Remembering Alice Pyne

Last Saturday following a six-year battle, 17 year old Alice Pyne succumbed to cancer. Over the last 2 years, Alice inspired thousands of people by documenting her story in a blog and in particular her bucket list. It wasn’t a list full of completely unachievable things –although she still had dreams. One dream was going to Kenya (she got to Kent - ya), but it was also a list of things that she could achieve, like enter her dog Mabel in a show and buy a static caravan for her charity.

One of her dreams is that everyone creates their own bucket list and it got me thinking. I thought bucket lists were about big things and they are. But they are also about the small but no less significant things, silly things even. It’s about momentum, starting small and maybe even staying small, but always moving on and having fun along the way.

So Alice, here’s the first item on my bucket list – tell people about your dream and invite others to start theirs. Buckets are for filling, start filling one today.

The Power of Teamwork

Yesterday, Team GB exceeded their Beijing Olympics medal haul and by the end of the London Games, will have reached their highest total in the modern Olympic era.  Not only that but on a per capita basis, Team GB would head the medal table.

There are many reasons for this success, not least the years of hard training and sacrifice by the athletes, the coaches, medics, nutritionists, psychologists, engineers, and all the other backroom men and women that make Team GB. 

Yet there is another group of people that athletes from around the world have paid tribute to for contributing to their success – the spectators.

The designers of the Olympic Stadium engineered it to amplify the crowd.  They recognised how the roar of the crowd would help build the atmosphere, urging the athletes on.  And it worked.  The spectators are definitely Team GB’s 12^th man. The athletes themselves, spurred on by the crowd go faster, higher, further and cite the crowd as a key contributor to their performance.

So, who are the 12^th men and women for your organisation? 

Who are the people that help build the atmosphere, that are passionate about what you are trying to achieve?

Who offers their unconditional support, shares your highs and lows, attaches no blame, asks only that you do your best?

The track cycling team have exemplified the science and business of winning.  Their planning organisation, innovation and execution are a testament to teamwork.  But even they can’t engineer the support they received over this last week.  Those levels of support have to be earned.  The crowd has to see the passion and determination, as well as the skill and ability.

Who is your sporting hero? What is it that gives them that level of recognition in your eyes?  What are the qualities that take them beyond technical ability?

How can you take those qualities into the workplace?

What do you need to do to harness the power of the 12^th man?

Dream Your Way to Success

 Mohammad Ali was probably the greatest boxer ever, but did you know that his pre-fight predictions were uncannily accurate, somewhere around 80% in fact.  How did he do it?

In an interview, Ali described his preparations.  Ali would research the opponent and devise a strategy to beat him.  Once the strategy had been developed, Ali would go to bed and dream the fight exactly to his strategy.  Once he had ‘seen’ the fight play out in his dream, he’d go to the gym and train for the dream.

That’s a powerful story and one that demonstrates the importance of having a clearly articulated dream or vision. Such was the strength of Ali’s vision that more often than not ,it came to fruition exactly as he had seen and planned it.

Along with his powerful vision, Ali was a very positive thinker.  Everything he said, thought and did affirmed his deeply held beliefs.  He was once quoted as saying “It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”

Dream yourself to the success your heart desires.

A Climate for Change

Over the last 60 years or so carbon dioxide (CO²) levels have risen more sharply and consistently than at any time over the previous 650,000 years.  Whilst there are many reasons for the rise and fall of CO² levels, there is only one factor that can account for the current and unprecedented rise in CO² in the atmosphere – human activity.

250 years from its inception, the industrial revolution continues to spread across the globe and when you see the abject poverty that millions of people live in, who can deny them the opportunities that industrialisation creates?  But is an 18^th century business mode, one that we should be still using today?

Energy drives industry and we are still a carbon based society.  Everything we do takes resources out, increasing CO² levels.  Whilst politicians and scientists argue there is no doubt that without action, the whole world faces a man-made, natural catastrophe.

The more advanced industrial nations have got better and taking less out but what is being put back?

I am reminded of the book “The Man Who Planted Trees” by Jean Giono.  The story is about a shepherd named Elzéard Bouffier who commits his entire life to cultivating a forest to restore the natural beauty of a ruined landscape.  Over a 40-year period Elzéard achieves his goal through planting by hand thousand of acorns, beech and other nuts one by one.  He receives no reward or recognition other than the personal satisfaction of seeing the forest grow.

Organisational Leaders are constantly looking for greater outputs.  They want more engagement, raised productivity. They want more out, but what are they putting back? 

At a recent networking event, the symbiotic relationship between trees and people was highlighted to me.  Trees absorb CO² and give out oxygen – the air that we breathe.  As we breathe, we give back CO² to the trees.  

