Aviv’s Blog
To Lead is to Transform
The Test For Leaders In Tough Times
What is the leadership test in tough times? To stay clear, cool and centered, and to focus on what matters most. To recognize and assimilate the situation you are in, without being overwhelmed. To free your people to engage in the most essential tasks and to help them create your organization’s future. To uphold your core values and principles, while being ready to adapt in...
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Prepare For The Future – 10 Benefits
Anticipating the future has been a major preoccupation for people from the beginning of time. Creating scenarios as a way to anticipate the future has been popularized in recent decades. We engage in developing scenarios to increase awareness about possible outcomes and to understand the potential costs, benefits and consequences of any decision or action we may take. In a business context, scenario-based planning is...
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Make Your Learning Compelling
Make your learning compelling. Make it compelling for you. You are the first listener and student of your teachings. When you listen well, the rest of the world wants to come and listen too. A great Rabi once said “we tell stories to our children to put them to sleep. We tell stories to adults to wake them up.” In our leadership seminars and retreats...
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Managing Fear
I am often asked how to overcome fear. Fear is probably the strongest, most intense of all behavioral triggers. We conjure up fears and react to them. Fears govern behavior in relationships, in career choices, in trading and investment, and in the way people express their views and feelings. There are four responses to fear: 1. Flight – fear reflex to run away 2. Fight...
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Do Not Believe The Gray Myth
That’s right. Do not believe the gray myth of the Pacific Northwest. It is not just rain and gray here year round. Here are late October shots in Woodinville by the Sammamish River. When you live amidst beauty, stop a moment to take notice. © Aviv Shahar
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Why I Disagree With Jack & Suzie Welch
In their BusinessWeek What Change Agents Are Made Of, Jack & Suzie Welch focus on four traits: power, vision, bravery, and support. The Welchway says that “…change is made by people with some sort of authority. It’s driven by managers who have a platform to advocate for a new direction and the ability to hire, promote, and reward those who embrace it. Change agents in...
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The 90/10 Rule Of Investment
The 90/10 rule shows up in a variety of ways in all fields of life. In money management and investment the 90/10 rule says that—over long periods of time (think your lifetime or 100 years) you will come out on top 90% of the time by following conventional wisdom, known also as the wisdom of the crowd. It follows that in the other 10% of...
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Love Is 100 Times Better
Why do so many relationships hit a brick wall? Too many people insist on holding onto frozen dreams instead of realizing that a relationship is a learning journey. You work at it. You work at it hard and you work at it soft and you make discovery, learning and growing central to your relationship. You listen to each other and you listen to yourself. You...
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The Greatest Tax Increase
The greatest tax increase is neither in McCain’s programs, nor in Obama’s plans. The greatest tax increase is in the breakdown of communication and civil discourse, the breakdown of trust and the ability to work through differences to find optimal solutions. Breakdown of trust and leadership is going to cost individuals, families, organizations and the economy as a whole, and the consequences will be greater...
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Blue Belt Morning Brief
To the Toronto Blue Belt Top Talent participants – Thank you for the opportunity to work together and be on this discovery journey with you. Here are my notes from our last mornings briefing: 1. You are the most important person in this world! The people you serve and work for, the people you support and help, the people to whom you bring a smile...
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