Who else has bad habits?

Words: 99 Reading time: 0 minutes 30 seconds

Every bad habit leads us away from what we want, but which are ‘bad’ and can we change them?

Where habits are concerned there are no absolutes. The same habit can be judged ‘good’ at one particular time and ‘bad’ at another. A cold shower in the morning can be seen as physically invigorating, but it would be of questionable benefit if you were suffering from pneumonia.

Fortunately, we are the ones that make certain actions routine simply by repeating them. That puts us in an ideal position to do something else consistently instead. Voilà, a new habit.

Who else would decide to wait?

Words: 211 Reading time: 0 minutes 42 seconds

At Christmas 1914 soldiers from both sides climbed out of their trenches and played football in No Man’s Land. For just a brief time those engaged in killing each other realised that war was not what they wanted and that there was probably a better way.

This spontaneous act at a human level was somewhat frowned on by those in higher command and next day they all went back to a prolonged and bitter conflict.

On a personal level, with much less dire consequences, we repeat this self-destructive cycle. We realize that what we are doing is not yielding the results we want, we know there is a better way, we may even try it for a short while, but in the end we revert back to what we were doing previously, because that’s what’s expected and it doesn’t disrupt the pattern of received wisdom.

By 1918, four years later, the protagonists eventually got round a table and arrived at a settlement. The cost would have been much less four years earlier, whatever they may have agreed at that stage.

The simple lesson learnt at such cost to everyone is: if you need to change something, do it sooner rather than later; it will be so much better for all concerned.

What is everyone else doing?

Words = 104 Reading Time = 0 minutes 21 seconds

If you spend your time looking over the fence at your neighbour's garden do not be surprised if your own is full of weeds.

That is not the same as saying that your neighbour’s garden should be ignored. By all means take a look, see what lessons are to be learned and perhaps pick up new methods or fresh ideas.

However, if you spend all your time worrying about what the neighbours are up to, if you stand open-mouthed in awe at their goings-on, then your own backyard will – perforce – be ignored and your flowers, fruit and vegetables will wither for want of attention.

Voices in the void

Words: 80 Reading time: 0 minutes 16 seconds

Many of us need the echoes of others to confirm our belief in ourselves. Perhaps it is this that lies behind the undeniable success of sites like Facebook and Twitter, the provision of feedback on blogs and the value ascribed to them.

That evokes even more admiration for those who plough the lonely furrow of an inner conviction, which society does not share, until they are eventually proved correct.

Are you a modern day Galileo?

How do you know?

Learning from our mistakes

Words: 78 Reading time: 16 seconds

We spend needless time worrying about mistakes, mainly because we have been programmed during our formative years to concentrate on correcting our errors, rather than maximising our successes. What we have rarely been taught – but what we must quickly learn for ourselves in business – is that mistakes are the inevitable corollary of success. Unless we are making mistakes we are missing opportunities; we are not trying hard enough and we are forgoing huge, valuable and irreplaceable learning.

When learning doesn’t help

Words: 575 Reading time: 1 minutes 55 seconds

It doesn’t matter much who you marry because they will turn out to be someone different anyway – or so they say. Business is just the same. Whatever you thought you were getting into will turn out to be something different in reality. And whatever your business is like today, next week, next month or next year it will have changed.

That’s life, but instead of successfully taking ourselves through it, we often sabotage ourselves by using three rules we learned at school. And these three false rules are at the heart of people feeling isolation, something I meet so often in clients.

The first rule is: there is only one right answer. This rule has everyone chasing the golden key that will unlock the secret of success. That the next book, course, or seminar will contain the Holy Grail and they will receive that great big tick of approval they have been seeking ever since attending nursery.

Unfortunately, in the power politics of the classroom, what is denied to virtually all pupils is the hypothetical nature of knowledge. Even 1+1=2 is an hypothesis and true only under certain conditions, as far as we know. The square root of 4 is either +2, or -2, or some other answer that we don’t know, but may exist.

The second rule is: focus on your weaknesses. Do you remember taking test and getting a mark of 18 out of 20? Pretty good! But what the teacher had you focus on was the two answers she thought you had wrong – not the eighteen answers you had correct. We can spend our whole lives looking in the wrong direction, trying to address minor faults instead of maximising our talents by doing even better the things we can already do well.

All those lives wasted and wrecked as a result cannot be counted. Imagine a Paula Radcliffe, or a Michael Johnson, or a Carl Lewis being told that, while they were quite good at running, they needed to address their weaknesses in the shot putt, or English composition, or historical dates. Would they have then developed into the outstanding athletes they subsequently became? Of course not! They would have been mediocre at whatever they did instead.

The third rule is: no cheating! Everyone must find the answer for themselves. The testing and examination regime placed constraints on leaning across to see what your neighbour had written on her answer paper. Inevitably, that has carried across into our working lives.
* Who has not worked extra, unpaid hours rather than ask colleagues to help?
* We have all sat through that awful, boring, stammered presentation by the HR Director when everyone knows that his deputy would have done it twice as well in half the time.
* And we men have all struggled to lift things that were really too heavy for us, but we refused to wimp-out and ask for a hand. Some of us have even injured our backs as a result.
*In business we sit in isolation, struggling with a situation beyond our immediate area of expertise, rather than pick up the phone and ask someone who knows.

So, day-by-day, week-by-week these well-learned axioms stand in our way, simply because we let them. Our parents, our teachers, our peers and our role models may have initially introduced us to these rules, but it is us that perpetuates them even though we are now fully grown and cognitive adults.

Yes, sometimes learning is over-rated.

Customer care is a dog’s life

Words: 444 Reading time: 1 minute 29 seconds

A dog is our best friend, because he wags his tail instead of his tongue – or so it is said. If you are engaged in customer service, as we all are in one way or another, there may be a lesson to be learned here.

Looking at the way that we, our colleagues or our company greet our customers – which end of the dog are we?

Companies that greet their customers with genuine energy and enthusiasm are as rare as the Kihansi spray toad – a species now extinct in the wild.

Companies persist in making so few people available to deal with their customers that, perpetually, “All our operatives are busy at the moment.”

And we then expect us to hold on a premium rate 0871 number.

Read that again, it’s not a typo.

People like us run companies and people like us are customers. It’s bizarre that as we pass from one side of the divide to the other we consistent elect to mistreat our alter egos in ways that we ourselves object to.

My heart-sinking phone call for help is declared “important” but that apparent recognition is not matched by any perceptible effort to make someone available to receive it.

Cashier positions are unattended at lunchtimes when a flush of peak demand can be expected.

Show me a supermarket on a busy Saturday morning and I will show you unattended tills.

And why are petrol and diesel pumps now so routinely unattended that we fill our own tanks without a second thought, despite high levels of unemployment among the anxious, but aspiring young and the keen, but chronically low-waged?

There seems little doubt which end of the dog currently greets our customers. While it’s true that some companies spend time and money dreaming up schemes to encourage and build customer loyalty (the dreaded ‘card’), the very same companies – and a host of others besides – spend even more time and effort “saving” dollars by doing the opposite.

A senior buyer from a major UK brewer told me recently that his company had worked out that a cost saving of £1,000 was equivalent to an increase in sales of £39,000 and such savings were seen as easier to accomplish – hence the focus on cost-cutting.

He failed to explain what the impact would be if, in saving £1,000, he also lost £39,000 or more of sales as a consequence of poorer quality in either product or service.

Of course not, with the way we train people in narrow skills and structure companies in tight little boxes that’s hardly his problem.

The great thing about the dog is that the tail and the tongue are connected. It’s a model we would do well to imitate in business and in life.

What Was Your Message?

