Author Archives: Sarah Heal

TED 2012 Key Themes – Part Two

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Business

There were many business messages that I took away from TED this year, some intentional and some probably not.

One of the unintentional messages was that presented by a number of the science speakers.  These people surrounded themselves with bright, young things which helped to fuel their research engines and provide innovation and new perspectives.  We had a great experience last year when we hired a young turk to support a project we were doing.  She was just outstanding, and had a natural curiousity which shone through in her work.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t keep her – she is now in Australia doing her Phd.  But it was a useful experience for us in helping us to appreciate the perspective and value that smart new minds can add.

Jim Stengel, who was previously a Senior VP at Proctor and Gamble, talked about bringing our whole selves to work.  Much of the message was vaguely familiar but it was still a challenging talk when we turned it in on ourselves.  I’m not convinced that we articulate our ideal as strongly as we could nor that it has the inspiring resonance that we want to it to have.  Part of this, previously, has been the impact of working in a distributed team.  I think we have big opportunities this year to strengthen the clarity and impact of our ideal especially as we seem to be forming a central core in Wellington that ‘out of towners’ can move in and out of.  The other piece of food for thought was Jim’s assertion that when times are tough everyone will be judging your behaviour.  How true!  So, I think it’s important to hang on to habits and connections that during the good times may seem less necessary but by making them part of who I am in the bad times they will hopefully be there to draw upon.

I was looking forward to Atul Gawande’s talk having read and enjoyed his New Yorker piece recently.  He was talking about the world of medicine but much of the content has relevance for a technical business like ours.

Gawande stated that the best medicine is that which is less expensive, has fewer complications and gives the best results.  When he looked at the various different procedures, it was  the ones that looked the most like systems that were the most successful.  However, this is a challenge for professions and organisations that rely on smart minds.  In medicine the culture of autonomy and daring is a disaster and what is needed instead is a pitcrew!  This is especially true because the complexity we are dealing with today (in our business as well as medicine) requires group success.  We all need to be part of the pit crew now.

So, what makes a successful system?  Three things:

  1. Ability to recognise success and recognise failure
  2. Devise solutions – checklists – which have: (1) pause points to help catch problems (2) killer items…the key things that get forgotten (3) a mixture of obvious stuff and interesting stuff
  3. Ability to implement

So this really got me thinking.  We know we have good reference sites and strong advocates for our work.  But how good are we really?  Are we able to recognise when we have success and when we don’t?  One of the difficulties of running a business is that as things get busier it simply seems to be harder to get close to our clients and implementations.  Yet I think this is really important.  In a previous year we  invited to clients to come in and talk to us about how they thought we were doing.  This year I think we need to go out and visit them. This is particularly the case for our successes.  We tend to leave them alone because they are doing well with the consultants they are working with.  It would be great though to get some insights on how and why they are successful and whether there are ways to really build on this for greater success.

Technology / Social Media

Reid Hoffman talked about how the career escalator – get a good job, get a promotion, swap escalators, get another promotion etc. etc. – is no longer true.  He suggests that the fast moving interconnected world has replaced the career ladder.  I’m not sure that I agree with that fully.   I’m a pretty erratic user of tools like Facebook and LinkedIn and have certainly never really bothered to leverage them to make career related connections.  Maybe this is because we are in New Zealand and everyone kinda knows everyone anyway … or they are only a couple of steps removed.

However, the discussion of network identity – who you know shapes who you are – was fascinating as were the insights about how information flows within a network.

Sherry Turkle provided a contra view that was somewhat less positive about the role of technology and social media in our lives.  She said that technology supports 3 of our deepest fantasies:

  1. We can put our attention wherever we want
  2. We are heard
  3. We never had to be alone

With technology we move from “I feel xyz, so I’m going to connect with this person or people” to “I want to have a feeling so I’ll log in”  Freaky!

So, the takeway for me is that self-reflection and solitude remains important and that fiddling around on-line is not a substitute for these.

TED Live overall

Following two years of attending TED Active (Aspen then Palm Springs) we didn’t attend TED last  year… a little something like an earthquake got in the way.  But as soon as the first morning was over it was clear the value that TED gives us.  Through different perspectives on a wide range of topics both related and unrelated to what we do, we make the space to think about issues and opprtunities beyond ourselves.  The way that TED extends our thinking also helps us to think about ourselves and the work that we do with fresh eyes and we have had some of the best conversations so far this year as a result of our TED immersion.

