General FAQs

More FREQUENTLY ASKED Rubicon QUESTIONS

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about the Crossing the Rubicon concept:

Q1. Why Does Rubicon Work?

It works for several reasons and at several levels.

First, making a valuable contribution or living a worthwhile life is closer to your hand than you may think and by labouring through the exercises in the current situation analysis you, hopefully, come to realise that your current experiences, talents and passions are good enough to help you achieve whatever it is you want to achieve. Your current position is the launch pad. When you start to get a different appreciation of success and the talents and resources that are available to you, you start to make different choices about change and work/life balance.

Second, Rubicon allows you to appreciate the now, at first hand, in the form of your fundamental beliefs, principles, values and purpose, and simultaneously, challenging you to write goals that are consistent and in harmony with these values. Success is not just achieving the goals you set. Success is embracing the twin aspects of who you are and what you do.

Third, ironically, when you have your Rubicon document formulated, you can try less hard and this allows the intuitive elements of luck and opportunity to invade your life. Mental focus and clarity become less important because you have captured everything in written form. Therefore, you can apply clarity and focus to everyday occurrences and allow amazing things to happen. Your head is clear to meet people, see solutions to problems and make connections between completely unrelated things.

Fourth, boldness and courage enter your life as never before, and you automatically become more adventurous and open to possibility, opportunity and fun that if you hadn’t the big picture organised you would simply have no time to entertain.

Fifth, when you get your big thinking, emotional intelligence and operational affairs flying in formation, you start to attract people, circumstances and apparently lucky episodes into your life. Chance happenings suddenly make sense. Trying to prospect for customers is far less successful than the indirect effort of peer level networking.


Q2. IS THE SHIFT FROM MANAGEMENT THINKING TO LEADERSHIP INTELLIGENCE AS SIMPLE AS YOU MAKE IT SEEM?

This one shift in your awareness produces – astronomically – more results in less time and with less effort. However, never confuse simple with easy. You’ll be astonished at how productive you are with this devastatingly simple change. Come to terms with the difference between average and successful and how these differences play out in personal and professional life. It’s critical that you stop beating yourself up and banish the BIG5 negative emotions from your head

Procrastination patterns steal more than your time. It destroys your self-concept of yourself and pushes away the opportunity to engage with the BIG5 positive emotions. Overcoming blind spots and delaying tactics are critical to all forms of success and achievement.

Learning to instantly shift your attitude can transform

your personal ability to lead and inspire by eliminating moods and emotions. Breaking the cycle of repetitive bad habits that do not serve your best interests is a critical Rubicon strategy.

Q3. Why Do We Need Seven Steps on the Personal Strategy Plan?

Rubicon is an integrated, all embracing process. The personal side seeks to answer the question who I am and the professional side seeks to answer the question what I do. This double process runs through the seven steps.

Further, there are four dimensions to the human being – physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual – and Rubicon endeavours to integrate all these elements into one whole, working on the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

To grow and change and live a worthwhile and fulfilling life, you need to see everything in total context. Context is a mindset. It is the panoramic view. It is like trying to fit pieces of a jigsaw together without seeing the full picture first. When you see the picture you are trying to create, putting the individual pieces of the jigsaw together becomes relatively easier.

Everything is relative. When asked to describe his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein said When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours’.

To combine the softer parts of strategy – values and mission – with the more operational planning aspects of strategy – goal setting and tactical plans – requires a master blueprint so that you can see the wood from the trees, and the parts from the whole. Goals are the more logical, left-brain, practical aspects of strategy, while mission and vision are the more intuitive and emotional strategy in action.

The whole purpose of Rubicon is to help you see the big picture and get the right balance between the operational side of your life and the human/emotional side of your life. For many people this is called work/life balance. For me, it is like walking a tightrope where the constant challenge is to stay balanced as we journey through life

Q4. What’s Wrong With Just Having Goals?

Goals on their own can just confuse people and leave them feeling empty. Interestingly, the origin of the word ‘goal’ comes from the old English word ‘gol’ which means to hinder or overcome an obstacle. Goals-driven people often feel deflated because of the huge effort to overcome the barriers or roadblocks that achieving goals needs. In fact, achieving goals without the proper clarity and focus around your purpose and values can do more harm than good.

