Anyone who tells you to have a 3-5 year plan set in stone, is completely nuts…

Returning to the office after having 3 weeks vacation is a little difficult, yet organizing and strategically planning for the year ahead is somewhat stressing. Being in the event industry for a few years now, I have had many discussions with clients about speakers that they invite – particularly economist & futurists. They always say the same thing to me, they specifically look for speakers that are optimistic about the future and speak positively about tomorrow.

Yet, the reality of it all is that many signs are showing that Europe is facing its worst year in recent years, India and China are slowing down and predicting their worst year in a decade, and America faces another year of uncertainty. So the only ‘known’ is not looking good.

Recently I was trying to find out what the differences are between pessimists and optimists. I came up with this formula:

“Pessimists get it right more often because they can see the world in its current form. Optimists can see the world the way it can become. So, pessimists will never change the world, only optimists can”

The world is changing so fast and you need a map that can guide you and give you the flexibility of change. We need to speak into the uncertainty of today and change our pessimistic view to an optimistic one of positive future growth.

Below are 5 pillars to start 2012 optimistically.

Anticipation – knowing what’s coming so you can take advantage of it…
Reacting – Building systems for stronger resilience and better crisis management
Product – Continuous improvement strategies in service and product
Marketing – World class marketing and leveraging off industry best practice
Innovation – Being ahead of the rest and creating encouraging environments insures a sustainable future.

I’m excited and optimistic about 2012 and know that teams of optimistic people will ensure long term growth, greater productivity and will prove that together, optimistically, we can change the world.

Learning to tell stories to disrupt human behaviors is a leadership must for the GREAT.

A few days ago I was asked to speak to an outer Melbourne community in Australia that were massively affected by the 2009 bushfires. Hearing some personal stories about what happened early February 2009, where 173 people lost their life and another 300+ with permanent injuries as a result of Australia’s worst ever bushfire, was very sad to say the least. Yet the hope and re-building of these communities have been nothing more than remarkable.

I heard of one small town that was completely surrounded by the fires. The electricity had gone and uncertainty blackened the minds of every person in the town. Many did not know whether the fire was going to consume them all or not. Kerrie, a woman who was there, spoke about the ordeal and the frantic men, women and children all pitching in on one street in this town fighting the fires together. The story about the community spirit and the one and only small shop pitching in and supporting everyone, was so inspiring and moved me.

Hearing this story and learning how stories and heroic acts like this was an imperative part of the re-build of this community, made me think about how a powerful story can transform. The past 21 months have been tough for these men women and children, & though they went through so much, the stories that have emerged have inspired these communities to Bounce Forward.

Sales staff or really anyone that builds relationships with people really need to be able to tell a story and paint a picture for their clients to both to motivate and inspire them. In order to get someone to TAKE ACTION, you need to not only educate, inspire and give them statistical analysis of why they need your product or services, but you need to transform them. Transformation comes from telling powerful stories that disrupt people’s behaviours to take action.

Everyone has a story and stories are being created every day in your life. Being able to tell stories and realizing that there is power in every story to shift mindsets and disrupt buying patterns within people is an art that we all need to learn.

During the Christmas and New Year season, ask yourself the question: “How can I tell better stories?” Just remember, the story does not have to be about how you lost an arm and died in a major car accident or anything crazy like that… hehe. But even turning an every day experience into a powerful story that transforms a person to think, act and do things differently.

Have a FANTASTIC Christmas & happy story telling while your eating too much at the Christmas table…

Waiting for good times to return is irresponsible, & focussing on ‘the good old days’ to come back is ignorant.

Recently I was talking with a manager of a large retail chain, he said that, “retail is very poor at the moment, but we are weathering the storm as it will return to how it was”. He thought he was being positive and optimistic. I hear it all the time, how we are waiting for our customers to return to their previous spending behaviour.

This irresponsible thinking is universal and we are trying to innovate through using techniques and formulas to get our clients to return to how they were.

This is called Bouncing Back.

Bouncing Forward is innovation through creating.

Another way to look at it would be what I like to call, Reactive Innovation verses Proactive Innovation.

Here is a graph of the difference between Reactive Innovation & Proactive Innovation:

Reactive Innovation                                                Proactive Innovation

Creating proactive innovative practices through Thought Leadership, is the secret ingredient for growth & staying ahead of competitors.

STOP being irresponsible & continue to proactively create, innovate & Bounce Forward…

Rhino’s can run over 45km an hour (26 miles) but they can only see 9 metres in front of them. So do you know what a group of Rhino’s are called?
… a ‘CRASH’!

