Don’t wait for the life you want –

… if you do, you might just never get it
David Thomas is an international speaker with vast experience who has spoken nearly 100 times to CEO groups. His sessions have consistently been voted as one of the best that Academy for Chief Executives groups have ever heard. In his article for the January newsletter of The Academy on Fresh Business Thinking, David advised designing your own future. “I don’t believe in destiny, luck, fate or “que sera, sera”, he told us. “I don’t believe in spirits, souls, divine intervention, an overseeing force or angels stroking my hair so I can get a good night’s sleep.”

What he does believe in is his own ability to control every facet of his life and what happens in it. “That all the things that happen to me do so as a direct result of the actions I take.”

Accepting responsibility is the bedrock of all future success, he suggests, both personally and in business. “If you have a business that is going to the wall, it is not because of the economy, bad sales or because your staff don’t get your vision.”

Being proactive personal development on every level is also important. “Success is about taking absolute responsibility for our current position, putting aside all the BS excuses and moving forward towards our goals. Waiting for them to come to us is business suicide. When we do this and it works, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities as we truly understand that we are masters of our own destiny.”

Read the article in full here.

More about David and his speaking

 

The Downturn Revisited – Preparing for Nessie

The economy has understandably been at the forefront of leaders for the last twelve months or so, and probably will be so in 2010. The economic situation is one of many subjects The Academy has experts on. For more visit www.chiefexecutive.com.
Rohit Talwar is CEO of Fast Future. He is a Global futurist, award winning keynote speaker and change catalyst working with international corporations and governments to create ‘fast insights into alternative futures’. He has worked on six continents – helping him take a truly global perspective. In January, Rohit wrote for The Academy for Chief Executives Newsletter on Fresh Business Thinking about the Recession and how it might affect businesses in 2010.

Rohit notes that “While most of the European Union countries have officially pulled out of recession, the UK is still struggling to launch (NOTE – it has now pulled out but by the slimmest margin) and President Obama is issuing ever-starker warnings about the risk of a double dip recession. Conversations with investment bankers and those with connections ‘on the inside’ of the banking system are all suggesting the potential for a massive collapse that could make the last two years look like a minor correction.”
 
Rather than a double dip, Rohit’s view is that we are looking at more of a roller-coaster decade in which we will see regular rises and falls in different economies around the world. His colleague Ian Pearson refers to this as a ‘Loch Ness Monster’ downturn – with uneven peaks and troughs emerging with very little warning. As a result, the pain will be felt quite unevenly. “Those economies that have done most to curb or prevent their banking system from entering into huge leveraged debt transactions and complex high volatility derivatives contracts are likely to fare best – or suffer the least relative pain.”
 
In his full article, Rohit suggests that the most apocalyptic view came from Société Générale in its ‘Worst Case Debt Scenario’ report which warned clients to prepare for a possible “global economic collapse” over the next two years. “Under their “Bear Case” scenario, we would see a further fall in the value of the dollar, a decline in global equity prices, a sharp retreat on property values and oil would fall to $50 a barrel in 2010.“
 
Dealing with such an apocalyptic scenario will not be easy. As Rohit suggests, “Hope, head in the sand and betting it all on number 36 on the roulette wheel are probably not the most sustainable solutions.” He offers, as an alternative, six ideas from Fast Future’s report on ‘Winning in a Downturn’: [Read more]

 

Building a Strong Team for 2010

We began our 2010 Newsletter on Fresh Business Thinking with an article by Brian Chernett, founder of The Academy for Chief Executives on the need to build a strong team for 2010

“2010 will be another a challenging year to be a Leader”, he told us and “the leaders that survive the year will be more aware of the market, will motivate their team to be creative and innovative and will build flexibility into the team to take advantage of opportunities that will present themselves.

Leaders need to focus on the present and the future and use the past to learn lessons for current and future performance. Business efforts will need to be concentrated on earning real money now, in the shape of cash profits, and on finding the areas where it will earn money in the future.

Brian suggests that you concentrate your business efforts “on what the market demands and scale down areas where demand is poor or declining.” He cites Jim Collins, in his classic book Good to Great, who talks about ‘Hedgehog’ companies – those that “know one thing but know it very well”. 2010, Brian contends, will be a year for the hedgehogs.

Do you have the right team to take the business forward to where you want it to be?  Jim Collins talks about who is ‘on the bus’.  [Read more}

Brian Chernett is founder of The Academy for Chief Executives (ACE) – Find out more at www.chiefexecutive.com

The Academy community provides a great place to build your leadership skills and learn more about motivating and developing your people, and how to focus the top team for the good of your company.  As the leading providers of experiential learning, the purpose of the Academy is to inspire leaders to achieve their dreams by sharing and learning from real life experiences.

