Education 2.0 & 3.0

During the past decade, business analytics platforms have evolved from supporting IT and finance functions to enabling business users across the enterprise. But many firms find themselves struggling to take advantage of its promise. We’ve found three main obstacles to realizing analytics’ full value, and all of them are related to people, not technology: the organization’s structure, culture, and approach to problem solving.

“I am sick to death of the ridiculous situations I have to deal with at work. The pettiness, the politics, the stupidity — it’s out of control. This kind of thing stresses me out to the max.”

Stress is a happiness killer. And life is just too short to be unhappy at work. But we hear this kind of thing all the time from leaders in industries as varied as financial services, education, pharmaceuticals, and health care. In our coaching and consulting, we’re seeing a spike in the number of leaders who used to love their jobs but now say things like, “I’m not sure it’s worth it anymore.” They’re burned out — emotionally exhausted and cynical, as a result of chronic and acute work stress.

Ever wondered what the best bosses whisper to their employees to get them motivated and glad to be working every single day? Here's your chance to find out.

Maybe you want to start a business. Maybe you want to change careers. Maybe you want to get fit, or gain a new path, or in some way take your life in a new direction.

To do that, sometimes all you need is a little push, a little nudge. A little burst of motivation and inspiration.

Here are fifty of those nudges.

Pick the one that makes your skin tingle, your heart race, your motor rev, and place it somewhere you'll see it every day: your monitor, your screen saver, your background, and let it help take you to the place you've always wanted to go.

Have you ever had a conversation and said something that you immediately regret?

It's happened to the best of us at one point or another, but that's not usually the norm for intelligent people who carefully select their words before saying them out loud.

Unfortunately, since there are so many of us who are inept in this area, I've put together 12 words and phrases that intelligent people would never say to someone else so that you can strengthen your communication skills both in and out of the office.

Do you ever stop to consider what it means to think openly? Wasn’t that your basic education at school and what your parents told you to do? Whatever happened to that?

The question is important because today, more than ever, we are urged to be creative in our jobs. If you cannot think openly, how can you be creative?

From birth our parents persistently encouraged us to think for ourselves. It was non-stop; a barrage of parenting tips that were designed to help us become independent, confident and open thinkers.

New ideas, whether it's a way to improve upon a process or something that completely goes against the grain, are what keep the business engine going. Some lead to big breakthroughs while others fall dead in the sand. But every idea, good or bad, has one common link: It required buy-in by someone other than the originator.

The history of great ideas is littered with the remains of potentially great innovations, notions and plans that never saw the light of day simply because the pitch failed to ignite a fire or set a series of actions into play. Anyone who's experienced the frustration of others just "not getting it!" knows how critical team buy-in is for the success of an idea.

The next time you bring a novel idea to your company's table, consider adopting a few of these strategies for selling it through.

When I look back on my 20s, I see two different versions of myself. The first five years were dominated by feelings of insecurity and anxiety. I was living a life I did not want, and I wasn't confident enough to stop it. Then, in the second half of my 20s, I learned to embrace my purpose and began living the life I wanted -- the life of an entrepreneur. One thing is clear: The success I've experienced while launching and growing SkyBell would not have been possible with my old mindset.

Now at age 32, I can clearly see my shift from a negative mindset to a success mindset was caused by my developing more confidence. When you feel confident, the whole world seems to belong to you. You suddenly surround yourself with other successful and confident people, and both opportunities and success come your way with ease.

Here are 10 ways you can develop the mindset shared by the most confident people.

FAST is an approach where you look to ensure that your business or project strategies have a sharp focus, clear accountabilities, utilize a simple approach and that you have transparency into both what's needed to be successful and also into your current performance.

When you have each of the FAST components optimized within your strategy, then you have a FAST Success Strategy, which will give you these five benefits which will set you well on your way to achieving success.

Years ago, I hired an extremely intelligent, Ivy League-educated professional who was highly motivated to work for our organization. He worked until 9 p.m. every night and often left a proposal or report on my desk so it would be the first thing I saw the next morning.

Each morning, I hoped for the best, but most days my reaction was a sad sigh.

This well-meaning guy just didn't have the skills to be a product manager. Little that he produced was helpful, or even accurate. I never was able to figure out why, but no matter how much support and training we gave him, his work never improved significantly.

Here's the good news: after we reluctantly let him go, he switched industries and became highly successful in a very different role.

Lately I’ve been spending more of my time and energy on freelance work because sometimes running a startup can be hard on the personal bank account. I’ve been lucky to be able to set aside time to take on that work and look for more, but it’s been a huge learning process. Balancing freelance and startup work can make life kind of crazy. And since I do remote work I’m often scheduling meetings and conversations across several time zones. I’m loving being busy though and am learning so much. One of the things I’ve learned is to make sure I take the time to have quiet, slow moments throughout my day. It helps me appreciate each day more. Here's how I do it:

I’ve been asked on a number of occasions the “secret” to harnessing mental toughness to overcome adversity. The “secret,” I tell them, isn’t a secret but a fact that they don’t want to hear because it’s simple. But simple isn’t easy. That secret is this: make a decision and go with it.