Uncertainty is surrounding us and closing in faster then ever. Rapid change is becoming one of the only catalysts for growth and is now the norm.

Through all this uncertainty we need to continually create environments for collaboration, innovation and embracing opportunity when it arises.

Below are 3 Ways to help you crash through uncertainty

1. Process Mastery
One of the greatest challenges that many businesses and organizations face internally is the efficiency and effectiveness of processes.

Creating efficient and effective processes that give the results needed are important, but encouraging environments of Continuous Improvement within these processes ensures excellence in maximizing productivity. When we continue to create cultures of continuous improvements within our processes, helps crash through uncertain times.

2. Be aware of your re-Actions:
I have just CELEBRATED my 5-year anniversary since I had my accident. This accident put me on life support for a week and left me with an amputated right arm and a permanent disability to my right leg. Looking back at the uncertainty of my wife, family and colleagues during my time in hospital, I recently asked a question to my wife, Kate.

“How did you get through ALL the uncertainty?”

She said, “I was never uncertain about whether Sam would awake or not, I was more uncertain about how he would react when he awoke. However the doctors said to me that the most important thing is how Sam sees you react”.

Too often as leaders we worry about how the team reacts but it’s the actions of YOUR reaction that they monitor.

3. Managing Crises
With crises happening all around us it is imperative for the leader, the manager and the staff member to know how to get through these and continue to move forward.

Yet far too many people waste valuable time in damage control and analyse what went wrong instead of seeing the possibilities within the problem. Reframing the crisis into an opportunity can be the make or break decider for a team in Bouncing Forward.

Uncertainty is at the forefront of everyone’s mind, yet making uncertainty work for us is imperative. We cannot see exactly what coming ahead, but if we continue to CRASH forward even though we cannot see in front of us, just like the Rhino, we can create the environments of profitable growth needed.

Be a Rhino…

Through many briefing calls with clients over the past few weeks, I have found a consistent conversation about the tough times over the past 3 years in corporate Australia particularly the finance industry. These conversations are around teams trying to weather the storm and ride it out, and wait for the ‘good times’ to return post Global Financial Crisis.

The effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) are continuing to impact home owners, investors and small businesses as they take a more conservative and even pessimistic view of the economy and financial markets. Many industries have been under heavy scrutiny and legislations are changing, and the once ‘easy days’ of post GFC, are now fading away dismally.

The reality is that things will NEVER be the same and we need to stop looking at Bouncing Back to where we have been before the crisis hit. We can not expect that things will be how they were before the GFC, and we need to change with the times and Bounce Forward.

The first thing to realise is that the opportunities are still there and business growth is still very possible. We need to continue to inspire and motivate our teams to re-engage existing clients and look for new business opportunities proactively. We need to be on the front foot of innovation and create environments of differentiation to ensure our survival. The secret ingredient for Adversarial Growth is not waiting but innovating.

Some of the most successful growth periods within business and sales teams is, innovation through tough times. The fastest growing company in business history was founded in the middle of the worst financial crisis ever. We need to be more optimistic and be a positive force moving forward. Through adversary comes growth and we need to be the catalysts in having an optimistic mindset for the future.

Pessimists get it right more often but they will NEVER change the future, as they can see ONLY the status quo. Optimists will change the future because they can see the way that it can become. Pessimists will never change the world. Optimists can, and will.

The last 3 years have been tough, but it MUST get better. Together we can change this by collaboration, innovation and then celebration.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Sam has teamed up with Google Australia and is putting on Australia’s first Youth Speaker Event held in Sydney Australia on 3rd of October.

This is an opportunity for Youth Speakers to hone their craft and become more commercially smart, or an opportunity for those people that have wanted to speak for many years, and need to know the tools for making it happen…

We still have a couple of seats available; so if you, or you know of someone that wants to speak to youth, get paid for it and is interested, see below.

Please follow this link or email me directly for more information.

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else” – Benjamin Franklin

The last month I have spoken to over 30 groups of people, from students to corporate, nurses to miners and one thing that is universal is that we all make excuses. Whether it be a personal adversity or bad productivity, we all make excuses about our problems & issues, failures & distractions or not achieving our targets.

Studies show that employees get distracted every 11 minutes and then we create excuses why.

The average person watches 5 hrs of TV every day, yet we’d never admit it.

The average worker gets distracted by emails 5 times an hour, actually the Management Association report that an average employee spends 107 minutes on email a day. Yet we tell ourselves they are perfectly legitimate reasons why. We check news websites once every hour, and 4-5 times an hour we check our stocks. Yet time and time again we always find reasons and excuses and justify ourselves why.

