Why constant learners embrace the 5 hour rule

Ben Franklin's five hour rule reflects the very simple idea that over time, the smartest and most successful people are the ones who are constant and deliberate learners.  

This could easily be reflected in your organization and with your leadership team.  After all, how do you help your leaders to learn and grow?  

Underlying the answer to this question is a success strategy for life that we can all use, and increasingly must use.

Throughout Ben Franklin's adult life, he consistently invested roughly an hour per day in deliberate learning. I call this Franklin's five-hour rule: one hour a day on every weekday.

Franklin's learning time consisted of:

• Waking up early to read and write
• Setting personal growth goals (i.e., virtues list) and tracking the results
• Creating a club for "like-minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community"
• Turning his ideas into experiments
• Having morning and evening reflection questions

You can read more from this Inc magazine article  

Hope you find it valuable.......  Steve Brody 

You can't ask customers what they want!!

This statement seems like a real challenge.  We have all been told to pay attention to the customer and find out what they desire.  But according to these remarks....often the customer has trouble imagining or identifying to you what the BIG desire would be.  As stated, your role in the firm is to keep close to the customer.....watch their behavior.....implement various tests in order to find out empirically what they want.  Not easy, but it can be done.

You can't ask customers want they want

... not if your goal is to find a breakthrough. Because your customers have trouble imagining a breakthrough.

You ought to know what their problems are, what they believe, what stories they tell themselves. But it rarely pays to ask your customers to do your design work for you.

So, if you can't ask, you can assert. You can look for clues, you can treat different people differently, and you can make a leap. You can say, "assuming you're the kind of person I made this for, here's what I made."

The risk here is that many times, you'll be wrong.

But if you're not okay with that, you're never going to create a breakthrough

   Seth Godin blog  Jun 2016  

Hope you find this valuable......Steve Brody  

4 Quick Start-up Tips by Richard Branson

The CEO of Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson, has successfully moved into several new areas of business.   From music....to airlines....and more.

Here is an article from Virgin regarding turning your passion into a business.....or a new development.   The  4 tips include:

  1.  Clue up

  2.  Start a side project

  3.  Quick funding

  4.  Be brave  


You can read the full article  here

Hope you enjoy it.


Read my new book, now on Amazon.com  What Happens After the Sale


        Steve Brody  

To Change Culture......Change the Habits

We often talk about the need to change.  In our firms....in our teams...in ourselves....in our families.  But why does it continue to be so hard?

A recent article puts focus on one of the most successful change programs and maybe these lessons should be modeled in our firms.   Here are some of the key items as used by the 12 step programs:

 -  Replace old habits with new habits

-  Peer support & pressure help make a difference

-  Using a sponsor helps generate commitment

-  Create communities without hierarchy

-  Pay attention to the company you keep

-  Practice continual introspection

-  Changes in practice may represent a breakthrough

-  Focus on small wins

-  The Goal is progress not perfection


These are from a Harvard Business Review article called  "Managing Change One Day at a Time."

You can read more  here 

Hope you enjoy it.

      Steve Brody


Read my new book, now on Amazon.com  What Happens After the Sale 

7 Caustic Management Behaviors to Avoid

You have heard it before.....but maybe this is a good time to review again.  People leave your firm because of bad management not necessarily because you are a bad company.

Want to lose your best people?  Then do these 7 Bad Behaviors.
Want to keep your best people?  Then do not do these 7 Bad things.

1.  Not keeping your promises
2.  Ignoring poor performance
3.  Having irregular meetings
4.  Dismissing opinions or ideas of others
5.  Micro Managing others
6.  Display arrogance
7.  Not delegating effectively

Read more of the article  here   

Hope you find it helpful.

      Steve Brody



   Read my new book:  What Happens after the Sale   now on Amazon.com   

Preview of my new Book: What happens after the sale

This is a preview of my new Book:   What happens after the sale.....Insights about the Business & Personal Journey after the Big Event

It is a case history of one of my CEO members in Vistage.....but a story that I believe will apply to many mid-size firms in the near future.  Would love to receive your comments.

Read the brief preview  here    Hope you enjoy it

    Steve Brody

8 Things Successful Leaders Do!!

Being successful as a leader can be hard. As demands on leaders increase, there is less time to focus on making the changes you need to make to do the job successfully. It’s a significant challenge to overcome because as more is expected of you, you find you have less time for development, and yet, improving your leadership skills is more important than ever.

You have to learn on the job, make the most of your surroundings, and ask those around you for help. You have to enlist their support as you do your best to develop yourself, your people, and your teams. And, this is why I call leadership a “contact sport”.

Leadership Is a Contact Sport is a leadership development model that has worked for hundreds of thousands of people. The original study, published in 2004, included 86,000 people. We now have research from 250,000 people who confirm that this model works. It helps them become highly successful leaders.

How does it work? The Leadership Is a Contact Sport model is just eight steps: Ask, Listen, Think, Thank, Respond, Involve, Change, Follow Up. Following is a short description of each step.

1. Ask:  Ask people "How can I be a better _______ (manager, partner, team member, etc.)?
2. Listen:  Listen to their answers.
3. Think:  Think about their input.  What does it mean?
4. Thank:  Thank people for sharing this valuable feedback with you.
5. Respond:  Respond positively when receiving input.
6. Involve:  Involve the people to support your change efforts.
7. Change:  Change isn't an academic exercise.  Act on what you learn. 
8. Follow-up: Follow up regularly and stakeholders will notice the positive actions you’re taking based their input.

This simple model for leadership development works! If you want to get better, at work or at home, try it for yourself and see. And, if I can help you consider the possibility that despite all of your success to date you might have some things that you can change to be “even better”

The above is from well known Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith.  His full article can be  found here  

Hope you enjoy it......  Steve Brody