Words: 1,374 Reading time: 4 minutes 35 seconds

When Lee, the Operations Director, announced the pending plant closures she had been working on it for weeks. The problems with the firm had been clear for a while, but answers had been elusive. This was her solution.

When Simon, the Warehouse Foreman, heard the proposals he wondered what had taken them so long. He would have told them what needed to be done months ago, only they never asked.

In organizations, when things don’t go as planned, or as hoped, or as well as we would have liked, there is one culprit certain to be nominated – lack of communication.

Common Culprit
Rey in her book “Secrets of the Body Broker” says that in her consulting practice, communication—or lack of it—is the leading cause of workplace dissatisfaction, and that the problem encompasses communication between employee and boss, between departments and between senior management and management staff.

So, not only does communication feature in the roll call of why things went wrong, it also stands in the dock when the charge is lack of satisfaction. Communication is conceived as being something not only outside of the individual, but also beyond their scope. It is a darkness, always there and into which no light of our own can shine. All of us await the harsh magnesium luminosity of some rescuer’s flare before we can steer our way to knowing.

Apparently, leaders, managers and workers are each shipwrecked on their own desert island of ignorance, playing their eight records and waiting for the fates to send them a ship.

We may not wish to admit it, but it doesn’t actually happen like this.

* Some of us are ignorant because we choose to be; it’s less of a problem that way.
* Some of us think we know it all anyway; anything else would be inconsequential.
* Some of don’t know what we don’t know; we are within the realms of what’s possible.
* Some of us don’t care what we don’t know; that’s somebody else’s problem.
* And some of us don’t want others to know; it’s just none of their business.


If we knew more, we’d do better
Organizational theory has it that communication in the workplace will provide employees with a clear understanding of what is demanded from them and give them knowledge of what to do and what to expect. It is said that communication creates effective performance by the staff, and, consequently, increases customer loyalty and profit.

The reverse of the coin says that lack of communication may lead to:

§ Misunderstandings
§ Lack of information
§ Decrease in employees’ performance
§ Decrease in company’s turnover

In this model the inability of leaders and managers to clearly express their thoughts, ideas and demands leads to employees' inability to work well.

This strikes me as way too simplistic and naïve.

Few companies, if any, run a single agenda and some items on the agenda are usually unstated. There are always conflicting demands between agenda items and which gets precedence can change rapidly, or be different in different parts of the organization at the same time. On top of that, each employee has their own agenda which – amazingly – is highly unlikely to be the same as that of the company.

What emerges from any company is the result of a complex of agenda trade-offs at every level. More and indiscriminate communication between those levels is likely to lead to greater confusion, not less; to reduced rather than improved results.

No news is good news
Some people believe they are managing by exception. This causes them to have their antennae tuned to hear only bad news. For those operating with such a mindset, no news is, indeed, good news.

However, there might be things, like political issues and conflicts of interest, which prevent others from bringing issues to surface. As a manager you will hear no news, but there will be hidden things that may go from bad to worse. Waiting until things get so awful that they can no longer be kept off your radar is a good way to be sure you will always be late to the scene of a fire and that fire will be out of control when you arrive.

If it’s an ‘internal’ customer not giving you feedback about a project you have completed, perhaps she’s not happy with it. If her preferred style is to avoid confrontation your future prospects may already be blighted, you just don’t know it yet. By the time you do it will be too late to repair the damage.

No news can also mean they didn’t hear what you thought you said, or they attach less weight to it than you do. Sometimes people just decided to put the issue on the back burner and let it simmer a while – if it’s that important, they expect you’ll mention it again – but they don't bother to let you know.

Mixed messages
If you continue to drive a large, expensive car while the firm is going through a rough patch, is that confidence or arrogance?

Critical non-essentials – like receiving flowers from the contractor after all your carpets have been cleaned – are a nice treat when everything else is fine, but something of an insult when the basics fail to come up to the mark. As a ‘thank you’ they are misplaced and as an apology they are inadequate.

If the functional area you manage is about to be downsized and you do not say anything to your staff, is that because you don’t know, or because you don’t want others to know, or because you can’t face it? In either case the end result could be an erosion of trust.

Even communication of success, the fact that things are going really well, can result in confusion. Is this reassurance that you are offering? Are you boasting just to look good? Or are the congratulations premature?


Leadership
Lack of communication is a lack of leadership. Leadership needs candour and honesty. Leadership is the communication of emotions. Lack of management experience is a primary reason why communication is such a problem in the workplace.

According to Rey, every day thousands of employees receive promotions into management positions for the first time, and the majority have little or no experience managing and motivating employees. She says it's no surprise they don't know how to effectively communicate to their staff what is expected of them. Exactly the same is true of businesses – of all sizes – hiring people.

However, if this is a lack, then it isn’t confined to business. Someone who is a good communicator does not suddenly cease to be so when she arrives at work. All of us communicate all of the time. However, the depth and breadth of communication, as well as the fact of communication itself, may be more critical where certain elements of business are concerned.

What we say and what is heard are not necessarily the same thing. What we want to say and what we ought to say can be different, both from our own perspective and that of the other person.

We Cannot Not Communicate
As Paul Watzlawick has made clear, and as some of the situations mentioned imply, you can not communicate, however you can always miscommunicate. Whether you say something, or not, others will interpret your words or your silence in their own way, structured by their own map of the world. Sometimes, by chance, the message sent and the message received are sufficiently similar to allow both parties to proceed along a common path. However, given that we are different people with different reality filters, there is every chance of some misunderstanding arising and our paths diverging.

Conclusion
In the annals of human tragedy Simon and Lee are just bit-part players in what amounts to a cast of thousands who are playing out similar disasters all the time. Simon and Lee are the Californian and the Titanic all over again; the Californian stops transmitting because its message isn’t being heard and the Titanic is transmitting when it really should be listening.

There is communication, it’s undeniable, but there’s no clarity of meaning.

Then, as now, we need to reach the Captain on the bridge, not the wireless operator in the radio room.

Knowing What You Want

Words: 1,061 Reading time: 3 minutes 32 seconds

Kelly was like a lot of teenagers; poised on the threshold of her future, she couldn’t decide. With so many opportunities open to her, how was she to know which one was the right one? Some of her teachers advised her to seek out more information. It didn’t help her. It multiplied her options without suggesting what her direction might be. Where was she to go from here?

You might expect me to recommend using a coach at this point, but where Kelly was concerned, I hesitated. When it comes to goal-setting most coaches conduct a mental version of the three-card trick. And their sleight of hand starts with the very first words out of their mouths – decide on your goal.

They have used that “D” word - decide. Kelly could now wait with baited breathe for all to be revealed. Alas, she would wait in vain. Nothing more is ever said about deciding. That particular stumbling block is deftly avoided as they move on to explaining how the decision should be worded to best effect; securing necessary resources; identifying obstacles; systemizing effort and … whoa!

The Starting Point
Let’s go back. Tell us about the start. How do we decide? What is it that tells us when we know what we want? Isn’t this is the key to the whole exercise?

If what we decide is decided very well, then the rest is merely mechanism for the most part. If we can decide powerfully, then the force will be with us…to coin a phrase.

When we are asked to name what we want, given a few minutes, most of us can come up with a list. Some of the items will be banal, some wild, some wonderful, some small and personal, some immense and municipal. If given more time we could even extend the list. But, out of all the things listed, how do we decide?

The Should-y Life
Part of the difficulty we face may be because, if we think about it, we rarely ask for what we want. Instead we live a life based on “should” and the “should” is bequeathed to us by others – I should exercise more, I should get a qualification, I should own a bigger house, I should get a better job, I should work fewer hours.

Getting from our shoulds to our authentic wants can be a problem. Recognizing that to be happy, we must live the life that we truly want to live, and that we are the only one who can truly determine what is right, doesn’t really help. How do we know what that is?

