Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Fear Free Future Posted: 19 Dec 2010 11:54 PM PST Fear is a complex emotion, it can protect us and limit us, it can make us timid and it can make us aggressive. Fear evolved for practical reasons. We assess external stimulation for risk, if a situation appears to represent a threat our whole body reacts. The limbic part of the brain (the oldest, most primitive part closest to the spine) takes control and shuts down access to the cerebral (thinking) part of the brain. Blood flows to the muscles and heart and away from the brain. Powerful stimulants and pain-suppressors, endorphins and adrenaline are pumped into our body. We are ready to fight or escape. In some ways our emotions struggle to evolve fast enough to cope with our rapidly developing lifestyles. We often appear to struggle to differentiate between situations which require fear as a response and those that require a different and more evolved response. This misapplication of fear is what limits us or makes us aggressive when we could respond more appropriately and effectively. Fear in work situations might make us cautious missing opportunities for creativity or innovation, it might make us insecure preventing us from speaking out, it might make us conform rather than challenge an error. Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi observed:  "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it." Fear occurs when we lack the confidence to deal with a situation. This might be perfectly reasonable when we are confronted by a Tiger, but something more subtle and nuanced is required when we are confronted with a challenge that we need to think our way out of rather than fight or run. Indeed the fear response specifically inhibits our ability to think our way out of a problem. Intense physical activity mimics a lot of the physiological elements of fear - try doing mental arithmetic while exercising hard. We need to learn to manage our emotions to the extent that we can keep fear under control and maintain our capacity to think, even under stress. For much of our evolutionary past winter was a fearful time of year. The shortest day was celebrated as it meant the light was returning. The animals were slaughtered providing fresh meat for the celebrations and avoiding the need to feed them during the famine months from January to March. Many of us are experiencing a dark period in our society. We can choose to respond to that darkness with fear and the consequent aggression or timidity or we can choose not to. As we celebrate the passing of the darkness this year, let's make a conscious decision to move from fearful reaction to loving response as much as we can. We have the choice to move from darkness into the light or into further darkness. Lightness requires us to replace our fear with love. Further fear will lead to deeper darkness. If you are afraid of the dark, live with light and love, not fear. Best of TED this week: Shimon Shocken talks about the transformative effects of mountain biking on prisoners in Israel. Watch his TED talk, put it on your web site, link to it and talk about it to everyone you meet. I have put it on www.neilcrofts.com If you would like help in finding your authenticity, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Transformers Posted: 12 Dec 2010 11:34 PM PST Last week I was facilitating a corporate leadership and teamwork event. As is usual in this kind of event there are, as one of my colleagues describes them, three types of participant - explorers, vacationers and prisoners. Explorers are those who come to find out whatever they can to learn, connect and develop. Vacationers see it as three days out of the office and an opportunity to kick back. Prisoners feel that they are not there through choice and will just endure. Our objective as facilitators is to engage all three groups to such an extent that the event becomes transformative, in terms of their leadership and team working capabilities, in this case. Part of the way we do this is to set ourselves a daily "brand" benchmark. For the first day our brand included "fun", for the second "inspiration", for the third 'transformation". Fun, because when people are having fun they are engaged and engagement is required for learning. We are inspired when some input has personally relevant value to our life. We are transformed when we can embed the learning to the extent that it becomes a permanent change in behaviour. Here is the key though, as facilitators, to make the first day fun, we need to be inspiring, to make the second day inspiring, we need to be transformational and to make the third day transformational, we need to be transcendent. This is the challenge, the test and the opportunity of transformational teaching and communication. With good materials and a good event design, inspiring should be reasonably easy. Transformational is altogether more challenging. Being transformational means that through the exercises, conversations, materials and experiences participants are able to re-wire their brains. They do this by opening up neural pathways that may have lain previously unused, to the extent that they become habits. Transformational teaching is interesting across multiple learning preferences (kinesthetic, intellectual, emotional, auditory, visual etc), repeated often enough to land without getting boring and has enough distraction free time around it to be processed into habit. Transcendence is another whole level. It requires a level of authentic immersion in and passion for the subject that