 

A lesson in memory skills and speed reading

David Thomas

David Thomas presented his ‘Memory Skills and Speed Reading’ workshop to members of SW London experiential business learning® group, Academy Group 14 recently.

David is truly unique in what he does, how he does it and the way in which he delivers on his guaranteed promise to dramatically increase delegates reading speed and memory skills by the end of a single morning’s workshop.

David’s style is rooted firmly in his Yorkshire heritage, at once humorous and challenging, engaging and down to earth, but always warm in its intent  – a great combination for any Academy speaker which, when coupled with outstanding and immediately high take away value, delivers a morning workshop that meets and exceeds all expectations.

Members’ high level of commitment to follow up some of the “brain training” lessons from the day to improve their reading speed and memory skills as a basic enabler back in their business as well as personal life (and their children’s!) was indicative of a great morning.

Just some of the many lessons learned were :

• How to “re-learn” the natural way to read and un-learn the way we’re taught to read out loud at school.
• How to use a combination of mental organisation and imagination techniques to train the brain.
• How to build a “mind journey” that allows the brain to work the way it naturally wants to and thus to dramatically improve recall of anything from names to numbers, business presentations to the punch line of jokes.

Gordon Bromley

David’s session is simply outstanding and received an excellent reception from Academy Group 14 members and guests, not least because it is very high on engagement, entertainment and above all immediate takeaway value. One member commented that while a year ago he could never have imagined he would be spending a morning learning how to read again and how to remember things this was one of the most practically useful sessions he’d attended since joining The Academy for Chief Executives.

Gordon Bromley
Chairman – Academy Group 14 and Entrepreneurs Board 8

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates peer groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of experiential learning. To hear great speakers like this every month and engage in The Board You Could Never Afford®, or to find a local group near you, visit www.chiefexecutive.com.

 

High Performance Leadership – Unleashing the Hidden Advantage latent in your organisation

David Powell

David Powell is an highly experienced speaker and former senior executive in the petro- industry sector and was a big success with members of my Chief Executive Forum, Academy Group 11 when he presented to them recently. He spoke enthusiastically and in great detail while at the same time writing on the easel and demonstrating his spatial intelligence … in great detail.

The concept of communicating corporate vision with pictures really came alive in David’s excellent two and a half hour talk. This is a fabulous workshop on long-term planning and the concept of “aliens of resistance” was unique to many of us.

Main take-away points included:

1. How to prepare a five year plan.
2. Root cause analysis training
3. Reverse planning i.e. starting with the end in mind.
4. The need to have team meetings to plan targets
5. ‘Aliens of resistance’ concept
6. How to create a PERT timeline
7. Creating the new game to inspire
8. Communicating vision using pictures

This was a very practical session with great takeaway value. We all enjoyed it enormously and I thoroughly recommend David Powell as a speaker.

Joe Adams

Joe Adams,
Chairman, Academy Group 11

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates peer groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of experiential learning. To hear great speakers like this every month and engage in The Board You Could Never Afford®, or to find a local group near you, visit www.chiefexecutive.com.

 

The Impact and Influence of a Leader

Kate Atkin

Members of experiential business learning group, Directors Forum 9,  spent the day recently exploring their ‘Impact and Influence as a Leader’, including examining their indispensability factor to their organisation …

We worked with Kate Atkin to explore our ‘EPL’; our ETHOS, PATHOS and LOGOS.

Ethos being our business and personal credibility, built on our track record, experience, qualifications, knowledge and gravitas; often leading to referrals.

Pathos being our empathy and understanding, built on our ability to ask great questions, truly listen and check understanding.

Logos being the facts, figures and information that we use in our reasoned arguments.

We established that our school days taught us to start with Logos, however, when working with humans we’re often much better to start with Pathos and Ethos.

We also discussed the statements “You are your business – What Impact Are You Making?” and “What changes in behaviour create the ‘right’ impression?”

By the end of the day we had a much greater understanding of the ripples, waves and tsunamis that we cause as leaders in our organisations.

Joanna Jesson

Kate proved to be an excellent trainer, adapting her material to the content presented in the members’s Goal Reviews and the emerging needs.

Joanna Jesson,
Chairman – Directors Forum Group 9

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates peer groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of experiential learning. To hear great speakers like this every month and engage in The Board You Could Never Afford®, to find out more about the Herts, Beds & Bucks Group, or to find a local group near you, visit www.chiefexecutive.com.

 

Unpossible Thinking

Ian Moore

Members of experiential business learning group, Directors Forum 11, had a great session when Ian Moore,  Msc & BSc(Hons) author of “Engineering The Impossible” and “Unpossible Thinking” presented to their group recently.

