Votre avantage compétitif en 2012

Vous avezrenouvelé votre site Web, vous bloguez régulièrement et votre page Facebook aplusieurs « j’aime ».  Vousavez lu tous les revues de succès et de gestion, vous avez une copie des plusrécents livres de stratégie en affaires sur votre table de nuit, et vous avezpassé plusieurs heures à écouter des webinars et à participer à des conférenceset événements de réseautage.

Alors, vousavez l’avantage compétitif, oui?  NON!  Parce que tous vos concurrents ont faitexactement la même chose.  Le Marketing2.0 et l’économie globale ont égalisé le terrain de jeu – les « top »joueurs dans chaque industrie ont l’air tous pareil.  Et l’année 2012 n’apportera rien de nouveau,sauf si vous pensez que créer un compte Google+ trois jours avant votre plusimportant concurrent va faire la différence.

Qu’est-ceque vous pourrez possiblement faire en 2012 qui fera la différence?  Qu’est-ce que vous avez que vos concurrents n’ontpas, et que vous pourrez utiliser pour créer un avantage compétitif?    Pour commencer,vous avec… vous.  Et vous avez vospartenaires, vos employés et vos sous-traitants.

Mais, vous aveztiré la dernière once de productivité de votre équipe déjà épuisée.  Tous vos vendeurs ont déjà participé dans lameilleure des formations de ventes et vos processus de service à la clientèleviennent d’être changés à cause de plusieurs plaintes de vos clients.  Votre équipe de marketing semble avoir perdusa créativité, votre chef de finance essaie tout simplement de vous maintenir àflot durant cette récession sans fin et les RH ont de la difficulté à trouverassez de personnes qualifiées pour remplir les quelques postes que vous avezapprouvés.

Laissez-moivous donner quelques statistiques qui pourraient vous faire penser différemmentdes choses :

• Les vendeurs optimistes vendent 56% de plus que leur homologues pessimistes;
• Les employés heureux prennent, en moyenne, 15 jours de congé de maladie de moins que leurs collègues malheureux;
• 360 $ milliards sont perdus chaque année aux É-U dû à la baisse de productivité cause par des mauvaises relations entre les employés et leur superviseur;
• La foi d’un employé dans sa capacité est un plus important facteur prédictif de sa performance en milieu de travail que son niveau de compétence ou de formation;
• Une étude chez KPMG démontre que la formation en psychologie positive était la cause d’une augmentation en satisfaction de vie, un des plus importants facteurs prédictifs de la productivité et la performance en milieu de travail.

C’est çaqui sera votre avantage compétitif en 2012 – l’avantage humain.  L’investissement dans le développement d’une main-d’œuvreheureuse (y inclus vous!) peut vous donner un important avantage sur vosconcurrents.  Pendent qu’ils se grattentla tête, essayant de continuer à faire plus avec moins, vous serez un employeurrecherché, qui jouit d’une équipe heureuse, optimiste, créative et innovatricequi contribue à vos résultats financiers.

Vous voulezsavoir comment?  Revenez demain pour ladeuxième partie de ce blogue : comment incorporer les concepts clés de lapsychologie positive dans votre organisation.

Your Competitive Edge in 2012

You’ve updated your aging website, you blog regularly andyour Facebook fan page has lots of followers.  You’ve read every success and management magazine,you have a copy of the most trendy business strategy books on your nightstand, andyou spent several hours listening to webinars and attending conferences andnetworking events.

So, you’ve got the competitive edge, right?  Wrong, because your competitors have all donethe exact same thing.  Marketing 2.0 and theglobal economy have evened out the playing field – the leading players in anyindustry essentially all look alike. 2012 doesn’t promise to bring anything new, unless you think thatcreating a Google+ account three days before your closest competitor does willtruly make a difference.

What could you possibly do in 2012 that will make adifference?  What do you have that yourcompetitors don’t, that you can use to create a competitive edge?  Well, to start with, you have you.  And you have your partners, employees andcontractors.

But, you’ve squeezed every ounce of productivity out of yourexhausted workforce.  All yoursalespeople have attended the best sales training and your customer servicedepartment just underwent an overhaul due to too many customer complaints.  Your marketing department seems to have losttheir creativity, your finance group is just trying to keep your corporate headabove water in this endless recession, and HR is having a hard time findingenough qualified people to fill the few job openings you’ve dared toapprove.

Let me give you a few statistics that might make you think differentlyabout things:

• Optimistic salespeople outsell their pessimistic counterparts by 56%;
• Happy employees take, on average, 15 less sick days per year than their unhappy colleagues;
• $360B is lost each year in the U.S. due to reduced productivity caused by poor relationships between employees and their supervisors;
• An employee’s belief in his or her ability is a stronger predictor of job performance than his or her actual level of skill or training;
• A study at KPMG reported that positive psychology training was responsible for improving life satisfaction, one of the most crucial predictors of productivity and performance in the workplace.

This will be your competitive edge in 2012 – the human edge.  Investing in developing a happy workforce(and this includes you) can provide you with a huge edge over yourcompetitors.  While they are scratchingtheir heads, trying to figure out how to continue doing more with less, youwill become an employer of choice, reaping the many benefits of a happy,optimistic, creative, and innovative team of contributors to your bottom line.

