Yeah, right.

There isn’t anyone out there who hasn’t started or run a business and not experienced some down time and challenges. It’s what it means to take risks and is inescapable. It also is what enables us to succeed – if we can learn from both our wins and losses.

Carol Dweck is a proponent of being an open learner – seeing life experiences as opportunities for growth. She’s absolutely right in this – we always need to keep an open mind and learn from the present.

What I’ve learned from running my own business is this:

1. Everything you have now – your results, your revenue, your prospects – is only a function of past actions. It is not an indication of future potential. Get over it and look ahead.
2. Plan to fail as well as succeed. Think about potential challenges and what they could mean to your business. Take your business plan, project ahead and as much as possible, brainstorm possible responses to both success and failure. Even if the exact issues do not come up, the thinking will be invaluable.
3. If you succeed, celebrate for a moment, then quickly dissect what worked and what didn’t. There are always things that didn’t work. Find them. They are gold.
4. If you fail, allow yourself a moment to grieve. But, just a moment. Then, quickly dissect what worked and what didn’t. There are always things that did work. Find them. They are gold.
5. Make sure what you are doing is something you love and are great at. You’ll be more likely to put the extra effort in and succeed. It sometimes takes a short while to get a business up and running and sometimes a lot of work. If the joy isn’t there it will seem like a life sentence.
6. Come from love. This is not some new age, airy fairy piece of advice. Sales pitches, feedback, performance reviews and criticism always sound better when they are spoken from care and love. 
7. Find your advocates. Connect with people who love what you do and nurture those relationships. Not just for business reasons – they’ll remind you that you’re amazing during the down times and be a resource for support, coaching and mentoring. Everyone needs a boost.
8. Find people whose work you love and let them know it. Acknowledgement goes both ways. 
9. Choose your business associates wisely and if you sense they are the wrong fit, act quickly. This town is too small to waste time making the same mistakes over and over again. Even if you live in China.
10. Always believe in yourself and be your best friend. No matter what. This way you know you’ll always have someone you can turn to for a word of encouragement, no matter where you are!

Finally, keep going. Most businesses fail because people give up too soon. If you believe in what you have created, fight like mad to keep it.

Yeah, right.

There isn’t anyone out there who hasn’t started or run a business and not experienced some down time and challenges. It’s what it means to take risks and is inescapable. It also is what enables us to succeed – if we can learn from both our wins and losses.

Carol Dweck is a proponent of being an open learner – seeing life experiences as opportunities for growth. She’s absolutely right in this – we always need to keep an open mind and learn from the present.

What I’ve learned from running my own business is this:

1. Everything you have now – your results, your revenue, your prospects – is only a function of past actions. It is not an indication of future potential. Get over it and look ahead.
2. Plan to fail as well as succeed. Think about potential challenges and what they could mean to your business. Take your business plan, project ahead and as much as possible, brainstorm possible responses to both success and failure. Even if the exact issues do not come up, the thinking will be invaluable.
3. If you succeed, celebrate for a moment, then quickly dissect what worked and what didn’t. There are always things that didn’t work. Find them. They are gold.
4. If you fail, allow yourself a moment to grieve. But, just a moment. Then, quickly dissect what worked and what didn’t. There are always things that did work. Find them. They are gold.
5. Make sure what you are doing is something you love and are great at. You’ll be more likely to put the extra effort in and succeed. It sometimes takes a short while to get a business up and running and sometimes a lot of work. If the joy isn’t there it will seem like a life sentence.
6. Come from love. This is not some new age, airy fairy piece of advice. Sales pitches, feedback, performance reviews and criticism always sound better when they are spoken from care and love. 
7. Find your advocates. Connect with people who love what you do and nurture those relationships. Not just for business reasons – they’ll remind you that you’re amazing during the down times and be a resource for support, coaching and mentoring. Everyone needs a boost.
8. Find people whose work you love and let them know it. Acknowledgement goes both ways. 
9. Choose your business associates wisely and if you sense they are the wrong fit, act quickly. This town is too small to waste time making the same mistakes over and over again. Even if you live in China.
10. Always believe in yourself and be your best friend. No matter what. This way you know you’ll always have someone you can turn to for a word of encouragement, no matter where you are!

Finally, keep going. Most businesses fail because people give up too soon. If you believe in what you have created, fight like mad to keep it.

More than gender equality on boards, the report noted that the key focus should be on achieving “an appropriate level of judgement and mixture of skill sets across board members”. Also the concerns that if boards focus too much on gender equality, it will do so at the expense of other talents.

In a perfect world, our boards would be populated according to talents and minds, not gender or race. While this is acknowledged as an important issue, current actions are not always reflective of the thinking displayed in this survey. A lot work still needs to be done before equality on boards is no longer an issue.

This is important – not because it’s the right thing to do morally, or even a nice idea.

Australian companies need a diversity of perspectives on their boards – it is incumbent of our directors to resist the comfort of the status quo and to open their minds and their boardrooms to new voices.

The value of a board is in the quality of the thinking and skills from a range of experiences made available to a company. Otherwise you risk having a board of bodies represented by one mind.

On the other hand, women, Indigenous and other disadvantaged leaders need to step up their game and promote themselves more. While it may be unfair that we still need to be 10 times more visible and 10 times better just to keep pace, that’s what it takes to be a pioneer. In many ways, we still are.

Most importantly, you need to believe in yourself. Find your voice and speak it to the world. Each of you have something to say that is important and of great value. 

You need advocates and mentors to assist you in building your leadership brand, to get out there and increase your visibility in the marketplace. In many ways, it’s just like building your own business. You need to generate your plan – do the critical thinking – then work your plan, adjust where you need and find your support anywhere you can.

