Posts Tagged ‘willpower’

Richard Martin’s Morning Brilliant Manoeuvre — 29 April 2013

Posted: April 29, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Enterprise Robustness, Leadership, Leadership Principles, Management, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Personal Development
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Brilliant Manoeuvre
Morale is critical, but we must also acknowledge and understand all of the components that go into forging an effective organization.

Discussion
The subject of morale often comes up in my work with clients. Unfortunately, there is a very superficial understanding of the concept. As I’ve said before, morale is the willingness to fight and persevere, to make sacrifices to achieve victory or one’s corporate aims. People often confuse morale with other the other main components of organizational dynamics, such as mood, cohesion, and unity of purpose. They all go together, but are all different in focus and purpose. When we add the effects of leadership, we can get a much fuller picture of how to build an effective organization that can perform beyond expectations.

Questions
You can assess the morale in your organization through the following questions:

  • Do people have hope of better days or constant improvement? Are they optimistic or pessimistic?
  • Are your people making plans with themselves in the picture, or are they trying to abandon ship?
  • Do they waste a lot of time or do they focus on ways to continually improve the organization and its performance?

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

Routine and Discipline

Posted: April 12, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Management, Military Lessons, Personal Development
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Routine means discipline. If you decide to write an hour a day or call 5 prospects every day, you sit down and you write or make your calls. You do it even if you don’t feel like it. At the end of the allotted period, you stop, whether you feel like continuing or not. The point is to not let yourself off the hook for emotional reasons and conversely to not binge and overdo it when you’re feeling ‘in the zone.’ That’s how your create habits, routine, and discipline.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

Richard Martin’s Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres

Posted: February 4, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Leadership, Leadership Principles, Military Lessons, Monday Morning Brilliant Manoeuvres, Personal Development
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Brilliant Manoeuvre
Complaining isn’t necessarily a sign of bad morale. In fact, the opposite is quite often true. If people stop talk, that’s when you should be worried.

Example
Morale is the willingness to fight, to persevere, and to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve victory. When morale is good, people care enough to complain because they know that things can be better, and that there is a better way to achieve the aim. When I was in the Army, I knew that things were amiss when my subordinates got too quiet. This was a sure sign to me that it was time to get them together so we could talk things out. Sometimes, I would stand my ground while explaining my decisions and plans. At least then my people had felt heard and understood my reasoning. They could then better appreciate the decision and apply it as if it were their own. Often, however, it was an opportunity for me to find out what had gone wrong or where I had been mistaken. I could then adjust my decisions and plans to take the suggestions (and complaints) into account if they made sense. The same applies in business, if you are hearing complaints from your people, or hear about them indirectly, it may be time to sit down with them to find out what is happening. You may be surprised at what you’ll learn.

Tip
Set aside regular time, at least once or twice a month, to meet with all your direct reports to hear from them. Ask them what they understand about the situation you’re in. Tell them what your understanding of the situation is and what you plan to do about it. Use this time to garner their input and to make suggestions for improvements. In the Army this tradition is known as ‘platoon commander’s hour,’ but you can also institute your own ‘CEO’s hour’ or ‘manager’s hour.’

Richard Martin is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach. He brings his military and business leadership and management experience to bear for executives and organizations seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes are permitted with proper attribution.

Do You Have March Discipline?

Posted: January 8, 2013 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Leadership, Leadership Catalyst Newsletter, Leadership Principles, Management, Military Lessons, Personal Development
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When I was on basic officer training in the Army our instructors would take us on ‘forced marches.’ Sometimes these were in the middle of the night while we were on exercise. Most times, however, this was the favoured way to get to the ranges for a day of marksmanship training. At the end of the day, when we were tired and anxious to get back to clean our rifles and take a nice hot shower, we would have to force march back to the barracks.