Even with an extensive list we may still not know what we want. Perhaps we don’t know all the options and what implications each might hold. Selecting just one want may exclude the possibility of fulfilling some other want, since they could be mutually exclusive.

Like buses, our wants often come in fleets. A person having just a single want is rare. Such a person may not exist at all. So, if we end up with conflicting wants – as seems likely – the question of how we know which one to pick stays with us.

What About Values?
One hypothesis is that values have great strength in determining human goal direction. Through our values we perceive important truths about life. These ideals are then reinforced by our emotions and feelings, and those sentiments create a vital passion that we hope to realize in our lives.

Some great human values include things like tolerance, openness, respect for the individual, and teamwork, which derive in part from some of the higher spiritual values like love, beauty, and truth. At certain points, the human and spiritual values come together in concepts such as selflessness, self-givingness, and gratitude

S.H.Schwartz carried out some extensive research and extracted six “universal” moral values, trustworthiness; respect; responsibility; fairness; caring; and citizenship.

However, I am not convinced that this helps people like Kelly a great deal.

A number of our wants may serve the same value – so how do we choose between them?

And any one of our wants may serve one or more of our values – so how does that help us know what we really want?

And should our wants cause some universal values to compete, how are we to rank them?

Hedonism
Steve Pavlina, often a source of inspiration, advises, “Treat goal-setting as a way to enhance your present reality, not as a way to control the future. Stay in the present and consider how this goal can improve the quality of your life right now. Not a year from now. Not five years from now. Not even tomorrow. Right now this very minute. Does it give you hope? Does it inspire you? Does it promise solutions to some current problems?”

As seductive as this might sound at first glance, all Steve has done is shift the timeframe. The questions raised earlier about mutually exclusive wants, conflicting wants and competing wants still remain.

Confession Time
Kelly is a person much like the rest of us. Most of us don’t know what we want. We only know what we don’t want, so we spend all our time moving away. And not knowing which path best fits our appetites, abilities, skills and personality doesn’t matter, because away is in any direction from the point of departure.

Once we are in motion, regardless of the drive, our perspectives will change. Whatever we start out wanting, or not wanting, may appear more or less attractive depending on where our journey has taken us.

Not knowing is OK. Pushing yourself to decide more quickly, more rationally, more firmly will result in beating yourself up to no good purpose.

In our task- and success-driven world, much is written about what people need to do and think, but very little about how they ought to be. To be truly fulfilled Kelly first needs to understand herself. Only when she does will she be able to follow Georgia Anne Geyer advice which is, “Follow what you love. Don’t deign to ask what “they” are looking for out there. Ask what you have inside. Follow not your interests, which change, but what you are and what you love…”

And even when you are sure you know what you want, you will still have no idea of what to cook for dinner.

Who else is feeling isolated?

Words: 762 Reading time: 2 minutes 32 seconds

Are you feeling isolated? It’s a common emotion. It’s even more common among those of us who take responsibility, or have responsibility thrust upon us.

What is it?
Isolation: it’s a sense of being marooned, of having nobody else you can turn to. The origin of the word – island – gives that same sense of being surrounded by a cold, uncaring and vast expanse of sea.

That’s not to say that we only feel isolated when we are alone; far from it. Feeling isolated on some issues in an otherwise close marriage will be familiar to some of my readers. The same sorts of feelings can arise among the partners or directors in a business. In such situations there’s a strong, shared bond while at the same, at some deeper level, there’s a ‘but’. The ‘but’ is not about the whole relationship, just one particular issue, or one particular area of concern.

If we can feel like this in a close relationship, how much more likely are such feelings when the relationships are not so close – such as a small businessman with a few employees, or a sole practitioner?

Feeling Isolated Is Not Feeling Lonely
Anyone familiar with these feelings will recognize that feeling isolated and feeling lonely are two different things. Feeling lonely is much more generalized. It’s a feeling that spreads through all the areas of our life. Being isolated, in contrast, is confined to one specific aspect, topic or area. To be isolated – by this definition – is not to be universally lonely, although it can be a part of that wider feeling.

What does it feel like?
People who feel isolated will sometimes describe a high wall, built by them, which they cannot see over. It surrounds their area of isolation. There’s a door. Only they can go through. When they feel isolated it means they have gone through, closed it behind them and are left sitting, helpless, surrounded by a featureless plain.

At other times isolation is just a small room, again, it’s featureless. It’s just us and our feelings of nagging uncertainty, disquiet and irresolution.

That nagging uncertainty, disquiet and irresolution is certainly part of feeling isolated, so too is privacy. When going through the wall, or into the room, we close the door. Nobody else can come in – obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t be isolation.

Even when we hold the feeling of isolation internally, we have an empty space within. None of the other areas where we have capacity (ability to do things) can come in. Being isolated is something we guard very closely.

Isolation has sole ownership, an exclusivity. Whatever issue or situation the isolation is built around, the individual feels sole responsibility. Others may be aware of the matter; they may even be addressing it. There could even be a whole team of folk involved. Yet isolated people feel that only they are affected in some special way and the solution – or at least the key part – must come from them.

If I’m Feeling Isolated, Can You Tell?
Spotting the people who are feeling isolated is never easy. There may be signs of strain around the eyes, or at the corners of the mouth, or in a phrase or a gesture. But such faint indicators may have other causes. And until the individual feels ready any question touching on that area is likely to be denied. The privacy condition will kick in, along with the conviction that “it’s up to me; no-one else can help.”

At best theses feelings erode self-confidence and our willingness to decide and our persistence is carrying things through. At worst such feelings can degenerate into depression. As with most things, just recognizing and acknowledging that such feelings exist is half the battle. Knowing that such feelings are so common also makes it much easier to say “me too!”

What Role Can Coaches Play?
Of course, for me to be involved with a client who tells me that they feel isolated will mean I have been invited through their door, or into their room. Already there are cracks appearing in those painfully constructed and lovingly maintained walls. The barriers are already crumbling. Even so, there’s often much work to be done by the client, although their isolated feelings are dissipating already.

Engaging with a Coach, or an NLP Practitioner, who is sensitive to these issues will help immensely, because the Coach is familiar with similar conditions, is not party to the issues and leaves you in charge of the final resolution – which is just what you wanted all along.

Lessons from the Life of Plants

Words: 830. Reading time 2 minutes 46 seconds

At this time of year most of the plants in my garden are working hard to produce the seeds of future flowers. Nature has them all focused on just one thing – reproduction: leaving enough of themselves to ensure that future generations survive.

And to us thinking, sentient human beings nature appears to be profligate.

The humble dandelion produces between 54 and 172 seeds per head and a single dandelion can produce more than 2000 seeds. Some estimates suggest that annually dandelions produce more than 240 million seeds per acre.

A typical sunflower will have between 260 and 800 seeds per flower head, depending on the growing conditions and a typical geranium will have about 5 seeds per flower and between 40 and 100 flowers per plant.

So, how come we are not knee-deep in dandelions, sunflowers and geraniums? Because seeds are like our ideas, efforts, experiments, trials and initiatives – some are successful; many are not.

If you are not seeing failure, you are not trying hard enough
Obviously a certain proportion of the seeds will not survive the journey from parent plant to place of germination. Many will be broken, burnt, waterlogged, eaten, aged or decayed along the way.

Some seeds may not even be viable (have life in them) to begin with. This is why many plants invest a lot of energy into seed production - to produce many, so multiplying the chances for the few.

And we would do well to recognize that success to failure ratio in Mother Nature and be aware that we could do a lot worse than imitate some of her ways.

