It’s coming your way! Change is everywhere in your life and work right now, sometimes it will hit you head on and bowl you over, and other times opportunities for you to change things will keep popping up, tempting you.

But will you change? Will you embrace the change, or even proactively encourage and force the change?

Or will you resist the change and try to maintain a feeling of safety trying to keep things as they are?

Of course it depends on the change in question.  Right now I’m talking about the biggest most current change in your life that you’re going through, or at least thinking about going through. The one that’s perhaps long overdue. The one that keeps sneaking up on you, tapping you on the shoulder and reminding you that something’s not quite right, and that change is on the horizon.

So what are you going to do?

Since change is going to occur anyway sooner or later (whether you like it or not)…

“Nothing is permanent but change” – Heraclitus

The main reason most people don’t want to change (when they feel they perhaps should) is fear. They feel comfortable in what they know. They know the deal. But they fear what they don’t yet know or understand.

So what’s the remedy? Learn about it. Learn about the thing you don’t understand so that you get a better idea of it. The more you learn about it, and study it, and ask questions and talk to people who know about it, the more you understand it and the less you have to be fearful of. It begins to click. And so the more likely you are to embrace that change or even drive it forwards on your own terms.

Despite reading this, many people will continue to fear the change they feel they should make, because they won’t make the effort to learn about new possibilities. I don’t know, maybe they’re too busy or something. Too busy reacting to things because of a decision or two they made way back. These people will stay put, until they are forced to change, and forced down a particular path.

So there it is, decide if you’re going to change, or whether you’ll leave yourself open to being changed, and if fear is your main hurdle, learn all about how things would or could be after the change. Learn about it until you’re clear. You’ll probably reach that tipping point where you’re ready.

If it’s a career change you’re thinking of, this may be just what you need.

Here are 3 more quotes about why you should embrace both learning and change:

“In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists” – Eric Hoffer

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” – Clarence Darrow

“In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy” – J. Paul Getty

My advice, learn how to learn fast (helps address fear and change) and proactively change under your own terms, in the direction you want. You do know which way you want to go don’t you? If not, try this.

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Do you work in sales? Yes you do. Do you educate others in your work or life? Your colleagues? Your kids? Then you’re definitely in sales.

Educating others is largely a sales challenge.

They don’t teach you sales skills at school, but they should.

They don’t teach people sales skills outside of the sales department in organisations, but they should.

And they don’t usually teach teachers, trainers and educators sales skills, which is why learning is often so ineffective, but they really really should.

Selling is the doorway to adding value, helping others, persuading for a win:win, getting agreement, getting alignment, enhancing engagement and leadership, and making progress faster, more easily or more enjoyably.  Selling is about changing mindsets. It’s about provoking thought and challenging ideas. It’s about re-directing someone’s actions and co-operation for the better of everyone involved. It all starts with the sale.  If the sale isn’t made, the rest doesn’t follow.  That’s potentially a lot of time, money and effort down the drain.  This definitely applies to learning.


Organisations, and educators, listen up:  If you want to educate people better, you need to

STOP thinking ‘here’s what you need to learn, now sit down and swallow it’, and

START thinking, ‘how can I help you really WANT to learn this?’

Once you’ve addressed that well and the learners are hungry for the benefits, you may even be able to step back and put your feet up, whilst the learner rushes off to learn in their time, in their style, with whoever they want, enjoying themselves as they go – the way learning should be done.

For more on smarter approaches to learning, contact me and ask how I can help your organisation learn and perform more effectively.  I’ll be glad to help.

First, Why You Really Should Mind Map

I’ve loved mind mapping for years.  Mind mapping has improved the quality of my thinking and learning, helped me generate thousands of ideas, helped me plan for my business, my work and personal life as well as saved me time and effort in many areas.  I’ve adapted mind mapping to help me in so many situations…but there’s a huge problem, particularly with mind mapping software…

You Can’t See the Wood for the Trees

It’s expansive.  There are no limits to what you add to your map – the screen keeps scrolling on and on.  It’s designed to not break your thought flow. Its very strength is also a potential weakness. This open ended platform for thinking is great for generating ideas, but it doesn’t get you to close any loops.  It doesn’t force you into making any decisions, which puts a halt to your actions and results.  A major mind map idea generating session can also leave you slightly overwhelmed and unfocused when you look over what you’ve done.  And some high value ideas can get lost in all the ‘noise’ of your mind map.

Increase the Quality of Your Ideas and Focus

Mind Mapping software helps you generate quantity of ideas, not necessarily quality.  That’s fine, because to get great ideas you usually need lots of ideas as a starting point.  The quality may come later. But I had an idea myself on how you can force better quality and more focus from your mind maps, and turn your best ideas into action more easily.