I remember finding it ironic that we would march very fast in formation, with all our battle gear on, and then stop for ten minutes every hour in order to rest. What’s the point, I thought, why not just slow down the pace and not take a rest? The idea of a forced march is that you cover a certain distance in a specific amount of time, and do it as a cohesive body of troops. As our instructors said, there’s no point in getting to the objective if we’re alone when we get there.

As I gained in experience as an infantry officer, I realized that there is wisdom in adhering to a demanding schedule—of marching, resting, or whatever else needs to be done. Despite fatigue and other factors, a military unit must be able to cover ground quickly and efficiently, and this makes for predictable results. However, I also learned that it is the easiest and most reliable way to motivate troops to cover the distance quickly. They know they will have to march fast, but they also get a rest every hour. They also know that by getting to their destination as fast as possible that they will be able to get to other important things.

In their book Great by Choice, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen discuss how companies that are consistent about regular and disciplined progress also show the best results over long periods. They call this the ’20-Mile March,’ and they argue it is most effective in chaotic and unpredictable circumstances. Even though the going is tough, a company commits to making small but measurable progress every day, month, and year. The company’s leaders also commit to not overdoing it when the going gets better. That way, they avoid overextending themselves when they are enthusiastic and optimistic, but they also continue to chug along when circumstances get harder and they are prone to a more pessimistic outlook. Collins and Hansen’s ’20-Mile March’ reflects the same philosophy that underlies military forced marching. You commit to predictable and demanding progress, with regular rest periods, and you do it consistently, whether conditions are good or bad.

A product-focused company must be consistent and disciplined about new product development, no matter what the circumstances. A sales team must be consistent about achieving specific objectives for sales activities with proven results, for instance, contacting X number of leads per day, week, or month, following up regularly and quickly on leads, asking for referrals, etc. A manufacturing company must be consistent and disciplined about making small and lasting improvements to its processes, logistics, distribution, sourcing, etc. A warehousing operation must be focused relentlessly on safety and security to minimize workplace accidents and losses due to fire and theft. All companies must be consistent and disciplined about recruiting and developing people for leadership, role redundancy, and succession planning.

You get the idea. Whatever the business objective, you have to commit to a demanding schedule of critical functions or tasks you require that will get you there efficiently and consistently. You then need discipline to maintain that pace through thick and thin. When the going is good, you don’t overextend or overexert yourself, and when the going is rough, you don’t quit or let up. You force yourself to march 20 miles a day, with regular rest periods, whether the weather is great, there is no enemy in sight, and progress is easy, or during storms, darkness, and against enemy resistance. What is your forced march discipline?

© 2013 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

How’s the Morale on Your Team?

Posted: October 15, 2012 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Enterprise Robustness, Leadership, Leadership Principles, Military Lessons, Personal Development
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Two essential skills of highly effective leaders are the ability to assess the morale and mood of their team, and the ability to maintain morale in the face of difficulties and obstacles. This is something I talk about extensively in my new book, Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles.

Morale is the willingness of an individual, team or organization to win and to succeed. Many people confuse true morale with superficialities such as mood. They take good humour and happy, peaceful feelings as signs of good morale when they are nothing but an adjunct to morale, and a peripheral one at that.

In other words, just because people complain, it doesn’t mean that morale isn’t good. Strong morale is built upon unity of purpose and action, determination to succeed and cohesion in the face of opposition, disruptions, uncertainty, friction and obstacles.

How is the morale in your team?

  • Do you sense that people in your team have hope? Is the language they use optimistic and hopeful, or pessimistic and despairing?
  • Are people making plans for the future with themselves in the plans, or are they instead making plans to abandon ship?
  • Do people have a lot of idle time, or are they working on ways to continually improve the organization and its performance?

How is the mood in your organization?

  • Are people happy to be working together? Do they joke around or are they morose?
  • Do people complain a lot in your organization? What do they complain about? Do they complain about superficial things and minor creature comforts, or are they more focused on substantial issues?
  • Do people feel free to approach management with issues, or do they let them fester and lead to grievances?
  • Are people making suggestions to improve things as a whole, so the team can achieve its mission and goals, or are they focused on their own issues to the exclusion of the team’s?
  • Is there a major discrepancy in perks and privileges between management and the rank and file of the organization? Large differences in this regard can breed resentment and anger in employees and lower level managers.