Want to know how? Check in tomorrow for part two of this blog: how to incorporate the keyconcepts of positive psychology into your organization.

Welcome / Bienvenue !

This is just a beginning of something great — stay tuned!

My Year in the Master Key System — Part Three

There’s a reason why it takes time to absorbthe Master Key System – we’re not always ready to fully understand a particularmessage the first time it is presented to us. I’m reminded of the quote by Rainer Maria Rilke: “Do not now look forthe answers.  They cannot now be given toyou because you could not live them.”  (Asan aside, I truly recommend that you read Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” ifyou haven’t yet!)

Part Three of the Master Key System talksfurther about how the conscious and subconscious systems relate.  The subconscious mind receives direction fromthe conscious mind and simply does what it is told.  It links to the Universal Mind when it needssomething, which is the mechanism by which we are able to create what we trulywant.  The power of the subconsciouscomes from the energy it radiates – the more energy, the more effectively itreaches out to the Universal mind and the more rapidly we can create what wewant.  So you want to radiate as muchpositive energy as possible – that means amplifying every request with strongpositive emotion and passion.  It alsomeans that we can’t let anything get in the way of this radiation.

This brings me to the main point of this blog –letting things get in the way.  This is probablythe hardest part of the journey for me. I believe what I read from an intellectual standpoint, but every time Ire-read the material, I realize that I really don’t get it yet.  I guess that up until now, I haven’t beenable to “live the answers”.  Part Threetells us that fear is the biggest resistance against the positive requests madeby our subconscious.  And fear issomething I live every day, and I suspect that many of you reading this mightdare to agree.  We want greatness, butfear living up to it.  We want success,but fear making a fool of ourselves.  Wewant to be a model for others, but fear other people’s reactions andtreatment.  We want abundance, but fearthe lack of abundance that we see around us.

In parallel to studying The Master Key System,I’m also reading other success classics, such as The Science of Getting Rich,by Wallace D. Wattles.  Wattles says: “Tothink according to appearance is easy; to think truth regardless of appearancesis laborious, and requires the expenditure of more power than any other workman is called upon to perform.”  Wattlesis saying that it is easy to think that things will always be what we seearound us – we will always have what we have, we will always be what we are, wewill always do what we do.  But theMaster Key System says that we don’t have to. With focused study and concentration, we can create so much more andtransform our lives and ourselves into exactly what we want!

A fun way to convince ourselves that we canactually do this is to try it out.  Thinkof one thing that you want to create, something immediate, not too complicated,but different enough from what you are living to convince you that you actuallycreated it.  Sometimes I do this byfinding a parking spot or getting someone to call me.  What small wins do you want to create thisweek to convince yourself that you can create anything you truly want?

My Year in the Master Key System – Part Two

As I movefurther into my study of the Master Key System by Charles Haanel, I begin tounderstand how I could actually start controlling the process ofcreating in the outside world.

Part Two ofthe Master Key System starts by explaining that we have a conscious andsubconscious mind.  The conscious minddeals with and reacts to the outside world. It sends messages to the subconscious mind, which quickly andeffectively finds a way to provide what the conscious mind wants.

What weoften don’t realize is that we can choose what we react to and how wereact.  Have you ever noticed that somedays things come at you so quickly that you seem to respond as if you were amachine, processing each thing as it comes and reacting automatically.  This saves energy and allows our consciousmind to focus on the most important things. I actually feel good on days like this, because I think I’m beingefficient and dealing with everything effectively.  Except that my automatic reactions are not alwaysconducive to giving me what I truly want. I say yes when I should really be saying no to a project that I knowwon’t bring me any benefit.  I respondemotionally when I should realize that I am too tired to respond rationally to myspouse’s three teenagers.  I create acrisis when a few deep breaths might give me the chance to remember a solution Ihave already applied to a recurring problem.

Theconscious mind has the ability to discriminate, choose and reason.  This means that we can choose what we send tothe subconscious mind, the instructions on which it will operate.  If we send “panic, this is a disaster!”, thesubconscious very efficiently ensures that a disaster occurs so that it canpanic according to our wishes.  If wesend “find a solution to this before it becomes a disaster”, the subconsciouswill do just that: find a way for a solution to present itself to us so that weavert the disaster.

Ok, so allI have to do is send positive messages to my subconscious and I’ll geteverything I want, right?  Well, it’s notquite that simple.  First of all, we haveto learn to discipline our conscious mind to send only positive messages.  In the Master Key System, Charles Haaneltakes us through a series of exercises to start this discipline process.  In Part One, he tells us to practice beingphysically still.  And in Part Two, westart practicing being mentally still.  Aform of meditation, we are asked to learn how to inhibit all thought and becomequiet inside.  Quite a challenge!

But thereis a second challenge to sending positive messages to the subconscious.  There is a filter between the conscious andsubconscious minds.  This filter is madeup of all the programming we have accumulated through years of being told whatto do and all the internal messages we tell ourselves.  We can send positive messages about becomingfinancially secure, but if we have internal programming that says “rich peopleare snobs and I don’t want to be a snob”, our programming will sabotage thepositive message before it reaches the subconscious.

So I havetwo challenges: discipline my mind and dissolve all the negative programmingthat sits within the filter between my conscious and subconscious minds.  It’s certainly plenty of work for the nexttwo weeks!