Some time back I started transferring my electronic mind maps on to half a sheet of A4 paper.  The physical limits to your paper force you to make decisions on what you include.  It forces you to increase the quality of your thinking and communication, be it choice of words or pictures.  It forces you to think about the important stuff and communicate it concisely! It’s handy of course to keep your writing standard size for this to work.  If you shrink your writing, you don’t benefit from the physical limits, so you’re probably shrinking the quality of your thinking too.

Take it Further Still

You can enhance your focus and quality of thinking even further.  Consider reproducing your mind map on the back of a business card.  What would you include and exclude?  Keep your writing standard size.  This really sharpens your thinking.  You get down to the main important points, and force yourself to make decisions. You gain focus.  Things become clearer.  It kind of tells you what you should be getting on with next.

Some people may already have control of their focus and ideas when mind mapping.  They may naturally manage their mind maps towards making decisions and taking actions.  But I’ll bet most people who use mind mapping software have lots of ideas, thoughts, resources and snippets of information that they’ve overlooked and that get buried in their maps, all because they haven’t forced themselves to make decisions to bring them to the surface and act on them.  I know I’ve been guilty of this, but I’ve really benefit over recent months where I’ve forced myself to make more focused decisions on what I think, learn, focus on, and on what I’ll turn into action, and in particular how I word my ideas.

The Missing Final Step

Plug my business card idea on as the missing final step to your current electronic mind mapping approach and let me know what it does for you.

I’ve also met and worked with lots of people over the years who consider teaching for one reason above all else: because it’s great for the holidays.  What?  What about the longer working part?  And the effect it has on your personal life?

Of course, you’re sending your kids along (or at least you probably will be) to spend much of their time with people who either don’t want to be there, or who only want to be there because they can’t wait until school’s out.  (This might ring alarm bells in your own work too).  That’s an awful lot of people who don’t really want to be there teaching your kids.  I don’t know about you, but it scares me.  I don’t want someone helping to grow, develop and teach my children, when their heart isn’t in it.  Because when their heart isn’t in it, then their performance, energy and results aren’t in it either.  The impact on your child’s learning, results and life, is huge.

For the record, I’ve also met a handful of teachers over the years who are in their ideal career, working not for the holidays, but for their passion and enjoyment for teaching and helping integrate children into the real world.  These people are the bridge to accelerating learning.  These people are driven to make it work.  They really care about their pupils and seem to put the needs of their pupils before their own.  And they tend to be remembered by their pupils. You may remember some of yours and you may even have the urge to get hold of them if you could, to thank them.  They made impact and they made learning enjoyable and powerful too.  A couple of my teachers stood out like that.  A couple, out of about 50.

Please note, I don’t blame teachers at all and I’m not having a go at teachers.  Because what’s going on here is going on in your field too.  My advice to teachers though who don’t really love their work is to get out and find and get into something that really makes you bounce out of bed in the morning and give it everything.  Something you’re driven to get better and better at and something that puts you in the best position to really help others doing what you do best.  My advice to everyone else (especially if you have kids) is to help teachers you know who are considering a career change to see it through.  They might be very pleased to hear of www.thegreatcareerescape.com.  Getting in to their ideal career will make them happier more productive people, and it will make way for teachers who were born to teach well.  They are out there, possibly working in the wrong job.  Think of the number of children’s lives this will positively influence over time.

And while you’re at it, consider how and where this is going on in your own industry too.  Perhaps some strategic repositioning will positively change your life and the lives of your customers?

I meet plenty of people through my work, all at different stages in their career.  It doesn’t take me long to decide which of three general attitudes they have towards their work:

1.  There are those who think they’re on a moving walkway in their career.  They think that just because they’re employed in a certain position, that all it takes is time for them to move up the ranks, and that in 30 years they’ll be in a successful, senior position.  It happens to some, but not to most (how can it work for everyone when there’s only a few places at the top anyway?)  If that’s you, then you can leap forwards in your career by understanding my next point…

2.  There are those who realise that there’s no moving walkway, and that no one owes them anything, that it’s not a fair playing field they’re playing on, and that they won’t get their ‘turn’.  They realise that if they want more back from their career, their employer or their life, then they’re going to have to get up and make it happen themselves.  You have to earn what you want.  Their priority is to get their hands on what they need to learn, and then put it into practice as fast and effectively as possible. They can leap forwards in their career by learning how to learn twice as fast (they need their employer to provide them with something like this) and learning how to manage themselves effectively to apply what they learn fluidly and consistently.

