Inspiration For Peak Performance

The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up. There is no price for time and no marginal utility curve for it. Moreover time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever and will never come back. Time therefore is always in exceedingly short supply. Ask a support staff by 5.00pm after a day’s work what she has been doing all day and you’ll be surprised that she may not be able to articulate a quality response. Why? She never had any support schedule for the day! Few people schedule a day well and have the discipline to follow it through. If you don’t intentionally schedule yourself for a day’s work, other people’s schedules will eat up your time. If you don’t know your name, you’ll answer to any name. If you don’t know your destination, just any bus stop will look like it! However, this is not to say that we should be too rigid on our schedules at the expense of team efforts and collective ...

Getting closer to our customers is a top priority.  Ever increasing competition, a more informed and social customer base and increase in consumer sophistication has put pressure on companies to differentiate in order to attract and retain customers. I once worked in a bank where you are more likely to be fired for behaving rudely to a customer than for perpetrating cash fraud. A top range customer experience was one of the values of that organization that it was ready to sacrifice anything else to reinforce! The customer experience is growing in importance and visibility because they are increasingly becoming instrumental to driving the innovation, development and day to day operations that will win and keep our business now and for the long run. The goal of every one of us should be to move our customers (both internal and external customers) from satisfied to loyal and then from loyal to advocate customers. When we build a reputation for great customer service, we ar...

You need self confidence to win the business of customers. You need confidence to reduce your error rates. You need confidence to deliver your targets within timelines. Whatever it is you need to achieve, self-confidence is the starting point. Confidence is a key ingredient for success in the workplace. Unfortunately, sometimes it is easier to know your weaknesses than your strengths. Self confidence creates a powerful climate. Those around you can sense the invisible currents of purpose within you when you are confident because your thoughts have presence. The atmosphere you permit determines the product you produce. People with good self esteem usually have an acceptable level of confidence, which directly influences their lives positively. To find your self-confidence, ask yourself these three (3) questions: 1.       What do I do well? Make a list of your strengths. These items are not the same as the accomplishments on your resume; they are wh...

Have you ever worked with a nightmare client? You don’t know if this client hated your company in general, or simply hated you in particular, but it seemed as if you couldn’t do anything right. You dread getting telephone calls from this guy. When his name would pop up on your caller ID, you sometimes feel like throwing up before picking up the phone. Meetings are even worse. You’ll lie awake the night before trying to figure out a way to avoid them. He is absolutely unforgiving! He wants the problem fixed tomorrow and without a miracle, this is not possible. And if you fail to deliver, he will be coming after you again the following day, pitchfork in hand. At times he looks at you with disgust, picks up the phone and start calling your boss and screaming at her. Even though you may not have an entirely happy client or an entirely happy group of colleagues either, you have got to explore some options and negotiate a solution without the client feeling a need to go over your ...