enables the teacher, facilitator to maintain a state of transcendence. Perhaps like an artist, musician or athlete, getting into the zone and being at one with their medium and their audience. My own experience is that working at other levels is transactional, there is a contract that offers a certain value in exchange for attention. Transcendence is captivating, it draws people in, even the vacationers and prisoners. It is compelling, even those who are highly resistant to the messages find it hard to counter. I aspire to do my teaching from a transcendent space. To make that profound connection with myself and the audience that helps them to fully connect with their authenticity and apply it wholeheartedly to their work and their organisation. Best of TED this week: Shimon Shocken talks about the transformative effects of mountain biking on prisoners in Israel. Watch his TED talk, put it on your web site, link to it and talk about it to everyone you meet. I have put it on www.neilcrofts.com If you would like help in finding your authenticity, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Transparency Posted: 06 Dec 2010 12:11 AM PST Back in the innocent, febrile days of the dotcom boom in 1998/9, we at Razorfish and others like us were touting transparency as an inevitable side effect of the internet. I am not sure our clients really knew what we meant, I am not sure we knew what we mean, but it seemed like a logical outcome of digital. Now we know. When you put recording devices into everyones hands and connect them to a global distribution network - secrets, of any significance,cease to exist. Whatever the nuances of the Wikileaks diplomatic download, this is transparency in action. Our advice to our clients in 1998 was to only do things that were fully aligned with their brand and brands had to be fully aligned with their market place. In a transparent world; Do NOTHING of which you are not proud. Politicians, diplomats and businesses have had plenty of warning to get used to the idea of transparency. It was inevitable as soon as Tim Berners Lee let the World Wide Web genie out of the bottle, and so it has happened. The reality is that we have become so completely used to the idea of saying one thing and doing another, to deceit, to lying that it is culturally hard to shift. To be fair to them, many businesses have already got their acts together - now it is the turn of governments. These are evolutionary lessons. Evolutionary lessons are hard. If you are at the leading edge they are hard because as Schopenhauer said: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. If you are behind the curve they are hard because the sensibility of the community has moved on and you are seen as vulgar, out of touch and embarrassing. Watching the writhing, self serving, finger pointing of the embarrassed you can see where they lie on the curve. Once again, the only answer is authenticity, to be true to our own brand. For every one of us, in business and politics. That way, even in a transparent world there are no embarrassing skeletons to be divulged over the internet. I was really hoping to be able to launch "Magic Monday" today, my anthology of six years worth of Monday messages, sadly the technology has delayed me and I have too much on this week, to be ready by next Monday. Many apologies to those who are waiting - I still hope to have it ready before Christmas. RA Mashelkar talks about the transformative effects of low cost design, why not apply these principles rather than implement austerity measures? Surely it is only fear and self serving to do otherwise?. Watch his TED talk, put it on your web site, link to it and talk about it to everyone you meet. I have put it on www.neilcrofts.com If you would like help in finding your authenticity, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

“Know Thyself” Posted: 28 Nov 2010 11:57 PM PST Up to 2,400 years ago, if you were entering the temple of Apollo at Delphi, you might have noticed this inscription - in Greek, of course. A latin version made a cameo appearance above a door at the home of a more modern Oracle in the film "The Matrix". Delivering a leadership training program last week I had a powerful example of the power and value of this apparently simple recommendation. One small but significant piece of self knowledge proved to be transformative for one participant. It explained, precisely, years of misunderstanding and provided the opportunity for a new and more positive way of being. Over the years since the Oracle at Delphi was the ultimate arbiter and authority, we have developed some brilliant tools to help us to understand ourselves. These are evolutionary tools that help us to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before and take each generation to a further level. They often go under the slightly intimidating name of "Psychometrics". We use a number of these profiling tools to help us understand ourselves and our clients and to give an objective view alongside our more subjective assessments. Very often the diagnostic provided by the profiling tool is so insightful that with a minimum of support, the knowledge can prove transformative. We all have deeply seated preferences and behaviours. Some of us prefer a lot of attention, others prefer to be left alone. Some of us prefer to feel in control others prefer to be free from responsibility. Some of us prefer to narrow things down and deliver, others prefer to open things up and explore. None of these differences are good or bad in themselves. Some lend themselves more to particular