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TED 2012 – The Key Themes first pass

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We’ve been doing TED Live – the simulcast version – this week.

As in previous years, attending or watching 3 and a half days straight of TED talks is the brain’s version of being run over by a truck. This time, Grant and I have taken the time to whiteboard and discuss key themes as they’ve emerged.

Here’s my first post on themes – more to come…

Theme One – Identity

I felt like Susan Cain was talking directly to me in her session on introversion – I suspect so did many of those in the audience at TED.  I think I have learnt how to be an extrovert when the occasion requires it through techniques and strategies.  So while I’m comfortable training groups, running workshops and delivering papers, my natural state is at home curled up with a book and I really don’t enjoy gatherings of more than say 8 people.

Susan emphasised the importance of solitude for introverts, especially as a crucial ingredient for creativity.  Increasingly challenging but important in my own life is the need to carve out these spaces.  With the demands of work, business, family and my need for exercise and sleep, taking time to just be alone often seems like an indulgence.  This is where the walking that we do helps me.  The act of moving convinces my brain that I’m doing something but the disconnect from books, TV and e-things allows me to just be.  And somehow the soothing green really helps.

Jonathan Haidt talked about the need for self-transcendance and said that some people find this in nature.  I think this is what I’m doing when I am out walking.

I had high anticipation for Brene Brown’s talk (having seen her TEDx talk at some point last year) and I wasn’t disappointed. She talked convincingly about vulnerability being our most accurate measurement of courage – the willingness to take emotional risks, to be exposed and to live with the uncertainty of what this might mean.

It seems strange to write this now but I was very hesistant when I first started blogging and conscious of how this might change how people perceive me.  But mostly people respond to authenticity – flawed as a writer may be.

Her discussion of shame was interesting where she said that there is a clear gender difference in the experience of shame.  That for women it is translated into the need to be perfect – to be able to do it all, do it perfectly and to never let them see you sweat.  For men it is the need to never show weakness.  In her research a man told her “the women in my life are harder on me than anyone else”…and I wonder about how I treat and respond to the significant men in my life.  I need to have and show more empathy.

Curiously, many speakers identified a significant parent, grandparent or teacher who had been profoundly influential in who they are today. In particular, where a child has a special relationship with an adult, the adult’s passions play a key role in shaping those things that the child pays attention to.

Theme Two – Justice

The talk of TED was clearly Bryan Stevenson’s talk.  It so engaged and moved me I didn’t take any notes.  He talked about race, poverty and justice (or the lack of it) in the US.  Sitting in comfortably liberal New Zealand I felt appalled and momentarily smug.  And then Grant reminded me of what has happened in Turangi this year and it seems to me that justice, protecting children and poverty are still battles that we have to fight in our own back yard as well.

Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee provided an international context when she gave a moving talk about the lack of justice that still exists for girls in many parts of the world.  She has an incredible story and the work that she has done is just amazing.

More themes coming…

 

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The new normal

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The Christchurch City earthquakes in February and June were unbelievably tragic for the city and for many individuals.  Lives and property were lost and no-one who was in the city for either earthquake escaped the sheer terror of having the world shaking underneath, beside and around them.

We have been fortunate. Yet, like many in Christchurch we felt relief towards the end of 2011 as it appeared that the aftershocks were in permanent decline.

With big hits on 23rd December and more on 1st January 2012 our complacency was shattered.  Scientists are now saying that Christchurch will be shaky (albeit at overall declining rates) for the next 30 years to come.

From being firmly decided, before 23rd December, that our future was a Christchurch future latest events and accompanying analysis have made it clear that we cannot just pretend 2011 was an aberration and pick up where 2010 left off.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that we will move out of Christchurch but does mean that we have to get used to living with the new normal – a normal where a 5-6 magnitude shake is a possibility and jarring and unpredictable 4-5s happen every day or so.

So, the new normal means taking the kind of precautions that, despite the well-intentioned urgings of civil defence types, we’d never bothered with before.  The earthquake protection of our possessions and ourselves that started after June has started again. My partner has been doing simple things like making sure that open shelves have a barrier on them to prevent things flying off, attaching (and I mean really attaching) bookshelves, the television and anything vaguely moveable to walls, making sure there is nothing high and heavy in the childrens’ rooms and wrapping bungy cords around cupboards to make sure they don’t fly open.