I have just finished 2 school tours around the country and the tour is called ‘Throw Out Your Excuse Book’. I tape up student’s most dominant hand and give them a challenge. For 24hours they have to keep their most dominant hand taped up. The teachers love it because if they go into their next class and make an excuse, they have to take the tape off. The feedback has been extremely popular with the entire school including teachers and parents taking up the challenge. We’ve had media follow us and the students are really getting behind the movement, we’ve taped up over 4000 students just this month.

We do not realize how many excuses we create every day. Recent Harvard studies show that we can create up to 100 excuses every day both consciously and unconsciously.

Excuses are made up mainly because we try to justify ourselves that what we are doing, or have done, is OK. Sometimes we find it hard to admit that we were wrong or try to misguide or mislead to cover up or get out of something. When chatting with Steven Van Aperen recently, (The Human Lie Detector) he says that for every one lie, we need another 3 just to cover it up.

When we are so consumed by our problems and failures, we create excuses around why we are not going to overcome it. Through our adversaries and distraction we need to look at them like opportunities for growth and not make excuses. If we stay focussed and look at adversarial growth instead of adversarial excuses, we can Bounce Forward into the lives that we want to create for ourselves and live a life guilt FREE!!!

The 3 Pillars guaranteeing a successful year!!!

Welcome to a new financial year.

We all feel the pressures and stress of finishing a financial year and bouncing forward into a new financial year yet with an all time high of workers being unhappy in their current job, and an all time high rates of depression, the pressures continue to increase.

45% of workers are currently unhappy in their jobs

Depression rates today are 10X greater as what they were in the great depression

The mean on-set age of depression 35years ago was 29yo, today it’s 14 years old

Coming into the new financial year we need answers to address this, so I’ve developed 3 pillars that will help you and your teams to bounce forward to create the new financial year you want.

Pillar 1: Leveraging Positivity that fuels success

All the latest research and studies show that when we are positive, this fuels greater productivity, performance and optimum levels. We also have less sick days, become depressed or even quit.

Recent research shows that Positive sales people out perform their peers by 56%

Coal miners that are positive show 45% greater productivity and performance

Happy Doctors perform better diagnosis then unhappy doctors by up to 50%

If we are not priming out employees to think positive and raise their levels of happiness, we are handicapping them in regards to their performance, productivity and results by up to 50%

Pillar 2: Altruism ignites high performance

When we perform good deeds, we experience a myriad of physiological benefits from feeling more calm and peaceful, to overcoming depression, to better recovery from heart attacks and even increased longevity.

When we started a foundation recently helping the true poorest of the poor which are the children living with a disability, we had no idea how much we would get out of helping others. Recently helping a 14yo kids that has no schooling because he was born with a physical disability, but now helping him with a wheelchair and seeing him wheel to school makes me feel awesome!

A necessity in our workplaces is cultivating altruistic acts within out teams. Shouting someone for lunch, encouraging voluntarism or just donating money to a charity.

Pillar 3: Creating collaborative environments

Workplace communication and collaboration is important for growth & results. When we provide inclusive environments to allow for open communication channels, we empower our teams to bounce forward into the new financial year.

While many fortune 500 companies where laying off and going through massive changes at the start of the Global Financial Meltdown, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi decided to do something different. She travelled around the world boosting her employee’s morale and encouraging them to see the good in every bad situation. This action had a profound impact on the company and also her as a leader. In fact Fortune Magazine named her the most powerful woman in the world in 2009.

Creating collaborative environments and opening the lines of communication within our teams is the secret recipe for bouncing forward into the new financial year.

So to recap, the 3 Pillars to help you and your team to bouncing into the new financial year are: Leveraging Positivity that fuels success: Altruism Ignites High Performance & Creating Collaborative Environments

I hope you have a sensational start to your new financial year!!!

Giving, philanthropy, humanitarian & performing altruistic acts boosts our performance levels.

A long line of research including a recent study of over 2000 people showed that acts of altruism decreased stress & strongly contributed to enhanced mental health. So if you want to be healthier, happier and have less stress… give.

There was a recent study of 46 people who were all given $20. Half were asked to spend the money on themselves, yet the other half was asked to spend the money on other people, maybe give it to charity; take someone deserved out to lunch or just spend it on an experience for someone else. This study showed that the people that spent it on themselves were not as happy as the ones that gave to others.

