Yasim's Blog

Change is hard. New Year's resolutions almost always fail. Our method is grounded in the recognition that human being are creatures of habit. Fully 95 percent of our behaviors are habitual, or occur in response to a strong external stimulus. Only 5 percent of our choices are consciously self-selected . In 1911, the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead intuited what researchers would confirm nearly a century later. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism," he wrote, "that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opp osite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." Most of us wildly overvalue our will and discipline. Ingenious research by Roy Baumeister and others has demonstrated that our self-control is a severely limited resource that gets progressively depleted by every act of conscious self-regulation. In order to make change that lasts...

How to Develop Your Leadership Pitch Ever see an executive fumble an answer to a question from a reporter, or maybe even an employee? Of course, it happens all the time. There are times when we simply may not want to answer a question, but the key reason for flubs is that we are unprepared to speak. One way to become more articulate is to prepare you in advance. A good lesson for every executive is — be prepared before you speak. Such preparation is not reserved solely for major presentations ; it also applies to impromptu messages that executives need to deliver constantly. I liken these leadership messages to elevator pitches in reference to their brevity (a short ride) but also their importance (selling a big idea). Leadership is about persuasion — convincing others of the soundness of your point of view . Writing out your thoughts is good practice and I believe that doing so is not onerous because managers regularly script their thoughts in email. Here are three tips for pre...