We’ve also made some simple ‘living’ changes.  It is no longer acceptable for any vehicle to have less than half a tank of petrol. We always park one car on the road now just in case our driveway becomes impassable.  We have an emergency kit of spare clothes, personal effects etc. in the garage ready to be loaded into the truck in case we have to flee.  Three weeks without flushing toilets, safe water or power is no fun.

The bigger question “to stay or not to stay” is there just below the surface for both of us. We won’t stay because we’re gritty, determined or committed Cantabrians.  If we stay it will be because we like it.  We simply can’t think of where we could get (or afford) the superb access to sea, sand and privacy that we have where we live.  We are blown away by the quality of our daughter’s preschool here.  We both have exercise routines based around local facilities and are looking forward to the re-opening of Les Mills, Cashel Street at the end of March (fingers crossed).  We think we might even get a great new ‘New World’ supermarket around 10 minutes drive away.  It is scheduled to be built during 2012.

So, while are going to be exploring other options, the bar is very high.

Fingers crossed for a safe and settled 2012 for all in Christchurch.

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Great by Choice – at last Jim Collins is writing for the rest of us

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Jim Collins is well known for distilling large amounts of data about successful companies into catchy soundbites and key principles for running a good business.  Until now he has concentrated on hugely successful companies with billions of dollars of revenue and 100,000s of employees.

In Great by Choice, Collins looks at companies when they were starting out and faced particularly challenging circumstances.  At many stages in its life a company can be
fragile.  Collins focuses on how to protect and grow the company despite adverse events.   There is even a chapter on luck.

Several of the insights that seem like they could be useful for us are:

20 mile march – these are pre-set targets that essentially regulate behaviour.  If times are tough the organisation still needs to strive to meet its 20 mile target.  When times are easier the 20 mile target acts as a check on reckless behaviour and over-stretching.  I think the hardest challenge for us will be determining what an appropriate 20 mile march is.  Is it related to growth, profitability, sales, customer satisfaction, new products, new services or something else altogether?

Fire bullets, then cannonballs – trying small things first and then following up the ones that work with larger, big ticket efforts.  I think we do a little of this but not always in a conscious way.  The biggest handicap I think is that we don’t determine beforehand at what point (or at what results) a bullet should become a cannonball.  So we fire lots of bullets but sometimes pick up on the successful ones and sometimes not, depending on what else we have on the go at any given time.  Like all organisations, to launch a cannonball is a significant commitment and there is always an opportunity cost.  While we are preparing, priming and delivering our cannonball there are other things we are not doing.  We do have a really good internal reference point in the Polytech initiative that we ran and there are some learnings from this that we can apply to determining our bullet/cannonball strategy.

SMaC recipes  - these are the Specific, Methodical and Consistent ways in which a business is run.  The SMaC will tend to vary very little over the life of the organisation.  This sounds appealing but I think could be tricky for us.  My perception is that we like to be a little fluid and to have the freedom to do things if they interest us, not just if they fit in with a plan or ways of working.  On the other hand, maybe I am overplaying this somewhat and we flex and display fluidity within fairly consistent boundaries.  I’m not sure.  Fortunately, tucked away on page 188, Collins gives his list of workshop questions that he uses with executives to help them determine their own SMaC.  Time for a little self-diagnosis methinks.  I think I’ll be clearer about our SMaC or what is needed once I’ve applied the lens of these questions to our organisation.

Leading above the death line – this metaphor didn’t really work for me but the principle behind it resonates.  Collins calls this ‘Productive Paranoia’.  This is all about cash reserves, preparing for worst case situations, running scenarios and trials of
what can go wrong – building in the buffers and shock absorbers for dealing with unexpected events.  I think this is something we need to start doing and haven’t to date. This has really been a function of our evolving but steadily growing company.  When we were just a company of two or three, the worst case scenario was pretty easy to mitigate.  Now we are a company of 15, with hiring plans for 2012, things are a little more complex and negative impacts are less easy to cushion.  It is time for a different,
more cautious strategy here.

