“The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.
Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late. Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing it’s going to be here forever. It won’t.”

If you don’t understand this you will have a “KODAK – Moment” and wake up one morning and find that the new thing that was not nearly as good as your old thing has now stolen your business.

The coaching gurus all seem to agree. To reach your goal you need to declare it and abracadabra you are already halfway there.

Well, it turns out that they could be wrong.

According to research performed by a group of American scientists last year and document by Daniel Pink there is a significant difference in performance between 2 groups performing the same task and where one group uses what the scientists called declarative self talk ( I can do it) and the other group uses interrogative self talk (Can I do it?).
The self questioning group performs a lot better than the self affirming group.

In Denmark we had an interesting example of this recently.
As the Danish handball team departed for the European Championships they self confidently declared that they were going for gold. They subsequently lost their first few games and in no way looked as if they were going to get anywhere near the finals. The fans at home of course were furious and the players and trainer were all accused of hubris. Subsequently the declarations from the trainer and players took a subtle shift from ”we can do it” to some serious self questioning around ”can we do it?” and ”what would it take to do it?” – and – abracadabra, they brought home the gold medals to everybody’s surprise – including their own I guess.

The research seems to indicate that people who ask questions somehow come from a more humble place and that in turn creates a space to come up with a deeper solution.

For those of us who have been working with action learning for years that does not come as a big surprise….

Inspired by the principles developed in the “Service Profit Chain”, Mike Hohnen takes you through each of the steps needed to create an outstanding service business.

You will find it here on Amazon

Best!

We live in a world of abundance – there is plenty of choice everywhere. And since 2008 we have experienced significant drops in demand as consumers became more careful. The result is a widening gap between supply and demand in virtually any category you can imagine.
When that happens, many companies have a knee-jerk reaction, and the recipe is more or less always the same: initiate rigorous cost-cutting programs, reduce staff and/or services, offer discounts in many forms, and increase advertising aggressively.
This, however, is the equivalent of trying to steer and brake as your car begins to skid on black ice while going through a sharp curve.
As you hit that declining demand curve, you need to perform what at first seems like a counterintuitive move: hold your price, increase your services, improve your quality, and narrow your focus in the market.
In this book, you will not only understand why but also see how you can do that.

One that struck me in particular was the story of when Jobs returned to Apple after his years of involuntary exile. At that point in time Apple was on the ropes and the market was rapidly losing faith.

Jobs convened a product review meeting – Apple at that time had 10–15 different versions of the Mac on the market and even more in the pipeline. Jobs went to the whiteboard and drew a 2 x 2 matrix. On the one side he wrote home/professional on the other he wrote desktop/laptop. Jobs then announced: That is it – four products. A laptop for professional or home use and a desktop for professional or home use. Everything else is as from now abandoned/discontinued.

The lesson for us all of course is: focus. Decide what it is you want to do and do it well.

Trying to be all things to all people invariably results in being nothing to anybody.

What particularly caught my attention was this:

“S+B: In a talk at the ALIA Institute last summer, you said that the only leaders who succeed are those who have some kind of personal spiritual discipline.
WHEATLEY: Yes, I’m convinced of this. By discipline, I don’t mean meaningless, repetitive, boring practice. That disables people. Nor do I mean religious practice per se. I mean some regular activity that leads you to reflect on your struggles and challenges in a larger context. For one of my friends, Alcoholics Anonymous serves that role. For others, it can be prayer, meditation, or time in nature. I’m not sure about running or other physical exercise, because I think a practice has to connect you to the rest of life — to take you out of the false perception that you are the center of the universe.
Without that discipline, I don’t see how leaders can maintain their integrity and focus. The prevailing mass culture has schooled a lot of people to follow their passion, find their calling in life, and do what they love. Then they encounter setbacks, failures, disappointments, and very subtle impediments — for instance, their loved ones say, “Why are you working so hard here?” Many people quit. That’s what’s essential about discipline. You do it day after day, even when it’s boring, because you believe ultimately it will lead to a good outcome. The fruit of all this effort becomes apparent only after a long time when it seems not to be going anywhere. Work can begin with passion, but it’s only through discipline that people can persevere.
Brain research is also clear on why we need quiet time, especially when under stress. This spring, I went on a long, solo retreat. I didn’t interact with anyone except my teacher. I witnessed my own mental capacities coming back in full flower. I regained great powers of memory and concentration. I could understand complex ancient texts. I was so mentally alive. Now that I’ve returned to my overly distracted life, I am back to old ways; I’ll walk across a room and not remember what I went looking for. But now I know that my memory loss isn’t caused by aging or deterioration. The cause is distraction, and working in an anxious world. I can regain my mental capacities if I regularly take the time to slow down and focus.”

Read the full interview here

We don’t yet know what is next – but we do know it will be different. One thing you can be sure of is that in the next 5 years you will see more innovation than you have experienced the past 15 years – what will that mean for your business?

Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey’s The Ultimate Question 2.0 is a follow-up to the bestselling book that first helped businesses understand their Net Promoter Score. One question — would you recommend us to a friend? — offered businesses a vital metric that has since been adopted widely by organizations, including GE. Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader spoke with Markey about what NPS is, how companies can increase the number of people who promote them and why it is now a system and not just a score.