Everybody has to start somewhere. Take time to get to know yourself. We all have tendencies, some of which serve us well, others less so.

Getting to know yourself helps you understand which qualities you are already naturally good at and which you need to develop.

Development is a journey, it starts with where you are now, what’s your story so far?

Where do you need to be and how do you plan your route so that you can realise all your untapped potential?

Opportunities are plentiful and there to be taken, right in front of you.

Sometimes they are easy to miss, if you are not on the lookout.

Sometimes opportunity can be seen as a challenge, or a result of a knock back or failure so it’s easier to ignore it because it seems too difficult to contemplate further.

Do you see the opportunities in front of you? How far away is your horizon?  What is holding you back?

This is a call to action!

You are the best asset you have. All the evidence from the self-development literature and leadership experts tells us that realising potential takes effort, insight, tenacity, perseverance, wisdom, practise and a system that works for you.

It helps to have support, someone who is already on a similar road, who can understand where you are and provide the challenge to maintain that forward momentum when the going gets tough.

If not now…….. when?

Grow your people while you grow your business. It is easy to focus on developing products and increasing your customer base. It can feel prohibitively expensive to invest in the development of your people, you will get around to it when business is booming.

What if developing your people could improve productivity and access the often unused potential that could help grow your business more effectively?

Have you considered sharing the cost of development programmes – all the benefits for a 5^th of the cost?  Interested?

All businesses need great leaders and this is not just about being the boss!

When every individual understands how they are wired, what they can bring, how they may get in their own way and how to bring their best to work daily you begin to build leaders everyone wants to follow.

As a business when you understand the diversity your people bring it is easy for them to shine and increase effectiveness and productivity into the bargain.

Every business wants to be successful. How do you define success? How do your people contribute to that?

Creating a success culture in your business means creating a healthy culture where people thrive.

Creating a well-defined business strategy is vital but is not enough to guarantee success because culture trumps strategy under pressure, and all businesses will find themselves under pressure.

How will you create a success culture that has the power to influence inside and outside your business?

Grow your people while you grow your business. It is easy to focus on developing products and increasing your customer base. It can feel prohibitively expensive to invest in the development of your people, you will get around to it when business is booming.

What if developing your people could improve productivity and access the often unused potential that could help grow your business more effectively?

Have you considered sharing the cost of development programmes – all the benefits for a 5^th of the cost?  Interested?

As businesses grow so does the potential for misunderstanding and conflict!

People think that they are not listened to. Teams work in silo’s, concentrating on their immediate world. Failure to adequately address issues leads to drama and gossip.

Cracking the communication code, creating a common understanding of language that is used explicitly to work in and across teams to improve the clarity and impact of the spoken word.

What if everyone in your business was able to use their voice to maximum effect.

Many businesses suffer from a high turnover of their people, which is seen as the norm! It can be described as ‘The Hole in the Bucket’ syndrome, pouring money into recruitment of new people, as fast as people stream out of the bottom. The bucket will never be full until the hole is fixed. The cost is not simply financial, there is an impact on the morale of the remaining people.

Understanding the complexity of turnover may mean having challenging conversations. Understanding how people wish to be valued for the contribution they make, recognizing and rewarding them. Investing in people so that they can bring their best may cost much less that constant recruitment.

Intentional succession planning is often overlooked. Businesses resort to the services of recruitment agencies and specialist head-hunters to help them fill a role that has become vacant without necessarily considering the ‘magic’ that the previous incumbent brought to the role or how that might have been passed on before they left.

Can you define your magic? Do you know how to pass it on?  

There may be huge potential to multiply the magic of successful leaders from within the business, with the right conversations, organisation clarity and apprenticeship programmes.

Businesses have huge potential to influence and effect change that previously would have been reserved for governments if they raise their eyes from ‘business as usual’.

Developing effective teams will not be enough, they need to connect and collaborate with all the stakeholders, communities and environments on which the business impacts.

Learning how to harness your personal influence and make it scale-able not only in your business but across and beyond into a growing concentration of ‘distilled influence’ with others which be needed to find and sustain new strategies for success in the future.

Thriving in a VUCA world. VUCA has become a trendy managerial acronym for the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world we live in.  It’s also misleading: VUCA condenses four distinct types of challenge. This makes it difficult to know how to approach a challenging situation and easy to use VUCA as a reason to dismiss the need for specific strategic approaches. In reality, you can’t anticipate and overcome VUCA, right?

Actually, you can. Advances in technology have started to dramatically change the way we communicate and work together but the speed and complexity of the change together with the political, economic and social landscape mean the challenges we face require a seismic shift in the way that we respond. ‘Keeping Calm and Carrying On’ will result in oblivion! We truly need to work together on a global scale.  How equal are you to the challenge?