Evaluating from your audience, customer or potential client perspective can be overlooked all too easily.

How to cope with rejection:
Find someone you can trust to be independent and ask them to evaluate your offering, discover where your holes are and address them. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm of ‘it’s-great-because…’

Certainly hold on to that feeling and do some bench testing before you ‘go-live’ with a real, potential customer. Better still ask someone you don’t really class as a supporter; the feedback may surprise you.

Practice makes perfect? maybe; more accurate to say, change becomes less scary the more you experience it, and by default, easier to deal with.

Homework: do one thing each day which scares you; let me know how you get on.

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Break the trust promise and it’s unlikely it can ever be restored.

The fast food restaurant where service is slow, the convenient on-line store which ships the incorrect product, then insists you pay for postage to rectify ‘their’ mistake.

When convenience is the unique selling point (U.S.P.) repairing the damage of broken trust will cost more than resourcing correctly in the first place. It’s not the problem itself that causes the pain, it’s the anger induced when the problem is poorly handled.
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Welcoming the year 2000 seems a very long time ago. So much has happened in my world, I decided to leave the ‘safety’ of paid regular employment and start my own business. Now nearly ten years later, collectively, we all face a period of change more significant than at the turn of the last decade.

Working for myself has been rewarding both personally and emotionally. Being authentic, doing something every day which makes a difference in one of the main reasons running my organisation works for me and one of the main reasons for leaving corporate life behind.

Reflecting this year helped me realize our success could not have been achieved without the help and support of a number of individuals; I’d like to say thank you to some them publicly.

Grace, Nick, Rebbecca, Samia, Nick2, Lee, Maggie, Sally, Charlie, Andrew, Nick3, Anna, Daryl, Lydsay, Sian, Gareth, Eric and of course, Max. The last ten years would not have been the same without your contributions. Here’s to the next 10 years and whatever it brings; I hope you come along for the ride.

Thank you.
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The experiences and opportunities afforded to top talent is often a double-edged- sword. The pressures and expectations can lead to crippling self doubt; the path to the top is not easy, ever.

If you think it is, check out tonight’s ‘Inside Sport Special’ called Mind Games.

Whether you are, or have experienced elite success, the content will surely resonate. Knowing you are not alone is both comforting and helpful in making sense of the ‘dark-thoughts.’
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On reflection, if the work you are tasked with, does not fit with your own values, no amount of coaching, counseling or medication will dull the pain. Leave it to those who are happy to ‘carry-out-orders’; choose instead to follow your own path.

The person found guilty of planting a bomb which took the lives of 270 people over Lockerbie in Scotland, was photographed boarding an aeroplane earlier today wearing a Nike baseball cap.

The photograph, most likely broadcast worldwide, is an example of both good and bad publicity and prompts the question, as  brand owners, we have autonomy to create the brand and how/where we distribute it; what happens next is beyond our control and influence.

One last thought, was the clothing part of a stage managed event, designed to cause maximum impact in the home market of Nike? Either way, it was noticed.

The three part series reflects a much more realistic picture of business in the UK it seems most of the problems affecting the six featured businesses were caused by ‘people issues,’ in my experience this holds true for most organisations.

The dynamics which affect how we ‘get-along’ with each other, communicating and interacting together is without doubt the single most important and difficult aspect to get right in any organisation. This is not some idealistic wish list, but basic common sense.

So, the sixty four thousand dollar question, how to achieve this cooperative utopia? Let’s start by making expectations explicit, consistently maintaining standards and crucially, having positive role models from the ‘top of the organisation.’ How can business leaders justify paying an employee bonus and at the same time award themselves one?

A leader can’t lead without followers, people will choose to follow those who they trust and respect!

Whether it is business, sport of life in general, adults have a choice; demonstrate behaviour to be proud of, or alternatively, to act with little thought to the consequences.

The eye gouging incident during the recent South Africa vs. British and Irish Lions test match represents an unacceptable level of behaviour which needs to be addressed with courage. Stop it now and with resolve so everyone understands this action is not acceptable.

Those who set and enforce the rules have a duty, please deliver.

* You could feel good about yourself all of the time;
* You felt comfortable saying “no” to people;
* You could talk in front of people without feeling silly or nervous;
* You could control that negative voice in your head;
* You could communicate with confidence;
* You had the confidence to change careers;
* What other people said didn’t get you down;
* You could act, walk and talk with confidence;
* You lived life as if you couldn’t fail.