Strategies for Anticipation, Acceleration and Reinvention
Ion is a strategic advisor to entrepreneurs and executives. He helps them anticipate the future, accelerate their performance, and reinvent themselves when necessary.
Anticipation
I’m not a historian or a futurist but I stand on their shoulders. Historians study the past to understand the present. Futurists study the present to predict the far future. As a Strategic Advisor, I study the past and present in order to anticipate the near future and recommend better strategies for today.
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Reinvention
Disruption is unwilling change on someone else’s terms. Reinvention is intentional evolution on your own terms. I help individuals and organizations reinvent themselves in response to changing personal, social, economic or technological circumstances.
Acceleration
I train executives and entrepreneurs in how to accelerate their performance by curating and creating game-changing ideas, insights and best practices. I try to upgrade people’s entire operating systems by developing better health, fitness, decision making, habits, routines and processes.
Ion Valis
Is President of Portfolio IV Media and Consulting, a strategic advisory firm with clients worldwide. He has a unique combination of entrepreneurial and executive experience in the public, private and plural sectors. Ion has worked as a Press Secretary on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, helped launch and run a ground-breaking international mobile media initiative at a Fortune Global 50 company in London, served as a senior executive in a fast-growing technology start-up in Montreal, run an international foundation dedicated to public leadership and since 2008 has run his own consulting practice.
The Book
Drawing on his two decades of experience managing people, projects, brands and budgets, as well as 6 years researching leading-edge thinking on peak performance from around the world, Ion has created an innovative personal leadership program and strategic framework that is described in his first book, “The Magnificent Mistake: How You Can Earn More from Failure Than You Learn from Success.”
Recent Posts
2020 will be another “Year Without Summer”
Everyone is comparing COVID-19 to 1918 and the Spanish Flu. But I think that the better historical analogy is a century earlier, in 1816. I went to see a theatrical rendition of “Frankenstein” with a friend last night - in part to escape the scary reality that we’re...
The Perils of Being Stuck in a Pleasant Present: 7 Strategies for overcoming Status Quo Bias
“If you are considering a change, you are past the point where you should have made it.” Tyler Cowen, Economist When was the last time you did something for the first time? When was the last time you took a risk, or even diverged from your usual routine? Don’t feel...
Have you ever done a Personal Brand Audit of yourself? You should.
To quote the great urban philosopher Ice-T, “don’t hate the playa, hate the game.” Some people might not like to think that we are “products” that have “brands”, but wishing it away does not make it so. If I say the names “Justin Trudeau” or “Oprah Winfrey”, certain...
Plans are useless but planning is priceless
What maps, plans and Mike Tyson have in common Maps — whether mental ones or cartographic ones — give the illusion of accuracy. But, as the saying goes, the map is not the territory. Only by recognizing the limitations of these constructs can we use them effectively....
Want to be more consistently great? Be like the All-Blacks and have a “Haka”
Here’s a trick borrowed from pro athletes that you can incorporate to become more consistently excellent: have a ritual. You probably don’t watch much rugby, but if you’ve ever seen the New Zealand All-Blacks you no doubt were stunned by their pre-game ritual: the...
The Coronapocalypse is a failure of competence, but also of capitalism
Are you surprised that the whole US economic system has essentially collapsed in a matter of weeks? I am. This is an enormously disruptive shock, to be fair. But the speed with which the health of the American economy has gone from healthiest in history to gasping on...
Do you have a reading “strategy”? You should. Here’s why.
Did you know that there is a Japanese word for buying books that you don’t read? This habit - one that I exhibit, sadly - is actually so universal that they created a term for it: 積ん読 or tsundoku. It combines the words “tsunde” (meaning “to stack things”), “oku”...
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TWEETS by @IonValis
I just published my latest think piece on COVID-19: "The Coronapocalypse is a failure of competence, but also of capitalism". Check it out at https://link.medium.com/CDaRz7hPh5 and let me know what you think ~
I just published my own little experience on the fringes of the fight against COVID-19 in California: Scenes from an LA ER in the calm between two storms https://link.medium.com/yvWaKuUs14
I hope that I'm wrong, but I think that COVID-19 will make 2020 will be another “Year Without Summer” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2020-another-year-without-summer-ion-valaskakis via @LinkedIn
Check out my latest article: Do you have a reading "strategy"? You should. Here's why. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-you-have-reading-strategy-should-heres-why-ion-valaskakis via @LinkedIn
Stuck in a Pleasant Present? Here are 7 Strategies for getting out of a personal or professional rut. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stuck-pleasant-present-here-7-strategies-getting-out-rut-valaskakis via @LinkedIn
SOCIAL MEDIA
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