© 2012 Richard Martin

My New Book Is Available – Mon nouveau livre est maintenant disponible

Posted: September 30, 2012 in Announcements, Book Reviews, Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Economics and Finance, Enterprise Robustness, Entrepreneurship, Exploiting Change, Leadership, Management, Marketing and Business Development, Military Lessons, Never Fight Fair, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Risk Management, Speaking Events, Strategy
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My new book, Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles, is now available for purchase through my website. It will also be available through all the major online retailers around the world.

It’s a bit more expensive if you order the book through me, but I will ship you a signed copy. If you’re in Canada, the shipping is included in the price. For bulk orders, just drop me a line at 514-453-3993 and we can discuss special pricing.

About the book

“There are quite a few books about parallels between military strategy and corporate strategy. Richard Martin’s Brilliant Manoeuvres makes a difference by not only focusing on the conceptual but also on the operational side of the equation. This book is a hands-on guide to a brilliant corporate strategy.”
Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Managing Partner, Mandat Consulting Group, Dortmund, Germany

“Brilliant Maneuvers is Sun Tzu’s Art of War combined with Drucker’s The Effective Executive.”
Alan Weiss, PhD, Author of the bestselling Million Dollar Consulting and The Consulting Bible

“Richard explains the reasons behind the military concepts, backing them up with diagrams and historical and personal examples. He then shows how to apply them in a business context. I highly recommend Brilliant Manoeuvres to beginners and advanced users alike.”
Pierre Bergevin, President & CEO, Cushman & Wakefield Canada

Business executives and entrepreneurs see themselves as modern day warriors and generals, fighting off competitors and conquering new markets. They talk about attacking competitors, defending turf, firing warning shots, establishing beachheads, bypassing the competition, digging a protective moat, and so on. Brilliant Manoeuvres – How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles is for those executives and entrepreneurs who are looking to create and sustain competitive advantage and to lead their teams in the face of determined competition and rivalry. Based on the author’s experience as a soldier, a business consultant and an entrepreneur, the book explains how and why military leaders and planners actually think and operate. It then translates this into terms that business people can readily apply to their own reality so they can survive and thrive. In other words, this book is a practical guidebook, and not just another set of exhortations to “lead from the front” or to “win without fighting”. In particular it demonstrates how some military methods cannot be applied in management.

“With Brilliant Manoeuvres, Richard Martin has produced a guidebook that gets back to the basics of strategy, management, and leadership. We tend to forget the fundamentals because we think they’re too simple or that we’ve outgrown them. Richard demonstrates the linkages between military and business wisdom and shows that these concepts are fundamental and essential. In the process they gain a new relevance and freshness to help in meeting today’s business challenges.”
Louis Gabanna, President, Colas Canada

About the author

Richard Martin is founder and president of Alcera Consulting Inc. Prior to launching his consulting business, Richard attended the prestigious Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean as an officer cadet and then served for 21 years as an infantry officer in the Canadian Army. Richard is the only member of Alan Weiss’s Million Dollar Consulting Mentoring Hall of Fame with extensive military experience. He brings his business and military leadership experience to bear for organizations and executives in both the private and public sectors seeking to exploit change, maximize opportunity, and minimize risk.

Regards,

Rich

Richard MartinPresident/Président
Alcera Consulting Inc./Alcera Conseil de gestion inc.
Author of the forthcoming book

Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles
Published September 2012 by Global Professional Publishing.

“Brilliant Maneuvers is Sun Tzu’s Art of War combined with Drucker’s The Effective Executive.” — Alan Weiss, PhD, Author of the bestselling Million Dollar Consulting

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Becoming Self-Employed or Starting a Small Business: What Are Some of the Financial Considerations?