It takes a lot of work upfront, but ultimately pays off if you get your thinking right at the beginning, take action and learn as you go.

Want to build your unique leadership brand? Join me in my only public workshop on 15, 16 March in Sydney. Click here for more details.

More than gender equality on boards, the report noted that the key focus should be on achieving “an appropriate level of judgement and mixture of skill sets across board members”. Also the concerns that if boards focus too much on gender equality, it will do so at the expense of other talents.

In a perfect world, our boards would be populated according to talents and minds, not gender or race. While this is acknowledged as an important issue, current actions are not always reflective of the thinking displayed in this survey. A lot work still needs to be done before equality on boards is no longer an issue.

This is important – not because it’s the right thing to do morally, or even a nice idea.

Australian companies need a diversity of perspectives on their boards – it is incumbent of our directors to resist the comfort of the status quo and to open their minds and their boardrooms to new voices.

The value of a board is in the quality of the thinking and skills from a range of experiences made available to a company. Otherwise you risk having a board of bodies represented by one mind.

On the other hand, women, Indigenous and other disadvantaged leaders need to step up their game and promote themselves more. While it may be unfair that we still need to be 10 times more visible and 10 times better just to keep pace, that’s what it takes to be a pioneer. In many ways, we still are.

Most importantly, you need to believe in yourself. Find your voice and speak it to the world. Each of you have something to say that is important and of great value. 

You need advocates and mentors to assist you in building your leadership brand, to get out there and increase your visibility in the marketplace. In many ways, it’s just like building your own business. You need to generate your plan – do the critical thinking – then work your plan, adjust where you need and find your support anywhere you can.

It takes a lot of work upfront, but ultimately pays off if you get your thinking right at the beginning, take action and learn as you go.

Want to build your unique leadership brand? Join me in my only public workshop on 15, 16 March in Sydney. Click here for more details.

Ali Raza on Skype

On the surface, we are a very unlikely pair. Me, a New York Jewish woman living in Australia and Ali, a Pakistani, Muslim man living in Pakistan.

Yet, at the source level, we are both two human beings committed to leadership excellence in the workplace and so come together inside that shared bond.

It’s been an extraordinary experience.

In his recent job interview, Ali was asked what he would do about a team member who was not performing. His response says it all about who a great leader is for their people. Of course, he got the job.

“First, I would check to see if there are any personal issues that he is dealing with. If that were the case then as a team we would have to wear it and support him through it. If not, then I would see if perhaps he was given something he’s not ready for or needs help or training to be able to accomplish it. If that wasn’t the case, I would give then him a second chance.”

When asked what he would do if his manager insisted on firing that person, Ali said, “I would refuse. You need to give him a second chance to see what he can do and support him to be successful. He’s a person and a member of our team so we must look out for him.”

Above all, leaders need to care for their people. They need to deal with issues of non-performance from the holistic perspective – realising that people have reasons for not performing. A leader’s role is to get to the source of that and do what they can to help them through it.

Employee engagement is important. However, people enrichment is critical to their performance and your company’s success.

Who can you be, what can you do to ensure your interactions with your people leave them enriched?

Ali Raza on Skype

On the surface, we are a very unlikely pair. Me, a New York Jewish woman living in Australia and Ali, a Pakistani, Muslim man living in Pakistan.

Yet, at the source level, we are both two human beings committed to leadership excellence in the workplace and so come together inside that shared bond.

It’s been an extraordinary experience.

In his recent job interview, Ali was asked what he would do about a team member who was not performing. His response says it all about who a great leader is for their people. Of course, he got the job.

“First, I would check to see if there are any personal issues that he is dealing with. If that were the case then as a team we would have to wear it and support him through it. If not, then I would see if perhaps he was given something he’s not ready for or needs help or training to be able to accomplish it. If that wasn’t the case, I would give then him a second chance.”

When asked what he would do if his manager insisted on firing that person, Ali said, “I would refuse. You need to give him a second chance to see what he can do and support him to be successful. He’s a person and a member of our team so we must look out for him.”

Above all, leaders need to care for their people. They need to deal with issues of non-performance from the holistic perspective – realising that people have reasons for not performing. A leader’s role is to get to the source of that and do what they can to help them through it.

Employee engagement is important. However, people enrichment is critical to their performance and your company’s success.

Who can you be, what can you do to ensure your interactions with your people leave them enriched?

They include:
1. Greater Connectivity – enterprises will move away from the isolated silo system to inter-connected company ecosystems. Companies will need to create a more liquid network where people can collaborate and share ideas.

2. A Truly Global Market – your market will no longer be limited to any one geographical location, even if you’re a small business. With ever more reliance on the internet for sales and communication, your customers, and competition, can be located anywhere in the world. You’ll need to think globally to compete.

3. An Anytime Anywhere Workforce – forget time and geographical boundaries. You and your people will be able (and be required) to work anywhere in the world at any time on any device. PCs and desktops will be replaced by smart-phones and tablets as the preferred work devices. 30% of global tablet use is currently by the C-suite. Gartner predicts that by the end of this year 20 per cent of businesses will own “no IT” and instead use the Cloud. You need to re-examine your platforms and tools and let go of the need to secure people to a desk.

4.  Increasing Power of Social Networks – communication via social networks will replace email. Many people already use twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as their preferred method of communication. This feeds back into trend number one as you need to think how you gather and use information.

The bottom line is you need to think like a kid! How so? You need to be ready to adopt new technology and trends with speed and ease in ways you never imagined. If you’re finding a little difficult to think like a kid, hire a kid to help you. Their ideas may be well be your next competitive advantage.