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The Business Athlete
Out running early this morning, (training for The Jurassic Coast Challenge in March), it suddenly struck me how good I felt! Freezing cold, exhausted, hungry and muddy! Yet ready, with an active mind and full of enthusiasm for the day ahead.
We all know that good things happen to us physiologically when we exercise, good things also happen when we feel good about ourselves. Almost 20 years ago I came across an American organisation who talked about ‘the whole person concept’. The idea was that in order for people, in this case sales people, to perform at their peak most of them needed to have their whole person in balance. The thinking has moved on a bit since then, but I’m not sure the actions have.
How many employers really consider the whole person that they employ or do they just focus on the 9 to 5 bit?
I know I work best when I feel fit, alert, well fed and watered. But it goes beyond that, I also work best when I spend some time with my family and friends, when I have no money worries, when I am doing some voluntary work and supporting charitable causes; and when I am achieving personal goals away from work.
As an employer would you consider the influence of these things on your employees and how would you deal with that?
As an employee would it make a difference to your motivation and performance to have these things considered?
Because to me, employing Business Athletes, sounds like the way to go!
Not Politics, a Business Lesson…
Maybe I’m a bit slow, but I’ve just realised what’s happening to our country, but more importantly why!
I believe that we are stagnant, a country lacking in ideas, scared to innovate and create. The reason for this manifests itself in many organisations across the UK. Accountants run companies. Don’t get me wrong we all need accountants and I know some great ones and have worked 
with some, however they rarely inspire, enthuse, motivate; they are much more likely to restrict, control, ask for proof and evidence. That is after all their job.
So back to politics for a second, our country is being run by an FD not an inspirational CEO!
The UK produces great innovators: James Dyson, Jonathan Ive, (he invented the iPod) and others, yet often they get ignored. As we feel the first rays of hope at the end of this crunch induced recession, let’s not ignore creativity and innovation. It brings new perspective to our thinking and acts as a catalyst for action; it excites people.
And excited people naturally do more, think more and live more than frightened ones.
The Ceiling of Complexity
I came across this concept back in the mid 1990′s working for an entrepreneur who was way ahead in his thinking. His coach, in the US, named the theory and it’s identification in our business, at the time, changed our whole approach. Looking back this was a period of fantastic growth for me personally.
Anyway the theory goes that the Ceiling is evident in companies that have had tremendous growth. They have been successful and so continue to conduct business in the same way, however their old approach cannot handle more growth. Therefore the business itself becomes very complex, hence ‘Ceiling of Complexity’.
The solution is simple: change; implementing that solution, however, is not easy, as we all know! In my experience the first thing to change is your perspective.
Either the incumbent management team need to change theirs, or their needs to be an injection of a third-party viewpoint. This is why ‘back to the floor’ programmes work because managers see their business from a different angle.
How do you know if you’re in this situation?
- Repetitive sales figures, (doing more but achieving the same)
- Staff becoming frustrated, (work harder, achieve less, criticised more)
- Managers appear out of their depth, (running out of ideas and energy)
What do you do? Change something…inject some energy…celebrate something…but above all look at things from a completely different viewpoint…the warehouseman’s, a customer’s, a competitor’s, a shareholder’s…
Alternatively you could trust an advisor to tell you how it appears from the outside looking in!
Behind the Mask
Simply a grumble today really!
I am fed up with reading stuff about passion, excellence, quality and care when it is so obviously rubbish! If it’s not you then don’t say it…be it first, then boast about it. It was Henry Ford (I think) who said you can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do! 
By all means talk about your own aspirations inside your organisations but your clients will see straight through them and they will love you less!
A very well known mobile phone company, (who preach many of the above and exult their customer experience), charged me for a service that I didn’t order. When I questioned them they admitted their error and refunded the correct amount to my bill…and next to that amount it said “Good will”.
Make sure that what you boast about is evident in all you do…if it’s not…then change the words or change the actions…its up to you.
Feedback for Happiness
Reading the weekend newspaper, as I sometimes get time to do, earlier today. I came across a great interview with Dr Martin Seligman whose work I have followed at Authentic Happiness.
Otherwise known as the happiness professor his mission has been the promotion of the field of Positive Psychology. This discipline includes the study of positive emotion and positive character traits.
His work and teachings are little talked about in business in the UK, but they should be. Delivering feedback is an undervalued skill in business and I could write endless posts on the subject, but what follows is what Dr Seligman calls an “action exercise”.
Try this the next time that you are in a position to give feedback.
You start with four options:
- Active
- Passive
- Constructive
- Destructive
There are also combinations of the above; most balanced peoples’ default is Passive Constructive. So let’s take an extreme scenario to demonstrate his point:
One of your sales team comes back to the office and tells you that she has landed to biggest deal in the company’s history and you say:
“Congratulations Amanda you really deserve it.” (Passive Constructive.) You could also say, “You do know that it will be very difficult for the business to service that order.” (Active Destructive.) Or you could try, “Have you got those sales figures that were due in at the begining of the month?” (Passive Destructive.)
