The future is not the past

Words: 314
Reading Time: 1 minute 3 seconds

The Japanese have just returned a deep space probe to Earth carrying asteroid dust. They hope it will indicate something more about the origins of the universe.

It’s fascinating stuff. As humans we seem to have an abiding interest in origins. Most young children eventually ask, “Where did I come from?” In biological terms that can be difficult enough for a parent to answer; in philosophical terms it’s extremely profound.

However, too often origins are felt to be deterministic – not only by us, but also by others. If we were born among plumbers and electricians, then we think we cannot be an academic. If a person was born in a deprived area, or of rich parents, then they are characterized in a certain way.

In business this type of think is widespread, but extremely restrictive.

Those that start out as employees rarely see themselves as entrepreneurs – until redundancy forces them into a rethink.

Businesses that start out as caterers can find it difficult to branch out into computer software. Their competence is doubted since this is not seen as their “core” business.

Why is it, that what we start with is always considered “core” rather than convenient, or circumstantial?

Even in ecological and environmental terms we know that the future of planet Earth is not the past endlessly replayed. We are no different except that, as self-determined individuals, we can decide in which direction we wish to change and do it much faster.

But we need to get out of our own way.

Business suggestions:
1) Re-examine what you do – is that what really interests you?
2) Re-examine the way that you do it – is that the best you have to offer?
3) Re-examine those you work with – what else are they capable of?
4) Re-examine those you do not work with – what are you missing?

As Richard Bandler once said: “Why be yourself when you can be someone so much better?”

Judging by appearances

Words: 373 Reading Time: 1 minute 14 seconds

Seeing the sun and feeling the warmth of early summer – finally – is very welcome. And being this early in the season means both men and women are wearing clothes that expose more, but before developing that attractive, but all-too-brief tan. This is the period of product enhancement.

If you are searching for a mate, now is the time to judge appearance.

While appearance is only one factor in a relationship, it is often where a relationship starts. That’s true whether the ‘relationship’ in question is with a product, or a person. That’s why the car industry spends a shed load of money on design, why companies like Apple obsess about it and why fake spray-on tans sell a bundle.

So why judge now?

Because now is when you get to see what will only be temporarily enhanced later with the benefit of tanning. Now you can judge the basic, underlying qualities of the pallid ‘product offering’ without being seduced by the shallow surface sheen.

Businesses could make a useful change to the way they operate in just the same fashion:
- By engaging with new companies as they begin to grow you can influence the way they develop and the level of service you receive;
- By engaging early on with new products you can help determine the features and benefits of the finished item to your own advantage;
- By taking on young employees, not only do you invite fresh thinking and enthusiasm untrammelled by unfortunate experiences elsewhere, you are also in a prime position to train them the way you would prefer.

Early adoption has its risks – but they are demonstrably no greater than those inherent in the typical wait-and-see strategy that misses boats and has expensive catch-up consequences, or the head-in-the-sand posture so tempting to all your competitors.

Early exposure also works for new companies, new products and new employees. The sooner you can get external feedback and outside input, the sooner the rough corners are smoothed out and the true value recognized. Waiting for ‘just the right time’, or ‘one more improvement’, or ‘the perfect opportunity’ risks being still stuck in the starting blocks when the race is already over.

Plough a new furrow. In business you do not even have to wait for the sun.

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.

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.

Lessons in Staying Positive – #8

Words: 959. Reading time: 3 minutes 12 seconds.

Our feelings are contagious. For example, if you are feeling down and disappointed then that feeling is likely to be transmitted subconsciously to those who interact with you.

Some individuals may believe that if they speak in a bright, cheery voice and act in an upbeat manner then that will effectively conceal what else is going on. It rarely does.

Even if the person concerned exactly modulates her voice to the precise pitch and timbre she uses normally when she is actually feeling bright and cheerful, her true inner feelings are almost certain to “leak” into some of the other ways we express ourselves.

These will include facial expressions, verbal dexterity and variety, breathing patterns, eye accessing cues, blink rate, gestures and body language. And it is likely to be the motions of the person’s further extremities, such as feet and fingers that give the game away.

The multiple ways we humans use simultaneously to express ourselves makes whole-body, consistent make-believe a daunting task.

And the longer, deeper and more frequent the interaction, the more likely it is that subconscious transmission will take place. Put simply, the longer pretence is maintained, the more effort it takes.

