Switched On: You have it in you, you just need to switch it on

By Sahar Hashemi

Life is too short to just come in for the paycheque
Let's face it, you work for the best years of your life and spend most of your waking hours on the job, so make sure you are energized, fulfilled and buzzing. Switched On will help you leap outside your comfort zone and awaken your creativity.

Blast through the old thinking
Switched On shows you how to think like an entrepreneur - have ideas, spot the opportunities, see the future and make things happen. The future belongs to fresh thinkers, so turn your receptors on and get ready to bring the real you to work.

They'll love you for it
Go on, unleash yourself - you'll be surprised at how indispensable you become. You have it in you - you just need to switch it on

'Not all of us can be great entrepreneurs but all of us can be innovative and enterprising in whatever role we perform. This book is a great guide and an inspiration on how to achieve this' Miles Templeman, Director General, Institute of Directors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Nov 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9780857080240

Book preview

001

Table of Contents

Praise

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

A Letter from the Author

What Does Being Switched On Mean?

The 8 Habits of a Switched-On Mindset

Habit 1 - Believing Anyone Can Do It

Mental block 1: I haven’t got it in me

Mental block 2: The com fort zone

Mental block 3: Self-belief

Mental block 4: You can’t change company culture

Practice makes perfect

Your USP: Right-brain thinking

Press the delete/mute button

Habit 2 - Putting Yourself in Your Customers’ Shoes

Think back to front: See yourself as the customer, not the seller

Think subjectively

Don’t rely on customer surveys

Think of what you’re doing as problem solving – it’s more exciting!

Think of it as removing an irritant

Make it personal

Habit 3 - Getting Out of the Office

Free yourself

Back to the f loor

Don’t outsource research

Impersonate your customer

Royalty only ever smell fresh paint

Become a customer of your competition

Open yourself up to the wider world

Inspiration and creativity will creep up on you

Habit 4 - The Importance of Being Clueless

The power of fresh minds

Avoid the success trap

Defeat routine

Break the silos – bring in outsiders

Don’t obsess about competition

Habit 5 - Prototyping

People get prototypes

Anyone can prototype, it’s Blue Peter stuff

New ideas are fragile – prototyping makes them real

Momentum moves ideas forward

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly

Hands-on problem solving

Prototyping makes you more creative

Habit 6 - Notching Up Nos

No one is born persistent - it’s not genetic!

The shock of the new

It’s not failure, it’s trial and error

Mistakes are part and parcel of good business

Habit 7 - Bootstrapping

What is bootstrapping?

You need to Just Do It

Sneak under the corporate radar

Bootstrapping bucks convention

Bootstrapping is not beautiful

The devil is in the detail

Momentum

Money is a poor substitute for creativity

Habit 8 - Taking 100% of Yourself to Work

Myth 1: The work-life balance

Myth 2: All work and no play

Myth 3: They’re not paying you to enjoy yourself

Myth 4: Be passionate about your job

Finding 100%

100% me

Afterword

Becoming Switched On

References

Acknowledgements

Praise for Sahar Hashemi

The impact you had on everyone’s mindset . . . was very visible the next day – the audience had a real ‘can do’ spirit.... I do hope you appreciate what an impact you made and I thank you once again.

—Karen Middleton

Chief Health Professions Officer

Department of Health

Sahar’s passion for encouraging innovation energises a room. It’s the verbal equivalent of a double espresso from the Coffee Republic chain she co-founded.

—London Innovation Conference

She was like a breath of fresh air.

—Police Strategic Command Course

Your presentation hit the mark by encouraging people to push back the boundaries, develop a more entrepreneurial approach and simply make things happen!

—GIST

She took her audience on a 30-minute ride... Her story was a little like the Alchemist, and the audience wouldn’t stop clapping even after Hashemi stepped down from the stage.

—Exchange4Media, India

I came away with a spring in my step and a smile of my face.

—RIM/Blackberry

Sahar was a great success at our workshop in Stockholm. The result was fantastic and hit all the right notes.

—IKEA

You were mindblowingly marvellous.

—Innotown Norway

Your energising talk on the necessity of passion to drive business growth was inspiring for everyone... I overheard the audience quoting ‘Leap and the net will appear’ for days afterward! Needless to say, our expectations were surpassed.

—Infosys

Praise for Anyone Can Do It by Sahar and Bobby Hashemi

I welcome this refreshingly honest and insightful book which lifts the lid on what it takes to be a successful entreprenuer, and explains what its like to dream a market.

—Martin Wyn Griffith

Chief Executive BERR Enterprise Directorate

A great success story and an inspirational role model for entrepreneurs in all business sectors... Books such as this illustrate not only the ‘nuts and bolts’ of entrepreneurialism, but also give invaluable access to the experience of others.