Just because we plan, develop a strategy, set SMART goals and visualize our outcomes does not mean that we will always succeed all of the time. As Dwight Eisenhower pointed out: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Nature's manual for maximizing outcomes

Nature adopts a variety of strategies to improve the chances of successful germination. How many of these could we adapt to foster our own dreams and desires?

1. Plants have evolved -in most cases- methods of dispersing their seeds. This means transporting them to a place away from their parent, ensuring that some of them will find suitable conditions for growth elsewhere, where there is less chance of competing with their siblings for space (finding new markets).

2. Some seeds and seed-like fruits are carried by ocean currents. Such seeds are of the kind that can float for a long period without absorbing sea water and establish themselves finally in tidal mud or on beaches (waiting for favourable economic conditions to materialize).

3. Animals and birds disperse seeds, too. We often see them in late summer and early autumn with numerous seed-like fruits adhering to their hides or feathers (using a surrogate sales force and word-of-mouth marketing).

4. A variable proportion of seeds of many kinds of plants resist prompt germination. One example is the uneven ripening and shedding of the fruits of some grasses, such as the giant foxtail (test new ideas in series, rather than in parallel).

5. Many legumes, such as the clovers, produce a variable proportion of seeds with impermeable seed coats, which may resist germination for long periods (give ideas time to mature and develop, rather than getting carried away, releasing them before they are fully worked out).

6. Some species produce pods in which one segment remains indehiscent—closed—and the seed within it remains dormant for a long time, as in cocklebur (Xanthium), for example (where an idea has scope for variations and enhancements, start with the basic model instead of diluting the market and, possibly, increasing start-up costs).

Gardeners and nurserymen also give nature a hand by selecting for certain characteristics and using only seeds from plants that are seen to be disease and virus free. They also save only from straight varieties, in other words not from any hybrid varieties that have been crossed with other material.

The initiates we elect to trial should be similarly selected.

The story of Brython the Bean

The great thing about cultivating your own seed (ideas) is that you can actually improve your selection with a little bit of thought to what you are doing. The late Brython Stenner from Glamorgan, South Wales, even though only a keen amateur, quickly became a legend in his own life time. His thinking was that you should select only the strongest, healthiest plants, those that consistently produced the longest and most filled pods along the row. Does that sound obvious? It does now.

Because of one amateur’s dedication, the 'Stenner Strain’ bean is the only bean that is consistently winning on the show benches today. They not only look good, they taste good as well.

So, even with careful preparation and nurturing, be prepared for less than 100% germination with all your schemes.

Do not be hugely surprised if some things take longer to come to fruition than others.

And, as Robert Louis Stevenson remarked, “Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

How are you choosing to travel?

Words: 588 Reading time: 1 minute 58 seconds

I watched as a pedal cyclist rode along the pavement, used a Pedestrian Crossing and then swung right, resuming his journey as part of the road traffic. I put my car into gear and drove on, reflecting on the transition the cyclist had just made.

Using the same vehicle he had moved from being a hazard to pedestrians to take his place as one more risk that drivers have to negotiate. That’s the sort of transition we often make in life.

Changing our transport
On any given day some of us will commute from being a forceful manager in the workplace to being the more regretful half of a failing marriage; a move from being a relatively fast-moving, potentially threatening person to being a much more vulnerable individual.

Our pedal cyclist decided to stay on his bike as he moved from the pedestrian environment into the traffic. In business and in life there are different choices, although equally significant.

As an employee, what kind and what size of company do we aim to work for, and in what position? As a business owner / director do we stay in our comfortable little puddle, or go out and compete against the big boys?

In our relationships, what kind of vehicle are we? Are we a caring parent, or an over-protective pain? Do we own our own problems, or expect somebody else to take care of us? Are we an old-fashioned romantic, or just a semi-permanent fixture?

Our Mode of Transport
And what kind of vehicle would we be if we decided to consciously manage our relationships, make them the best they could be and take care to promote the common good?

A bus: everybody on board and heading in the same direction, with frequent opportunities for people to either join or leave the vehicle.

A plane: a fast, efficient, self-contained vehicle that can get you to your destination by the shortest route possible, but needing lots of infrastructure to support it and somewhat ignorant of the lives of those not on board.

An ambulance: a simple rescue vehicle, always on call, but only for those already in serious trouble, only for the few and only having one destination in mind.

A dust-cart: a highly useful vehicle specially designed to clear away the damage and detritus from everyday living, but offering no real solutions. They’ll be round again next week.

Or a muck-spreader: smelly, often despised, but essential for providing a rich and fertile soil in which other things can grow and flourish, given that other environmental conditions are right. Used too much it can “burn” the plants it’s supposed to be helping.

And I wonder if the Inland Revenue is the Combined Harvester of life? All-encompassing, mechanistic, and unable to distinguish wheat from rye, it waits until someone else has put in all the hard work and grown a worthwhile crop. It then comes along and strips the field bare, leaving little or nothing for the rest of society. Consequently gleaning, after the crop is gathered in, is never seen today.

And who are the tractors – slowing everyone down to a crawl and getting in the way, but ultimately necessary? Is this health and safety?

Harnessing the horsepower
What sort of vehicle do you need to be to realise your life’s ambitions?

And what sort of vehicle do you need me to be, and when?

The pedal cyclist that started all this is now gone. But you can see what disturbance even one may cause, not just to fellow road users, but also to trains – of thought.

Who cares if you're stressed?

Words: 708 Reading time: 2 minutes 22 seconds

The Health & Safety Executive have published figures showing that 6.7 million working days are lost each year due to the effects of stress. The cost to society is estimated to be in the region of £3.8 billion.

Stress is believed to be responsible for up to 40 per cent of all absences from work and can reduce employee performance by up to 70 per cent.

Now we have more labour-saving devices than at any time since the world began, why is it that?

When I ask ‘What is stress?’ I get different answers.

One set of answers is a list of symptoms, some of which are emotional, such as feeling irritable, frustration at having to wait for something, barely suppressed anger, generally feeling upset, lack of sense of humour, etc.

Other symptoms listed are physical, such as muscle tension, neck or shoulder pain, stomach upsets, 'pounding' or 'racing' heart, sweaty palms, 'butterflies', insomnia or excessive sleep, shortness of breath, etc.

Another set of answers list what people see as possible causes, such as job insecurity, heavy workload, infrequent rest breaks, poor communication in the organization, crowding, noise, insufficient leisure time, etc.

A third set of answers merely uses synonyms for stress, such as anxiety, hassle, pressure, strain, tension, worry.

But none of these actually tells me what stress is.

Aching joints and a runny nose might tell me I have influenza, but it is not influenza itself. Getting soaked in a downpour might make me susceptible to influenza, but it does not cause influenza. As we all now know, the true cause is viral.

So, what single root cause covers all of the above factors and manifestations of stress? What is the equivalent of the viral or bacterial agent where stress is concerned?

My suggestion is that stress only occurs when the situation, as we perceive it, demands more resources than we believe we have available at present to resolve it

Situation > Resources

As far as I can see that definition covers all cases and it helps by providing four different avenues of escape:

The situation can be avoid, vacated or mitigated.

Our perception of the situation can be revised, or reframed.

The resources required can be augmented, assembled, bought or borrowed.

Our beliefs about our resources can be challenged, replaced or adapted.

The other important point about this definition is that underlines the part played by perceptions and beliefs in the whole subject of stress. That is not to dismiss or denigrate the trauma reported by those experiencing stress, it merely points up the fact that we cannot isolate this stuff called stress and hold it in our hands. We cannot isolate it from the person directly concerned and measure it separately.

Because stress is not an objective reality, it is not equally experienced. Two individuals can be seated side by side in the same work environment, doing the same tasks and with the same demands place on them, in the same way, yet one individual will experience greater stress than the other.

This tells us that one other precondition is needed for someone to experience stress – the person concerned must actually care about the outcome. This is crucial, because unless you really care there will be no anxiety on your part about what may or may not transpire.

At the end of the football season, as various teams face demotion from one league to another, some fans become genuinely anguished. However, for those who do not follow football in general, or that team in particular, there is no concern one way or the other. Indeed, the whole organizational structure surrounding the sport could collapse and non-fans would be totally unaffected.

Stress is an internal phenomenon. We manufacture it ourselves. Sometimes we manufacture it inappropriately by caring about inconsequentials, or by caring too much about the wrong things. So when we are stress it is extremely useful to ask ourselves what is it that we care about so much, and is that sensible.

Who cares if you’re stressed?

You do!

As a parting thought, is it therefore nonsensical to blame employers for causing stress? And if stress arises because people care, how wise is it to work on increasing employee engagement? Isn’t this ultimately self-defeating?

Being SMART - S is for...

Words: 1,000 Reading time: 3 minutes 20 seconds

The SMART acronym is past its sell-by date and highly ineffective, but still heavily in use by unthinking project managers, unimaginative trainers and uninspiring coaches.

Acronyms and abbreviations are supposed to add colour and texture to the written and spoken word and to life in general. Their purpose is to assist in memory retention and learning.

They lose all of that whenever they become trite, confusing or uncertain. SMART has managed all three.

Those that are still trotting out this tired old carthorse claim that the goal, task or project must meet these criteria to be effective. But just what are the criteria?

There is zero agreement on what SMART is supposed to stand for. That’s why it’s such a useless tool. Just take the ‘S’ of SMART. A very quick search on the internet yields us the following alternatives for use in formulating our objectives:

Self-controlled; self-managed; self-owned; sensible; significant; simple; specific; strategic; stretching; straightforward; succinct; synergistic; systematic

This list is by no means exhaustive, but how helpful are even these few candidates as possible progenitors of ‘S’?

Self-controlled and self-managed are very close in meaning. Neither adds very much to the process of formulating the goal. If the path to the objective is not in our control, then it’s likely to be someone else’s objective rather than ours. It’s the same with self-owned. As possible roots for our ‘S’ they are little better than tautological.

Sensible? Some of the most awesome and inspiring goals were and are anything but sensible: climbing Everest; deep-sea exploration; curing AIDS; world peace.

Significant or strategic might seem acceptable after that last list, but many goals we set ourselves are neither of these in the great scheme of things. Will every single one of our goals be really significant or strategic – even to us? They may well be worthy, useful and desirable; but hugely significant and / or strategically imperative? I think not.

To be effective our goal must be simple or straightforward. Really? So a goal that is not simple or straightforward is not effective? Well, that’s it for mankind, isn’t it?

Actually, no. Many of the goals we set ourselves are complex, yet we follow them and achieve them despite the doomsayers of SMART. The Large Hadron Collider was built under the Swiss countryside. I have no idea what it does, how it does it or why anyone who does know might want to, but that highly complex objective was achieved.

Specific is a favourite candidate for the ‘S’. The case is that the goal needs to be concrete, detailed, precise, explicit, focused and action-oriented with a well-defined result.

Lovely, but I can think of many huge goals, all achieved, that had none of those characteristics. Churchill’s stated objective in 1940 was to win the war. It was as vague as that. He had no idea exactly how that could be done, when it would be achieved, or what form the victory might take. The rest is history.

When John Kennedy committed the USA to putting a man on the moon and bringing him safely back again there were neither vehicles to do it, nor the guidance systems to get them there. Less than 10 years later I watched it all on TV and cheered with relief.

So much for being specific.

Stretching goals are those that promote some form of discernable personal growth. Yet there are serious, important goals that do not necessarily deliver on that front at all.

Getting our frail and ageing parent into a good social care environment might occupy all our efforts for a considerable period, although it is unlikely that we will feel we are better people at the end of it. Often, we will feel worse because of lingering guilt. Nevertheless it is clearly identifiable as a goal.

Succinct: if we are going to tick all those boxes – being concrete, detailed, precise, explicit, focused and action-oriented with a well-defined result – is succinct even possible?

If it is, then is it necessary? Sometimes a longer, fuller description paints a more colourful, seductive picture making it easier for us to visualize the outcome, to commit ourselves to its pursuit and helps us keep the whole project vibrant and alive.

If all our goals had to be synergistic (2+2=5) then there would far fewer goals. Of course, single-point goals will usually have spin-offs, but those are by-products or unintended consequences. Imposing genuine intended synergy as the prerequisite of good goal-setting sounds like severely over-egging all puddings. Nice if we can do it, but hardly necessary.

Finally, finally, systematic: I suspect this one came with one foot in the project manager’s camp. Again, it’s not an absolute, indispensable requirement for our common or garden goals. Someone like Benjamin Franklin was highly systematic and got great results. But goals are often reached despite the system used to search for them, rather than because of it.

The biggest problem with penicillin was producing enough of it. Florey and another researcher travelled from Britain to the U.S. to talk to chemical manufacturers. Corn (maize) was tried as the nutrient base and it yielded almost 500 times as much as it had before. That helped, but more vigorous and productive strains of the mould were also needed, and one of the best came from a rotting cantaloupe in the market at Peoria, Illinois.

Systematic (the maize) helped, but serendipity (the cantaloupe) was also necessary.

Serendipity helps more often than SMART protagonists care to admit. The amazing story of post-it notes are another case in point.

There are other, possibly undiscovered, ‘S’s:

How about saleable – so that we can get others on board?

How about seaworthy – so we know that the goal will float?

How about sanguineous – so that we’re always full-bloodied about our objectives?

With so many stars to steer our ship by, how on earth is the ‘S’ from SMART going to help us?

SMART and its ‘S’ are touted as necessary and sufficient for all goals. Clearly, they are not.

Lessons in Staying Positive – #10

Words: 375. Reading time: 1 minute 15 seconds.

Feeling positive, when others feel anything but, often invokes a degree of fear or guilt in the positive individual. This can stem from a number of sources:

~ We assume it is wrong to be positive when so many others are not;
~ We take responsibility inappropriately for the feelings of others;
~ We feel others will reject us because we are now different to them.

Well, each of us has our own version of the world and we have no right to steal another’s responsibility for their own thoughts and feelings.

Despite appearances to the contrary a can-do / positive attitude is a natural state for all of us. Psychologists confirm that we are born with only two basic startle reflexes – sudden loud noises and falling. Other fears and phobias may develop along the way, but children have one innate quality that drives most limitations away – curiosity.

It’s only “adults” that have trained us to curb our natural curiosity for fear of nameless consequences. More often that not these consequences are by no means certain; they are not even likely; but they may hover on the edge of vague possibility. Yet we allow such uninformed trepidation to limit our journeys, halt our exploratory missions and curtail any investigations.

A young child would have no such qualms – as most parents will testify!

When we set out we were positive people – and I hope we still are.

a) How many of us gave up trying to walk before we were 3 years old?
b) How many of us believed that we could not learn a foreign language – which our native tongue was at the time, as were all languages?
c) Who remembers as a kid saying “let me, let me, let me”? I know I did.

That’s who we really are – so stop acting your age – this is our chance to be more childlike and authentic.

Let’s turn up our curiosity!

Negativity is when we only think we know; it doesn’t mix well with curiosity.

As Mary Kay Ash said: “There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.”

The question is: in which group are you going to be?

Average or Amazing?

Words: 971 Reading time: 3 minutes 14 seconds

Under the heading ‘Ordinary or Awesome’ I expressed the view that what is awesome and what is OK is firstly conveyed and then established partly by the customer. If we want awesome and we keep getting ordinary, then customers have to accept part of the blame.