Ian is fascinated in developing tools and techniques to allow people to unblock their thinking on demand to achieve their full potential- (see www.unpossiblethinking.com).

The Academy for Chief Executives members enjoyed a fascinating workshop on the workings of our brain! Thinking about thinking … Members were thoroughly engrossed and involved through experiential learning in the way we think about issues/ problems and how we can resolve them.

The key experiential learning points included:-

• How to think about thinking and the benefits of doing;
• Clearer techniques for thinking outside the box;
• Thinking about being more positive can result in more positive actions;
• Lateral thinking regarding ‘If I could do it, then how would I do it?’;
• The benefits of not using the word ‘Can’t'!

Peter Sutcliffe

Peter Sutcliffe
Joint Chairman with Karen Humble, North East
Academy Group 23 and Directors Forum 11

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates peer groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of experiential learning.  To hear great speakers like this every month and engage in The Board You Could Never Afford®, to find out more about the North East Group , or to find a local group near you, visit www.chiefexecutive.com.

 

 

 

Key Account Management Lessons

Phil Jesson

Phil Jesson presented his workshop, “Key Account Partnerships” to CEO members of Surrey-based Academy Group 14 recently. A terrific session, superbly delivered, with lots of great take-away value for even the most competent commercial business operations. Whether as a timely reminder for those already building true partnerships with their customers or as a practical introduction on how to understand where you are with your customers and how to grow from being just another “supplier” to a “partner” this is a great session for all.

Top 3 takeaways were:

1. Importance of doing regular audits of your key customers – and how to do it.
2. Key Account Plan for top 5 customers must be in place and updated regularly – and how to do it.
3. Strategic Bridges process and how to use it.

This was a superb session for our experiential business learning group and yielded the highest average scores of meetings to date. Phil’s style is involving and participative, his material solid and his preparation faultless plus lots of practical take-away value. Members commitment to specific actions within their business regarding their key customers was extremely high and I know the work has already begun in many cases.

Gordon Bromley

Gordon Bromley
Chairman – Academy Group 14 and Entrepreneurs Board 8

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates peer groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of experiential learning. To hear great speakers like this every month and engage in The Board You Could Never Afford®, or to find a local group near you, visit www.chiefexecutive.com.

 

Questions Have More Power than Answers

Mark Fritz

Mark Fritz is an highly experienced international business man who brought great value to members of my Chief Executive Forum, Academy Group 11, when he presented to us recently. He was formerly a senior executive with Eastman Kodak and is now the head of his own company – Procedor – a training and management development organisation.

Valuable takeaway points were:

• Discussion is not an outcome.
• Agree outcomes and delegate them for further action.
• Don’t let your problem people steal your time.
• Character plus skills equals professionalism.
• Balance stress with recovery time.
• Differentiation between leadership and management.
• Think ahead, stay ahead and focus on next action.

Mark Fritz is a very accomplished speaker and achieved an excellent average score from my group members, who are not known for giving high marks!

I was more than a little pleasantly surprised by the power and substance of his subject. The takeaway value was enormous. This was Mark Fritz’s first Academy for Chief Executives workshop and my members were all very enthusiastic at the conclusion of the day.

Joe Adams

Joe Adams,
Chairman, Academy Group 11

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates peer groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of experiential learning. To hear great speakers like this every month and engage in The Board You Could Never Afford®, or to find a local group near you, visit www.chiefexecutive.com.

 

Creating a Winning Mindset with Steve Smith

Steve Smith

The North East Academy for Chief Executives‘ speaker in July was Steve Smith, UK high jump record holder and Olympic Bronze Medallist speaking on ”Creating a Winning Mindset‘

The Academy members not only gained a highly interesting and entertaining insight into the determination and planning needed to achieve Olympic standard but also how to relate such focus to business and personal life through experiential learning.

The workshop highlighted how, from a situation of failure, you can then achieve your goals through analysis of present position, to focus on end objectives and define a set of rules/ actions to achieve them to rigid timescales.

The key experiential learning points included:-

• The importance of planning and focus,
• Analysis of competition and your strengths,
• How you can win the psychological battle in competition and with competitors,
• Analysis of your own leadership skills,
• Developing an action plan to help develop your own leadership and coaching skills.

Peter Sutcliffe

Peter Sutcliffe,
Joint Chairman with Karen Humble Academy for Chief Executives North East (Group 23)

The Academy for Chief Executives, a leading provider of experiential business learning® facilitates peer groups of CEOs and Managing Directors who meet together every month to network and take full advantage of experiential learning. To hear great speakers like this every month and engage in The Board You Could Never Afford®, to find out more about the North East Group, or to find a local group near you, visit www.chiefexecutive.com.