Category: Human Performance
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Are you motivated by Pain or motivated by Gain?
Pain or Gain? There are two fundamental drives to human action: Avoidance of Pain Seeking of Gain. This is how we work. There are no other external causes of action. We take action when we truly believe: It will avoid a Pain, or We truly believe it will deliver a Gain. If I am not […]
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The #1 Reason I am Inefficient.
This graphic captures it all… Thanks to XKCD for the original. “I take good decisions and then I work to make them great.” It reminds me of a story about one of the founders of Tata Industrial group. He was asked “How do you take good decisions?” He paused before answering: “I don’t do anything […]
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How to Become Mentally Strong: The Practice of Resilience
What is Resilience? Resilience: the ability to stay creative and motivated in an environment of chaos and change. Personally, I faced a huge time of chaos and change in late 2008. My company was going bankrupt and my family was falling apart. It is from this time of great difficulty that I learnt most […]
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Managing Oneself
Companies today aren’t managing your career. You must be your own HR guru. That means it’s up to you to identify your place in the world and know when to change course. It’s up to you to keep yourself engaged and productive. This is the premise of Peter Drucker’s 2005 HBR article “Managing Oneself”. Peter Drucker asks […]
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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
This is a great summary video of a book that had a great impact on me back when I was 23 years old. I was working for Accenture (in those days, Andersen Consulting) and the organisation shared this book with all employees. There’s a photo there of me there on the right with my leather […]
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Teaching with Creative Indifference (or Impartiality)
Creative Indifference A good gardener creates the conditions for growth of a garden, but cannot force the flowers to grow in an exact way. The good gardener creates the conditions and accepts what arises. The bad gardener fights what arises. The bad gardener hacks and chops and fights against the natural growth of nature. The […]
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Put somebody on a treadmill and I’ll tell you how good they are at any other thing they do in life.
Reading an interview with Will Smith (he is deep and a keen observer of the human condition), I came across this statement from him: “Put somebody on a treadmill and I’ll tell you how good they are at any other thing they do in life.” Will Smith Harsh. Brutal. but… is it True? I think […]
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[Infographic] 6 Simple Steps A CEO Can Take To Improve Employee Engagement
This week I attended an Entrepreneurs Organisation learning event led by long time EO member Ridgely Goldsborough on the subject of “Know your WHY“. Here’s a picture of EO Barcelona Learning Chairman Toni Mascaro welcoming over 100 entrepreneurs to the event. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Conor Neill (@cuchullainn) Disengagement: The […]
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Become Strategically Unavailable
First, you may ask, what is “Strategic Unavailability” anyway? What is Strategic Unavailability? If you say “yes” to every request for your time, money or attention you will have none for the areas that are your own personal priority. If you want to achieve success, you must retain most of your resources and dedicate them […]
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Your Scarcest Resource
I know plenty of financial advisors who would love to spend a few hours reviewing my investments, cash position, investment goals and helping me make a realistic plan. I know how much I spent on food, travel, housing, school in the last month, year and if I did the sums I could calculate a rough […]