for integrated solutions. The merger appeared to be a strategic slam dunk.

But there was a problem.

Before the acquisition, the two companies were fierce competitors. Their sales teams had gone head-to-head for years, often bad-mouthing each other to customers. Leaders had publicly challenged each other’s credibility. The cultures were built on mutual distrust. And after the acquisition, no one did the work to repair that. Instead, leadership focused on integration plans, product roadmaps, and operational efficiency. They ignored the trust deficit. And it cost them.

Employees from both sides resisted collaboration. Teams second-guessed each other’s intentions. Key customers noticed the tension and started pulling back. Internal morale dropped. Innovation slowed to a crawl. And within 18 months, the combined market share declined.

The business case for trust was now inescapable.

To their credit, the executive team finally took things seriously and decided to tackle the issue head-on. Not through shallow team-building activities, but through raw, honest conversations.

Leaders from both legacy organizations came together. They acknowledged the elephant in the room: “We don’t trust each other.” Then they did the work. They shared what had fuelled the mistrust, taking responsibility for their part, and committing to creating a new shared future based on transparency, accountability, and mutual respect. They rebuilt trust through actions, not just words—weekly alignment calls, clear ownership, no back-channeling, and celebrating cross-functional wins.

Within six months, collaboration felt genuine, employee engagement increased, product teams co-developed offerings that customers loved, sales rose, and the turnaround was evident.

This demonstrates the power of trust.

When trust is missing, people play defense. They protect turf. They interpret actions with suspicion. Communication becomes filtered, strategic, and self-serving. Ideas are withheld. Innovation dies. Even good people start acting small.

But when trust is present, everything changes. People assume positive intent. They tell the truth faster. They give and receive feedback without drama. They take risks. They act as one team.

Trust transforms culture. And culture drives performance.

If you’re a leader, don’t assume you have trust just because no one’s yelling. Silence can be a symptom of fear, not alignment. Look closer. Are your teams bringing tough issues to the table? Are people pushing back, offering dissent, or just nodding along? Is feedback flowing in all directions?

You can’t fake trust. And you can’t mandate it. But you can build it. Here are a few places to start:

  1. Acknowledge the past. If there has been tension, conflict, or competition, name it. Nothing breaks trust faster than pretending everything is fine when it isn’t.
  2. Model transparency. Say what you think. Share what you know. Be open about your intentions.
  3. Close the gap between words and actions. If you say something matters, back it up with consistent behavior.
  4. Invite feedback. And don’t just tolerate it—thank people for it. Make it safe for others to challenge you.
  5. Celebrate shared wins. Trust grows when people feel part of something bigger than their silo.

Trust isn’t just about being nice. It’s about being real. Real with your words. Real with your actions. Real with your people.

The story of this failed merger is not unique. Mergers often fail because leaders underestimate the cost of mistrust. They focus on integration without unification. They prioritize strategy over relationship.

Don’t make that mistake!

And remember: Trust isn’t just for mergers. It matters just as much for existing teams, cross-functional projects, and any situation where people have to work together to produce results.

If you want stronger results, start with trust. Not because it’s sentimental. Because it’s smart. It makes your organization faster, your people braver, and your business better.

Trust is not a “nice to have.” It’s your edge.

Strong Teams Tackle Tough Conversations. Weak teams avoid them.

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If you want to know how powerful your team is, just see how team members deal with sensitive and tough topics.

Sensitive and tough topics often require the leaders and team members to put their own personal feelings, egos, and agendas aside for the greater good of their company or team.

They could large organizational-wide trade-off topics like deciding which team to invest in, which team member to promote or re-allocating people and budgets from one leader’s team to another. It could also be one-on-one topics like giving honest feedback to colleagues, your boss or subordinates about bad behavior, lack of accountability or poor performance.

When it comes to sensitive and tough conversations the line between significant and insignificant topics becomes blurry. People tend to take even the most trivial topics personally, often leading to disproportionate emotional reactions and behaviors.

In powerful teams, members never lose sight of the bigger picture. They put their team and company first and they always strive to do the right and the best thing for the collective cause.

In powerful teams, people also don’t hold back their punches when it comes to discussing and debating the tough and sensitive topics. Teammates may fully ‘go at it’, push back and disagree with their colleagues, but they continue openly to listen to each other, consider each other’s views objectively and they never cross the line of disrespectful interactions.

At the end of the conversation or meeting when the team or their boss makes a decision all team members genuinely align, own and support the verdict, whether in their personal favor or not. When they go back to their respective teams, they represent the decision as their own in a united front with their colleagues.

I have seen some great teams that exemplify this behavior. However, I have also seen many teams that don’t.

I believe it is safe to say that most teams don’t do a great job in dealing with tough and sensitive topics.

Take for example the senior executive team of a large technology company. They took on a bold company-wide transformation strategy with an ambition to expand and evolve the company’s product portfolio, grow its revenues and improve its customer experience and satisfaction. Pursuing any one of these strategies would have been audacious. But taking all of these on simultaneously was a daunting endeavour.

At first there was good synergy and harmony and executives were aligned and excited. But after a few short months colleagues started experiencing cross-functional dependency challenges between each other. The heads of Sales and Customer Success/Satisfaction were failing to achieve their targets, because their head of Product counterpart was significantly behind in achieving the product road map he committed to. When they confronted him at a senior executive team meeting, he blamed the chief financial officer for not releasing investment budgets in a timely manner.

The executives tried to engage in direct and honest conversations to address and fix their issues. They made a few attempts to express their frustrations and hold their colleagues to account for not keeping their commitments, but personal egos got in the way. Peers took personal and professional offense from the feedback and reciprocated with defensiveness, excuses and self-protection (CYA).

Instead of staying bold and figuring out how to learn from their shortcomings, and growing together as a team, executives stopped owning the greater company success and each other’s success. They continued to say all the right supportive things, and perhaps they through they meant them. But their actions said otherwise. They started looking out for themselves, make smaller more predicable commitments to mitigate dependency on colleagues for success. They behaved friendly and politely with each other to avoid tensions but they avoided deep and blunt conversations.

Presenting a positive report card on their functional activities and achievements became more important than doing the things that made the biggest impact to the company’s bold vision. And overall, the senior executive team became more tactical and less strategic; more conservative and less bold, more political and less authentic and courageous.

To be fair, addressing the tough and sensitive issues in a bold, powerful and respectful manner, takes leadership maturity and courage.

Unfortunately, too often there isn’t enough of these qualities even in the most senior teams.

 

Don’t confuse efficient compliance with real transformation

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For a significant transformation initiative to succeed, the CEO must ensure that all their senior executives are fully (genuinely) aligned and own the transformation purpose, outcomes and process.

Large-scale transformation processes are often complex and messy. Many CEOs use a Project Management (PM) function to oversee, track, and manage the transformation execution process. A strong PM function can make a significant difference in achieving the transformation outcomes. However, a strong PM function can also undermine and jeopardize the transformation’s intent and purpose.

A powerful transformation is never just about achieving better outcomes. By design, it is always about aspiration and inspiration. And no matter how complex the change initiative, senior leaders cannot outsource or delegate the aspiration, inspiration, and execution of their transformation to anyone else. It’s solely the role of the senior executive team to fuel the transformation with clarity, spirit, and inspiration. Therefore, organizational transformation can only move as fast as the senior leadership team can lead, drive, and inspire change.

Take a large global technology company, for example, that undertook a strategic transformation program to elevate its product portfolio, market share, customer experience and business performance.

The CEO and senior executives aligned on a 2-year bold strategy with clear breakthrough outcomes to fulfill their change vision of the future. All executives emerged from the transformational strategic planning exercise genuinely aligned and excited to take the company to the next level.

They assigned managers to lead bold execution initiatives under them and added a PM function to manage and oversee the cadence of execution tracking, presentations, and status reviews to ensure consistent and effective execution of their intent.

As with every large change initiative, reality set in. The existing work that hadn’t gone away competed with the future work, and executives were getting overwhelmed with the challenge of managing everything.

As a result, they spent less time engaging in meaningful strategic dialogue about how to make the transformation most impactful. They also deprioritized mentoring, coaching, and supporting their managers who were at the forefront of executing the transformation. In fact, they began to rely more heavily on the PM function to manage the process by providing more frequent updates and status reports on the transformation.

The problem, however, was that the PM function wasn’t privy to the creation of the vision and strategy in the first place. They didn’t have the necessary context of what the CEO and senior executives intended to achieve and why. All they cared about was ‘checking the box’ on hitting the published outcomes on their due dates. They considered their mission to be providing timely and accurate reports on the status of outcome attainment. The PM function did not focus on ensuring that the overall intent of the transformation was being fulfilled.

As the CEO and executives pushed the PM function harder to provide updates, the PM function pushed the execution managers for updates too. The managers, who were overwhelmed themselves, became resentful toward the PM function and the executives for signing them up for extracurricular change-leadership accountability, only to abandon them when things became tough.

A year passed and although everyone worked extremely hard and the PM function presented an overall ‘green scorecard’ for outcome attainment; people didn’t experience a sense of accomplishment or victory. In fact, many questioned if anything substantial had really changed in the company.

There was a growing sentiment among the execution managers and senior executives that their promising large-scale transformation initiative intended to change the company became a major efficiency and process compliance exercise, lacking energy, spirit and soul.

 

Why Bold Visions Fail – And How to Make Yours Succeed

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I have coached many teams and organizations in creating bold and aspirational strategies that take their success to the next level.

Every transformation begins with setting ambitious goals. And every team emerges from this initial exercise highly optimistic, energized and eager to achieve a better future for their company and themselves.

Time and time again, I am impressed and inspired by leaders’ genuine enthusiasm, commitment, and resolve to realize aspirational goals that, at the outset are often viewed as beyond current.

Unfortunately, when it comes to fulfilling aspirational goals and transformational change, there are two types of leaders: those who stay the course and those who don’t.