—Andrew Main Wilson

Chief Operating Officer of Institute of Directors

001

First published 2010 by Capstone Publishing Ltd (a Wiley Company)

Copyright © Sahar Hashemi, 2010

Written with Morag Cuddeford-Jones

Registered office

Capstone Publishing Ltd. (A Wiley Company), The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

978 1 9064 6583 4

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 12.5 on 14.5pt Calibri by Aptara

Printed and Bound by T.J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

This book is dedicated to my mother ‘everything I do, is your doing’ ee cummings and to my husband, James

All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimetre of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of his, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimetre of chance pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.

—Carlos Castaneda

A Letter from the Author

I tap dance to work.

Warren Buffett

Do you?

Or do you read this and think, No wonder he tap dances to work. He’s Warren Buffett. Everything he touches turns to gold. It’s a no-brainer. So would you if you had that much in the bank.

But that’s not why he does it. Sure, we all come to work to earn money, but there needs to be something more, much much more.

And that something more is what this book about is. Because being at work is about more than just the pay cheque.

Work is about fulfilment, it’s about engaging your mind and nourishing your soul. Work is an enormous part of your life, so just turning up is no longer an option. The adage that you leave your personality at the door when you go to work is outdated, gone. If work is such a large part of your life, you’ll want to live it well.

Switched On is about being awake to what you do and feeling energized by it. Why? Because it engages your interest and stimulates your creativity. Working in a switched-on way will, by definition, make you great at what you do. It will generate the plaudits and rewards and make you valued and indispensable in the organization you work for.

What Switched On is not about is going to work on autopilot. Ever feel that your mind is so much elsewhere that you barely remember the journey into work? Somehow you just arrived ... Then eight hours later you left again. Nothing revved you up, there was nothing remarkable about your day. I’d say you were living for the weekend, but I’d hardly call it living. You’re merely ticking over.

Living and making a living should be the same thing. That’s what being switched on is all about. It’s about leaving your comfort zone for a more enthralling, fulfilling journey, packed with rich experiences. Leaving your comfort zone is not about quitting your job, it’s about leaving behind the complacency of the comfort zone. It’s about switching on to the potential in front of you and grabbing it with both hands. It’s about using the comfort zone for its comforts, not its straightjacket.

How do I know this? Because I’ve been both switched on and switched off at work. I’ve been a grey-faced automaton in work mode, where I’ve left my personality at the door as I’ve entered the office every day. I’ve felt the frustration and emptiness of being disconnected from what I do.

But I pushed myself past the threshold of my comfort zone and took a leap into a life where work was not the antidote to life but a wonderful, expanding, reinforcing part of it. A life where work and fun are not opposite words.

Switched On is about adopting some habits that will change your life at work. Because, let’s face it, we’re at work for most of our waking hours if we’re honest, so we should be enjoying every minute of it.

I called this book Switched On because there’s a natural tendency within the traditional working environment to accept the status quo. It’s not that you are switched off as such, simply that corporate culture seems to encourage just going with the flow. But why go with the flow when something as simple as

Reviews for Switched On

[sassybrit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Get Switched On - for that Light Bulb Moment

Sahar Hashemi shares her insights and knowledge on how to use the entrepreneur mindset within a company as an employee. She uses her own entrepreneurial business success the "Coffee Republic" as examples of her experience, alongside the views of other former, successful entrepreneurs. Hashemi's 8 habits of a "Switched On" mindset (the habits of an entrepreneur) are about behavioural change and adopting new habits to inspire the reader to get motivated, creative and above all persist by taking action. The key word here, as always in success, is "action". She looks at how being "Switched On" within a large organisation can help step away from the usual barriers, and avoid the "how we always done it" mentality to achieve success. Yet is is done in a way that where one will still be seen as a team player while dumping he bureaucratic baggage of large compartmentalised corporations. True light bulb moments.

I loved this book in that the advice given can be "switched on" and is eminently actionable, by anyone, in any organisation at any level. And there is nothing to prevent the lone entrepreneur getting some great tips from this book either. Of course there is a level of engagement and emotional involvement required to not just read the book but act upon what is read.

I must add that Hashemi's 8 habits are like a British version of Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, of which there is now an 8th habit, but with less of the unnecessary spiritual guff. Everything learned can be used within a large organisation and by going that extra mile in a new, fun way which reignites one's enthusiasm for the job, can't be bad.

Overa ll: This is one of those books which excited me, hence the 5 star review. So, if like me entrepreneur books switch you on, I highly recommend you getting "Switched On" by this. Unless of course, all the lights are on, but nobody's home.