Here is a little taste of what I will be talking about…

Are your future aspirations tainted by an outdated notion of success and failure?   Our biases and deep rooted discriminations shape our irrational and predictable beliefs that can ultimately sabotage the choices we make.  If you could construct a “thicker value” in your life and in the life of others, would you?  We will explore why some successes are failures and why some failures are success and why this matters. I hope to re-ignite your fervour with a sensible and sustainable model for success.

I would love to know what defines success to you and how it affects you and your choices?

It comes down to having the courage to express yourself honestly as a leader and even more challenging is to express your corporate brand totally and completely honestly.  As a leader, being water enables you to fully engage your natural instincts to master the art of your intentions, awakening your own Bruce Lee within.  As a corporation, being water is even more powerful, it will ignite the natural instincts of your entire company harnessing the collective energy to become an honest expression of your brand.

Whether in context of business or personal matters, being like water is not easy, and there is no one way to do it.   Like any art it is an expression of you and there is only one you.

When the universe talks to us we have a tendency to chalk it up to coincidence missing the opportunity to take notice of its purpose.  I’m not advocating that we over analyze the micro moments of our daily lives, but I am proposing we take notice of patterns and messages that shape our beliefs, biases and ultimately our future.

By simply taking notice, much of what is distracting you will lose its power over you.  It will minimize your blind spots and maximize your ability to rethink patterns that are holding you back.  Picture your level of awareness as a radio station, if you are not tuned in to the right channel the audio transmission will be distorted by the noise of other streams and you will be unable to listen with clarity leaving your sense of awareness essentially muffled.

Much of today’s business, social and personal angst is as a result of us making decisions and shaping our tomorrow without taking notice of the abundance of wisdom that surrounds us and lies within us.  Taking notice will ignite your audacious self.

We need to decouple audacity from ego with the distinction that audacity comes from internal confidence while ego seeks external recognition, the beauty in audacity occurs without ego.  Audacity is really about giving courage to your internal fire.

Proposing audacious ideas (and acting on them) takes courage and the wisdom to embrace risk and failure.  The call we are hearing for audaciousness is essential to solve today’s economic and social issues, but this call is so much more than that, being audacious and having the courage to live with purpose manifests a happiness within that grows and spreads like wild fire.

What audacious ideas do you have stirring in you? Be the change you want to see and be bold about it.

Yet ironically we shun failure and discourage taking risks.  We need much more than a call for leadership courage, we need to re-frame our limiting beliefs about failure and risk and a call for people courage broadly.  Nothing is more fertile than acts of courage that are mindful of risk, not rash acts of impulse, acts that make meaningful change possible

Do you encourage your children to take risks?  Do you have the courage to let them take risks?  Every parent I know wants their children to have the courage to be successful yet few recognize that they are protecting them from success as much as they are protecting them from failure when they attempt to shelter them from making mistakes or dreaming too big.

Similarly most managers punish failure and reward success.  I am not suggesting we reward failure but I am suggesting we rethink our biases towards it.  If failure occurs in absence of carelessness, the courage to take a mindful risk should not be overlooked; in fact it should be celebrated.  Without question, it is my failures that have fostered my growth and shaped my success.

What you don’t do may not hurt you, but it will profoundly inhibit your potential and ultimately your purpose.

“A ship is safe at harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” William Shedd

In January’s HBR big idea, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer ignited this movement by introducing us to what they call Creating Shared Value.   Around that same time Umair Haque published “The Capitalism Manifesto” and since then we have seen numerous discussions driving more awareness and stirring polarized beliefs.  A growing number of smart business leaders are beginning to recognize the merits of becoming accountable for more than the bottom line.  The spotlight for November’s HBR is “What Great Companies Do Differently” with numerous articles chiming in on the virtues of this new way of doing business.  Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s article How Great Companies Think Differently is brilliant and an absolute must read.

The fundamentals of this movement rely on establishing a broader common purpose, invoking emotional engagement, reconceiving our products and services to benefit social progress, forming accountable value chains, creating trust based organizational structures, and having the courage to get naked.

For all my fellow customer experience enthusiasts, we need to broaden our focus to encourage leaders to rethink their businesses at the core.  Creating Shared Value is key to sustaining thicker customer experiences.