Some leaders love the thrill of a new idea, fad or beginning, especially when it helps them to engage and motivate their teams around a new purpose. As long as their effort continues to progress with even mild success, and managers and employees continue to feel good about the process and engage in its activities, these leaders stay engaged and continue to invest their own commitment, energy, time, and resources into the process.

However, the minute things get tough or messy, instead of doubling down and using challenges as opportunities for change, these leaders quickly turn skeptical, lose their faith, commitment, energy, and resolve. Eventually, they get distracted by other activities, lose interest, disengage, and move on to the next new thing.

It is easy to stay engaged and focused at the beginning of big change initiatives when everyone is in the initial excitement stage, there is increased goodwill all around, and people tend to be on their best behavior in terms of trust, teamwork, and collaboration.

However, if you take on any Big Hairy Audacious Goal, it is inevitable that at some point in your journey, you will have to confront your barriers to change. Marathon runners describe this as hitting the wall. It’s the moment, about halfway through the run, when overwhelming fatigue kicks in, and you feel like you may not have what it takes to finish the race. It’s a devastating and discouraging feeling. If you buy into this, it can hurt your performance. However, if you anticipate this phenomenon and prepare for it, you can get through the tough patches with minimal distractions in focus, commitment, and effectiveness.

It is exactly the same thing when pursuing a big aspirational change initiative.

The wall often manifests as: people feeling overwhelmed with keeping up with their existing jobs while transitioning to future work, initiatives taking more time and energy than initially expected to demonstrate results, people losing faith because of temporary dip in performance and results, and people beginning to disengage because of growing frustrations and skepticism.

Leaders who trust the process, push forward and stay the course, no matter what, achieve extraordinary results.

Take, for example, the CEO of a large manufacturing company who launched a much-needed performance and culture change initiative to leap production and sales results. He defined the process as a two-year transformation and got all his senior leaders on board, excited to own the process. Like most transformational initiatives, they started strong and achieved noticeable breakthroughs in production efficiency and output. However, halfway through the first year, the markets changed. While production continued to significantly improve, sales started to suffer, and they ended up behind on their first-year sales results.

Instead of leveraging the breakthroughs that his team achieved in production to send a message of confidence and encouragement to his team, the CEO repeatedly discarded all accomplishments and progress and instead highlighted his frustration and disappointment at the process’s failure. His attitude dampened morale fostered discouragement and resignation, and slowed momentum. People felt that no matter how hard they worked and what progress they achieve it would not be recognized.

Contrast this story with the CEO of a technology integration company who launched a transformation process to break through his long-time sales glass ceiling. As the company battled COVID, global supply chain issues, and local economic and market trend challenges, he stayed firm in his conviction to drive change. His change initiative remained a top priority. He insisted on continuing the process and demanded that his leaders do the same, even when everyone was stretched thin and complaining about the extra work.

In his second year, he exceeded all his aspirational goals. In his sixth year, he doubled his company and positioned it as a market leader. Throughout his change process, his team achieved significant breakthroughs in new technology and product adoption and new market penetrations. Morale in his company soared, and his leaders and managers are even more excited today about the next breakthroughs ahead.

Unfortunately, most leaders are not good at staying the course. Many leaders simply don’t know how to remain focused when they don’t know what to do next. They tend to stall, stop, and eventually give up. Others can’t tolerate things getting worse before they get better, so they react badly to chaos, messy situations, temporary dips in performance, and unpredictable challenges, which are inevitable in any big game.

Most leaders and teams fall short or fail to achieve their intended transformation outcomes not because they go all the way and fail, but rather because they do not stay the course and give up at the most critical time in the process.

And to add insult to injury, most leaders don’t take ownership and acknowledge the simple truth: “We simply didn’t stay the course!” They usually tend to justify their failure with excuses like: “There is too much going on,” “The change initiative is interfering with our core business or results,” and “People are not committed.”

The cost of not staying the course lies not only in failing to achieve higher levels of performance and results but, more importantly, in the cynical attitudes—both overt and covert—that arise from the defeat in pursuing great aspirations and dreams.

My recommendation to leaders who want to pursue big, hairy, audacious goals: Stay the course no matter what, or don’t start at all!

Are you standing in your future or in your past?

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In 1899 Charles H. Duel, then Director of the U.S. Patent Office, said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

In 1895, Lord Kelvin, who was President of the Royal Society, said, “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”

In 1905, Grover Cleveland, then President of the United States, said, “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.”

In 1943, Thomas Watson, then Chairman of IBM, said, “There is a world market for about five computers.”

We all say and think things every day that we sincerely believe to be true, even though they are not true at all.

When we think or say positive things, it could be motivating. Even though sometimes it could cause us to underestimate what it takes to turn these thoughts to reality. However, when we think or say negative things, it often limits our view of what is possible, and therefore, it disempowers us and kills endless great ideas and possibilities.

Our thoughts are not objective. We see things and form views based on our preconceived notions. We don’t believe or disbelieve what we see. We actually see and don’t see what we believe or disbelieve.

We seem to already know how good or bad the future is going to be, even though the future hasn’t happened yet.

For example, when people start a new project, I often hear them say things like “This is going to be hard” or “We can’t do it this way” or “It will never work here.”

