Success – Shaun Coffey

March 12, 2022March 12, 2022

Don’t pigeonhole yourself according to a “mindset”, rather use it to understand the way you function.

According to Carol Dweck, there are two basic mindsets, fixed and growth.

These mindsets are a model for how we think, and as a model they help us to explain/understand our reality. But, like all models they are not your reality – they are useful representations but are always incomplete.

Look at the following common models of thinking

Open/Closed
Divergence/Convergence
Exploring/Exploiting
Disrupting/Capturing
Creating/Executing
Unfreeze/Freeze
Diffuse/Focused
Growth/Fixed

Eight different ways to say the same things. 16 words that can be used to describe a “mindset”. And therein lies a basic problem of these models.

A useful diagnostic tool (the model) is used as if it were the reality. You get typecast (or typecast yourself); for example, as open or closed, as an explorer or exploiter. You tick a box to say, yes that’s me.

January 2, 2021January 4, 2021

An expert model for engineers

Nine work strategies for career success.

Taking initiative: accepting responsibility above and beyond your stated job, volunteering for additional activities, and promoting new ideas.
Networking: getting direct and immediate access to coworkers with technical expertise and sharing your own knowledge with those who need it.
Self-management: regulating your own work commitments, time, performance level, and career growth.
Teamwork effectiveness: assuming joint responsibility for work activities, coordinating efforts, and accomplishing shared goals with coworkers.
Leadership: formulating, stating, and building consensus on common goals and working to accomplish them.
Followership: helping the leader accomplish the organisation’s goals and thinking for yourself rather than relying solely on managerial direction.
Perspectives: seeing your job in its larger context and taking on other viewpoints like those of the customer, manager, and work team.
Show-and-tell: presenting your ideas persuasively in written or oral form.
Organisational savvy: navigating the competing interests in an organisation, be they individual or group, to promote cooperation, address conflicts, and gets things done.

Source: Kelley R and Caplan J (1993) How Bell labs creates star performers. Harvard Business Review, July-August, pp.128ff

June 8, 2020June 9, 2020

Purpose is the game of champions, and subservience to purpose is a proven path to success

Where organisations are struggling to succeed, or survive, or just to run harmoniously, there is often an absence of purpose.

Most of these organisations have a great vision, mission and strategic plan, but lack the spark to pull it all together.

In his book, Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies, Nikos Mourkogiannis records that “…purpose – not money, not status – is what people most want from work. Make no mistake: they want compensation; some want an ego- affirming title. Even more, though, they want their lives to mean something, they want their lives to have a reason”.

You can’t find much fault with that!