All those who have been working through the Blueprint for an Exciting Adventure will be in different places right now. A few of you will likely be flying along. Having landed today, got in touch with tomorrow, you will have come up with a clear strategy, plans and be running fast by now. If you are one of these two or three individuals who are flying, skip to the bottom of this article for the final stretch target. Some of you will have made good progress in ...

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One of the surprising shortcuts to influence is to construct or articulate what you want to happen in terms that relate to a powerful person and how they believe they are powerful. If you can show them that by saying yes to you, they will become more powerful, aka more influential – then you are on to a winner. Provided you have credibility and you can deliver. Now some might say, "Well shouldn't you be working on making yourself more powerful?" Read More

I don't know about you, but one of the problems that I quite often find myself facing, is not being sure what to do for the best. There's so many complexities, so many different permutations, I'm sure you'll agree, it's very easy to get lost, particularly in nebulous, soft, subjective decision areas. Read More

If you’ve got this far, my job now is to push you on to the next step because most people end up continuing to ruminate over all their ideas without landing a concrete decision about what they are going to shoot for. True, you may not yet be at the stage that you can make a decision because you have more research to do. That’s okay but, set yourself a firm deadline by which time you will have completed pulling all the information together, so you can decide.

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At one point or another, if you have built your career on opportunities that just happened along – handy coincidences, good fortune – at some point they'll stop. They won't come along any more. You'll be regarded as being over the hill, out of touch, but you will not notice until it's far too late. Read More

Now we get to the part where you can start to play. Let your imagination run riot. Remind yourself of the things that give you the most stimulation, excitement and enjoyment (at work). It is also the time when you will begin to realise where you...

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No opponents. Go find them. Seriously! When I am showing people how to use my stakeholder mapping tool, one of the things I alert them to is the problem of having no critics or opponents. If you look at the four boxes, we're talking about the dimensions of agreement and of relationship. The opponents or critics sit in the good relationship disagreeing quadrant. Read More

Without doubt, the most important stakeholder that you have whenever it comes to influence – is you. Think about it. When you're completing your stakeholder map you map out all of the powerful people, all of the people that can have an impact. But, how often you put yourself on there? Read More

As you will see in a moment, this part of the Blueprint for an Exciting Adventure at Work is core. Changes you make here will, in time, be seen as the turning point for you – because it concerns the way you are relating to your work, responding to it, and starting to aspire to bigger and better things. Which means it is worth investing some time in studying it carefully and...

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We all make mistakes. I myself regularly make mistakes. When you do, you kick yourself, you beat yourself up, but hopefully you learn from them as well. And, I'm sure you're in the same boat. It doesn't matter how much we know or how little we know. We are all human and prone to making mistakes. When it comes to influence, there is one mistake that I make and I see others making time and time and time again. Maybe it's about time we started to root this out. Read More