But only part of the blame, because there are at least two parties to every transaction. In one context we are customers; in another context we are the providers. And in the many cases where we are providers, whether that is in a commercial setting or not, we too are in a position to be average or amazing. As someone wrote many centuries ago, “by their fruits you will know them”.

Few people set out to do a deliberately bad job. Even the apocryphal husband, who deliberately drops dishes as a ploy to escape doing the washing-up, is doing the best he can with the resources available to him – his vision of how the world should be.

In the context of employment many workers are made to feel they can go “only so far” in the job that they do. The organisational view is that the value of the transaction in question – or just the implicit gain to the company – allows for only so much resource, no more.

This can be traced back to management taking a short-term, transaction-by-transaction, view. In the face of a complaint and taking the short-term view, management weighs up the margin on that particular transaction and uses it as the limiting factor in determining how much more they are prepared to do to meet what the customer wants.

That would be fine if the transaction was totally divorced from all subsequent transactions, but it’s not. It’s either one of a stream of potential transactions stretching into the future – the so-called life-time value of the customer, or it contains the advocacy potential of a “raving fan” gained through amazing products and astounding service, even if it’s a one-time deal.

Management that ignores the wider setting of any transaction runs the risk of making the insignificant hugely significant by throwing away a large amount of future business for the sake of “a few dollars more” in the very short-run.

Either that or, they are on a personal ego trip with an unknowable cost.

Amazing helps deliver the future, because ordinary – and certainly less than ordinary – is no longer good enough.

Authors like Jeffrey Gitomer make the point that mere satisfaction is hardly going to light up someone’s life and get them talking about you. Satisfaction is when it’s just OK. Amazing is when it’s in a totally different league.

Do not measure customer satisfaction; it’s taking you in entirely the wrong direction.

And good doesn’t cut the mustard either. As Michael Bungay Stanier points out, many organizations are focused on delivering ‘good’’. And they want to sustain the way things are, so that there's minimum interruption to that ‘good’’.

But good gets in the way of GREAT. To stop at just good misses everything that flows from amazing and it short-changes both parties to the transaction. As Jim Collins found, great is a matter of conscious choice. It’s no coincidence that Good To Great companies first got the right people on the bus and the wrong people off.

If organisations wish to thrive then Presidents, Vice Presidents, Chairmen, Directors and Executives need to recognize that amazing products and astounding service are only delivered by people who are encouraged to exercise the necessary attitude.

Anyone can do it, given the right mindset and appropriate encouragement. As businesses we need to build a sense of pride and place the magnificent ahead of the merely measurable, because measurable places a huge roadblock in the way of being amazing.

This is why.

We are told that we get what we measure. And the unfortunate inference is that we get only what we measure. So, to get something we always have to be able to measure it. Right?

We know that isn’t true. Great art, of whatever hue, cannot be measured; yet it is still produced. Compassion cannot be quantified, yet it is poured out in huge abundance around the world. Not always, but more often and to a greater degree than one would suppose for something that no one has attempted to gauge.

Humour, ambition, grief – all these human qualities are not susceptible to measurement, but still they come forth. And so do their opposites like oppression, cruelty and neglect.

Being amazing, whether in production, in customer service or in life does not mean making a vast and overwhelming effort every minute of every day. Good grief, most of the averages we get are so poor that being even just 1% more remarkable will put you into the area of amazing.

To be amazing is not a call to abandon everything that you do and everything that you are. On the contrary, it a call to deliver your full potential, to be everything you can be, rather than what someone else would keep you from being or doing.

What can you do more of that makes a difference, shifts the balance, has an impact, moves minds, adds beauty, changes the status quo, creates something that’s worth creating, improves life, shows love, moves things forward, stops waste, starts a dialogue and engages people?

Jump right in. There are opportunities all around you and any one of these suggestions will start transforming the average ending into an amazing outcome.

Of course, from time to time the desire to be truly amazing, to settle for nothing less, will go against the flow. But where the broad river of humanity is going is not what we should be aiming at.

“The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Shoes from a Sweet Shop

Words: 736 Reading time: 2 minutes 27 seconds

“Why can’t we just give the customer what he wants and needs and stop worrying about our own systems and processes?”

You may be familiar with this recent gripe I heard from a business trainer. It’s not uncommon from people who engage directly with clients when their own grand schemes seem to be going awry. And it does seem to pick up on common themes of listening and customer service.

How well does it work in practice?

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, just giving the customer what he wants and needs is a process in itself, if that is how the business decides to operate.

A process is “a sequence of interdependent and linked procedures which, at every stage, consume one or more resources (employee time, energy, machines, money) to convert inputs (data, material, parts, etc.) into outputs. These outputs then serve as inputs for the next stage until a known goal or end result is reached.” [businessdictionary.com]

Whereas a system consists of elements which continually influence one another (directly or indirectly) in order to achieve the common purpose the 'goal' of the system. All systems have (a) inputs, outputs, and feedback mechanisms. Systems underlie every phenomenon, and are everywhere one looks for them. [businessdictionary.com]

So, really, the call is not to abandon systems and processes, merely to operate different ones that are seen as better serving this advocate; whether such a change would better serve the business as a whole is an entirely different question.

One of the extreme models of customer service, and a very successful one, is Nordstrom. For those that don’t know, Nordstrom’s is a chain of department stores in the USA. At the end of 2000 they had 77 full-line stores and 24 clearance stores in 25 states, generated annual sales of almost $5 billion and boasted a sales-per-square-foot of $400, which is almost double the industry average.

A central plank in the service ethic that underpins Nordstrom is the single rule governing all employee actions:

“Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.”

That’s interesting. All it calls for is good judgment, not an unconditional abdication to whatever the customer demands. For example, in the early 1990s the residents of Santa Clarita, Los Angeles expressed a strong desire to have a Nordstrom store in their community, because of the improvement it would bring. At the time of writing, as far as I can tell, they are still waiting.

Even Nordstrom sets boundaries.

Ryanair can be seen as being at the other end of the spectrum, yet it's a highly successful business. It got that way by deciding exactly what it wanted to do and sticking to it.

Ryanair aims to be a low cost airline, so it flies to low-cost airports which are in out-the-way places. If a Ryanair flight is diverted, perhaps due to bad weather, there will be no coach laid on at the alternate destination. Ryanair is a low-cost airline. Coaches are not part of the package.

Michael O'Leary, the Irish airline's boss, now wants to abolish the luggage check-in. He proposes that people carry their suitcases to the boarding steps, where staff will stick them in the hold. This would be unacceptable at BA. At Ryanair it’s expected.

On opening up new routes Michael O'Leary has said, “I don't give a toss where people want to go. I'm in the business of creating a market for people to go where they have never heard of.”

Ryanair – we do what we do.

So, just giving the customer what he wants and needs misunderstands what customer service is about. Certainly, one must listen to customers, but one must also learn. And part of that learning may be that what this particular person wants is not what this particular business does.

Others may do what they want a lot better. In that context good service would consist of steering the person in that direction. They were never your customer in the first place, because a customer is someone who pays you for what you do.

And as a business trainer my complainant should have understood this.

“Why can’t we just give the customer what he wants and needs and stop worrying about our own systems and processes?”

Let’s be charitable and put it down to frustration. The simple fact is, you can’t buy shoes from a sweet shop.

Don't Get SMART

Words: 662 Reading time: 2 minutes 12 seconds

Read anything on setting goals these days and, sooner or later, you’ll be told that all goals need to be “SMART”. If not, then there is no hope for you. The goal is not well set and you have little chance of achieving it.

