Aviv’s Blog

Model Implementation – Four Phases

If your passion is to help leaders realize their brilliance, consulting is a great profession. What’s the difference between a subject matter expert and a process expert? The first needs to impress the client with what they know. The second needs to help the client impress themselves with their own latent knowledge by helping the client access and realize it. The fun part of getting to do and be in the second role is that you get to work with brilliant people – the Olympic champions of their field. Imagine getting to sit in on Lance Armstrong’s bike or run in Usain Bolt’s shoes? I get to experience that kind of exhilaration.

We are currently collaborating with Matt Wagner, Director of Strategy and Planning for Hewlett-Packard and his team to evaluate plausible futures as the executive team determines optimal strategic investments options. The strategy team developed a new model to guide this process. Here is an insight provoked by the process:

The implementation of a new model – for evaluation of risk, for decision making or for anything else - needs to go through four stages.

First, it needs to make sense - we need to understand it.
Second, it needs to become credible - we need to believe it.
Third, it needs to be tried and played with – we need to engage in it.
Fourth, it needs to be applied – we need to put it to practice, to use it in real time and to have it guide our decisions and the way we do business

Through the process, the model is tested, refined, improved and optimized.

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.14.2008 :: Consultant Journal :: Comment Now »

Where Do You Start – Life Strategies

Here are three ways to begin—three starting strategies.
1. Fly to the easiest spot
2. Face the toughest part head-on
3. Chunk the whale into parts

The first strategy is best applied when you face a new domain or task that may seem difficult at first. This strategy is useful in the following cases:
1. Crossword puzzles
2. Exams
3. Networking a room full of strangers
4. A visit to a new country
5. Tidying up a messy house
The first strategy is to find the easiest entry or starting point. Identify the least challenging entry point and quickly move towards it. It will help you warm up and relax into doing the rest. As you warm up, you begin to flow. New doors open up once you begin to engage. Next steps reveal themselves as you ease into action. The system’s intelligence begins to surrender to you and guide your next moves. The wisdom of this strategy is that it doesn’t matter where you begin, as long as you do.

The second strategy is to address the greatest challenge head-on. You apply this strategy when dealing with matters of life and death, when it is critical to address the greatest threat and danger without delay. This works when the most urgent relates to the most important and you must face it head-on. There are other situations, where beginning with the toughest challenge is the way to go, even if a time factor is not involved. Resolving a conflict is an example. The toughest thing in the world may be to get the two parties involved together in the same room. And that is exactly what you need to do. Faced with a communication breakdown, you begin at the toughest point.

For example, you could say: “look, I know you hate me, you might even want to kill me but we’ve got to be able to talk.” It can be difficult or scary to say but you present the other person with a choice: they can say: “I don’t hate you at all.” Or they can say: “It’s true; I hate you for what you’ve done” or they may say, “Don’t be ridiculous, I would not dream of hurting you in a million years.” Once you have said the worst, the toughest thing that can be said, it is not so difficult anymore. Plus, you are now talking. When two people are talking and listening to each other, hate and anger begin to melt.

The third strategy is used for large and complex projects where you can’t just begin right away because it is simply impossible to swallow the whole whale in one go or you can’t even see how big the whale is. Your approach then is to develop a plan, in which the big project is broken down into smaller projects and these are then broken out into more manageable tasks that can be planned as a series of activities on a time line. This approach is used for designing and building a house, for a large engineering project like building a bridge or an airplane and you may choose this approach for writing a book. If you need to plant a forest of trees, plant them one tree at a time.

The criterion to choosing your starting strategy is to find the point of greatest leverage. In certain situations the greatest leverage is the third strategy: Plan your work and then work your plan. In others, the greatest leverage is in addressing the toughest issue and facing head-on the biggest threat. And in some circumstances, your best leverage is the first strategy of finding the easiest entry point.
Reflect on what you have recently started. What strategy did you employ? Share with us your starting strategies and successes and what worked well for you.

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.09.2008 :: Entrepreneur, Strategy :: Comment Now »

Are You Generating Value?

In good times and in tough times, the surest and safest tactic is to become the best value generator you can be.

Here are ten things you can do to generate and bring great value to your stakeholders.

Be clear about the most important - the vital things.
Identify the key people you serve.
Learn their concerns, needs and issues.
Don’t let not knowing inhibit you – ask questions to better understand until you feel you do understand.
Develop versatility in your communication. Over-communicate.
Practice situational awareness – What makes the people around you excel? What are their data-processing preferences? What are their decision-making styles? What will offer the best help?
Think and reason for yourself. Develop and express a viewpoint.
Take initiatives. Stake a position. You learn more and are more engaged once you have staked out a position. You learn most by helping others.
Seek feedback. Never take criticism or rejection personally. Continue to improve and optimize.
Find a mentor or a coach.

