Google searches for the keyword “downturn” have quintupled since 2009.

This is no surprise. In business, the uncertainty of global finances has led to a world of tight budgets.

Two of the biggest costs, the biggest budget chunks, are always: payroll + marketing.

So, two of the biggest returns need to be:
1. return on payroll, and
2. return on marketing.

To survive harsh economic conditions and grow their business, senior management will be focusing on payroll optimisation and marketing optimisation.

In my own consulting I am focusing my attention on helping my clients with tight budgets to become leaders of change:
1. to create more profit out of their monthly payroll expense, and
2. to harvest more sales revenues from their marketing investment.

My mentor, Professor George Gallup, was acknowledged worldwide as one of the greatest leaders of change. George was also a wonderful American gentleman and a very nice man. He was 84 when he died at his place in Switzerland in 1984.

He was the inventor of the Gallup Poll at Princeton and the designer of market research. He was the first to map the Human Meme Pool.

••• To read the rest of this article and the comments just click here …

••• ADVANCED TRAINING:

Meanwhile, as part of the ADVANCED LEADERSHIP TRAINING I’ve added a new module to help raise your darwinian intelligence, your ability to survive and grow in rapidly changing environments.

It’s called: Think Darwin!

This bonus training module consists of an additional ten lessons designed so that anyone can understand, get their head around and then harness the amazing power of Darwin’s Theory in their daily life, career and business.

For example, what do you know about ‘memes‘?

If you’re in management, marketing, media, or HR/training memes are a must. You’ll become very up-to-date with them on this course. Darwin’s Theory is widely regarded as the most powerful theory in all of science!

••• You can apply for the training by clicking here.

These lessons were first published in my book

The X10 Memeplex: Multiply Your Business By Ten!  (Prentice Hall 2000).

Where to use Tenpower?

You can use tenpower anywhere. There’s no right place to use tenpower. Some people use tenpower to get started. Some use tenpower for fitness, practising skills and doing repetitions. You can use tenpower to solve problems, to create opportunities.

Writers can use tenpower to escape writer’s block. I use tenpower in teaching thinking skills. Business people use tenpower to plan ahead. Students use tenpower to do their research. Parents use tenpower to help in family discussions. Where can you use tenpower?

Why use Tenpower?
Putting-on a zero is a powerful thing to do. It is the quintessential provocation. It’s purpose is to provoke movement through the cognos, the universe of possible thoughts. It allows you to escape from your present position.

It’s a bit like using a helicopter. If you wanted to climb a mountain you might start from the bottom but then when you reach the summit you say Boy, if only we’d come that way it would have been easier. This is because the view from the top is different from the view at the bottom. If you had a helicopter you could fly to the top first, see the better way, and then go back and use it.

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I want to devote a separate lesson to discussing tenpower thereby giving it the importance it deserves.

If these lessons were just about theory, tenpower could be left out, but it’s really a training program about action. You don’t just want to know about cognetics, you also want to be able to DO it.

Practice, Repetition, Rehearsal

It was revealed to me during my army training lessons, in the late ’60s, when I was a 20-year-old national serviceman draftee, how amazingly effective was the strategy of REPETITION. Army instructors demonstrated its power by always having us use practise, repetition and rehearsals.

I remember thinking it odd, at the time, that an ambush was actually rehearsed in detail in the field before being laid that night. But why not? Ambushing is a skill and anything that is a skill can be dramatically improved with repetition and practice.

A pattern is something that is repeated more often than randomness or chaos. The architecture of a pattern is repetition. That’s why in a patterning-system like the human brain system, repetition is the most powerful learning strategy you can use.

That’s also why you’ll notice a great deal of repetition in this training. It’s not because I’ve forgotten that I’ve already discussed something with you. It’s to help build patterns in your brain so it becomes easier  for you to remember and use the software.

IN A PATTERNING SYSTEM, LIKE THE HUMAN BRAIN SYSTEM, THERE IS NO STRONGER MAGIC THAT CAN BE USED THAN THE MAGIC OF REPETITION.

All this is critical when acquiring new skills. And, repeating things ten times is an excellent way to exploit tenpower.