Here, at random, are some of those promoting that view:

‘Setting goals…means creating a written plan that includes reasonable and measurable long-term and short-term objectives. It means setting SMART goals.’ Annette Richmond

‘The SMART acronym is used to describe what experts consider to be "good" goal statements’ Rodger Constandse

‘A key determinant of an individual's success or failure in meeting a goal can be summed up with one small word (or, more accurately, acronym): S.M.A.R.T.’ Christina Morfeld

Baloney!

A big problem with being SMART is finding any agreement on what the acronym stands for. Here are a handful of alternatives for each letter:

S - specific, significant, stretching, systematic, synergistic, simple, self-owned

M - measurable, meaningful, motivational, methodical, memorable, maintainable

A - agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented, ambitious

R - realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented, resonating, responsible, reliable, remarkable

T - time-based, timely, tangible, trackable, thoughtful

If my maths is correct that gives 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 3,125 possible combinations. Good luck!

I will look at each of these pompous precepts in a series of later blogs, but for now, let’s look at one example where SMART – whatever its constituent parts – offers no help at all. Indeed, it’ll probably get in the way.

Nic Rixon tells the story of a restaurant owner who was shot twice in the course of a robbery. As he enters A&E the restaurateur can see in the eyes of the staff that they don’t think he will make it. He is asked, over and over again by the medical team, if he is allergic to anything. But he can’t speak due to the trauma. As they wheel him into the Operating Theatre they ask him one last time and he gathers all his strength and yells, “Bullets!!!”

At that point everyone looks round and immediately everything speeds up. In that moment everyone’s belief changed from “he’s gonna die” to “we have a fighter”. The man survived.

Now that man had a goal. His whole existence turned on that one outcome. He did not have to get SMART about it – the goal was too important for that. He had neither the time, nor the inclination to work it all out, write it all down, set milestones and measure progress. Had he done so, he would probably be dead.

None of that was necessary. And, outside of sheer physical and surgical limitations, there was no doubt about the desired outcome.

For me that says a lot about goals, whether we have any hope of achieving them and what that may take.

When nothing else matters in the world other than your goal, then SMART is irrelevant. SMART is unnecessary. SMART may even delay you and make the goal less likely, rather than more likely.

The secret of reaching your goal is picking one that really matters that much to you.

More time would be better spent on finding a goal that, for you, is an all-consuming passion, instead of figuring out how to make some second-rate, minor league, lesser goal come about by using a version of being SMART.

The people who come to mind as being both memorable and remarkable do so because they devoted their life and their spirit towards achieving what we now regard as exceptional. And often, they are only inspirational looking back. At the time they did not plan and did not expect to arrive where they did. They were not SMART.

Some examples include Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa, the Beatles and Beethoven, Alexander the Great and Boudicca, Galileo and Leonardo da Vinci, Dante and Darwin.

It's the weight of our feelings that lets us know how important something is. We just have to be smart enough to recognize them.

Ordinary or Awesome?

Words: 596 Reading time: 2 minutes 0 seconds

Have you ever wondered how much influence we have over the experiences we enjoy? For example, in your daily interactions with people, what level of response do you get – ordinary or awesome?

Of course, in theory, we would all choose awesome. Reality is sometimes different. While awesome would be…well, awesome…it could take a little longer to deliver. Are we prepared to wait? Is ordinary all we wish to spare the time for, so we grab that and run?

If awesome means stating our demands and creating a bit of a fuss – a very unBritish thing to do – are we predisposed to avoid making a scene? In how many cases do we opt for a quietly dissatisfied existence?

A picture of what is awesome and what is OK is firstly conveyed and then established partly by the customer – you and me. Do we encourage better than average and a tendency to awesome by the praise, thanks and recognition we bestow? Or do we grunt and go when the goods and services obtained for our hard-earned money reach a barely acceptable level?

The service and attention given to customers in major retail outlets provides a useful case study. The move to pre-packaged and self-service has been inexorable ever since I was lad growing up in London.

Now, we can shop in most major chains without ever having to react face-to-face with any of their staff. Not only do we search out the items on the shelves, we even take the goods through an automatic checkout, pay through a slot-machine arrangement, bag all our purchases and take them to the car ourselves.

Oh, and please put the trolley back where you found it, our employees are too busy to be bothered with serving our customers. And our customers are so dazed and distracted by the mindless, windowless warehouses they now shop in, that don’t hardly complain.

A quick aside: have you ever noticed a clock in a supermarket? Thought not. Would you like to guess why?

How did it ever come to this?

If we want awesome and we keep getting ordinary we have to accept part of the blame. We have allowed conditioning and habituation to establish mediocrity as somehow normal. It doesn’t have to be, but nothing will change unless we do so first. If we keep allowing what we’ve always allowed, delight will decline as it’s always declined.

We can actively consent to being offered something more. And companies prepared to offer more will be well placed to capture the market. We observed this phenomenon with the advent of The Japanese TV. The TVs being made here and in the USA at the time were prone to breakdown. That was normal. A whole industry was founded on the need to repair them.

Then the famed reliability and quality of the Japanese offering became available. People voted with their wallets. They wanted awesome as soon as it became available. The TV repair industry was all but wiped out.

The same happened with motorcycles. Much the same has happened with cars.

If we know that accepting awesome is so much better than ordinary, then we need to expand the paradigm to other areas of our lives. Every interaction is an opportunity. The chance for change is never gone; we can begin whenever we wish.

We have a huge influence over the experiences we enjoy – often much more than we realise. Give someone else the opportunity, the room and the permission to be awesome. You may be surprised by the result.

And we can choose to be awesome too.

Lessons in Staying Positive – #9

Words: 702. Reading time: 2 minutes 21 seconds.

Tough times are regulated neither by the state of the economy, nor by the state of society. For an individual, tough times can occur on a much more personal level, such as injury, illness or lay-off, irrespective of the wider context. And while not actively sought by most, tough times can still be turned to advantage when they do show up – as an opportunity to recalibrate.

It strikes me that in tough times we need to separate the essentials from the clutter in our lives. In this setting clutter includes doing too many things, doing things for insufficient reasons and doing less productive things while more productive ways of investing our time are neglected; that’s besides the physical clutter of too much stuff we don’t need and stuff we do need being buried beneath a mess of other stuff.

Tough times give us the chance to be more resourceful, even though we often have fewer resources. We can learn to “live” off less - use fewer resources to live an even richer life.

Exactly what makes for a richer life turn on our beliefs and values. Getting clear on those is at the forefront of making the shift necessary under tough times. What really matters to us? What qualities do we want to have? By what principles would we be happy to live our lives? Who do we love? What do we love doing? The answer will be different for each of us, but that is no reason not to ask the questions.

If we want to make real change then there is a tough question for tough times: “What am I willing to change right now?” This is not another wish list, it’s an action point. It’s not something that might be nice to do in the future; it’s absolutely essential to the process of changing the present and it’s something that we can start work on this minute.

For the transformation to fully take hold might take a while. As the saying goes “Rome was not built in a day”. But it was built, which means that someone had to start by laying one brick on top of another.

We may not even know what the final edifice will look like. It is unlikely that the Roman builders started with a master plan. And even if they did, it is doubtful that what eventually emerged conformed to the initial set of drawings. But they did being and they adapted as they went along. And as any schoolboy will tell you, the rest is history – literally.

To help us get started we can begin talking frankly about the dangers and challenges we see facing us. We can start an honest dialogue that involves authentic give and take about tough topics, rather than engaging solely in social gossip that keeps real issues safely at arm's length.

We can seek greater clarity by asking people to explain what they mean, rather than just assuming we know. We can ask what sources they're using to get their information, check those for ourselves and compare them to others we learn about.