What I love most about this movement is that it puts us all on the same team.  Business, society and government with a common purpose is mass collaboration at its finest.

Over the upcoming weeks we will examine each of these fundamentals in depth and discuss the real challenges that need to be overcome as we pioneer forward.  This kind of change is not easy, but it is essential.

I came across a book review in the current issue of Scientific American Mind that struck a cord with me on many levels.  The book is The Dyslexic Advantage by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide.  The doctors put into words what I have always known on a personal level; a message that not only applies to dyslexia, it really speaks to our limiting misconceptions of how we are expected to process information.   As a result we have inadvertently negated massive potential to foster untapped brilliance and robbed many children of the confidence to recognize their strengths.

I was 13 years old when my teachers discovered I am dyslexic, this was almost 3 decades ago and I was immediately put into a class with everyone else that had any form of “disability”.  Not only was this very socially humiliating, it had an enormous impact on my self trust in how my mind worked.  They told my mother and I that I would never amount to be more than an administrative assistant and advised her not to put too much pressure on me to perform.  The fact that I was in the top 1% for IQ testing was explained as a “fluke”.  Fortunately I was blessed with a mother that believed in me and was unwavering in her mission to unlock my potential.  I was sent to a specialist and within  a few short months I was given the tools to process information the same way everyone else does.  It wasn’t until years later that I began to discover that I now have an advantage because I can process information in multiple ways.  I have often joked that we should be teaching “normal” thinkers to think like dyslexic thinkers.  Fast forward to today, and I reflect on my dyslexia as a gift, arguably one of my strongest assets in solving complex business problems.

It is time to stop classifying dyslexia (or any other unique way of processing information) as a “disability” and start appreciating unique skills that have enabled brilliant entrepreneurs like Richard Branson to thrive and succeed, not in spite of, but rather because of his condition which enabled Branson to create alternative solutions to vexing problems.

My hopes are that this emerging topic will not only create awareness and meaningful change in schools, but also in the work place.  We need to celebrate diversity in how we process information, these skills are essential in solving the complex problems we face today in our business community broadly.  I love it when science backs up what my heart has always known.

If you were to draw what trust means to you, or to attempt to convey what it means, how would you do that?  It’s recent fame clearly indicates we see the value of trust, but how do we create it?  How do we build trust with our employees, customers and partners? Trust cannot be manufactured through methodology, process or practice, it can only be experienced through our behaviour and human interactions.  This often entails changing our behaviour at the core which cannot be underestimated in terms of effort, nor should it be underestimated in terms of the returns it yields as you first seek Unimaginable Clarity.

While trust in of itself cannot be taught or manufactured, we can further develop our understanding of psychology and create a deeper awareness of our cognitive behavior that drives how we interact with others. Arguably the intent of the Customer Experience discipline is to create trust in one’s services, products and ultimately in one’s brand broadly.    Building trust is not easy, nor is it prescriptive, but it is a currency that weathers market volatility and it is essential to fostering loyalty.

A primary focus for Health Care broadly has been on maximizing reimbursement versus understanding and measuring the real costs of delivering that care and the impact it has on patient outcomes.  Heath Care may be the only industry that does not focus on measuring cost of delivery and outcomes at the customer level (aka the patient).  There are in fact innovative technology solutions today that do measure some pieces of the puzzle but their true value and potential has not yet been exercised and/or recognized.

While what Porter and Kaplan are proposing is clearly a win-win for businesses and patients it is complicated and it will take time to solve, but it is far from rocket science.  In fact the proposed solution itself is fairly straight forward, the complexity lies in cultivating the mentality of the industry and turning the current specialized business model on its head.   So many of today’s inefficiencies are as a result of a Health Care industry designed around medical specialty versus the medical condition of patients.

A pessimist might read their article and argue “you get what you pay for”, while an optimist might dream about a world where optimal patient experience and profitability converge. I am a “possiblist” and find myself crafting actionable ideas on how to bring this forward, the possibilities are endless!

As we begin to design business solutions and work environments around what motivates us it is imperative that we are shaping mutually beneficial outcomes in highly transparent ways.  Misuse of these strategies will backfire in the long run, our rising “wikileaks” nature thrives on exposing unethical practices.

We need to cultivate our business strategies through the lens of what motivates us and puts our values into action.