Tomorrow is another country

Words: 217
Reading Time: 0 minute 43 seconds

All around me are preparations for the first England match in the World Cup. Whatever you may think of football – or of the England team - enormous enthusiasm is being exhibited nationwide. When we consider the record of the England team delivering against such expectations, I begin to wonder why such raving fans exist.

I believe the most likely explanation is that – once again – they have been sold, not the reality of past results, but the dream of future glory. This is not the past all-over-again; this is new territory, the dynamics are different; the possibility exists. It is hope-against-hope time and an excuse, among some, for a party.

And then there is the loyal cognoscenti who would enthuse whatever the circumstances – either for football in general, or for the England team in particular – although they are probably a minority.

What are the implications for business?

I would suggest the following lessons:
1) Don’t ignore your loyal fan base, they will keep you going through tough times;
2) Find out why your prospective supporters should care;
3) Sell the future for your customers, not the products' past;
4) Dreams overpower reality.

If business recognized and realized the way their potential supporters think, they would have many more enthusiastic aficionados and a very different tomorrow. Computer firm Apple is the classic example.

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.

Knowing Is Not Enough

Words: 561 Reading time: 1 minute 52 seconds

It isn’t what we know that determines the outcome; it’s what we do with what we know.

Example 1
Prior to “Operation Market Garden” in September 1944 the senior Allied commanders knew that the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions were located on the corridor that the Allies planned to use for their narrow-front thrust. This made achieving the objective highly unlikely.

More than 16,800 Allied troops were killed, wounded or captured in a fruitless effort that was essentially targeted at assuaging a bruised ego.

Example 2
In December of the same year the Germans launched a tactically brilliant offensive through the Ardennes, inflicting heavy losses on inexperienced Allied troops.

Just like Market Garden 'It was not intelligence (evaluated information of the enemy) that failed. The failure was the commanders and certain G-2's, who did not act on the intelligence they had,' according to one of Patton's subordinates.

Although both of these failures to listen came close together, they are by no means unique. Similar failures had preceded them in earlier times and others have followed in later times.

Example 3
The North Vietnamese Easter Offensive of 1972 was similar and as one author has pointed out "Though the location, numbers and types of forces were not the same, the command assumptions, the weather and the use and misuse of intelligence had almost the same catastrophic effects in both clashes.... "

Example 4
Ten years later, in the South Atlantic, the Falklands war may have been avoidable. In any event it was undoubtedly made more costly and riskier by the intelligence failure that preceded it. British officials were unresponsive to warnings that diplomacy had failed and invasion was imminent.

Example 5
In 2003 it was Iraq. As the White House has acknowledged, intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs did not drive its decision to go to war.

The intelligence on Iraq was there. It did not get things wrong and thereby mislead policymakers. Once again the leaders were insensitive to information that suggested that the course of action on which they were embarked was likely to lead to disaster.

These examples are drawn from the military sphere simply because mistakes there tend to more visible and better documented than failures in business. But similar failures in business abound. Failures where the enterprise does not give sufficient weight either to facts within its purview, or relevant facts easily revealed.

Many people, let alone businesses, are uneasy acknowledging that many of the conventions and principles they operate on are unwritten, unspoken and unconscious. Psychologists estimate that 95% of the things we say and do each day are done on “autopilot”, that is automatically, unthinkingly and routinely.

And the very familiarity of such actions mean they go unrecognised and unquestioned long after they cease to be either safe or appropriate. Thus it is that we wake up one day to find ourselves in an awful mess without realising quite how we got there.

The tragedy is that working with either a business coach, or an NLP Practitioner for even a short period of time will begin to raise awareness of the subconscious paradigms we are running and what the implications might be.

Make just one New Year’s Resolution – start working on raising your awareness of yourself and your business so that you can improve your chances of recognising the warning signs before it is too late.

Change and Uncertainty

It is a common misconception that people fear change. On the contrary, people are change.

People change all the time – from the colour of their hair to the clothes they wear; from the book they are reading to the job they are doing. Even the cells in our bodies change – our blood is completely changed every 30 days.

It is not change that people fear, it is the uncertainty associated with change.

Faced with uncertainty your possible responses go beyond the simple alternatives of flight or fight. Psychologists now also recognise freeze (extreme vigilance while immobile), fright (“playing dead”) and faint. I have observed there’s a fifth – flap – and a sixth – flatulence.

Flap is extremely common in the business world and just as evident in Government. Earlier writers characterised it as “seagull management” based on the tendency of senior personnel to fly in, foul everything up and fly off again – leaving the troops on the ground to clear up the resultant mess as best they can.