These are all valid perspectives, but they are not facts or truths. And, if we get too attached to them, they often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

It’s as if we are driving toward our future, but without realizing it, we are looking into our rearview mirror. So, everything we see that seems to be in front of us is actually behind us. We think we are objectively working on our future, but we are actually stuck in our past. And, when the same type of issues that we incurred in the past keep reoccurring in similar ways, we blame others or the circumstances. We believe that “This is just the way it is” or “this is as good as it gets.”

If we were actually driving our car on the highway and we realized we were looking at our rearview mirror, rather than the road in front of us, we would immediately shift our view.

Could we do the same in real life?

If we stand in our future, without being distracted by our past, we could think, strategize, plan and navigate more freely and effectively toward our objectives and commitments. We would probably also avoid many of the hurdles and obstacles that impede our progress.

When giving advice to others who are dealing with a challenging situation, I often hear people say things like “Forget the past, discard it, pretend like it didn’t happen…“. I find that advice, both silly and unnecessary. First, it is impossible to forget our past, especially when we have memorable traumatic events in it. Second, it isn’t necessary to forget past events in order to move forward with freedom and confidence.

We all have the ability to proactively stand in our future while letting our past be, and leaving it alone. Unfortunately, most people tend to live in the opposite way – they stay fixated in their past and leave their future alone.

When people are stuck in their past, they tend to focus on the obstacles and reasons why things can’t be done or why something won’t work. When you try and enroll them in new ideas and possibilities, they often respond with “Yes, but… we can’t do this because…” And, they usually refer to the people who are initiating new possibilities as naïve and/or unrealistic.

But people who stand in the future tend to be more optimistic and confident. I was coaching a group of managers from two functions in a well-known technology company who were working on improving their role definition and collaboration.  The dialogue quickly became extremely lively and flowing with ideas. People built continuously on each others’ thoughts and ideas by saying, “Yes and…we could also do this and that.” This is a typical dynamic when people stand in the future.

We don’t have to forget or discard our past in order to become rooted in our future. In fact, we should always honor, respect, and learn from past lessons. But we shouldn’t cross the line and become too attached to our past, it will limit our ability to think, create, and fulfill great things in our future.

 

Is the grass really greener on the other side?

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I could tell you the tale of a handful of senior executives from a variety of well-known companies and industries who invested more than fifteen years of their life and career in their organization. They rose through the ranks by taking on greater responsibilities every year or two, building strong teams around them, demonstrating great cross-functional teaming and collaboration, and delivering results beyond expectations.

All these successful executives on my list demonstrated great leadership in their company’s turning points. In many cases, they delivered great improvements in their company’s trajectory, adjusting the strategic direction every few years to follow the evolving market and consumption trends.

Many of these individuals are world-class leaders, recognized in their field and market as top experts. Needless to say, they made personal sacrifices to make their mark and achieve their growth and success.

However, when the opportunity came around for them to secure promotion to the top job of their pyramid—which was what most of them were working toward their entire career—they lost out to an external candidate who, in most cases had the same or even less experience and/or knowledge than them.

The reason they were all given was some version of:

“You have been in the company for a long time. You have done a great job to bring the company to where it is today. HOWEVER, we need to take the company to a new direction and improve performance, and we don’t think you will be able to bring new thinking and strategies given your long history and familiarity with the company…”

Is it just me, or do you also feel that there is some unjust BS here?

How come you were capable of driving paradigm shifts and breakthroughs over the last fifteen years or more, but now that you are at the top, you won’t be able to…?

How come when the company needed you to stay, you were qualified to take the game to the next level, but when the company doesn’t feel they need you, you are no longer qualified…?

How come your long-time loyalty and familiarity with the company were assets when you were climbing the corporate ladder, but when you get to the top, your long-time loyalty and familiarity with the company are a liability…?

Unfortunately, I have seen this twisted reality play out too many times. I call it the myth of the grass is greener on the other side.

This dynamic is often fueled by internal politics. For example, a new CEO takes the helm with a mandate to take the company to a new level. To quickly show tangible change, the new CEO starts to replace some of the executives who are associated with the ‘old regime’ of the company.

There is probably a certain amount of bringing new blood that most of the time is warranted. However, in too many cases new leaders tend to ‘throw the baby with the bathwater’.

The new leader comes in and his views are completely skewed by an untrue bias which is: “outside talent is better than existing talent“. So it’s game over for many long-timers, and the rest is history…

I know it sounds over-simplistic, that’s because it really is simple and straightforward!

In many companies, the unwritten truth about promotion is that “If you want to get a big promotion or a significant raise you have to come from the outside”. It is quite common for managers to leave the company only to return after a year or even less at a higher level, title and salary.

As ridiculous as it may sound, I have seen this happen many times, and I hear the same corporate rhetoric in many companies.

I understand the logic that says that if someone has been part of a system for long enough; doing things in a particular way, they start seeing things in a particular way too, and this could limit their ability to think differently about the same areas and topics.