By the same token, if you are truly feeling buoyant and optimistic then the people you are communicating with will pick up on it. If you have a really good state people will think “I like this person” and be drawn to you.

We are more comfortable with people we like and it is easier to like someone who is happy, just as a warm, sunny day in May is more elevating than a cold, wet Wednesday in November.

We are also more comfortable with people who we think are like us, or who we would like to be like. Given a choice, most people would elect to be happy and most would hesitate to describe themselves as sad, miserable or cheerless. That’s not going to win them any friends.

That happiness is catching is confirmed by a study that followed a whole community of people for 20 years. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, followed more than 4,700 people living in Framingham, Massachusetts from 1983 to 2003. Researchers found that the effect of one happy person could ripple through three degrees of separation. The researchers liken the pattern of happiness transmission to the spread of a virus: those with the most number of happy contacts are the mostly likely to catch the happy bug.

“Happiness is like a stampede,” said [co-author] Nicholas Christakis… “Whether you’re happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviours and thoughts, but on those of people you don’t even know”

In this study certain social relationships were more effective at spreading happiness; the good mood of a next-door neighbour was more contagious than that of a live-in spouse. Friends of the same gender were the most likely source of good cheer.

A temporal element was also detected: the effects of a happy encounter could linger for as long as a year before fading.

One important dimension of such “contagion” has been rightly emphasised by Shigehiro Oishi, a University of Virginia psychologist who studies the causes and consequences well-being. He has said:

"Although we are connected with friends and family members who live far away via cell-phone and the Internet, these results indicate that there is nothing like a face-to-face interaction. We are told to get connected by cell-phone companies, but in order to get connected you really have to live close by and interact face to face.”

Technology is evolving a lot faster than the human animal.

But how can something like happiness be contagious? Some researchers think one of the most likely mechanisms is empathetic mimicry. Psychologists have shown that people unconsciously copy the facial expressions, manner of speech, posture, body language and other behaviours of those around them.

Through a kind of neural feedback, they experience the emotions associated with the particular behaviour they are mimicking.

Barbara Wild and colleagues at the University of Tubingen, Germany, found that the stronger the facial expression, the stronger the emotion experienced by the observer. She believes this process is hardwired, since it acts so rapidly and automatically.

Others suggest it works through the action of mirror neurons, a type of brain cell thought to fire both when we perform an action and when we watch someone else doing it, though it is not clear whether the mimicking would cause the neurons to fire or whether their firing would trigger the mimicry.

What is clear is that unconscious imitation allows people to "feel a pale reflection of their companions' actual emotions" and even "feel themselves into the emotional lives of others", says Elaine Hatfield, of the University of Hawaii.

There is plenty of evidence for emotional contagion outside the lab. In 2000, Peter Totterdell at the University of Sheffield found a significant association between the happiness of professional cricketers during a match and the average happiness of their teammates, regardless of other factors such as whether the match was going in the team's favour.

Other studies have found that waiters who offer service with a smile are rewarded with bigger tips.

In NLP this is called being in uptime. Make sure your head, your heart and your happiness are all on the same plain before launching into any key activity, particularly where it involves face-to-face contact. If not, then postponing to a better time - or making a phone call instead - might be the better strategy.

In business giving your clients, the people you are communicating with, the sense of having your “unconditional positive regard”; that you are there for them and with them; that they have your undivided attention, is the foundation on which good rapport is based.

Imparting happiness with the deal is a big bonus worth having.

Lessons in Staying Positive – #3

Words: 388. Reading time: 1 minute 18 seconds.

We all tell stories. We construct them from the events we pick out of our moment-to-moment existence. However, the events that I choose to notice and those that loom large for you will often be different – even when the whole experience would appear to be the same.

Have you ever been present at the same meeting with a colleague, but come away with a different version of what took place?

Or to the theatre with a friend who noticed aspects of the drama that completely escaped you?

Or seen an accident after which your witness statement differed from that of another honest observer?

Of all the stories in the world the most compelling are those we tell about ourselves to ourselves. Our story is our life; it is our version of reality. Our stories impose order and meaning on the chaos; they give us structure and direction.

Recently I asked a business acquaintance what her story was. She jumped right in with her first job and then told me about each job she has had since.

That’s interesting; what happened to her childhood? What happened to the rest of her life?

What does it say about her? And what story is she telling herself?

As life unfolds for you:
(a) what will you choose to focus on?
(b) how will you interpret what you focus on?
(c) what will you do and (a) and (b)?