Flatulence refers to the long-winded, bombastic, pompous and pretentious displays evinced most often by Ministers in reaction to a crisis. This adds greatly to the public spectacle, but does little to seriously address the root of any problem.

Think of Gordon Brown’s ‘saving the world’ as being equivalent to a local moggie making itself more impressive and threatening by raising its fur and arching its back, thus increasing its apparent size and power.

Mistakenly assigning your feelings of concern or resistance about change to simple fear could cause you to miss more meaningful information – like:
i) your unhappiness with the way the change is happening;
ii) your lack of concrete information about the way the change will affect you; or
iii) your dissatisfaction with a lack of genuine opportunities for your voice to be heard in the change process.

When contemplating the changes you face it’s worth recalling that:

* Change is part of everyday life; it’s part of the endless cycle of birth, growth and demise. You are part of that process, so make the most of it.

* You are not alone. Others will have been in the same boat in the past, some will be in the self-same boat you are and others will join the boat later. Share the problems and form a crew.

* When you know what piece of meaningful information is missing, you’ll know what to do.

* One person’s threat is another person’s opportunity. To quote an old adage – when life serves you lemons, make lemonade.

* The inspiration to live a life you’ll love will carry you long after the adrenaline burst from fearing a life you’ll hate has burned out.

We are often admonished not to be fearful; we should “pull ourselves together” we shouldn’t “be so negative” even though worry, fear, concern and trepidation are really useful signals that something may be happening and we need to pay attention.

If we harbour genuine fears then that is how we feel and that is what we have to work with. “Shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” are simply distractions. Going past the fear itself to the situation that evokes that feeling and finding which elements are important to us there is the best way to capture the value in fear’s early warning system.

That’s putting fear to its best possible use. To do the opposite – becoming exclusively focused on our own preservation, rather than notice what is going on – is to devalue the message.

By way of illustration, there’s a simple story to remind us about the value of focus.

A small plane is flying high over the Scottish mountains, when it develops engine trouble. There are five people on board: the pilot, Steve Redgrave, Gordon Brown, the Dali Lama, and a new-age hippie. The cockpit door opens, and the pilot bursts into the compartment.

"People," he begins, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that we're about to crash. The good news is that there are four parachutes, and I have one of them!" With that, the pilot throws open the door and jumps from the plane.

Steve Redgrave is on his feet as quick as flash. "People," he says, "I am the world's greatest athlete. The world needs great athletes. I think the world's greatest athlete should have a parachute!" With these words, he grabs one of the remaining parachutes, and hurtles through the door and into the night.

Gordon Brown rises and says, "People, I am the world's smartest and most serious politician. This is a serious situation and the world needs a smart politician like me. I think the world's smartest politician should have a parachute, too." He grabs a pack, and out he jumps.

The Dali Lama and the hippie look at one another. Finally, the Dali Lama speaks.

"Young lady," he says, "I have lived a satisfying life and have known the bliss of True Enlightenment. You have your life ahead of you; you take a parachute, and I will go down with the plane."

As cool as a cucumber, the hippie smiles slowly and says, "Hey, don't worry, dude. The world's smartest politician just jumped out wearing my rucksack."

The magic is not in the mushrooms, it’s in paying attention to what is going on around you.

"Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out." – Karl A. Menninger.

Sitting Pretty

Additional long-term capital would be welcome. It would surely act as a ready buffer against future shocks and yet more trying times.

But some clients are beginning to feel left out of the party as the rate of economic growth slows. As the total of taxpayers’ money being gifted to banks and financial institutions grows day by day they are tempted to cast an envious eye in that direction.

While I can appreciate the sentiment I regard the prospect as a siren song leading to potential tragedy.

Once such a comfortable cushion is in place it is all too easy to regard that as the solution: nothing more need be done. The company can now sit safely on the, albeit diminishing, cushion and watch as events pass by.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Either the cushion will continue to diminish until it disappears completely, leaving the company worse off than before.

Or the crisis will end and your competitors will be stronger and better prepared than you, having benefited from the hard lessons imbibed while weathering the storm.

Liners may carry lifeboats, but your chances are improved by learning to swim.

Depending on the benevolence of others for your own survival is never a good idea. Those that ride to the rescue today will, unlike the good Samaritan, impose their own conditions tomorrow – as the bankers will shortly learn.

Any coaching I give is directed towards each client learning the rules of the changing markets conditions, as they apply to him or her, and then working out his or her own solution, whatever that may be.

That may not sound easy, but this is not economic Armageddon, despite what the newshounds will tell you.

There is still plenty of business out there – at least as much as there was 2-3 years ago.

If you were in business then, you were probably doing nicely.

You still can be.