Many executives, for example, achieve the goals they set with regard to climbing the corporate ladder only to realise the pointlessness of it all and that the ladder, in fact, was leaning against the wrong wall. Purpose breathes life into what you do. Purpose is about being. Goals are about doing.

People who concentrate on just goals frequently get goals handed to them by their boss or other people and frequently become task oriented and absorbed in To Do lists in the belief that the achievement of the goal is everything. Achievement of a goal is not everything. No matter how big that goal is, it must be part of a bigger context, a bigger purpose and consistent with your underlying thought process, values and character.

Some people are paralysed by the past, others are transfixed by the future. But there is an old saying that goes If you keep one eye on the past and one eye on the future, you will become cross-eyed in the present’. The lesson is to enjoy today, live in the present, work and live in context.

Too much of a good thing can destroy you. Too much of a focus on goal setting and achievement can destroy you. Just as a strength overused can become a weakness, so can the embrace of the goal setting tool on its own do you collateral damage.

So, goals are good, but in context. The end does not always justify the means. Consider the means. The seven steps of Rubicon are means, not an end. Goals are one piece of the pie, not the total pie.

Rubicon, therefore, is beyond just goal setting. It is beyond just achieving things. It is beyond the job or financial benchmarks that so many people consciously or unconsciously seek to reach in their own journey

Q5. It’s Just Too Much, Too All Embracing, I’ll Never Get Around To It. What Should I Do?

Context again. If you are a man, your life expectancy is 75.1 years. That is 657,876 hours. If you are a woman, your life expectancy is 80.3 years. That is 703,428 hours. Planning and organising your life surely must be worth 100 hours.

The biggest challenge with Rubicon, like all the great challenges in life, is simply getting started. But remember, any system is better than no system, and Rubicon provides you with a readymade blueprint that thousands of people have already soldiered through, and ironed out the glitches to ensure that your crossing will be so much easier.

Everyone has their own preferred way to learn, some people just like to jump in and start, while others like to reflect and consider before taking the first step. Both ways have merit and both ways work.

Q6. What About ‘Horses For Courses’? Is This For Everyone?

Every activity in life can be seen as an experiment. There is a lot of truth in the old saying When the student is ready the teacher will appear’. Like everything in life, you may not be ready. You may need to experiment some more. This of course is your right. All truth is your truth. If you think this will not work for you right now, then you are probably right. Don’t do it. Experiment some more. Maybe another time and place in your life would be more appropriate.

Rubicon is a systems thinking way of looking at the world. Galileo once said that you cannot teach an adult something they do not already know. Systems thinking merely allows you to get the edge you may be seeking or organise your thoughts, or understand the voices in your chatterbox, or create a master map that acts as a reference point at various times. But in the end, you decide. Context is everything.

Q7. Why Should I Do All This, Why Don’t I Just Keep Going The Way I Am?

I remember taking a one-week presentation skills course in Vancouver, Canada, many years ago. First, we were taught the principles of good communication. Beginners learned how to make good eye contact and use their hands. As we progressed, we got more and more advanced and learned about facilitation and presentation techniques that professional speakers use, such as functional movement, right brain stories and positional power. We then learned about different techniques and which techniques are best used with different kinds of audience situations.

The lessons about principles continued for the first few classes, until we were ready to start making a live presentation to the class. At this stage, we were drilled into using the techniques that we had just learned. During technique training we were forced to use the exact technique as taught and incorporate it into our presentation to best effect. With the help of these techniques we were able to make great presentations with predictable and repeatable results.

This is why the best professional presenters and public speakers, after using systems and techniques during their training, progress from the safety of the methodology and revert back to fundamental principles. They begin to ad-lib on stage and play with their audience. They no longer rely on a specific formula. They ‘free-wheel’. A good presenter becomes great primarily because they used the system and every best practice they could get their hands on in the beginning. To truly connect you need to go beyond the formula and try new things.


Crossing the rubicon is a chance for you to pull everything together into one place in the first instance. Later, you can ‘fly like an eagle’ and improvise in your own way.

Goal setting and achieving on their own can become addictive and, in fact, a crutch that churn out predictable results. This can be very useful, as you can imagine, but it can also be very limiting. It reduces your ability to see the big picture and the overall context in which you play the game.




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