Once people get a taste of honest, good-natured, substantive discussion that doesn't come with an agenda, they tend to find it addictive especially when you don't do all the talking and none of the listening. Good listening leads to good ideas, especially when they come from those who are doing the heavy lifting.

When our world appears to be unravelling the healthiest and most restorative response is an open mind, honest curiosity and bold action. Embrace the unknown. That way, we can make permanent uncertainty a sustainable way of life.

From the dialogue a decision will emerge. That’s the whole point. And once a decision is made, we commit and go for it. If we never commit, all we will ever do is change course. Continual second guess is not allowed.

In time, if we have to change course, then we have to change course. Yet, the secret rule is that when the time for a decision arrives, then we decide quickly and, once the decision is made, we change our mind slowly – not the other way round. That just adds to the uncertainty.

Negotiation is normal

Words: 932 Reading time: 3 minutes 6 seconds

It’s most odd. Life calls for negotiation, but some advise that our first tactic should be to avoid it altogether if possible. Well, it’s neither possible, nor desirable – ever. And here are a few reasons why.

Negotiation is everywhere and everyday. It isn’t confined to the realms of industrial disputes and international discord. It is also about the mundane — who does the washing up.

One lady I was discussing this with thought she had avoided any negotiating over the washing up by buying a dishwasher. She had not registered the negotiating it had taken to reach that decision in the first place and the subsequent negotiating over who filled it and who emptied it. Those jobs still needed doing. Negotiation could not be avoided.

Negotiation is not a one-time event. It goes on even when most people think they have finished.

Just imagine that you buy a cabbage from the market. The stallholder was happy with the price, you were happy with the cabbage. That is, until you got it home, cut into it and discovered that some bug had eaten away the inside. At this point you may decide to return to the market and recommence negotiating.

Alternatively, should the cabbage look wholesome you will cook and eat it. Is that the end of the negotiation? Not if you are subsequently violently ill as a result. That would almost certainly affect your negotiating stance.

But suppose, instead, that you really enjoyed your cabbage. You decide to buy another next week. Now a negotiation that was ‘finished’ is affecting future actions. And the enjoyment of your cabbage will affect the price you are likely to pay when next dealing with that vendor. Negotiation over? I don’t think so.

With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that negotiating over things like pay and conditions is a continuous process; even when no union is involved. Every day that you go to work you are asking yourself, sub-consciously, if the reward is worth the effort.

We negotiate with ourselves. The examples given so far involve another party. That is always the second step. Before we reach it we will have already negotiated with ourselves. Some people appear to be good at this; they are tagged as ‘self-disciplined’. Others appear to be not so good; they are tagged ‘weak-willed’.

As the working presupposition is that every behaviour is motivated by a positive intent how one classifies the eventual outcome from this is unclear. Steve McDermott puts it this way, “if you set out to fail and you succeed, what have you done?”

Practice makes perfect or, as Vince Lombardi had it: “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” If we accept that negotiations occur over and over in our lives in an endless stream, then we will get a better outcome each time if we work on improving our performance. That means getting into the water, not sitting on the side.

We get a better result when we do. Although it takes two to create a relationship, it takes only one to change its quality. Could you influence the quality of your relationships and improve the results you get by negotiating? Absolutely; in the right conditions (negotiation) we get better results when we work with other people (negotiation) than when we work against them or when we work alone.

Good negotiation isn’t about winning and losing. If the negotiation is handled well, then both sides come away with more than they started out. If you don’t satisfy the other person’s needs as well as your own, it’s not a good agreement. As former US President Jimmy Carter put it, “Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.”

As bizarre as it may sound, that means that all parties to a negotiation have to be aware of the wants and needs of the other party and work as hard to satisfy those as they work to satisfy their own. Good negotiation is about sitting together on the same side of the table and tackling the problem together. Adversarial negotiation is a poor second cousin by comparison.

Advice that runs “if you give away a concession without asking for something in return, the other side will carry on asking for concessions until you say no...” takes a depressing view of humanity and its relationships.

Would you rather have 10 pence given willingly, or 50 pence given begrudgingly? I thought so. And the same is true of everyone. If you paint your negotiating partner as ruthless and without scruples, then guess what you are going to get?

This goes to the heart of good negotiation and, perhaps, one of the biggest fallacies that so many in the field choose to perpetuate: negotiation is about compromise. It isn’t.

Compromise is the dirtiest word in negotiation, because in negotiation compromise isn’t the goal. It’s the fallback if nothing better can be achieved.

When you start with compromise, you’re tacitly inviting everyone to give up something important in order to reach an agreement. That’s no place to begin, because there are other highly effective ways to approach negotiating that have little to do with compromise.

If you define personal and business negotiating primarily in terms of compromise, you create a pattern that’s all about giving up and horse-trading. That’s not the greatest foundation on which to build any long-term relationship.

So, what is my key tip for negotiating? It comes from Tammy Lenski: “To resolve an argument someone has to be the adult. And if it’s not the other person, it had better be you.”

People buy from people? Give me a break.

Words: 654 Reading time: 2 minutes 11 seconds

You may feel the same as me. When I find the tired, foot-sore and weary still being dragged from the back of some damped, dark cupboard, dusted off and pressed yet again into unconsidered service I have one of two reactions. Either I feel resigned (not again), or I feel exasperated (good grief).

As my previous posting was on the tired, foot-sore and weary idea of people staying in their comfort zones this posting will look at the equally drained, drawn and discredited idea that “people buy from people”.

Do they? Do they really? What, all the time? Every time? I don’t think so.

Let’s look at an entirely fictional, yet believable week for you and me.

On a Monday morning we leap out of bed at the first peep of the alarm clock ready and raring to go. Freeze frame…

That bed; do you know the people that constructed it? And your alarm clock; that was your local watchmaker, wasn’t it? What about the building you’re standing in; any idea who…?

Moving on, after your shower using the water provided by that nice man from the local reservoir, you tuck into your breakfast. Of course, you’re not really sure who made the bread for your toast and the cereal in your bowl, but hey, you’re only eating them after all; there’s nothing really important about buying from people here.

Then you get dressed (your personal tailor at M&S is so good) and head off safely in your car at 70 m.p.h. (built by Joe, the guy at the motor works on the corner) using the road constructed by the boys you always hang out with in the bar of The Pick & Shovel. You may smell the flowers in your front garden as you pass, the seeds all lovingly harvested and grown by Betty at the nursery in the next village.

At the office it’s lucky Mr Dell has already delivered your computer, together with a little note offering to meet you for coffee, because you can’t wait to log onto the internet provided for you by…well, you can’t quite remember them all. There were so many at the Christmas party last year; but nice people.

Are they nicer than the people who made the pen in your hand, or the paper you’re about to write on? You can’t quite decide as you take an aspirin, a drug made by people in Malaya who you have never met, are never likely to meet, and a drug the strength and constituent parts of which you haven’t checked and don’t know who might have done so on your behalf.

Let’s stop. It isn’t even ten o’clock on a Monday; how many people have you bought from that you actually know?

People buy from people? Give me a break.

People buy from supermarkets, from Amazon and EBay, from slot machines and petrol station forecourts, from serve-yourself tills and McDonald’s. Most people buy anonymously. They buy as much as they can, as often as they can, without having to interact with anybody. People scare them. A soap on the TV is about as close to real people as they want to be.

So, what is it people are buying, if it isn’t from other people?

People are buying minimum inconvenience and as much certainty as they can with as little precious cash as they can spare.

Now as a person you can supply some of that certainty by building empathy and giving reassurance. If you can convince the other party that you are a nice person, that you want to help them and are not trying to rip them off, then you might make some progress.

People only buy from people when they actually help to increase certainty. Thinking that people buy from people is like being fooled by a three-card trick. You’ve missed the essence of the transaction by concentrating too closely on the players involved.