When reading the book too I got an uncomfortable flashback to one of Collins’ principles from a previous book.  This principle is that successful organisations celebrate success but also confront the brutal facts.  I think this is an area where organisationally we are weak. We tend to operate inside our own bubble a little with strong reinforcement from each other and our customers about how great we are.  We don’t often spend time with the ‘ones who got away’; we rarely review unsuccessful projects; and we don’t dwell, or
necessarily even share, the times when we lose bids.   Our internal news items are overwhelming positive. This makes us happy!  But doesn’t necessarily build the focus or care that we need and can make us too cavalier when we don’t shine.

Lots of food for thought in Great by Choice and some useful business planning and diagnostic tools.

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The 90 minute rule

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A couple of years ago I came across one of the most useful, and yet hardest rules to apply, ever.  This is the 90 minute rule.  Tony Schwatz writes about this in “The Way We’re Working”.  Essentially it means working at something, undistracted, for 90 minutes and then stopping and taking a break.  So what’s so hard about that?  It’s the ‘undistracted’ element that is so hard.  No phones, emails, internet, quick chats.  Just pure focus for 90 minutes.  Despite knowing how much more effective this approach makes me, I don’t use it often enough.  In fact, I often need to be in a minor work crisis to pick this up and use it.

My last one was a presentation for a client that just wasn’t coming together.  I’d collected a lot of material but wasn’t sure what to do with it. So, the first thing I did before my 90 minutes was to drop it.  Not to struggle with it but to let it go for a few days.  I woke up on a Sunday morning, feeling like I ‘had it’.  And I did.  I shared it briefly with someone else, jotted down some quick notes and then left it.  I don’t get 90 minutes at the weekends!  By Monday though I was ready to start and
didn’t open my email but went straight to my presentation and my handscribbled
notes.

Why is this top of mind for me right now?  Well I have another piece of work to do that I’m experiencing some resistance to doing.  Basically it’s a clean-up job of someone else’s work.  I’m pretty sure – have my rough notes – that I know how to move forward. And once I start, I think it will take me 20 minutes or so before I get going and start to feel the flow.  During that 20 minutes I need to be firm with myself and not get tempted to get into the email.  Just writing this makes me realise that my next step is to take the relevant material out of my email and save it where I can refer to it without even needing to open Outlook when I finally sit down at my desk and get ready to write.

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Commitments

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As part of a renewed focus on living a great life I’m currently working on 3 commitments.  Yes, that’s it – 3 commitments only.  I’m hoping that by building these three into habits I will then be able to create more space in my life for other things and build a foundation for some of the other commitments that I want to make.

Sleep is my first commitment.  I’ve always been a great sleeper.  In fact, my problem has been oversleeping anywhere from 10 to 12 hours a day.  But too much sleep makes me sluggish and I simply lose too much time.  At the moment I’m focusing on getting 8 hours a day.  On some days this means 7 and a half at night and a top up in the afternoon and other days (where I simply can’t make the space during the day) this means going to bed earlier.  I have a 5.30 wake up call, the beautiful spring time birds, so I need to compensate at the other end by going to bed half an hour earlier.

Exercise is really working for me at the moment.  This is kind of ironic given that I don’t have any gyms near me anymore thanks to the earthquake.  Most weeks I’m managing an exercise session 5-6 days.   I’m doing circuit training which, as I’ve got better at the exercises, I’m starting to really enjoy.  I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve had a light travel schedule which has enabled me to get this underway.  Fingers crossed I can keep it going as my travel increases over the next few weeks and I don’t have access to a motivating circuit class that I can attend.

Weekly I’m writing. I’ve made a commitment to blog every week.  I used to do this before parenting took over my life.   In fact, some weeks I’d blog multiple times a week.   Parenting still takes up a large amount of my time but I’m prioritising making the space to write instead of sleep (see above!) or simply wasting time surfing the net and reading magazines.  Inspired by Stephen King’s On Writing I’m no longer waiting for the muse to show up but starting regardless of where the muse is.  Early days yet, this is post number 3, but the key seems to be finding a specific time slot and writing no matter what.

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The right vehicle?

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I’ve been working on an interesting project over the past couple of months which has got me thinking about the right vehicles for change.

Have you ever been in a situation where you knew exactly the right thing to do but the person who needed to do that thing simply wasn’t doing it ?!  You’ve talked and talked and given your best advice and yet the other person just isn’t doing the obvious.  And when we move from 1-1 relationships and start thinking about organisations this gets harder and harder.

Often it’s not that the message doesn’t make sense but for some reason we can’t get the shift we need.  What’s going on?