3.  There are those who just don’t care.  They just potter along.  They just go to work because, well you have to don’t you?  They’re in the wrong job.  Because when you’re in the right job, you do care.  You’re compelled to make things happen and do a great job, because you enjoy doing just that, and you’re proud of the results you create.  Unfortunately, those who don’t care about their career progress because they’re in the wrong job are unlikely to be reading this blog post.  So you might need to point them towards what they need, which is this.

Join the Queue?

Brian Tracy says that you only have to do 2 things to get to the front of a queue, or to advance your career:  ‘Get in line and stay in line.’

The truth is, you don’t have to stay in line where you’re at.  You can jump the career queue, and the beauty is, it’s a fair jump too. You earn the right to jump the queue by becoming more valuable to those who pay you (and to your colleagues too).  And it’s not a single line anyway.  It’s a mass huddle of people.  It’s a crowd.  It’s like a chess board full of pieces, and you can move like a knight.  You can jump people sideways, if you like, to get to where you want.

Just follow these steps:

1.  work out what position you want to be in and why (make it a position you really care about and will be proud of)
2.  work out what value you’d need to provide to who (and how often) in order to earn the right to be in that position
3.  work out what you need to LEARN and then APPLY in order to provide that value
4.  learn it
5.  apply it
6.  repeat

Of course there are plenty of stumbling points along the way, and there are ways to move through these steps faster, more easily and enjoyably too. If you’ve got a question for me related to this, please post it below or email me and I may blog my response.

A major choke point to improved performance (and the resulting personal rewards) occurs directly after having learned something potentially useful. Thats when all your efforts can fall down. Translating new knowledge, skills and behaviors back to the job is a huge weakness and limitation for most people. Let me tell you one thing about turning learning into better performance; it isn’t just going to happen. You have to purposefully make it happen. It’s as important as learning in the first place. Unless you have a plan or system in place to facilitate the translation of learning to results, your progress and ROI on learning is going to be very low. That’s when learning itself becomes costly and apparently a waste of time.

The truth is, everyone can squeeze every last drop out of what they learn if they build a reliable system around themselves. It’s your responsibility to do this, since you’re going to reap the rewards.

One way is to immediately store newly learned information in easily accessible bite sized pieces in a place where you can and will retrieve them when and where you need to apply them.

So if you need the info when you’re out and about, store it on your iPhone. If you need it when using your desk phone then stick it there. If you need a process or reminder to pop up your screen when you open an application, ask your IT guys to do it. Just put everything you’ve learned in the
right place and you’ll increase your chances. If its just sitting in your original notes, you’ve
probably wasted your time.

Talking of notes, put what you’ve learned from this post on the front of your note book. When you close it after learning something new, hopefully you’ll remember to transfer your notes to a smarter place. If you do this, you won’t help but notice the rewards and benefits it brings over time.

A major choke point to improved performance (and the resulting personal rewards) occurs directly after having learned something potentially useful. Thats when all your efforts can fall down. Translating new knowledge, skills and behaviors back to the job is a huge weakness and limitation for most people. Let me tell you one thing about turning learning into better performance; it isn’t just going to happen. You have to purposefully make it happen. It’s as important as learning in the first place. Unless you have a plan or system in place to facilitate the translation of learning to results, your progress and ROI on learning is going to be very low. That’s when learning itself becomes costly and apparently a waste of time.

The truth is, everyone can squeeze every last drop out of what they learn if they build a reliable system around themselves. It’s your responsibility to do this, since you’re going to reap the rewards.

One way is to immediately store newly learned information in easily accessible bite sized pieces in a place where you can and will retrieve them when and where you need to apply them.

So if you need the info when you’re out and about, store it on your iPhone. If you need it when using your desk phone then stick it there. If you need a process or reminder to pop up your screen when you open an application, ask your IT guys to do it. Just put everything you’ve learned in the
right place and you’ll increase your chances. If its just sitting in your original notes, you’ve
probably wasted your time.

Talking of notes, put what you’ve learned from this post on the front of your note book. When you close it after learning something new, hopefully you’ll remember to transfer your notes to a smarter place. If you do this, you won’t help but notice the rewards and benefits it brings over time.

A major choke point to improved performance (and the resulting personal rewards) occurs directly after having learned something potentially useful. Thats when all your efforts can fall down. Translating new knowledge, skills and behaviors back to the job is a huge weakness and limitation for most people. Let me tell you one thing about turning learning into better performance; it isn’t just going to happen. You have to purposefully make it happen. It’s as important as learning in the first place. Unless you have a plan or system in place to facilitate the translation of learning to results, your progress and ROI on learning is going to be very low. That’s when learning itself becomes costly and apparently a waste of time.