••• To read the rest of this article/lesson and the comments just click here …

Measurement is a very important skill for the brainuser to develop. Let’s look at units of measurement. It’s very helpful, when trying to measure things, to have a unit of measurement. Having a basic unit of measurement means you can keep score and then compare one score against another.

For example, the whole metric system uses a number of units of measurement based on the decimal (or 10) system. We have metres, litres, dollars and grams. So, if you want to measure how far you have to travel to work you can do so and the answer may be 10 metres if you work at home or 10 kilometres if you don’t.

You can use dollars to figure costs and overheads and to help control them and bring them down. You can also use dollars to figure revenues and sales results and help move them up.

Metrics – Measuring Your Job

The more you can bring metrics or measurements to aspects of your job, the more you can take control and the more interesting your job becomes. What things can you measure in your job?

- Costs – eliminations, reductions or increases?
- Accidents/safety – lower or higher?
- Sales calls – more or less?
- Delivery times – longer or shorter?
- Wastage – less or more?
- Materials used – more or less?
- Industrial disputes – fewer or more often? etc.

Decimal Cognetics

In the last lesson, we’ve already seen that a CVS can never be equal to a BVS. So, what exactly is a BVS?

A BVS is a decimal of a CVS. A CVS is also a decimal of a BVS. In other words, they are related by powers of ten. Sometimes a BVS is ten times smaller than a CVS. Other times it is ten times greater. From experience, it is usually the latter, but not always.

By decimalizing (yes, it is a word) cognetics we are introducing measurement into the brain software and we get more control. Cognetics now becomes a more useful brain tool. Remember, cognetics is decimal. In cognetics we use the number ten.

The deliberate or habitual use of the number 10 is called Tenpower.

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SOT has included an earlier TED talk from Sir Ken in Lesson 10 of our BCT (Beyond Critical Thinking) training. It is so good that it has become a favourite of many SOT members.

Here is his second TED Talk on why we don’t just need to reform education but we really need to revolutionise education.

Sit back once more and enjoy another amusing and enlightening talk from this visionary educator …

We can now turn on The Switch.

Switch from FLAT earth … to … ROUND earth, for example, just like Columbus.

The Switch is the Universal Brain Software known as cvs2bvs. The Switch is the simplest and fastest key to better thinking. cvs2bvs is a powerful perception switch. Also popularly known worldwide as CVS TO BVS.

cvs2bvs allows you, the brainuser, to think outside the square.

The Universal Brain Software also allows the brainuser to switch from one parallel universe to another. It empowers you to explore the cognos, the multiverse of thinking.

Just flip the switch! cvs2bvs.

••• Click through to read the rest of this article/lesson #13 …

TED Talk – Brian Cox:

In tough economic times, our exploratory science programs — from space probes to the LHC — are first to suffer budget cuts. Brian Cox explains how curiosity-driven science pays for itself, powering innovation and a profound appreciation of our existence.

About Brian Cox

Physicist Brian Cox has two jobs: working with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and explaining big science to the general public. He’s a professor at the University of Manchester.

• Science historian George Dyson asks “what if the cost of machines that think is people who don’t?”

He wonders “will books end up back where they started, locked away in monasteries and read by a select few?”.

• Technology analyst Nicholas Carr wrote , “Is Google Making Us Stupid”.

Has the use of the Web made it impossible for us to read long pieces of writing?

••• Click through to explore the question: How is the internet changing the way you think? …

NEW YORK TIMES:

When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it.

Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up.

“I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.”

The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood: two computer screens alive with e-mail, instant messages, online chats, a Web browser and the computer code he was writing. (View an interactive panorama of Mr. Campbell’s workstation.)

While he managed to salvage the $1.3 million deal after apologizing to his suitor, Mr. Campbell continues to struggle with the effects of the deluge of data. Even after he unplugs, he craves the stimulation he gets from his electronic gadgets. He forgets things like dinner plans, and he has trouble focusing on his family.

His wife, Brenda, complains, “It seems like he can no longer be fully in the moment.”

This is your brain on computers.

••• Read more of the original article …

BBC:
Sleeping on a problem really can help solve it, say scientists who found a dreamy nap boosts creative powers.

They tested whether “incubating” a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep known as REM.

Volunteers who had entered REM or rapid eye movement sleep – when most dreams occur – were then better able to solve a new problem with lateral thinking.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published the US work.

•••Click through to original article …