Posted: September 18, 2012 in Business, Entrepreneurship, Management, Marketing and Business Development, Personal Development, Small Business
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Anyone who wishes to become self-employed or start a business should consider the following key financial points, which is where many self-employed people have avoidable problems:

  • Whether you choose to consider yourself in business or simply self-employed, the market will consider you nonetheless to be in business. As a result, you have no choice but to think like a business owner and entrepreneur at all times.
  • A business with a great product but poor marketing will likely fail. On the other hand, a business with a so-so product but great marketing stands a much better chance of thriving. Consequently, as a business owner, you must continually invest in marketing and selling. At the beginning, this is more about time and effort than big bucks, but the tendency is to skimp on these as they can be hard. It takes sustained effort and perseverance to create the demand for your products and services (which is what marketing is) and to face refusals and obstacles as you start promoting and selling. The investment is psychological and physical, but it is real nonetheless.
  • Keep a tap on your ego. Ego is what leads people to buy a Mercedes as a company car at the beginning, rather than, say, a Honda. There will always be time for that later, once you’ve got better cash flow and are a going concern.
  • You should pare your fixed expenses to the minimum and transform fixed expenses into variable expenses. Do you really need to rent an office with a receptionist, or can you work out of a home office. The cash flow savings are significant as can be the tax implications. You also save on commuting in terms of time and money.
  • Build a safety net in the form of savings, commercial insurance (as relevant), supplementary health insurance, income replacement insurance, and catastrophic illness insurance.
  • Be prepared to invest in yourself and in time-saving approaches. For instance, you need regular professional development, professional memberships, and professional advisors (e.g. accountant). You also must consider the time value of your work and other activities. For instance, time spent doing household chores can be better spent marketing and selling for your business. It can be an investment to hire someone to do these while you invest your time and effort in your business.

© 2012 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

Willpower

Posted: March 23, 2012 in Book Reviews, Business, Personal Development, Personality
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We all need willpower to succeed in school, business, our relationships, our careers, life. I’ve written a lot over the years about the need for resilience and robustness. Willpower is also fundamental to these, so you don’t give up at the first signs of trouble.

There are two very recent books on willpower that are definitely worth reading and that should be in your library if you’re serious about self-development. The first isWillpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. It’s written by the researcher who was instrumental in putting the science of willpower on a sound footing through experimentation, Roy F. Baumeister, and science journalist John Tierney. The book reads well and is in the style of many of the new popular science books, with a combination of hard scientific fact, anecdote, and the occasional first-person account.

The main thing I learned is that willpower is something we can control, but not by exercising more willpower. Instead, the authors focus on different areas of endeavour to show that willpower is largely a function of circumstances, physiological functioning, habits, and skills. In other words, there really IS a science of willpower, and it offers insights to improve how we function in all aspects of our lives. I was particularly interested in the authors’ discussion of ways to get more organized. They show how David Allen’s Getting Things Done approach to time and work management is so successful because he has apparently stumbled on to a series of skills that work with our human nature, rather than trying to go against it.

It is also an approach that eschews senseless moralizing, and that is a fundamental theme in the other book on willpower, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, And What You Can Do to Get More of It, by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. McGonigal teaches a continuing education course on self-control and willpower at Stanford University, and it is apparently one of their most successful courses open to the public.

There is a considerable overlap in the scientific information presented in this book as compared to the first one I’ve mentioned. However, this book is much more practical, and I would think also more interesting to the average reader. The author has structured the book to follow her course. She has included exercises to develop self-control and willpower and that have proven effective for most of her students in her course. She has also been able to include a large number of relevant examples from some of her students. This makes the information that much more interesting and shows that the reader’s self-control goals are quite attainable.