That’s it.

I remember waiting for Hell Week to begin in BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) and students asking the instructors—in a somewhat uncommon cordial setting—what the secret was to making it through five and a half days of constant, nonstop activity. Here’s what the instructors said, “The secret to making it through BUD/S, is knowing you’re going to make it through BUD/S.”

It’s belief.

You need to believe that you’re the type of person who has the skill and will to make that goal happen, and then make it happen. Don’t worry about what’s right and don’t wait for the perfect opportunity because “perfect” doesn’t exist—it’s an excuse to procrastinate.

My great-grandparents, Cleve and Zelma Carder, lost almost everything they owned during the Dust Bowl years. After losing their homestead and ranch, they packed what they could into a Conestoga Wagon and made the trek from Northern New Mexico to find work picking cotton in the fields of Oklahoma.

When my great-grandmother told me stories of those difficult times, it wasn't with bitterness or anger. She would laugh as she recalled her husband's refusal to remove her grand piano from their wagon, despite the fact that it weighed over 1000 pounds. Instead, the family would spend several hours digging the wagon free from the sand in the dried-up riverbeds that they crossed.

In the last years of her life, her strongest memories were not of her failures or disappointments but of the love and hope experienced within them.

I am grateful to her for helping me learn at an early age that we get to choose how we view our circumstances and how we let them affect our mindset.

We love talking about what millennials know. As a group that’s become the dominant force in the workforce, we applaud their smarts on tech, social media, and even the age-old practice of branding. Yes, millennials might arguably be one of the overall most intelligent generations to come around. However, that’s not to say they still don’t have a lot to learn, especially when it comes to face-to-face communication.

As the generation that grew up with communication becoming more efficient via digital, their biggest strength could also be a critical weakness. While the way they say things has become more direct, their messages sometimes lack. Why?

Because as one of the first to grow up in a digital world, they’ve been afforded a privilege not found in our day-to-day.

Who isn't tired of obsessing over their body and their food? The struggle to break free from yo-yo dieting and self-sabotage is real, and yes I know it sounds a little like an infomercial, but it's actually Sheila Vier's ethos.

After successfully exiting her first company in 2015, she decided it was time to develop a company - SheilaViers.com - to help people recognize that entrepreneurs are still human and that they have all the same issues and insecurities that are human nature.

But part of being the best CEO you can be is feeling powerful in your own skin. That's what Sheila Viers helps her clients capture. I have always tried to empower women through my agency's work, and to do that you have to address issues of health, wealth, relationships with ourselves and others, and even spirituality. It has to be a well-rounded approach to achieve stasis.

Here are Sheila's best practices to manage the tightrope walk of life as an entrepreneur.

I’m accustomed to handling clients who are at a crossroads in their lives and are looking for change—after all, I’m a career coach. So this usually involves guiding clients through some pretty heavy soul-searching to help them find the sort of truly fulfilling work that we all deserve.

This also means many of my clients are in an indecisive state at the outset—that’s to be expected. But I don’t think I’ve had a more indecisive client than Kevin. When I asked Kevin what sort of career he truly wanted to pursue, he blanked. I asked him what he enjoys doing and what he’s really good at, and he could never seem to articulate a direct answer.

Geeks—the two of us might fit the profile. Yes we have tendencies to contemplate things that probably shouldn’t be contemplated. We question. We prod. We poke…at everything. And, we’ve been known to engage in long, seemingly meaningless conversations about random things like: “Is the love of curry a genetic disposition or a socially experiential acquisition?” Or, what is the real meaning of the word “of?” That’s a valid question, right? Or, is it just geeky?

Being geeky, according to research by Imgur, is actually cool in today’s world—especially among Millennials. In fact, 60% of the 83 million Millennials consider themselves geeks compared to just 38% of GenXers and Boomers. And, the study also shows that geeks are the trendsetters and influencers (84% of geeks say people look to them for advice while only 60% of non-geeks say they get asked for advice).

This is, of course, welcome news for all of us who happen to randomly know Peter Parker’s height and weight (yes, we’re referring to the fictional character who turns into Spiderman). But, more than that, it’s also welcome news for all of us who geek-out about our own work—passionately probing to innovate, improve, dissect, and lead others to the discovery of their best selves.

For fifty or sixty years job-seekers have been taught to write their resumes in the most opaque and unhelpful way imaginable.

Job-seekers have been taught to use terse, governmental language in their resumes, so that almost every job-seeker sounds identical to every other job-seeker!

That's the worst possible approach. You are not a dry, dusty person — you are lively and creative! Why not show some of that creativity and spark in your resume?

As a small business owner, you probably have a lot to do. I know I wear a lot of hats day to day. Something that helps me manage it all is by planning ahead.

But how do you plan ahead, when you have too much to do right now? You plan to plan ahead.

As an entrepreneur your level of success ultimately boils down to your consistent ability to turn problems into profit. Starting a business is simple, but rest assured that there is no such thing as an easy business when it comes to operating day in and day out.

Get ready to use these tips below the next time the "fit hits the shan".