Detailed vision, broad direction or blind luck? How do you find your way through life?
Having spent several years as a member of both BNI and 4N, as well as attending many other networking events, I have a number of views and opinions. That doesn't make it true, so whether you agree with it or not is up to you.
Most groups are on a spectrum with BNI at one end (only one person from a particular category in each group, tracked contributions) and 4N at the other (go anywhere, meet anyone). So I'll use these two as the benchmarks for the sake of comparison
Let's break things down a bit
1) Common themes
All networking comes down to three main points. First of all, collaboration is better than doing things by yourself. Secondly, look to help others first and finally, make it easy for them to help you.
The plight of the Western middle class is perfect fodder for today's comedian, highlighting the ridiculousness of people getting stressed about not having a decent wi-fi connection or Waitrose running out of Halloumi, when other parts of the world are having to deal with war, famine and disease.
Of course, the basic premise is absolutely right, there is no comparison between them, but it is imperative that judgement is not passed too quickly on those who appear to be out of touch with reality.
At the end of one of our Business Enjoyment Community meetings, I recorded a few people to get testimonials from the event. One person ended off his recommendation with these words:
“If you want to be miserable, don't come. It's not for you.”
A nice little line and very amusing but, underneath that lurks a truth that is quite distressing really, because the reality is that there are people out there that actually find it very hard to enjoy life.
Enjoyment and happiness are actually quite nebulous concepts that are hard to artificially manufacture. This can easily lead to the situation where someone is so desperate to be happy that they actually put themselves under pressure when they aren't, which increases the misery – thereby creating a vicious circle that is never going to be resolved.
This is one of a series of brief posts to get you thinking about enjoying business more. Feel free to comment.
Back in my corporate days at KPMG, I was heading up a particular team and, in our first meeting, I came up with an ice breaker exercise. I asked everyone what their best day had ever been at work. What was interesting was that, without exception, everyone's best day came at the end of what had started off as being the worst.
This is one of a series of brief posts to get you thinking about enjoying business more. Feel free to comment.
For the majority of my clients, there is usually one of three main reasons why they aren't enjoying their business as much as they should, assuming that they have a business, of course. When there isn't enough money coming in to cover the bills then other steps are needed. Otherwise, here is the third of the key issues:
It just doesn't seem important enough
Here is a summary of some of the key things we discussed at the Breathing Space that took place on 19th June 2018 in North Wakefield
The theme today was around Money Hangups
With our very own Piggy Bank in the Middle, we kicked off with an ice breaker to get things going. If money were an animal or a creature, what kind of animal would it be for you?
We had some great answers, my favourite being a Donkey (sometimes it helps you, sometimes it bites you in the … proverbial), Chameleon ( we have to change and adapt to different circumstances) and, being a little creative with the definition of 'animal', one person came up with Celebrity (craved by those who don't have it but when they get it, it's not what they thought)
As the discussion rolled around, we picked up quite a few interesting nuggets.
This is one of a series of brief posts to get you thinking about enjoying business more. Feel free to comment.
For the majority of my clients, there is usually one of three main reasons why they aren't enjoying their business as much as they should, assuming that they have a business, of course. When there isn't enough money coming in to cover the bills then other steps are needed. Otherwise, here is the second of the key issues:
Nothing is ever good enough
You have raving clients but you know it could all be so much better. As a consequence, you run around like a headless chicken, constantly trying to find ways to improve your client experience but it's never quite good enough. You look for support and help from others to give you some extra time to work on the quality, but they just don't do it as well as you do, so everything ends up taking even longer. You'd have been better off doing it yourself.
Even when you get an incredible piece of feedback and a testimonial from a client saying how amazing the work that you did was, you know deep down that it wasn't the best that you could have done and that they're probably saying it just to be nice.
The consequences of this can lead to not having enough time to do what you should be doing, failing to charge enough for the work you do and a deep underlying sense of dissatisfaction with your business and yourself.
I'd be interested to know how many of you recognise this, in others if not in yourself.
Coming soon – Key Barrier Number Three.
This is one of a series of brief posts to get you thinking about enjoying business more. Feel free to comment.
For the majority of my clients, there is usually one of three main reasons why they aren't enjoying their business as much as they should. I'm assuming here that they have a business, of course. When there isn't enough money coming in to cover the bills then we have to take a slightly different approach but, given that proviso, then the first of these key issues is:
You know you do good work, but it isn't fully appreciated by others