Once upon a time a wise King, concerned about the unrest and discontent among his people, invited them all to bring their burdens to him. He promised to listen and to help, if he could.

They came from near and far, each carrying his own burden, which they laid at the feet of the King. Then one after the other, each rose and told his story.

When the tales of woe were finished, the King spoke: “You have heard your neighbour’s story. If anyone wishes he may now exchange his burden for another’s.”

Silently his subjects looked around, then silently picked up his own particular burden and quietly walked away.

Migrating Your Business

Faced with the plans, goals, targets and objectives necessary to migrate our business, from where it is to where we want it to be, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Indeed, it is so easy to become overwhelmed that some people actually end up doing nothing at all, paralysed by those daunting challenges.

Of course, such people are not totally inactive, far from it. They give the appearance of being the busiest people in the office as they collect mounds of data and reams of analysis about all the challenges they face.

However, there is no outcome, for they never reach a conclusion. All that activity is merely a smokescreen, a security blanket, a substitute for the action they should be taking, but never get round to.

When faced with overwhelm one remedy is to take a lesson from the animal kingdom. Since autumn is approaching the goose sense used during their annual migrations is a lesson as powerful as horse sense.

When you see a flock of geese heading south for the winter, you will notice they fly in a characteristic "V" formation. That way, as each bird flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the bird immediately following. The "V" formation adds at least 71 percent greater flying range, for the flock as a whole, than if each bird flew alone.

Who else do you know that is heading in the same general direction as you? What opportunities exist to draw on their experience and leadership? How can you and your firm use their “slipstream” to help ease the hard work sometimes needed in order to make any headway? Would you really like at least 71 percent greater flying range?

However, do not expect such assistance to be entirely altruistic.

When the lead goose gets tired you can expect it to rotate back into the following flock while another goose flies point. Depending on circumstances, resources and the skills required sometimes that goose will be you. That’s because it makes sense to take turns doing demanding jobs.

You will also hear the geese behind honking to encourage those up front. Note that the honking is there for encouragement, not criticism. When you honk from behind – figuratively speaking – what is your intent? And is that intention realised?

Finally, when a goose gets sick or is wounded by gunshot, and falls out of the formation, two other geese fall out with the injured bird and follow it down to lend help and protection. They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly again, or until it dies; and only then do they launch out on their own, or with another formation to catch up with their own group.

How many businesses have the corporate sense to offer mutual support in the face of economic ills, market malaise and the continual sniping from Government and financial institutions? And is yours one of them?

Perhaps the humble goose is not quite so silly after all.

Business in Progress

Recently a leading think-tank, the Ernst & Young Item Club, said that the economic outlook for Britain is like a "horror movie".

In my opinion that is a contrived exaggeration designed to catch the attention of the media.

One wonders what metaphor they would possibly have substituted if they had been commenting in 1926. However, there are so many doom merchants plying their trade at the moment that trying to go one better might be expected.

So, just how bad is the economic outlook as seen by the Item Club? What constitutes a “horror movie” these days?

Growth in UK GDP during 2007 was 3.1%. The Item Club expects growth of 1.5% in 2008 and growth of 1.0% in 2009 before it returns to 2.5% in 2010.

Growth????

Oh, yes! Ernst & Young are not forecasting a recession … far from it. They are expecting that the UK economy will continue to grow.

This is about as close to a horror movie as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Even if things turn out worse than Ernst & Young’s choice of prose, professional firms need to get a sense of proportion. In the US Great Depression 1930-33 the reduction in the level of GDP from peak to trough was a fall of some 30 per cent.

That means that some 70% of output was maintained, although the exact figures will have varied from sector to sector and firm to firm. Nevertheless the point is well made that business continued to happen. Some people even did remarkably well out of it.

Therefore, what you can be sure of is that, no matter how poor the economy gets, substantial amounts of business will still get done.

The only question you need to answer is whether you will be among those doing that business.

There is a recognised 3-step process that will help you towards a positive answer:

1. Raise your standards. Increase the levels of service that you provide and the attention that clients receive. Satisfactory is not good enough, either to win new business, or retain existing accounts.

2. Change your beliefs. Who your prospects are, where they can be found, what they want and your capacity to meet those expectations all need rewriting. The world has moved on; you need to keep pace or you will be left behind.

3. Revise your strategies. Whatever game plan you have been following is now familiar to all your staff and most of your competitors. It’s predictable. “A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates” ~ Sun Tzu.

For the outlook to be perceived as bad is nothing new.

Recently, Sam meets his friend Joe in the Arndale Centre and greeted him warmly.

"Hi Joe, I haven’t seen you for some months. So how is the company doing that you set up with Maurice last year?"