The same is true for effective leadership.  It’s vital to give as well as to receive.  So what can you do today to give something back? Seeking out a balance between giving and receiving brings harmony, increases your value and the worth of those people with whom you have a brief or a long-term relationship.

Radio Gaga

Have you ever listened to one of those radio talk shows where the host raises the  important topic of the day? They have a couple of 'experts' with polar opposite opinions debate the issue and then  invite listeners to phone in with their views.   Of course, to make good radio, any comment has to increase the chance of disagreement and conflict.  It drives me mad!!!

I was recently moved to call into one of these radio stations, to put my view across.  My text and email was ignored and after phoning in and being put on hold for 10 minutes I gave up.  I now make a point of avoiding that particular show altogether.  

The following month I was talking to a team leader about the nature of communication in their organisation.  Their description reminded me of that talk show.  They are talked at and there is little opportunity of feeding back, or holding a constructive conversation about how to improve effectiveness or efficiency.  The effect?  The team leaders tune out, keep their ideas to themselves and, as Ken Blanchard said, quit and stay.

How do you manage and facilitate communication within and across your teams?  Is everyone tuned in or is it radio gaga?

What's in Your Loft?

Last winter’s cold weather prompted me to get the loft re-insulated.  In preparation, we had to empty the loft and wow, what a job that was.  As well as cherished memories – photo’s, keepsakes and the like, there was also a lot of junk that we didn’t know what to do with at the time.  Putting it in the loft was an easy answer – out of sight out of mind.  Now, with sweat pouring down my face and fibre glass strands making me itch like I had measles, the decision to put it out of sight was coming back to haunt me.

Recently a man was trapped in his bedroom when 70 boxes of old yachting magazines fell on him after his ceiling gave way under the weight.  It took 45 minutes for the fire service to rescue him and he could easily have been injured or worse. But that wasn’t on my mind.  What I was thinking about was how much we store out of sight in our minds, hanging on to stuff that isn’t really useful.

All those small and insignificant incidents that build up one by one and box by box.  Un-accomplished goals, the if only’s, the impossible wishes. A pattern of thinking develops and leads to a pattern of behaviour.  The behaviour leads to a path you would not have chosen, but find yourself walking.  

So what’s in your loft?  Is there a large magazine collection building up in there?  Are you storing away thoughts and feelings that over time will limit your growth and development? 

If left unattended, the weight of all that unhelpful thinking and building resentment will eventually come crashing down, trap you and lead to unwanted and unintended consequences.  Is it time for a spring clean?

Brain Power

Our brains are amazing things.  Even the worlds most advanced supercomputer, with the processing power of 1,000,000 desktop computers, wouldn't come close.  IBM predict hat in 10 years time they could build a computer with the power to rival our human brain.  Even if that were true it would still need the output of a nuclear power station to run it, substantially more than 3 shredded wheat!

That's because our brains have a few neat tricks up its sleeve.  Keen photographers will be familiar with the RAW format, which contains far more data than the more commonly used JPG format.  The brain does a similar thing.  It takes the raw visual image and compresses it to reduce the amount of data, while preserving the key details.

And the image the brain receives is also subject to some power saving trickery.  The common understanding is that the whole 'picture' is captured on our retina and then streamed to the brain.  Some say that the brain progressively scans an image much like an up-scaling DVD player. Now it seems the brain uses something called predictive coding to speed up recognition.  It works like predictive text on a mobile phone. The brain guesses what it thinks it's seeing and then then processes the detail to check and update the guess.

The brain is pretty clever then, but there's more.  Our brain not only controls our thinking and perceptions, it also controls our behaviour and our emotions.  The cerebral cortex  takes care of all the logical rational thinking. However, beneath our rational brain sits the limbic system.  This controls emotions and drives behaviour.  It is the more instinctive and intuitive part of our brain and operates at a deeper level.  Have you found yourself thinking that something doesn’t feel right, can’t put your finger on it, or put it into words? That’s your limbic brain at work.

It's easy to see why communication can be so problematic. With the billions of bits of data being processed, compressed and compared, it can be easy for it to be interpreted differently depending who is doing the processing.  While everyone has a brain they are all wired up slightly differently.

The Hermann Whole Brain Dominance Index (HBDI) is a great tool for understanding individuals communication preferences.  These preferences drive behaviour and impact on all kinds of things from career choices to decision making and problem solving styles. 

I use a simple but powerful card game in leadership and team development programmes to show people how their own thinking style impacts on communication and behaviour.  It’s also a good introduction to the psychometric profile you can complete. If you like to know more about how HBDI can be used, drop me a line.