However, I have also seen so much evidence that contradicts that logic; smart, talented and skilled leaders who after being in the same company for many years were able to bring new ideas and innovations to existing challenges and opportunities, by reinventing themselves and their thinking, and providing a new level of leadership to their organization.

It would seem to me that if you have a leader who has invested himself or herself in the success of your company for many years, they know the place inside out.  They have proven their value and ability to achieve great things, as well as reinvent themselves and take their game to a new level and they are extremely passionate, committed and excited about the next level of impact and success… that it would be a no brainer to give them a chance.

After all, isn’t it a much sweeter victory when your top people have grown and developed from within?

 

What gifts have you received during the COVID era?

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Recently my wife and I were sitting on the porch drinking our morning tea. My wife was reading me a new affirmation she had received via social media about how COVID has presented the world with unique opportunities to reprioritize and focus on what is most important, yadda, yadda, yadda…

I am sure like me you have received many of these affirmations and videos. Many of them rung true, some even touched and inspired me.

In the same spirit, I asked my wife: “What gifts have WE received so far during the COVID era?”

My wife and I generally feel very blessed in our lives and we frequently count our blessings. This has especially been the case recently as we know that COVID has had devastating effects on many people in terms of lost loved ones, serious illness and loss of livelihood.

I challenged my wife to share her views on “What net new gifts have we received as a direct result of the COVID era? In other words, what good things have happened to us that would not have otherwise occurred without the pandemic?”

We came up with a list of things that were meaningful to us. Here are a few of them:

  1. We grew closer to our kids
  2. Our kids grew closer between themselves
  3. We spent more quality time and grew closer as a family
  4. My daughter had wanted to change her job for a long time, but she was too comfortable. Her employer had to shut down the business, and she was temporarily laid off, which gave her the opportunity and courage to resign and start working on a new direction
  5. We completed a few projects in our home that were on our ‘bucket’ list for a long time
  6. I significantly improved my classical guitar performance.
  7. Our garden is looking more beautiful than ever…

While traditional and social media keep pumping the notion of looking at the half-full part of the glass and finding the silver lining in the COVID era, I am not sure how many of us truly feel and own it.

Most of us probably dedicate a big part of our mindshare to coping and managing our work/home life, another part to keeping updated with information and relationships, and the rest to hoping, wishing and waiting for things to get back to ‘normal’.

How much time do we really spend on acknowledging our ‘COVID gifts’ and enjoying them?

I invite you to do the exercise of listing all your COVID gifts. You could do it alone or with your loved ones.

When you do it, keep your list specific and real. Don’t censor or judge. Don’t disqualify any gift because it is ‘too small’. If it is something that enriched your life and you feel that in reality it wouldn’t have naturally or easily happened without the COVID era, count it in.

If you come up empty-handed and you feel you didn’t receive any gifts it could be for two reasons:

  1. You are too self-critical or cynical. In this case, be more generous with yourself and find the gifts that probably exist. Alternatively, ask someone who knows you well and help you see the gifts that you received and have not acknowledged.
  2. You are not taking advantage of this era and living as fully as you can. If this is the case, it is never too late. Start now. Connect with your loved ones and friends. Use any extra time to complete something you have been wanting to achieve for a while. Read a book, learn something, be creative, watch a Netflix series, clean out a corner in your home or help someone else.

There are always gifts. You just have to be ready and willing to see and own them.

Will you lead or lag the virtual revolution?

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Just like the smartphone revolutionized the way we live and do business, it is inevitable that COVID will transform the way corporations work and do their business.

Why is this transformation inevitable?

Survival is a very powerful instinct. COVID very abruptly required companies to shift the way they manage their employees and customers, and the way they conduct their business.

At first, most companies scrambled to stay afloat. But for most, it didn’t take long before they found their new bearing. As I wrote in a previous blog, some companies even excelled in the last few months, finding and creating ways to take their internal and external business to new heights that surpassed pre-COVID times.

Many large corporations are weathering the COVID storm. Others will eventually do the same as well. However, many of the radical changes and innovations that companies had to create and implement in order to survive during the last few months, as well as their benefits, cannot and will not go unnoticed.

Companies are having and will continue to have new realizations about how they think about and manage their business, employees, and customers.

Here are three selected examples out of many more I heard from clients:

  1. “We were afraid of how to stay focused and productive, but we actually managed to be more focused, productive, and efficient working virtually than in the office. We got more things done…”
  2. “We were afraid of how to keep our teams united, motivated and in communication when everyone works from home, but our teams are probably more aligned, united, motivated and coordinated than ever before…”
  3. “We were afraid of our ability to maintain customer presence, value and loyalty due to the fact that everyone was working from home, but it turned out that our presence with, and value to our customers has only increased given the fact that we conducted more virtual webinars, presentations, training sessions and other customer events than ever before…”

The most significant realization for many companies may be that they actually can continue to grow and improve their business with much less overhead, by incorporating a radically different virtual strategy to their business.

Many companies have rejected and resisted programs like working from home or as it is commonly referred to as “flexible work” for the belief that it undermines productivity and effectiveness. I am sure this myth will dissipate across the board.