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.06.2008 :: Entrepreneur, Personal Growth, Tough Times :: Comment Now »

Your Worst Enemy

Your worst enemy is thinking that you don’t matter, that there is nothing you can do that makes a difference. This thought shuts off your mind and suffocates your soul. Thinking your life doesn’t have meaning or that you don’t mean anything is when something begins to die in you. Here is the truth. Everything you do matters. Everything you cause to happen matters. Everything you are matters. Yes, you matter!
© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.05.2008 :: Know Thyself, Personal Growth :: Comment Now »

Responding To Crises - The Three Phases

A response to a crisis follows three phases:
Phase 1: Looking backward – this begins with denial and continues into argument, anger and bargaining.

Phase 2: Looking lost – when anger and bargaining with what was and is no more has been used up, it gives way to confusion. The reference that was used as an anchor is no longer there, and there isn’t a new point of reference yet. Confusion leads to feeling and looking lost which gradually may lead to surrender.

Phase 3: Looking forward – If the second phase has led to surrender it opens a way up into a third phase. From surrender and acceptance there is a shift toward looking forward, to identifying new opportunities and to adaptive emergence.

Some never go past the first phase. Some stay at the second phase for far too long. Resilience is being able to metabolize from phase one through two and quickly move into the third phase.

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.03.2008 :: Innovation, Organizational Development, Personal Growth, Reflections, Tough Times :: Comment Now »

The KEY: Your 2009 Strategy

This KEY gets you started on your strategic planning for 2009. Although we are in the midst of the greatest financial crisis in a century, we can confidently say that a brighter future is ahead of us. Why? Because on the other side of what may be a difficult and challenging phase are new and amazing developments, brilliant innovations and extraordinary opportunities. The seeds of these opportunities are being sown right now, amidst the destruction. Soon they will begin to blossom.

Now, more than ever, you must be reflective and strategic. Agility and speed, poise and clarity of purpose are just a few of the things you have to focus on as a leader. To help you make the next year the best it can be, explore the 10 areas below.

For you to gain the benefits of this, you must allow it time and space. Make a commitment to engage in this strategy workout. You might need a 90 minute concentrated session; or, you may prefer to break it up into two sessions or a series of sessions. Ideally, plan to have this workout in the next 10 days. Do not wait for December. Block the time out on your calendar now.

Click here to find 10 exploration areas to help you develop your next-year strategy.

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.01.2008 :: The Key :: Comment Now »

The Test For Leaders In Tough Times

What is the leadership test in tough times?

To stay clear, cool and centered, and to focus on what matters most.
To recognize and assimilate the situation you are in, without being overwhelmed.
To free your people to engage in the most essential tasks and to help them create your organization’s future.
To uphold your core values and principles, while being ready to adapt in a shape-shifting situation.
To resist the downward spiral of diminishing returns and defeat.
To identify and frame opportunities amid fear and uncertainty.
To stay open minded and at the same time execute your strategy.
To invest in creativity and innovation.
To build confidence and trust.
To create a vision that rallies all stake holders

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.27.2008 :: Leadership, Tough Times :: 1 Comment »

Prepare For The Future – 10 Benefits

Anticipating the future has been a major preoccupation for people from the beginning of time. Creating scenarios as a way to anticipate the future has been popularized in recent decades. We engage in developing scenarios to increase awareness about possible outcomes and to understand the potential costs, benefits and consequences of any decision or action we may take.

In a business context, scenario-based planning is a creative, open-ended exploration of patterns that might emerge in your field. In our Future Scenarios Workshop we help executives anticipate and prepare for the future by exercising their ability to think about opportunities and challenges in context of what may happen in the next month, the next year, or in the longer term. It is a discovery process to help you evaluate uncertainties, triggers and the important forces that have the power to affect the future.

The value and benefits of developing your future scenarios for your organization are multiple:

1. You increase awareness to the range of plausible futures.
2. You challenge your assumptions.
3. You prepare and rehearse responses to specific scenarios.
4. You develop a framework for continued environmental scanning.
5. You create future options for your organization.
6. You identify specific decision points and triggers.
7. You cultivate in-depth understanding and insight about the inter-relationships of active forces in your eco-system.
8. You create a context with which to monitor and evaluate change.
9. You develop analytical tools to support strategic decisions.
10. You engage in a creative process that unleashes and forwards innovation.

