Author Archives: Mark A. Tipping

The five steps to leading a great team

Really, it couldn’t be this simple, could it? Yes, it is. Follow these five rules, and your new team will be productive, happy and support you.

OK. You’ve been through the interview process, done your due diligence, and have an understanding of why there was an opening.

Perhaps the last guy got a promotion, won the lotto, or was simply not great at the job – whichever way you’ve landed the role, you’ve been brought in to replace them. So how do you get your new staff to accept you as their new leader? In my experience, there are five simple steps you need to follow.

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10 Tips for Successful Business Networking

If only we knew everyone who needed our help … or who we could help.

Like any businessman, coach and consultant, I spend a fair amount of my time moving around the marketplace, making sure I know what’s going on, and keeping in touch with friends and colleagues. It’s just second nature, really.

I don’t go to networking events just to drum up business. I go to maintain comradeship, to learn what’s going on, to seek new ideas, and to contribute my own opinions, support and friendship to the process. When I remember that’s what I am doing, I find business pops up in the most unexpected places!

So I took a moment today to jot down my “Ten Successful Strategies For Networking”. They seem obvious, but I often forget them, so writing them down was a useful reminder to me, too!

Effective business networking is the linking together of individuals who, through trust and relationship building, become walking, talking advertisements for one another.

THE TOP TEN TIPS

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In case you didn’t already realise, I’m a Pig

You know, some people have been saying that for years! But no, I don’t mean I’m an ill-mannered, rude, uncaring bigot. I simply mean I am fully committed to achieving my goals.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the riddle ‘In a bacon and egg breakfast what’s the difference between the chicken and the pig?’ – ‘The chicken’s involved but the pig is committed’.

Are you committed, involved, or something else?

It’s been applied to all manner of things from scrum agile project management to sports. And yet it’s a concept, when expanded, which can be applied to nearly any endeavour. I was thinking about this and you know what? I felt there’s a whole farm that needs calling out.

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The Euro crisis explained by Blackadder

Baldrick: “What I want to know, Sir is, before there was a Euro there were lots of different types of money that different people used. And now there’s only one type of money that all the foreign people use.

And what I want to know is, how did we get from one state of affairs to the other state of affairs?”

Blackadder: “Baldrick. Do you mean, how did the Euro start?”

Baldrick: “Yes, Sir, if it please you, Sir.”

Blackadder: “Well, you see Balders me lad, way back in the good old 1980s there were many different countries all running their own economies and using different types of money. Oh, the messy, wild fun of it all!

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This Mother’s Day – send hope, not flowers.

The following article is from Julie Ulbricht at mamamia.com.au. It’s reproduced in full.

Send hope, not flowers by Julie Ulbricht

Last year a girl I went to school with died in childbirth. I was in  shock when I heard the news. She went into labour in a hospital in  Melbourne, there were extreme complications and she died – leaving her  baby to be raised by her devastated partner. Everyone I ran into that  knew her was dumbfounded. Who dies in childbirth in Australia?

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Quadruple Bottom Line Reporting – Would You Adopt It For Your Organisation?

QBLR – the way of the future?

By Shane Thornton – an excellent article, which I stumbled onto on eHow, and I really recommend it. It’s very thought-provoking. Everyone knows about Triple Line Reporting, but Quadruple Line?

As an organisation specifically set up to marry good business practice to philanthropic outcomes, this fascinates me, especially as it touches on the personal aspects of peope’s lives. I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who has implemented QBLR, and their experience of it, or anyone who is interested to explore it, but doesnt know where to start. Is this something The Different Company should be helping people to achieve?

Cheers, Tippo.

Quadruple bottom line reporting uses the idea of triple bottom line reporting as its foundation; it makes businesses accountable and responsible for the economic, social, environmental and spiritual effects of doing business. Although triple bottom line reporting is much more popular, the newer idea of quadruple bottom line reporting and the addition of a spiritual aspect is quickly gaining support.

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The black art of “project rescues” explained

In my career I have focussed a lot of energy and time on “project rescues” – the bigger the problem, the more hostile the stakeholders, the worse the management controls, the greater the lack of belief, the more complex it becomes to disentangle the situation, the stronger the blame game … yes, you get the picture.

I know so many Project Managers who simply bail out when they see a project going wrong, or if they’re brought in to fix a situation up that’s gone to poo then they won’t go anywhere near these situations. They don’t want to deal with someone else’s stuff up. They think they’re going to fail too. They’re scared it’s going to destroy their career. “Too much risk” they mutter, and slink off, Gollum-like, into the darkness. Continue reading

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Important people doing important stuff that no-one else could possibly understand? No, I don’t think so.

Hmmm … see the similarity here?

So, Dear Reader, what do skyscrapers, space shuttles and soothsayers have in common?

Well, mention delivering change or project management and every organisation you talk to has a horror story to tell.

Many would even have you believe that it’s some sophisticated, difficult and dangerous black art practised by highly educated and well-trained soothsayers carrying project charters, GANTT charts and detailed schedules. They’re all building skyscrapers, launching space shuttles and merging banks.

Run away! Run away now!

Yet successful project and change management is really not difficult.

In truth, delivering change is a simple and largely predictable process and successful change is the intelligent application of that process – no matter how tough or complex the project seems.

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Chanting naked in the bush… err, maybe not

Stop. Take stock. Move forward.

How long has it been since you stopped and took a couple of deep breaths, pondered your navel, and performed a stock-take on life? Can you still locate your navel? See anything below it?

I know I haven’t done such a stock-take for more than a decade and, I’m sure, probably far longer. If you take a look at my work history (http://au.linkedin.com/in/marktipping) you’ll see I’ve been self-employed, either as a contractor or a business owner, for basically the past 18 years. And that’s been a whole heap of work.

Like many, I’ve ridden the feast vs famine tides. I’ve lived a life that, on reflection, was far more in tactical mode than strategic – get the next contract, find someone to deliver an outcome, keep paying the bills, and try to steal a few days here and there to call a holiday. All the while knowing there was so much more to do and so little spare capacity to deliver it.

Heck, I planned to take six months off in 2001 after my first daughter was born, but my good mate Stocko had me at a seminar on the Gold Coast the day I left work – only to then spend the next six months, not with my new daughter, but working on creating a new business. Then factor in my life’s other noises: an acrimonious relationship with the ex; two pre-teen daughters; and, step-fatherhood. There’s a lot of sh*t going on!

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Something a little bit different…

There are times when something, somewhere, triggers some of your deepest emotions. I’ve written before of some of my life changing events. Yesterday, something as simple as a poem, read by my wife, touched me at the deepest level. So please, grab a glass of wine, sit down with the one you love, and read this out loud…

THE INVITATION

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