I know of a few communication technologies companies that have not used their own video and conference call products to run their own business pre-COVID and, during the last few months, they have had to use them to conduct day-to-day work. They stayed very productive during the last few months at home. They and other companies like them are going to start using their own technologies post-COVID.

In fact, for many companies, the use of communication technologies previously had been almost solely to offset and reduce travel costs. In simple terms, instead of people traveling to an off-site meeting/conference in one location, they conduct their meetings virtually and save a lot of money.

Some types of events and meetings are far less powerful and effective virtually, and some are flat out impossible to conduct via video. However, now that companies have experienced the virtues of virtual platforms, they will feel much more comfortable to take advantage of them.

Many companies own or lease a large amount of very costly real estate footprint based on their traditional way of doing business. I am sure many companies will reassess their real estate needs and resize their portfolio, now that they have proven to themselves and their customers that they can be as successful, with a much greater reliance on virtual tools, platforms, and approaches.

Lastly, it seems to me that the virtual revolution will address the gender imbalance in the workplace.  I believe that to a large degree the pre-COVID ‘work from home’ trend was initially promoted and primarily driven by and/or for mothers wanting to continue to develop their careers while having a family and caring for their children.

Therefore, the more the virtual revolution is accepted and takes hold, the more opportunities it will open up for women to take on more prominent roles in corporations. After all, in many of the old-fashioned companies that have resisted enabling working from home, opportunities for women’s advancement have been scarce.

The virtual revolution is inevitable. It is already underway. However, as always, some companies will lead the trend, and others will follow.

Will you be among the leaders or laggers in the virtual revolution?

Stay out of your head!

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The last few months have certainly tested our mental stamina and resolve. One person I spoke to told me that COVID is easy for him because he loves to stay at home and not go out. However, I am sure that for most of us staying at home with minimal-to-no going out is a challenging proposition.

I have been working virtually for many years, so I am quite comfortable working in a virtual-mode. However, working solely virtually without physical meetings and interaction with clients or going out of the house has been trying for me too.

Repeated instructions like “Stay at home!”, “Stay in touch with family and friends” and “Stay 6 feet from others” have been ringing in our ears as they mark this period.  I want to add another strong recommendation to the list for those of you who want to stay centered, focused, and strong in these challenging times: Stay out of your head!

The conversations that go on inside our head are not innocent, arbitrary or random. Their aim is to keep us contained and ‘out of trouble.’  They achieve that purpose by filling our consciousness with discouraging, gloomy and scary information and warnings.

Each of us has our fears, baggage, and demons from the past. The conversations in our head exploit those to their end. They make us draw disempowering conclusions about situations that seem bad, which leads to disempowering reactive decisions.

It’s no surprise that the media is speaking about a spike in anxiety, depression, and suicide during the COVID months.

It’s not because people have spent too much time at home. It is because they have spent too much time in their head.

Most of us consume way too much TV, news, and social media, and for many, it can also be their primary source of information and knowledge. Both mainstream media and social media – regardless of your political persuasion – have been polluting our minds and stressing us out. Many people believe what they hear and see without questioning it, and can struggle to distinguish between what is real and what is fiction.

This predicament is discouraging and demotivating.

So, how do you stay out of your head?

Simple, be in action!

Being in action is the only alternative to being in our head. Action takes place in the real world.

When you are engaged in any kind of action – be it exercising, drawing, dancing, listening to music, playing an instrument, knitting, reading or communicating/sharing your thoughts and feelings with a friend or family member – you focus outward.

In fact, if you think about it, when you are engaged in action, you stop thinking about your worries and fears. All noise disappears into the background, and your entire attention, focus and consciousness are on what you are doing.

To be clear, I am not suggesting you stop watching TV and/or engaging in social media, this is not necessary or practical, and you wouldn’t do it. I am, however, strongly suggesting that you manage your time to reflect a healthy balance between doing things that throw you into your head (exacerbating your fears, worries, anxieties, etc.) versus the actions that keep you out of your head.

I have found that when I spend most of my days in activities that pull me out of my head and require me to focus outward (activities such as supporting others, writing blogs and articles, and/or playing my classical guitar), it enables me to overcome any fears and anxieties if/when they arise.

Whether you are at home or not, working now or not, I recommend you take on a conscious commitment to spend the majority of your days out of your head.

To that end, make a list of the things you love/like to do or something you could do that would get you out of your head and start doing them.

What is your mid-term mark for leveraging COVID?

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If you had to give yourself and your organization a mid-term mark (four months in) for how powerful you have been in leveraging the COVID era, what would it be?

Based on my observations, from supporting several companies and teams in the last few months, you could be in one of three spaces:

  1. Hoping to survive COVID,
  2. Trying to stay productive,
  3. Excelling and taking your business and culture to a new level.

I am sure most if not all companies went through some degree of survival mode in the beginning when the business and economic reality of COVID hit. At first, some leaders were in denial, brushing off the severity of the pandemic. Other leaders expressed hope that it would simply go away, even when there was mounting evidence that the epidemic was spreading globally and here to stay.