But of course the one that will work best is Active Constructive, “That’s fantastic Amanda, I have been keeping an eye on your presentation stats and your proposals over the past few months and the one you put together for this deal is the most considered and detailed I have seen. Would you talk me through the pitch? Who was there? Did they accept all of your recommendations?…” Suddenly your feedback also becomes a celebration, an eductaion, it becomes memorable. ( NB Ensure that your feedback is authentic and delivered with candor.)
The more people in your organisation that you can get delivering Active Constructive feedback the more commitment you will get all round, the more success and the more people will want to work for you.
Make Hay Whilst The Snow Lasts!
Working at home this morning I remembered this post from last year;
“Last night watching the news it suddenly came to me that this weather is what we’ve all been waiting for!
Day after day, sales people are chasing decisions, checking progress and getting frustrated with being told that their contact is either travelling or in a meeting off site.
KEY POINT: Not tomorrow they won’t be!
If their business is working tomorrow then you can be pretty sure that all travelling and meetings off-site will be cancelled. This gives you a rare opportunity not to have to hear excuse after excuse and instead actually get a considered and factual response.
Make tomorrow the day when you call all your potential prospects, contacts and customers.
The weather conditions could be the kick start to getting a decision that otherwise you wouldn’t get.
Make Hay Whilst The Snow Lasts!
Long Time, No Blog
What is a long time not to post a blog? At an IoD meeting earlier this week we were discussing the place of online marketing and social media in business today. I was lamenting the fact that I have been so busy networking, presenting, mentoring (and being a Dad), that I had not found time to post a blog in the last couple of weeks.
A little over ten years ago I remember sending my first email, not just in a different decade, but what now seems like a different world. In the Noughties our business world has been taken over by the online world and its jargon! Is it a better business world?
Our days are now fragmented and interrupted, which impacts on how we work and handle tasks. We all talk about multi-tasking as if it were some virtue of successful people; but research shows that it is a highly inefficient way to work. What happened to concentration and focus? In many of the businesses that I encounter there now seems to be a lack of ability to problem solve deeply, to go past the basic data and unlock knowledge. American author and journalist Maggie Jackson believes,
“that the way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained perceptive attention – the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress.”
This surely has serious ramifications for many businesses, that rely on relationships, understanding and development.
Let’s use words like will, discipline and self-control in our businesses. There is no doubt in my mind that social media works and should be part of your business. But exercise your own will over what, discipline your business to have direction, a strategy of where and why and use self-control to know when and how much!
Who knows when I’ll blog next, I may just be too busy shaking real hands and exchanging real business cards!
Don’t Blame Powerpoint
PowerPoint is not the cause of bad business presentations, but laziness, poor writing and presentation skills may be.
Slides are intended for images and visual displays of data, not for words, that’s what you’re there for!
Surely the point is to create a well-written, detailed document/ presentation as the basis of what you say. That can then be used to create handouts, where you need them; to be distributed after the presentation.
You need to tell me a story and use slides like the illustrations in a book. But what does the story need to do?
- Grab me by the ears
- Lay a foundation
- Engage my emotions
- Build up proof
- Answer my questions
- Help me to draw a conclusion…then get my feedback
Tick off these and you’ll be well on your way.
I believe that presentation/ public speaking skills are one of the most under-valued and under-trained skills in business. How many times do we get in front of a precious prospect and fail to tell them a compelling story that ensures that they want to engage with us. How many times do we fail to deliver a key message as a key speaker at a business event?
Make the most of every opportunity and respect your audience, after all, in listening to you, they have invested their most precious commodity in you, time!
Young Enterprise at work…
Having now spent a few months with my latest batch of Young Enterprisers we’re both getting used to each other! Ingenuity, refreshing answers and enthusiasm; this term has brought to life the enjoyment of working with young people and what makes it so stimulating. This is corroborated by a major study by the Training and Development Agency into what practising teachers enjoy about their jobs, in which eight out of 10 cited engaging with young people and nine out of 10 the sense of achievement that working with pupils offers.
It hasn’t taken long this term to remind me of the joys of working with young people; why they are so fascinating to work with. The projects that we deliver encourage the pupils to respond in their own way and their response is mostly inspiring and clearly highlights why teaching is such a rewarding profession.
Yet how many of us in business recruit young people and expect them to behave like mature employees not enthusiastic beginners? If you recruit someone from school/ college/ university, why not give them a work buddy? Someone who can spend time encouraging, developing and inspiring? I am convinced that time invested yields huge dividends.
Interested in volunteering for Young Enterprise? http://bit.ly/2RfTKh