The truth is, everyone can squeeze every last drop out of what they learn if they build a reliable system around themselves. It’s your responsibility to do this, since you’re going to reap the rewards.

One way is to immediately store newly learned information in easily accessible bite sized pieces in a place where you can and will retrieve them when and where you need to apply them.

So if you need the info when you’re out and about, store it on your iPhone. If you need it when using your desk phone then stick it there. If you need a process or reminder to pop up your screen when you open an application, ask your IT guys to do it. Just put everything you’ve learned in the
right place and you’ll increase your chances. If its just sitting in your original notes, you’ve
probably wasted your time.

Talking of notes, put what you’ve learned from this post on the front of your note book. When you close it after learning something new, hopefully you’ll remember to transfer your notes to a smarter place. If you do this, you won’t help but notice the rewards and benefits it brings over time.

People often say ‘you get out what you put it’.  Rubbish.  You can get loads more back than you put in, if you ‘put in’ to the right places in the right ways at the right times.  Whatever you’re currently getting out of your work, you can almost certainly get much more.

How?

I learned this lesson from Michael Gerber in the book ‘The E-Myth Revisited’.  It applies to business owners, but equally applies to employees too.  Michael Gerber mentions that whilst working in your business, you should also be working on your business.  As well as doing the day to day stuff that you get paid to do, you should be giving plenty of attention to strengthening, organising and growing your business too.  You should be planning ahead, deciding which way you’ll move and ultimately building a money making machine that’s as near to self-perpetuating as possible.  You should build your business to free yourself.

How Do You Do it as an Employee?

Whilst working in your career, you should be working on your career.  Few people do.  They don’t want to spend the time.  But it’s an investment.  If you take a little bit of extra time to think ahead, plan, choose your direction, and try to ‘build’ the value you provide in to something as near to self-perpetuating as possible, then you’re on to something rewarding.

If a business owner can strive to build a money making machine that eventually frees themself, then why can’t you as an employee?  Have you ever thought about it?  Can you stop selling your time and instead work out how to still give high value by somehow bottling up the value you provide?  When you’re explaining things to others, or teaching them, can you bottle up your words so that they can listen again if they need to and so that your words can reach others, freeing you from saying them again?  That’s so easy to do these days, but few people do it.  And that’s just one example.

For every task you do, how can you work in such a way that your efforts can be re-used when you’re not there?

Think about it.  Get some answers.  Write them down and schedule to try them out.  And enjoy what comes of it.

P.S. The smartest way to earn more for less effort is to get in to the right line of work in the first place.  Working on your career means purposefully steering yourself towards the highest rewards you want by exchanging the best of yourself.  My new site ‘The Great Career Escape’ helps you do that and you can create a free account: http://thegreatcareerescape.com

There’s also a free ebook on the home page which you might find interesting..

I sent this post out as a newsletter back in 2008. For those who missed it, it’s worth a look:

My advice this month was given to me 10 years ago by a colleague who I deeply respected.  It still holds true and I often think about it.  He explained to me that to increase your value and earn more money, and increase the chances of continuous employment you should purposefully become indispensable to your employer or your customers.

He explained that often there is money to be made in the jobs that most people don’t want to do or can’t easily do.  He explained that in every organisation there are certain important areas in which few people, if any, are expert.  And that if you make it your mission to become the expert in any of these areas, then you’ve just made yourself instantly valuable.  Especially if you can create value and impact in your work that no one else can.  That’s when they need you.

When you reach that level, people keep coming to you.  Word of mouth soon travels when you can do something truly useful (and relevant) that no one else around can do.  You (and the value you provide) get free advertising.

With that of course comes bargaining power.  You should become more in demand, so long as you choose the right area to become expert in.  And with that, your (employment) price can go up.

But you must not get complacent!  Times are changing so fast these days that it’s healthy to assume that whatever niche area you are expert in will become obsolete in the next 5 years.  So you must keep learning of course, and keep an eye on which areas to dominate as THE expert.

Give this some thought.  It could change your career and your lifestyle forever.  And of course, if you want to become indispensable fast, then you should learn how to learn fast and self manage effectively so that you can put what you learn into practice in the right way at the right times.

Finally, it’s much easier to become indispensable when you’re in your ideal career. Are you?  If you’d like to find your ideal career because you’re not happy in your current one, drop me a note. I might have a surprise for you.

Help Yourself and Your Organisation

Since 2003 I’ve helped businesses and corporates in the UK and Australia grow high value engaged employees who:

• learn fast and adapt quickly
• become highly productive
• think like a business

Here’s what they’ve said.

If you think I might help you or your organisation, then either get in touch, or put them in touch with me.