I would like to believe that most leaders were able to collect themselves, think rationally and strategically and move on to a more productive space.

Unfortunately, I saw some leaders who didn’t and remained in panic and reactive mode.  They continued to make panicky decisions such as: freezing all budgets across the board without distinction; stopping all corporate programs – “run the business” and “improve the business” without exception; and laying off as many employees as possible to mitigate short term risk, without any enlightened regard for longer-term consequences.

Some companies seem to still be in that space today after four months. What a waste of energy and time!

Other leaders pride themselves on the fact that they quickly and efficiently shifted their entire workforce to a virtual work mode from home. In many cases, this shift was an admirable logistic undertaking given the size and geographical spread of their workforce.

Some companies are used to working virtually; they have the platform and technology to do so. However, for some companies working from home is an entirely foreign concept. In one case, employees literally unplugged their desktop computers (not laptops) and took them home via Uber.

The physical move to home was no small task for many. And then, establishing a virtual routine of productive business performance and customer service is also an admirable accomplishment.

Unfortunately, many leaders stopped there, settling for uninterrupted productivity.  As long as they could continue to provide the same services (or close) that they were offering pre-COVID virtually and uninterruptedly, they were content.

In one case, the CEO of a large regional division (which was faring well in virtual mode) told his executives to put on-hold all improvement and transformational programs for the time being, because as he put it, “They are ‘excessive’ during these challenging days.”

I believe this CEO’s mindset is quite common these days, and most companies feel that staying productive is a high enough mark.

The companies that inspire me most are those who quickly passed the first two spaces and then pushed themselves to the next level.

One CEO told his leaders to “discard COVID as an excuse.” His words were blunt, but he succeeded in setting the bold expectation of continuing to take the business, that was already on a path of transformation, to the next level – full speed ahead, without reservations.

Another CEO of medium size lighting company with the same mindset launched the most significant improvement programs his company has ever had focussing on many critical areas, including Sales, Production, R&D, and Marketing. By doing so, he increased productivity, effectiveness, results, and impact beyond the best months pre-COVID. His company will never be the same.

In fact, the two CEOs and other leaders who took bold initiatives believe that COVID is not a time to be cautious, think conservatively, hold back resources, or play safe. On the contrary, the COVID era is the perfect opportunity to rethink things, challenge the status quo, figure out approaches to truly work smarter, scale, and significantly improve processes and ways of doing business. Actions not merely to survive or overcome a tough epidemic but to generate lasting breakthroughs in their business.

Much has been written about the influence of COVID on businesses, and much more will be written over time. But when all is said and done, what are you really going to learn and take forward from the COVID era?

 

Complete 2019 in a meaningful way

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Effectively completing a chapter can be a meaningful and powerful endeavor if you approach it with a deliberate and conscious mindset. Unfortunately, most people tend to focus more on starting a project and executing it, and when it reaches its end, they just move to the next one. We tend to underestimate the power and value of completing things effectively, not merely finishing or ending them.

The dictionary defines ‘Finishing‘ as ‘Bringing a task or activity to an end.’ It defines ‘Completing‘ as ‘Making something whole or perfect.’

You don’t have to do anything for something to end. It is the nature of any cycle. Things begin, go through their evolution and end. A year, a project, or a lifetime, it’s all the same principle. But, in order to feel complete at the end of your year, with all the good things and bad things that happened, you need to apply deliberate and mindful focus and awareness.

How do you complete things?

If you review the year’s events without the distinction of completion in mind, you are likely to focus on the cold facts of what occurred. You will ask yourself questions such as: “What did I do?”, “What didn’t I do?” and “What results did I achieve?”. Most likely, your sense of satisfaction would be determined by the number of outcomes you achieved. If you achieved most of your goals, you would most likely feel good. If not, you would feel bad.

In contrast, if you look at 2019 through the lens of completion, you will push your thinking and reflection to a deeper level beyond merely the facts of what happened. You will still account for the facts of what occurred; however, you will be compelled to own what happened and what didn’t happen in a more meaningful way.

You will ask yourself questions such as “What did I accomplish?”, “What did I learn?”, “Where and how did I grow?” and “How am I better, stronger and more prepared for the future?”. This type of taking stock will deepen your connection with your higher purpose and vision, and it will make you feel more satisfied and complete.

Your experience of success and failure are based on interpretations, not facts. You can feel victorious and successful even when you didn’t meet your goals. And, you can feel disappointed and unfulfilled when you did meet them. The feeling of success or failure is often determined by the notion of completion.

Completing the past and feeling that you have learned and gained the most out of it will enable you to put things in a more powerful perspective. It will help you put the past behind you, and this will leave you feeling freer, stronger, and more empowered and excited to focus on the future from a clean slate.

However, if you leave things incomplete, past incompletions could haunt you and cloud your thoughts, plans, and aspirations for the future. You could become more hesitant to take on new things because of past failures and/or you could take on things with a sense of vengeance and need to prove something, which could rob you of enjoying the journey. In both cases, you would be reacting to your past, and that won’t be effective or satisfying.

