SOAR to Success Thinking! Make having brilliant ideas easy

Posted on by Martin Murphy

Our normal day to day working life or even just life itself can leave us feeling mentally confused. When we find ourselves so caught up in the whirlwind we often cannot see the wood for the trees.
In this fast-moving mental state, our brains are very capable at using past experiences to make a decision. In these situations, we make decisions intuitively and mostly this works okay. The more successful experiences we have built up over time in a particular field, the better our decision making will be when we face similar challenges in the future. That’s why experience counts in business. READ MORE

10 Behaviours Seen in Crap Bosses!

Posted on by Martin Murphy

I was giving a talk the other day to a group of entrepreneurs and business leaders and I jokingly mentioned I was writing a book entitled:

‘Stop being a Crap Boss and Be an Inspirational Leader!’

It raised quite a chuckle around the audience, but then it stimulated some lively debate around ‘crap bosses’. I was asked all sorts of questions such as

“Can you change a crap boss and make them better?”

or

“How do you tell a crap boss they’re crap and still hold onto your job?”

What it brought home to me is the fact that there are many of us who’ve suffered at the hands of crap bosses. Perhaps it should be a problem that is recognised more.

So as a little exercise I thought I’d list ten things that crap bosses do from my own experience and those behaviours coaching clients have related to me.

Please feel free to add your own in the comments below! READ More

LEADERSHIP: Are you carrying or influencing your organisation?

Posted on by Martin Murphy

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When I ask business owners the above question, they’ll often ask me what I mean. So I qualify the question with another one. I ask them:

“Could you go on holiday for four weeks, have no contact with your team whilst you’re away and know that the organisation can still thrive?”

Mostly the answer is a resounding “NO!” READ More

 

Developing a Comprehensive Advantage in Business

Posted on by Martin Murphy

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Competitive advantage is primarily seen as the ability to produce a product or service at a lower cost – aka comparative advantage – or in a more desirable fashion -aka differential advantage. Gaining a competitive advantage can be the result of several factors but the main idea is that you’re doing something in such a way as to outperform your competitors.

In the complex world we live in, there is a shift happening. Leaders have relied on one or two types of leadership intelligence to drive business performance. But that style of operating is coming to its zenith. Now enlightened leaders realise there are other ways to gain a more comprehensive advantage. READ More:

Developing a Mountain of RESILIENCE

Posted on by Martin Murphy

stocksnap_8pz7meslnx-800x533When you’re going through some tough times you really have two challenges going on simultaneously. One is the outer world challenge you’re faced with and the other one is the battle that’s raging on the inside. You have to master your inner game if you want to overcome the challenges life throws at you.

I found this out when engaged in the selection process the Special Air Service Regiment puts potential candidates through, in order to assess their suitability. The ‘Regiment’ has some intriguing ways to test your inner game. Some are blunt instruments and some more complex. I developed a technique which helped me through the physically and mentally demanding challenges I faced. READ More:

 

 

 

 

Developing Creative Brilliance in your Team (Part 4)

Posted on by Martin Murphy

stocksnap_yy0cctbu9wStep 3 ~ Direction (continued)

“…the way you get the most out of every moment you have on the planet, whether that’s personal or for business, is by acquiring new skills and by becoming better at what you do” Tim Ferris

Working towards business freedom

A great question Tim Ferris asks himself is:

“What can I put in place so that I can go completely off the grid for 4 to 8 weeks?”

A lot of the entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with have experienced work exhaustion. It’s easy for them to fall into the trap of being the hero who solves most of the problems that arise in the business themselves. As such, the longest holiday an entrepreneur would consider going on is about two weeks because that’s just enough time for them to go away and get back in time to put all the fires out. Plus, with today’s technology, there isn’t really anywhere in the world that people can’t still work from.

This is the classic entrepreneurial myth that business consultant Michael Gerber talks about in his book, “The E-Myth Revisited”. Entrepreneurs start businesses so they can enjoy more time, money and freedom. But entrepreneurs usually experience the opposite and have less of all three.

To enjoy a 4-8 week holiday “off-grid” a leader has to put in place systems. But not only that. They’ve also got to empower the team with some tools that allows the organisation to not only survive the entrepreneurs individuating from the business psychologically, but thriving. READ More

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Developing Creative Brilliance in your Team (Part 2)

Posted on by Martin Murphy

stocksnap_u4p6d87d0tIntroduction

In the previous article in this series I explained the CREATE model. If you’re going to unleash the creative brilliance in your team, you’ll need to foster some of the conditions which allow that to happen. These were the freedom to challenge existing paradigms, developing deep relationships amongst the team, exposure to novel experiences, creating associations between disparate ideas and subjects, training and experimentation. These foundations of creativity then need a process and some tools to harvest new ideas that emanate from the team.

TREAD vs SOAR Thinking… Read More

 

Make Better Decisions with Universal Intelligence

Posted on by Martin Murphy

meetingSo imagine these scenarios. A group of Bankers are sat in an office and they are wondering how to extract more money from the public so they can all claim bigger bonuses. So they come up with what they believe is an ingenious solution. They wrap up some dodgy debts into some triple ‘A’ packaging. The rest is history, the effects of which are still reverberating around the world today.

Let’s take another meeting. A group of corporate leaders thinly disguised as politicians say to themselves:

“Let’s start a war in the Middle East, using a recent terrorist attack to unite public opinion, because we’re bound to win quickly and we’ll get all the contracts to rebuild the place and make gazillions.”

We all know how that’s still playing out. READ More:…

Overcoming the Leader Wall

Posted on by Martin Murphy

 

leader wallWatching the Olympics, I’m reminded of the fact I should go out and do more exercise.  At the moment I resemble the couch potato character ‘Denis’ played by Simon Pegg, in the movie ‘Run Fatboy Run’. In the movie Denis attempts to prove to the girl he jilted at the alter, that he can transform into somebody worthy of her attention again, by running in the London marathon.

There is a great scene in which, after many exhausting miles shuffling along the dark streets of London, Denis suddenly hits a brick wall. In his delirious state Denis can’t quite understand what the wall is. The wall symbolises the marathon runner’s wall or ‘the bonk’. It’s a stage when the glycogen stores in the liver and muscles are depleted and the runner literally runs out of energy.  To continue the runner must rely on other types of physical and mental processes to continue because the mind and body unanimously want to quit.

I think this is a great metaphor for entrepreneurs who get to a certain stage in their business life cycle….. READ More

Who’s Got the POWER?

Posted on by Martin Murphy

 

So post Brexit?POWER

There is a lot of talk in the media about how the world will be moving forward. Dependent on who owns the media outlet and their political leanings, really depends on how they portray the future. But mostly they’re all about making it seem dramatic. They choose a side, polarize opinions and then terrorise people for their attention and money.

But a debilitating aspect of living in a society defined by media and politics, is… Read more: