Depending on your priorities, the current slump in the oil price could be good news! Fuel at a little over £1.00 a litre, for example, feels pretty good.

If you are actually working in the industry, however, the positives are scarcer than hen’s teeth. The one exception is the idea of businesses being “fit at $50 (or even $40)”. This is the idea that if organisations can get their act together to be viable in a downturn, then when things pick up they will be laughing. The good news for us at Wild Thinking is that clients who want to be “fit at $50” really do need to work smarter and that’s where we can help!

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Summer is firmly upon us. You only need to look out of the window for evidence of this. OK, so dependent on your locale this maybe easier to recognise in some places rather than others.

Regardless, though, of the day’s weather as you read this, it won’t stop the annual hopes that you actually see your fair share of nice days. Allowing you to get out of the workplace and enjoy some pleasant time outdoors.

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A successful business often sees one singular person at the top, who accepts the plaudits and kudos, rarely the whole team. Though it would be incredibly unusual for that individual not to be supported by a less recognised, but equally dedicated group of individuals behind the scenes keeping the whole thing on track.

In this way tennis and indeed any top level solo sport is very similar to the companies we all work for.

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Space rocket in universe

Corporate mission and vision statements sometimes get a bad press. Sure, poor ones can be clichéd, vague and overly long. Most successful organisations in the world have them, however, so what is not to like?

The challenge is to develop a mission and vision statement that people really connect with and feel that they own. At their best, the statement should be the compass that gives a workforce direction and a clear sense of purpose. At their worst, however, they can be little more than designed-by-committee platitudes that rarely emerge from some forgotten corporate file.

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Tough times call for tough decisions, but business success is about more than just what is right for the short term.

Success comes from thinking differently, seeing opportunities further down the line and building strategies for the future. Most importantly, it is about making sure that your people are up for the challenge, motivated and always looking for the next opportunity to improve performance.

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Nothing stays static. Markets shift, customer expectations change and employee expectations evolve. If leaders want to continue to deliver high performance in the long term, then they have to be constantly checking their course and trimming their sales to stay on course. In an environment driven by short-term results, it takes discipline to step back and look at the bigger picture. The long-term rewards are well worth the effort.

We coach a number of leaders and leadership teams who want to see their organisations sustain a high level of performance. We encourage them to take time out on a regular basis, where we ask them some BIG questions. Doing this can make a huge difference to keeping things on track.

The questions aren’t complicated, but they do help leaders to focus on the really important things that they can do to help sustain performance in the long term:

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England have set off to the World Cup with a new man in the team – Dr Steve Peters, the psychiatrist who has worked so successfully with British Cycling over recent years. It is great to see that they are committed to developing their mind game every bit as much as the physical game on the pitch. With “pressure of expectation” often cited as a reason for failure in many of England’s previous World Cup campaigns, maybe this is the edge that the team need to succeed. Read More