What this study shows is that when we give, this ignites our self worth to humanity and connects our heart, which in turn allows us to feel good about the act and about ourselves.

Bob Buford, author of Half Time talks about the difference between success & significance. He talks about how most people look at success as a fatter wallet, and the possession of materialistic stuff. He then speaks about the importance of significance and how some of us have a half time in our lives where we turn our focus from success to significance, which is, to make a difference in others lives.

Doing altruistic or significant acts boosts our happiness and performance levels as we gain stimulation and a sense of achievement within the act of giving.

My wife and I started a non-for-profit Foundation recently, working with the true poorest of the poor. Most people think they know who the poorest of the poor is but the reality is that the poorest people in the world are the children living with a disability in developing worlds, as they are even outcasts from their own families.

What we have found is that even the local community in the villages where we are working, have become more driven and motivated from seeing that we are helping, thus they have been inspired to help as well.

Altruistic acts are not necessarily starting a Foundation, but it can be as simple as opening the door for someone else, shouting someone to lunch or one of my favourites is when I drive through McDonalds with my kids, we pay for the cars meal behind us, we are all so excited about doing this that it boosts our energy and happiness levels.

What are you doing right now within your teams to ignite them to think about adding value to others… thus boosting high performance within your bottom line!

We are seeing a shift towards a push of an inclusive working environment and you need to be on board!

There are three main areas of inclusion where we need to close the gap, and these are: Disability Inclusion, Social Inclusion and Cultural Inclusion. I’ve recently attended a number of conferences about people living with a disability entering inter the workforce, so we are going to focus on this.

20% of the world’s population lives with a disability. That’s 850 Million people, or 4 million people in Australia. Yet 88% of disabilities are invisible. People with a disability have a disposable income of approximately $26 billion per annum, so chances are right now your workplace your customers, your shareholders and your suppliers will have people that live with a disability.

Disability inclusion is everyone’s responsibility; and the benefits it can has in our workplaces are just huge. Research has shown that 52% of households pay more attention to advertising messages featuring people with a disability than people without

98% of employees living with a disability, rate average or better in work safety, 90% of people with a disability rated average or better on job performance and 86% of people with a disability rated average or better on attendance

I shared recently about Adversarial Growth, meaning that through our most difficult of times can ignite some of the greatest growth periods of our lives. So people that live with a disability can have more determination and clarity of purpose than others.

So are YOU tapping into a motivated, inspiring and talented pool of people that live with a disability and reaping the rewards??? Businesses today have to welcome a diverse customer and employee base and are being more appealing to investors with Corporate Social Responsibility. A culture of inclusion in your workplace leaves your organisation well placed to respond innovatively to the demands of Australia’s diverse market.

Yet still today among the OECD countries, Australia is ranked 13 out of 19 in employment rates for all people living with a disability. We CAN change this together

R.I.P Osama Bin Laden World Champion ‘Hide & Seek’ 2001-2011

I recently plastered the above statement on one of my facebook sites and got pounded for it. “What!!! R.I.P???” Your positivity has crossed the line Sam” etc etc I guess I’ve been created to see everything that happens in the world in a positive light.

Even the last 2 cartoon movies I’ve watched, with my kids of course, have been focussed around the villain being the main character. MEGAMIND and Despicable Me, both show a different side to being a villain and demonstrate that there is always a different side to every situation and everything comes down to where we focus and if our focus is negative or positive.

Positivity can cross into all levels of life, both personally and also in the workplace. Fueling Workplace Positivity will give your team the competitive advantage.

Positive workers have greater levels of productivity, produce higher sales and perform better in leadership positions. They also enjoy more job security and are less likely to take sick days, become depressed, quit, or to become burned out.

We are literally hardwired to perform at our best – not when we are negative or even neutral, but when we are positive.

Positivity is the catalyst for success. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This discovery has been repeatedly proven by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience.

Optimistic salespeople outsell their pessimistic counterparts by 56%.

Happy, engaged workers have been shown to receive up to 25% higher job performance ratings than their unhappy colleagues, which translates into better productivity and great profitability.

Harvard research is now showing that with every 100 happy and positive managers, the average company could save nearly $400,000 each year.

I live with a disability; I will never be able to ride a bike, run, lift my kids up with 2 hands. It’s hard for me to sit down, walk, sit in a car, a plane or theatre. But I choose to focus on the good things in life… I get disability parking spots!! It comes down to what we focus on, whatever situation, we have a choice to look at it in a positive or negative way.

We, and our organizations need to be actively working to enhance employee positivity to gain a significant competitive advantage.