"Well,” said Joe, “As I told you then, I put in all the money and Maurice put in all his business experience. But things have changed a bit since then."

"What do you mean?" Sam asks.

"Now Maurice has all the money and I have all the business experience."

The wisdom of making mistakes

We all make mistakes. And fear of making mistakes too often keeps us frozen in indecision and inaction. However, it is rarely the mistake itself that is the real problem. More often it is the consequence we expect, the outcome from the mistake that blocks our moving forward.

That fear is misplaced for four main reasons:

Our fears may be groundless or, at least, exaggerated. Fear is only felt in relation to potential future events. Nobody fears the past since it is already known and experienced. However, potential events are not real events. They may never happen as we anticipate and we cannot know how they will happen until we take action. How often has some dreaded eventuality turned out to be not so bad after all?

Mistakes may be more apparent than real. What we judge to be a mistake in the short term can eventually emerge as a breakthrough. History is replete with such events. Artificial sweeteners, X-rays, microwave ovens and vulcanized rubber are just a few of the inventions that owe their existence to chance.

We learn from our mistakes. It has been said that success teaches us very little, whereas failure carries valuable lessons. Our failures cause us to pause, take stock, work out what went awry and then modify our approach. Success is often taken for granted. We pat ourselves on the back, congratulate ourselves for being so smart and move on. We rarely stop to work out what elements came together to deliver such a great result.

Indecision and inaction is itself a decision – hence the expression ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t’. With a decision made and action take you have intention and a degree of control. With indecision and inaction one is subject to the variable winds of fate and fortune, and the decisions and actions of others, never know where one is likely to end up.

Then there are those mistakes that only appear to be foolish, but conceal a deeper wisdom:

One day a beggar appeared in the marketplace. Whenever people showed him both a large note and a smaller note he always chose the small one.

Eventually, a generous man who was tired of seeing everyone laugh at the beggar quietly went over to him and explained that when people offered him two notes, he should choose the larger one. Then he would have more money, and people would not think him a fool.

"You are surely right", replied the beggar. "But if I always choose the larger note, people would stop offering me money, in order to prove that I am a greater fool than they are. And then I would no longer receive enough for my food. There is nothing wrong with appearing to be a fool, if what you are doing is in fact intelligent."

Preparation

"It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared" (Whitney Moore Young Jr.). As the economy shifts under us, moving from one phase to the next, some preparation for what might be ahead will promote our chances of capturing the opportunities that will be there for the taking.

We may be sure that opportunities will exist, whatever the circumstances.

If house prices continue to fall there will be bargains available to those willing and able to take advantage of them.

If oil prices continue to rise then oil reserves, previously uneconomic, will become worth drilling and refining.

If food shortages spread, then more land will be brought into cultivation, farmers will prosper and agricultural land values will increase.

It’s an open secret: in good time and in bad opportunity consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. Preparation consists of dreaming what might be and devising contingencies to deal with that situation should it arise.

Most situations will not actually occur. Those that do will not be exactly as we planned. Nevertheless, the fact that we have been thinking ahead makes us better prepared, sooner than those that have just waited to see what turns up before they react, if they ever do.

In business we often find ourselves wrestling with current demands and misadventures. Our days are spent fire fighting, leaving no time to worry about tomorrow. However, this approach, while apparently sensible and seductive, will mean we continue to fight those fires day after day. Being busy will be no protection when the roof caves in.

With the future in mind it is often easier to spot opportunities as they arise. Without that mental preparation the chance goes unremarked. We are familiar with this phenomenon from our own experience. Having bought a new car we immediately notice how many other similar cars there are on the road. Before making the purchase we were totally unaware.

By way of illustration:

Sarah has just left the house after a blazing row with her husband. She was taking a quiet walk to calm down when she notices an unusual funeral procession coming along the road towards her. At the front is a large black hearse and 20 yards behind this is a second black hearse. A solitary woman is walking behind the second hearse with a large, well-groomed Rottweiler dog on a lead. Behind the woman are 50 other women walking single file.

Sarah is very curious and goes over to the woman with the dog and says, “I’m sorry about your loss.”

“Thank you,” says the woman, “you’re very kind.”

“I know it’s a bad time to ask,” says Sarah, “but whose funeral is this?”

“It’s my husband's funeral,” replies the woman.

“So what happened to him?” asks Sarah.

The woman replies, “My dog attacked and killed him.”

“And who is in the second hearse?” asks Sarah.

The woman answers, “My mother-in-law. She was trying to help my husband when the dog turned on her.”

A poignant and thoughtful moment of silence passes between the two women.

“Can I borrow the dog?” asks Sarah.

“Go to the back of the line,” replies the woman.