The good news is that you can bring completion to your past at any moment, no matter how good or bad things were. You just need to take stock, draw empowering conclusions from past events, and then declare the past complete. It requires taking a stand, and it takes courage. But it is easy and fun!

How to complete 2019 in a practical and meaningful way:

As you end 2019, reflect on your year. First, make the list of the facts – what happened, what you did and didn’t do and accomplish. It’s useful to start there. But don’t end there.

Ask yourself:

  1. What did I accomplish?
  2. What did I learn?
  3. Where and how did I grow and improve in the areas I care about?
  4. How did I forward my bigger personal and professional vision and purpose?
  5. What am I most grateful for?
  6. Whom do I want to recognize and thank? (Make sure you tell them.)

Once you declare 2019 complete, you will feel a sense of satisfaction, peace, and fulfillment. In that space, you can powerfully start creating your next year to be your best year ever.

In conclusion, on a personal note – Thank you for following my blogs during 2019. I hope at least some of them were useful to you. I will be taking some time off myself and will post my next blog in the week of January 13th, 2020.

Wishing you and your family a Happy Holiday Season and Happy New Year!

 

Are you living in and enjoying the moment?

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A powerful quote by Alfred D’Souza, which I have shared in the past:

 “For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life”.  

Have you ever had the frustrating or upsetting feeling that you are moving too slow, or you are behind in achieving your life and/or professional goals?

I had a conversation with a senior executive who has had a very successful and impactful career so far, in which he has built strong teams, achieved extraordinary results, and has received many accolades. He was eager to find his next promotion and role. Throughout our conversation, he kept referring to his feeling that “he should have been further along in his career by now, given his age and the number of years he had been in his company…”

A different professional who was looking for ways to build greater wealth through investments, shared with me recently that he felt he was behind and he should have been wealthier by now given his age…

I have heard these types of expressions from successful people many times before about different areas of their personal and professional lives. In fact, if I am honest, I have had these feelings from time to time about my own goals.

The problem is that as ambitious people we tend to set bold objectives in order to stretch ourselves, and then somewhere along the way, especially when we face challenges, we feel we are behind, we forget that we were the ones who created these high bars for ourselves in the first place.

We move so fast that we forget or neglect to stop every now and then to review our goals and take stock of our progress.

The whole point of setting goals is to direct, focus, and, most importantly, empower ourselves. The minute our goals are out of tune, it affects our mood, spirit, and performance. We need to have the courage to change, cancel, or adjust our goals to make sure they maintain their relevance and purpose. We also need the courage to acknowledge, own, and celebrate our progress and accomplishments, even if we didn’t exactly hit our set targets.

We definitely want to avoid the trap of feeling that our validation, validity, and “OKness” is based on whether or not we have hit our goals.

The entire “retirement” concept is predicated on the following premise. We work extremely hard throughout our life, often sacrificing and neglecting key areas like family, marriage, health and recreation, in order to achieve financial and professional goals that would allow us to ‘one day’ get to that stage in life where we can “truly start doing what we love to do and enjoy our life“.

Can you hear how ludicrous that sounds!?

And let’s be honest, the dominance of social media doesn’t help at all! In fact, it only makes the pressure and stresses greater. Instead of only seeing our neighbor’s new car or job, we are now exposed to thousands of online ‘friends’ who display their ‘perfect’ lives. No wonder the feelings of ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ are stronger than ever.

Throughout our prime years, as we are working extremely hard, we feel like ‘when we get the next promotion, close the next deal, make the next million, buy the house or car of our dreams, get our children through college or married’ – “THEN life will truly be great.  But then when we reach a certain age, we start looking back and talking about our life in terms of ‘the good old days…’

So, if throughout our life we feel that ‘someday’ we will start living and then at the prime of our life we feel like ‘the best is behind us’ – when is our time??? When do we enjoy today… The moment???

If you want to stop delaying your enjoyment of your life, here are some thoughts about how to do it:

  1. Keep reminding yourself that you are the one who created your objectives and expectations in the first place. As the author of your future, if you find your goals and timelines to be too daunting and/or stressful, change them to ones that are more reasonable and ones that empower you.
  2. Acknowledge your accomplishments – every month, week, and every day. Focus more on your progress and what you have accomplished and less on your gaps, deficits, and what you haven’t achieved.
  3. Make sure to set time in your busy life for activities that fuel you with energy, enjoyment, fun, and fulfillment… If you are a workaholic, make time for the hobby you love or for personal time, or great vacations… and take time off. If you are married and/or have kids make sure to spend quality time with them on a regular basis… force yourself to do that….
  4. Stop equating your material achievements and success with your self-worth. Stop getting caught in the hamster wheel of jealousy and competitiveness. When you reach certain milestones or accomplishments, take the time to appreciate and celebrate what we have accomplished. Do not move right into your next goal; don’t let the rat race continue.
  5. Anticipate now what you will regret in the future if you don’t do or say, and do or say it today!
  6. Avoid falling into the trap of comparing yourself and your life with others… or even worse, being jealous of others. As my wise wife puts it: ‘you don’t want what others have and what they don’t have!’

It’s now or never… literally!