lines of activity than others, but mostly they just provide the diversity that any team needs to be optimal. With my preference for finding new ways of doing things, you would not want me as the pilot of your passenger plane, for example. The opportunity, for individuals and teams, lies simply in the awareness. Once a particular need or behaviour becomes conscious we can be open about it. It moves from being a confusing misalignment to being a distinct quality that can be positively applied to any situation. None of this understanding exists in isolation, it is all relative to others and particularly those around us. Our partner at home and our team at work. Knowing that one colleague has a preference for always coming up with ideas and not focussing on the deliverable like the rest of the team is enormously valuable and liberating. Immediately we can stop trying to get them to conform and value their ability to come up with new ideas. At Authenticis we particularly use two tools (there are plenty of others) FIRO-B and Pathfinder. FIRO-B was originally developed for the US military to profile submarine crews. It is essential to understand people's preferences and behaviours so that a a team can complement one another rather than conflict. FIRO-B helps us to understand how we prefer to relate to others, specifically in terms of what we want and what we offer in terms of interaction, control and affection. Pathfinder Profiler is a contemporary business based version of the much more ancient Enneagram. Pathfinder helps us to understand our personality type our strengths and our weaknesses. Being conscious and transparent about what we tend to be better at than others at means we can valuably offer it to our team. Being conscious and transparent about what we tend to be less good at than others gives us the opportunity to improve or to compliment ourselves with others who have our weakness as their strength - the essence of team work. RA Mashelkar talks about the transformative effects of low cost design, why not apply these principles rather than implement austerity measures? Surely it is only fear and self serving to do otherwise?. Watch his TED talk, put it on your web site, link to it and talk about it to everyone you meet. I have put it on www.neilcrofts.com If you would like help taking your team from good to great, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "Know Thyself". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Where is the limit? Posted: 22 Nov 2010 12:15 AM PST I have never been very clear on where my personal limits are. I have quite a history of overstepping them, although I am better at knowing the edge these days. In younger days I crashed a few cars trying to work out where the line was drawn. I still find it difficult not to overtrain when cycling. I am talking about all environments here - creative, leadership, communication, sporting, emotional, physical. We have limits in every aspect of life, it is only through exploring those limits that we get to know them. It is tempting to believe that we are normal and that diversity spans out equally on either side. Most of us have to accept that, in some areas of our life at least, we are not in the middle. We are extreme. It is our extremes that make us interesting, not our normality. Understanding where the boundary between extreme and impossible is, is a mysteriously fine and imprecise line. It is defined by feeling and emotion as much as by physics. That line is not visible from a distance. It can only be detected up close. Anyone who has not been near that line does not know their limits. It is only through spending time near the limit that we get to know it and of course the better we know it the more we can move it. I have a rule I try to hold myself to: "Never pass up an opportunity to go out of your comfort zone." The reality is we do not know what we are capable of until we try. As soon as we try we realise that the more we practice and the more we try the more we can push the limit. This goes for tough negotiations at work, for leadership, for technical challenges, for how we use our computers, for being loving, for sports and fitness, just about anything. To be a great leader, creative, team member, partner, parent or lover you have to be prepared to explore your own potential to it's fullest extent. If you are not overstepping it occasionally you are not getting close enough to it. Here are some inspiring examples that may stretch your idea of what is possible on a bike or on skis. Sugata Mitra has a way. It is cheap, it is scalable and it is totally doable. Watch his TED talk, put it on your web site, link to it and talk about it to everyone you meet. I have put it on www.neilcrofts.com For help in finding the authentic path for your business or your life, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "Where is the limit?". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Moving stuff Posted: 14 Nov 2010 11:55 PM PST I happened to be at Gatwick Airport at 11 am last Thursday. It was a remarkable and moving experience. The chimes of Big Ben rang out through the airport's public address system and everyone stopped. It took a while for everyone to catch on. The Poppy splashed into the ocean of everyday noise, and the moment rippled around the whole airport. The Russian staff behind the counter of the cafe stopped serving. The man at the front of the queue, stopped waiting and simply stood. The excited Turkish tech geek, jabber of the boys next to me stilled to a slightly bemused silence, overcome by the unbearable peer pressure. I felt the waves of collective emotion from the shared experience and the remembrance shudder through my mind and body. That week I had been working with a Dutch colleague who asked me about the significance of the Poppies. I told him how it had started, with Poppies being the first signs of life to emerge from the blood soaked quagmire of the shell cratered fields of Flanders and France. How our failure to learn the lessons of that genercide (the killing of a generation) had lead to the Poppy being adopted in Britain as a symbol of the remembrance of the sacrifice. While the icon of the Poppy and the tragic ceremonial of 11 November, (The armistice that signified the end of the slaughter was signed at 11am on the 11th of the 11th 1918.) known as remembrance Sunday remind us, what we really need to do is learn. We are still sending our children to fight wars created by our failure to learn, our failure to communicate, our greed and hubris. When enough of us can learn from the lessons of the past; can communicate with those we disagree and can replace greed with generosity and hubris with humility, there will be no more war. When we can run our businesses and our governments for the greater good rather than for self interest, there will be no more war. When we can truly embrace diversity of thought, diversity of culture, diversity of belief and diversity of appearance, there will be no more war. All that is required is for love and authentic self confidence to replace fear and insecurity as the primary driver of so many business, governments and individuals. Authentic self confidence comes from empowering people to use their talents to follow their own dreams. Is it really so difficult for us to do this? Sugata Mitra has a way. It is cheap, it is scalable and it is totally doable. Watch his TED talk, put it on your web site, link to it and talk about it to everyone you meet. I have put it on www.neilcrofts.com Embrace our sustainable and peaceful future. For help in finding the authentic path for your business or your life, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "Moving Stuff". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Live the Dream Posted: 04 Nov 2010 12:52 AM PDT The difference between a dream that happens and a dream that doesn't has nothing to do with how realistic it is. We all have dreams. We all know the dreams we have, even if we are unable to articulate them or unwilling to share them. Most of us have been taught that our dreams, especially the big and important ones, are unrealistic and that pursuing them will result in wasted time, disappointment and failure. We have been taught that we are better off doing what we are told than chasing fantasies. The biggest difference between those who achieve their dreams and those that don't, is that they pursue it. Not that they are necessarily better equipped or that the dream is more realistic. It is never too late. Even if you have not articulated your dream, it is highly likely that you will have been preparing for it unconsciously anyway, such is the power of dreams. Think about any dreams or ideas you have realised, no matter how small and you will recognise that you used a process similar to the one below. Whether your dream is an influential role in your organisation or singing at The Albert Hall, the first step is to articulate it. What is your dream? Once you have articulated it, visualise it. What tangible evidence will there be of your success? What events will occur so that you know that your dream has been realised. Will you be given a particular award, or job? Will you deliver a particular speech or get recognition from a particular individual or organisation? Will you perform on a particular stage? When you have articulated your vision - make it present. Write about it, surround yourself with images of it. Talk about it with trusted (and supportive) friends. Keep it present, keep talking about it, doodling with it, lying in bed at night thinking about it. Bore your supportive friends with it. Once you have a clear vision that you can articulate and repeat easily, start making your plan. The dream and vision do not have to be realistic, the plan does. Working backwards, what is the last thing you will have to accomplish in order to allow your vision to be complete? What is the last thing you will have to do to before that? And so on, keep working backwards, in some detail, until you get to now. Put dates on all of the major activities and events and then you have a plan. All you need to do now is to deliver on your plan and to continually revisit it. Keep checking that the plan and the vision are still what you want. Do not be afraid to adjust both. When I have achieved any of my dreams it was because there was sufficient clarity of articulation and "presence" of visualisation. When I have failed it has been because I did not get a clear enough vision. Dreams I have realised: to race cars, write books, find a loving relationship, cycle over the Pyrenees and move to Mallorca. These were all dreams that happened because I was able to hold and make present the vision and create a realistic and deliverable plan for getting from where I was to where I wanted to be. My big failure has been in defining the next stage of the vision. I wanted to race cars - I got to race cars, but I never defined the next level of the vision or made the next level of the plan. As a result when that vision had run it's course, I stopped. I wanted to write a book - I wrote three, but I never defined the next level adequately. The books never really took me where I wanted to go, because I never articulated that next level clearly enough. As we approach the realisation of our vision, it is vital to take the time to step back and look for the next level. This is as true for businesses as it is for individuals. Microsoft was inspired for years by the vision of "A computer on every desktop and in every home" - while this was not achieved in a literal sense, it was achieved to all practical purposes and, since then, without a new inspiring vision, Microsoft has struggled to regain it's focus and performance. For help in finding the authentic path for your business or your life, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "Live the Dream". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Red Bull s**t Posted: 29 Oct 2010 02:04 AM PDT We all want to be happy, right? We all work towards having a happy life and even a happy life for our kids, don't we? Or do we? I think the evidence is that very few of us actually know what happiness is, and many of our efforts to pursue it are misguided and can be damaging. So - what is happiness? It is easy to define happiness in terms of what it is not. Happiness is an absence of fear, stress, tension and so on. But that definition only helps us understand what we want to avoid, not what we want to pursue. And it is what we pursue that is the problem. In our pursuit of happiness, what many of us end up seeking is euphoria. Happiness is NOT the same as euphoria, and this is where much of the problem lies, because too many of us confuse happiness and euphoria. Euphoria is a short lived state of exultation that we might experience in a moment of intimacy, triumph or creativity. Euphoria might also be chemically induced through, stimulants, alcohol or drugs. The risk is that the pursuit of euphoria leads to addiction. Athletes in pursuit of the euphoria of triumph turn to performance enhancing drugs. Business people in pursuit of the euphoria of victory turn to manipulation and exploitation. Politicians turn to lies. Teenagers turn to drugs. Some of us turn to shopping. When corporations, governments and whole countries are in pursuit of euphoria, rather than happiness, we get what you might call a Red Bull Culture - all buzz and no beauty. Euphoria leads to addiction. Addiction is not sustainable and leads to harm both for the individual and those around them. So, what is happiness? Happiness is a prolonged sense of inner peace. It is alignment, it is calm. We feel happiness in our bodies and in our minds when our emotions feel balanced. Peace is created through the removal of tensions and the cultivation of alignment. Happiness is created through love. Through being loving with others, through loving our work and what we do with our time. Love is the bit beyond the logical, the bit beyond the transactional. We 'like' people or places or things because of the logical, transactional benefits they offer us. When a relationship transcends the logical and transactional it becomes loving. We experience happiness when we are immersed in loving relationships with people, places, work and things. Working and living authentically is the path to happiness. For more on this see what Nic Marks had to say about happiness at TED. For help in finding the authentic path for your business or your life, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "Red Bull S**t". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

Do you want a future? Posted: 22 Oct 2010 02:41 AM PDT We and our children will be paying the price of our greed based folly for decades. We have strip mined much of the globe and it's atmosphere in pursuit of wealth, entertainment and comfort. We have squandered billions of years of solar energy deposits on wars and commuting. We have created wealth distribution systems of such epic unfairness that in some countries parents end up selling their children. We have allowed one small group to rack up so much debt that governments have to bail them out, and they choose to do it by borrowing money from the same people. Clearly we have not figured things out yet. How do we learn from this trauma. How do we move on? The first step is to understand how we could allow such catastrophically bad decision making to be sustained in boardrooms, schools, homes and governments for long enough to get us to where we are. The answer is that we can only take good decisions when we are in a good place ourselves, when we are confident, centred and authentic enough to take decisions from a place of love. Even tough disciplinary decisions can be taken from a place of love, parents do it all the time. When we take decisions from a place of insecurity and fear they are likely to have damaging consequences. Sometimes intentionally damaging sometimes collaterally damaging. To create a sustainable society we need everyone to have the courage to pursue lives based on love and confidence rather than fear and insecurity. We need to train and educate a new generation of authentic leaders in business, politics and education. We need all children to have the opportunity to flourish pursuing their passions, rather than flounder, fleeing their fears. Everyone who reads these mails has a responsibility to lead this change in our approach. We all have a responsibility to run our lives, our businesses and our relationships authentically. We have a responsibility to continue on our own authentic journey, holding ourselves as closely as we can to our purpose and our values. Equally we have a responsibility to encourage others to embark on their own authentic journey, as soon as they are ready. When enough of the population are on their authentic journey peace and sustainability will be within our reach. Authenticity is genuinely the panacea for our troubles. It is not easy, but then what we are doing at the moment is not easy either. I have just completed training the first contingent in Authentic Leadership, for a group of high potential leaders at Microsoft. They are brilliant, it is massively heartening to work with these talented people who will define the next generation of business and leadership. The course ran as eight phone based one to one sessions and proved a great success for everyone. I am delighted to offer this course to anyone or any business who want to lead the transformation. More details here. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "The Limit". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

How much do you want to be paid? Posted: 18 Oct 2010 12:29 AM PDT Imagine a job where you decide how much you get paid, where you decide on your role, your title, how hard you work and your tasks. Does that sound like your sort of job? Perhaps you already have it. Most of us are so wedded to the conventions of hierarchy and authority that we accept the idea of waiting to be told what to do, what we will be paid and how much we must work without question. Neither side of this equation pauses to ask if this is the most efficient and effective way to do things. On the whole, even those who want to be paid more or work less accept the jurisdiction of the hierarchy to make the decision. The idea of going to those in authority and specifying your preferences is anathema, but why? Let's consider the reasons for employing people. Organisations employ people to contribute to the fulfilment of the organisational objectives. Ideally you end up with people doing work that precisely matches their skills and motivation and delivers optimally on the objectives. But who is best placed to match employee with activity? Is this a top down process or more of a conversation? Think of yourself as an employer and imagine the ideal employee. Would you prefer someone who sat on the bench waiting to be called and then did what they were told to do and then waited for further instructions; or someone who proactively proposed exactly where they would be most effective, delivered using initiative and then proposed where they would be most effective next? If you are asking people to fulfill repetitive and simple tasks then the former might be a suitable answer. If you are asking people to do things that require thought, creativity, discretion and intelligence then the latter will be more effective. So as an employee - why not take that initiative and make the proposal for your new job before you are asked? To make the decision easier you can cost it out in terms of money and hours invested, including your own requirements. In Authentic Leadership we teach people to be leaders in their own career as well as in their work. To plan their careers, ensure that there is alignment between their personal objectives, their team and their employers objectives to optimise, motivation, engagement and productivity. Interestingly a Professor of Management at the University of Notre Dame has been researching the link between meaningful work and employee motivation. His findings indicate that employees in "Green" businesses are more motivated than employees in more conventional businesses. Nothing new in this for followers of authentic business, the only difference being that from our research we see that these advantages are not restricted to "green" businesses, but any profound and positive purpose that a group of people can align around. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "The Limit". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

KISS! Posted: 11 Oct 2010 12:36 AM PDT Keep It Simple Stupid! The virtues of "simple" are not hard to grasp, so why does it take our greatest minds to truly live this principle, while the merely brilliant seem to do the opposite. Albert Einstein's advice was that "everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." Leonardo Da Vinci believed "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Antoine de Saint Exupéry held "It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars, sought to "Simplify, and add lightness". Steve Job's advised the new Nike CEO to " Get rid of the crappy stuff." In life, business, communications and relationships most of us endure unnecessary clutter and complexity. Clutter is like a drag anchor, holding us back, slowing us down and reducing our effectiveness. As individuals we carry around emotional and ego baggage. As organisations we expensively maintain cultural clutter. As teachers we add complexity and inhibit learning. Why? Four reasons... A lot of complexity is driven by ego, "simple" seems too easy. We need to impress, and complex seems more impressive. Who is going to be impressed by something short, small and easy to understand? Impressive requires a plethora of intricacy to engender an impression of imbecility in the audience juxtaposed with the sagacity of the author. We often to hang on to our complexity like a security blanket, "because we have always done it this way", "because it has always been there". We are reluctant to remove our baggage because we lack the self confidence to do so. It often takes courage to let go of "the crappy stuff". It takes self control and discipline to hold ourselves to high standards in what we do. To adequately think things through. To pare