As mentioned above, the author states that willpower is definitely NOT about morality. In fact, McGonigal has a whole chapter devoted to that fact. She shows that couching things in terms of good and bad are not useful to developing self-control. In fact, they can be counter-productive as they can produce perverse results and unintended consequences. I also learned that willpower is like a muscle. It can be developed and honed over time, but you need to have the right tools to do so. This book gives much of the same information as Willpower, but the exercises are focused on skill building, not just generalities about gaining willpower or applying the scientific findings of the research. An interesting point about those exercises is that most focus on developing self-awareness. If you know the science and can then watch yourself in action, you will be able to apply the self-control techniques to achieve your willpower goals.

Overall I foundThe Willpower Instinct a better and more useful book. However,Willpower rounds out some of the scientific information and provides insight into the historical development of the field, as one of its authors was one of its founders.

Here’s some willpower advice. Exercise self-control; get both, and you won’t have any regrets.

© 2012 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

Success Principle # 2 – Maintain morale

Posted: March 6, 2012 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Crisis Leadership, Enterprise Robustness, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management, Military Lessons, Personal Development, Uncategorized
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This is very similar to one of the principles of military leadership, because it is so fundamental to any kind of undertaking. Morale is the willingness to persevere and fight in the face of obstacles, opposition, resistance, and even temporary defeat. You haven’t truly lost until you admit defeat. Therefore, morale is faith that you and your side will ultimately prevail.

Persistance, determination, faith, prevail. These are all words that are just as applicable in business or anything other undertaking as they are in war and conflict. Nothing ever works the first time you try it, or if it does, it’s often a fluke. Assumptions prove unfounded; estimations can be grossly incorrect; people in the company resist the new way of doing things; competitors imitate your initiative and fight back with their own approaches. You need strong morale, perseverance, and an unshakeable faith that you will ultimately prevail.

Many people only see the ‘overnight’ successes of a Facebook or other tech wonders. What most people fail to appreciate is all the work and consistent effort that went into that success. They see the tip of the iceberg that is the project or business being brought to successful fruition, but they don’t see the 95% of the iceberg that was all the work and sweat in the face of discouragement, opposition, mistakes, and just plain friction that had to be overcome. They see the rewards but they don’t see the morale that was needed to achieve them.

© 2012 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

Success Principle # 1 – Selection and maintenance of the aim

Posted: March 5, 2012 in Brilliant Manoeuvres, Business, Enterprise Robustness, Entrepreneurship, Exploiting Change, Leadership, Management, Military Lessons, Opportunity, Innovation and Adaptation, Personal Development, Strategy
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This is the first principle in my series discussing the applicability of the principles of war for success in business and life.

Selection and maintenance of the aim is the number one principle. In the US military it is simply known as the principle of Objective. To achieve anything of consequence, you must know what it is you wish to achieve and then persist in achieving it against obstacles, uncertainty, risk, friction, resistance, and opposition.

Selection implies that there must be a deliberate process of analysis and evaluation of options prior to deciding on an overarching objective. Maintenance implies the fact that nothing ever works the way you plan it or wish. You have to be willing to stay in the fight until you achieve your aim.

The application to military strategy is obvious. Whether at the strategic, operational, or tactical levels, you must have a single overriding objective that is communicated to everyone concerned and that drives all of the planning and action. The Western Allies during the Second World War identified the complete defeat and unconditional surrender of the Axis countries as the overarching objective of military action. That aim drove everything else, without ambiguity, and sustained them during the darkest days of the war, from 1940 to 1942.

In business, every company must have an overarching vision of what it is trying to achieve, or where it sees itself in one, three, or five years. I’m not talking about the typically vapid vision statements such as “We are a visionary company striving to achieve excellence.” I’m talking about a vision such as “We are striving to be the number one company in the field of X. Our revenues will grow to Y by the year 201X and we will be known for the outstanding quality of our products and our service.” We can see that the first vision is not really an objective, as there is nothing concrete to sink your teeth into. The second one, while only an abstract example, already shows that you need to be specific and measurable in setting the overall goals of the business. It is only with such specificity that everyone in the company can be mobilized to work in achieving the vision through the power of their collective and individual initiative and motivation.

© 2012 Richard Martin. Reproduction and quotes permitted with full and proper attribution.

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