If we see the thorn and not the rose, the past and not the possibility, the lesson and not the learning then we will tend to awfulize.

Awfulizing keeps us stuck in the past exclusively viewing the worst of the world. It then extrapolates from that very selective stance to a future ever and always more dire.

The third lesson is to glamorize rather than awfulize.

If you notice yourself awfulizing, neutralize your runaway thoughts with these two questions.

- How is being attached to this awfulized story influencing my reaction?
- How would I be different in this situation if I were not attached to that story?

It’s a rare situation that goes as badly as the scenarios you make up in your mind beforehand.

So what is the worse that can happen? And what is the best that can happen?

Which would you choose to focus on to maximize its chances?

Lessons in Staying Positive – #1

I was recently asked to deliver a talk entitled “Staying Positive In Difficult Times”. I accepted the invitation, but I changed the title.

The words we use are important. They reflect our thinking just as much as our thinking reflects our words. If times were difficult I would not want to stay in them, positive or otherwise. Nor would I want to stay positive under them, about them or while they last, although I might choose to stay positive through them.

I am equally twitchy at airports and railway stations where I am invited get on the train, or on the plane. No thanks! I’d much rather get in than get on!

And why would I wish to stay positive only in difficult times? Wouldn’t staying positive serve me just as well, whatever way “so-called” times turn out? If your outlook truly serves you well, it should do so whatever the circumstances. And if times were difficult would I want to stay?

The fact is the phrase “staying positive in difficult times” is a complete oxymoron and that’s lesson one: watch your language and do away with labels.

For someone who is positive times are neither difficult nor easy; times are neither happy nor sad; times are neither good nor bad. Times just are; they have no innate character that is true for everybody, everywhere, every when.

Times are what you make of them. It is quite possible for times to be both good and bad at the same time. Don’t take my word for it. Dickens said it most famously in the very first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Isn’t that just like now?

All Change

You may have come across the phrase “if you always do what you have always done, you’ll always get what you have always got.” Notable speakers who have used it in the past include Penny Phang, Anthony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Chris Widener and Zig Ziglar.

I have even used it myself.

Newsflash from my banking clients: that’s (another) coaching myth.

In the past this little mantra has been used to challenge those clients who were stuck in a rut of working hard in a particular way with little success, but unable to come up with another approach.

In those circumstances pointing out the illogicality of continuing in a fruitless pursuit made sense.

But what of those whose strategy has a history of success, but who face more recent set-backs? Wouldn’t they want to keep doing what they have been doing in order to duplicate previous favourable results?

Certainly they will. However, circumstances have changed. Now they need to change too, in order to match the changed situation.

Once the environment shifts, then so must the approach you use. Doing what you once did will not give the previous outcome.

That much is obvious, so what’s the problem?

Every moment of every day every one of us has to make three choices, whether we are aware of it, or not:

1. We have to choose where to direct our attention;
2. We have to choose how to interpret the event or object that has our attention, and
3. We have to choose what action to take as a result of choices 1 and 2.

The peculiar thing is that many people (not you, of course) do not consciously make those choices, because they do not even realise there is a choice to be made.

The consequence is that such people, instead of consciously selecting an action, merely react instead.

They take no responsibility for what goes on in their heads and the subsequent outcomes. “Other people” are being difficult and “the world” is against them. Their behaviour is entirely derived from habit, conditioning and untested suppositions.

Increasingly, as the world moves on, those habits, that conditioning and their suppositions are no longer appropriate. It follows that the results such people achieve become less and less satisfactory.

The results we get depend on the choices we make we make, either consciously from applied thought, or unthinkingly from the subconscious.

It pays to remain aware of our choices; it maximises our chances of selecting an appropriate action that matches the present circumstances.

At the height of the banking boom a highly successful broker drove his brand new, top the range Ferrari down Wall Street and pulled into the kerb to show it off to his friends. As he opened the door to get out the door was suddenly and completely ripped off by a passing truck.

The broker was outraged. He cursed the trucker. He screamed about the cost of the car. He yelled that the body repairers would never get it to look as good as it did new. He wailed about all the expensive extras that he had had fitted.

A New York cop pulled in behind the Ferrari with his strobe lights flashing. He told the broker to calm down. The car was no more than an expensive toy. And did the broker even realise that the truck had torn off half his arm when it passed? At that moment he was bleeding profusely over the sidewalk.

“My God!” the broker shrieked, “My Rolex!”