everything back to it's most powerful essence. To deliver value without varnish. The big one is lack of focus. Few of us really know what we seek to achieve, and even when we do, it is desperately easy to loose sight of it and become distracted (often by the baggage). The KISS recipe for success in any endeavor... Define your purpose and and your vision with absolute clarity. If you are a team, align around them. Your purpose is your overall direction - "heal the world through authenticity" for example. Your vision is the route you choose to take in pursuing it - "inspire and teach authentic transformation and leadership in business." Make both fully present in your mind, your life and your work space. Put key phrases around you, talk about it, explain it exhaustively until you have your pitch off pat. Work back from your vision and purpose to define your overall strategy. What is your key measure of success? What will have happened so that you know you have delivered? What happened just before that, and before that, and before that, right back to the present. Identify all of the jobs that need doing to deliver the first few bits, share them among your team and commit to them all. Articulate you values as an individual or a team. Rigorously weed out anything that does not fit with your values, or adjust it so that it does. Filter our everything else that does not contribute to your strategy. Get started and have fun. If you want help applying an authentic KISS of life in your life or business, give me a call. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "The Limit". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Inspiring Your Authentic Week

---

The Limit Posted: 27 Sep 2010 12:00 AM PDT I completed my main sporting target for the year yesterday. A local event called Trenca Garrons. It is a cycling event that starts at sea level in Alcudia and then climbs 1500 meters to the top of the highest mountain in Mallorca, Puig Major (pronounced push ma-yawr). You can see the route here - http://beta.mapmyride.com/workout/30668304/ . You can see my pictures on facebook. The last seven kilometers are timed on a military road, to the clouds, that is normally closed to public access. The last six kilometers are at a completely unrelenting 16%. It is as if the engineers who had to carve this road out of the cliff had to meet a specification of a maximum of 16% gradient and the minimum length, and they delivered. There is no flattening out, no place to recover. As you climb the views disappear and you are enveloped in cloud. The only sounds come from your own effort and the gentle tick of the bike chain. Occasionally a fitter, lighter and mostly younger rider ticks past, effort etched on their face. You climb above the eagles circling below. Constantly balancing the knife edge of the limit. Go into the red for too long and there is no place to recover, stay to far in the black and you are not doing your best. Everything is uncomfortable at this level of effort, but you have to stick to the limit. The line is one or two heart beats wide, four or five watts wide, this is the zone you have to inhabit. You can tell if you are going too hard because you want to get off, you can tell if you are going too slow because you want to stay on. This is the limit. This is where great things happen, where achievements and creativity exist. This is where humans are at their best, pushing our personal boundaries, finding out what we are truly capable of. We need this emotional, physical, spiritual, mental discomfort every week to be truly alive. To know that we are living our life to the max. To know that we are not compromising. As F1 world champion Mario Andretti said: "If everything feels under control, you are not going fast enough." We can experience this limit in our work, in our love lives, in our sports and in the choices we make of what we will do with our lives. Greatness is defined by what we do when we approach this limit. Do we back off for fear of pain, discomfort, the unknown or do we press on, edge closer to the limit and then hold it there, balancing precariously on the edge. Do we know the limit well enough to trust ourselves to be in that space. Or do we panic and flee to safety? If we never approach our limit, we will never know it well enough to find out. If we approach our limit without due respect we can crash and burn. We also need to respect the limit, we cannot be there all the time, we have to create space to recover, reflect, learn and grow in between our exploits. If you feel your work or life is a compromise, pushing that boundary is exactly where you need to go. If you don't like what it is, how much worse could it be to see if you can do something about it? I am planning an Open Authentic Leadership event in Mallorca in October, with 15 - 20 places available. You can find out a lot more about the course here. If you are interested please let me know so I can gauge numbers for the hotel. Join us on our Authentic Business Radio show every Thursday at 5pm UK, 6pm Euro or 12.00 EST. This week we will be discussing "The Limit". Feel free to forward this to friends, post to your networks and to republish on your website. Please include the link. You can subscribe for free at www.neilcrofts.com Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter With love nx Neil Crofts Neil Crofts authentic business +34 646391384 neil@neilcrofts.com www.neilcrofts.com Skype - neilcrofts

You are subscribed to email updates from Weekly Inspiration from Neil Crofts To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610