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.27.2008 :: Future, Strategy :: Comment Now »

Make Your Learning Compelling

Make your learning compelling. Make it compelling for you. You are the first listener and student of your teachings. When you listen well, the rest of the world wants to come and listen too.

A great Rabi once said “we tell stories to our children to put them to sleep. We tell stories to adults to wake them up.” In our leadership seminars and retreats we often practice the “From you I have learned” exercise. Each participant tells a story about a person that has had a formative impression on them. When they finish telling the story they end with saying – and so from (this person) I have learned about courage/ how to say no / how to pick myself up and have another go / how to forgive and let go, and so on. People tell stories about a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a manager or a friend. It’s a powerful exercise because people learn to distill and articulate a specific learning from their experience. They learn even more from each other’s stories. As we work through this life-centering-stories exercise, people are surprised to see the value that lives inside the significant stories of their lives. They find new wisdom is available to them when they learn to reframe their experiences and bring them up to date and harvest a new meaning.

Make the learning interesting, inspiring, compelling. This is how you forward your experience into further development and growth. The radium is always buried deep in the pitchblende. Charisma joins you when you process enough pitchblende to find the radium inside you.

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.24.2008 :: Listening, Personal Growth, Storytelling :: Comment Now »

Managing Fear

I am often asked how to overcome fear. Fear is probably the strongest, most intense of all behavioral triggers. We conjure up fears and react to them. Fears govern behavior in relationships, in career choices, in trading and investment, and in the way people express their views and feelings.

There are four responses to fear:
1. Flight – fear reflex to run away
2. Fight – defense mechanism
3. Fright (Freeze) – fear reflex to stay frozen
4. Frame – Manage the fear reflex in context and make a calculated appraisal of options.

The first three have served humans since the beginning of time. They are wired into the reptilian brain and instinct. All creatures large and small have intrinsic knowledge to run away when faced by a stronger slower opponent. If immediate danger is posed, some of us will fight our way to safety. In other situations, both humans and animals are known to freeze either as a defense mechanism so as not to be seen, or out of inability to mobilize to the next action. These reactions can be very useful in situations of physical danger. However, many of the fears we face as urban dwellers are quite different, where ancient hard-wired reptilian responses are not suitable or helpful.

The fourth response of framing your options and evaluating these inside a larger context involves later evolution of brain function and a different stratum of consciousness. Engaging higher brain function and levels of consciousness is at the center of personal growth and development. You started to practice overriding reactive circuitries at the age of four or five. Managing fear more effectively by framing options, evaluating pros and cons and making choices can be learned and practiced.

This fourth response is based in recognizing that you have a fundamental choice; that you can choose between:
1. Using fears to make you succeed
2. Allowing fears to hold you back

Here are 21 fears that govern people’s behavior, participation and response:

1. Fear of losing a position
2. Fear of losing social standing
3. Fear of losing income
4. Fear of losing another person’s positive view of you
5. Fear of losing your own positive self image
6. Fear of losing love
7. Fear of losing security
8. Fear of failure
9. Fear of criticism
10. Fear of rejection
11. Fear of humiliation
12. Fear of embarrassment
13. Fear of being left out
14. Fear of change and it’s consequences
15. Fear of being wrong
16. Fear of being caught out
17. Fear of being alone
18. Fear of pain
19. Fear of finding emptiness inside
20. Fear of death
21. Fear of fear

Then there are also:
22. Fear of taking full responsibility and having no excuses
23. Fear of success
24. Fear of realizing your true power

What can you do in the face of fear to bypass the flight/ fight/ fright reflex and frame a different response?
1. Ask: “what is the worst thing that can happen?” By framing it clearly in written or spoken words that are outside of you, it is no longer invisible or unspoken. The unspoken and the invisible often have a greater gripping power than the things that are seen and said.

2. Frame the fear in context; ask:
A. What is the best case scenario?
B. What are the probabilities of the worst and the best case?
C. What are likely scenarios in the middle?
D. What options do you have?
E. What are the possible risks and rewards in each option?

3. Find the greater fear that can keep you succeeding:
A. Fear of not realizing your potential
B. Fear of not living fully
C. Fear of forgetting what matters most
D. Fear of getting separated from your calling and purpose
E. Fear of not rising to your opportunities.

4. Make a wise decision. Take action.

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.20.2008 :: Personal Growth :: 1 Comment »

Model Implementation – Four Phases

Where Do You Start – Life Strategies

Are You Generating Value?

Your Worst Enemy

Responding To Crises - The Three Phases

The KEY: Your 2009 Strategy

The Test For Leaders In Tough Times

Prepare For The Future – 10 Benefits

Make Your Learning Compelling

Managing Fear

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