Logic not emotions - often we present the perfect argument but fail to see how to get people emotionally invested.  We haven’t been able to tell a compelling story that connects with peoples’ emotions.  Two of the best books I have read on how to make the emotional connection are ‘Made to Stick; and ‘Switch’ both by the Heath Brothers.  Also worth reading is ‘Influencer‘ which has several co-authors

Next step is not clear - sometimes people want to do something differently but are simply not clear how to start to do this.  This is an ‘action’ gap.  In our book ‘Flapping to Flying’ we talk about Motivation Maths or P-A-P.  People need a compelling reason to make a change ‘Push’ and a vision of what the future will look like ‘Pull’.  But the ‘push’ and the ‘pull’ are necessary but not sufficient.  The missing piece is the ‘Action’ – what are the things that need to be done or done differently.

Someone like me – the reasons stack up, the next action is clear but something just doesn’t feel right.  Often this is because the change simply doesn’t seem like something a person like me or an organisation like  ours would do.  Conversely, minds are opened by the stories of people like me who do thinks that are unlike things I have done.  The book, Redirect, by Timothy Wilson is an eyeopener in terms of how identification and personal narratives shape and change behaviours.

I’m going to be rereading these books over the next month or so, chasing down the insights that might make a different to the projects I’m working on.

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Time Management – who’s the best guru of them all?

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As a huge fan of Michael Linenberger’s earlier book, Total Workday Control I was thrilled to see he had a new book out. The ‘One Minute To-Do List’ is truly that. The book only takes a quick scan to extract what’s needed.  Simply divide your ‘to do’ list into 3 categories, make sure every task makes it and ‘voila’.

What I liked about Michael’s previous book was the tweaking and fine-tuning of Outlook to make it into a task management maestro.  None of the tweaking this time around –
unless you count dragging your emails to your task list to make them actionable.  This was nifty the first time and still is, if you follow Michael’s approach to always keeping a clear in-box.  I’ve had some luck with this over the years although my adherence to ‘to do’ lists has been somewhat rocky.

I also had success with Mark Forsters AutoFocus approach which took me back to paper and pencil. It too was effective – in fact, my partner would make sure I had my
little black notebook with me when we went on long drives so I could record any
tasks as they arose.

‘Getting things done’ by the guru of time management Dave Allen simply didn’t grab me.  I’ve been a lacklustre implementer of GTD. And I feel embarrassed admitting this as I know it has a whole industry of devotees, software programmes, techniques etc.
But it does have some strong points – getting everything out of my head and recorded somewhere, doing a weekly review and most importantly ‘immediate next action’.  This is the breakthrough part of GTD for me.  If something has been lingering on my ‘to do’ list for a while and every time I look at it I move quickly past (‘a la’ Forster’s scanning type approach) then chances are it is not granular enough.  This means that the time has come:  either jettison the task or find the ‘immediate next action’.

But despite having all these time management specialists at my disposal – or their books anyway – the biggest stumbling block seems to be in my head.  I can do the tasks, so long as I write them down.  It’s the big plans that can be elusive especially as find myself time poor moving the minutiae of family, business, habits.  Not to mention
the impact of a couple of significant earthquakes.

So now that my blog is back I’m making a concerted effort.  I’m choosing to be more
deliberate in what I do and how I focus my energies.  Watch this space…

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For and about my Dad

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My dad is in surgery as I type this.

Tomorrow I’m going to take my daughters down to Timaru to visit him in hospital.

I wasn’t originally going to take my 7 year old down but because of the Christchurch earthquake she has no school.  She was delighted to be going to see Granny Jo and Grandpa Martin and they were likewise pleased at the thought of seeing her.

She seems to have made a special connection with my Dad.

But here’s  the thing that perhaps is a little strange – or maybe not…I don’t know.

Dad is really my stepdad and my 7 year old daughter is really my stepdaughter.

And the thing I remember really clearly about my dad (who I met when I was 6) was his unshakeable belief in me throughout my childhood.  And when I see or hear him interacting with Hannah I can hear that belief and love in his voice.

One of my favourite memories takes place in my first (and only) term at Notre Dame Senior School. I think it was October/Novemberish and it was the time of the school cross-country.

Back in those days, they didn’t stream the cross-country into years at all.  The whole school from 12 year olds (me) to 17/18 year old 6th formers all shot across the hockey fields and up into the woods at the same time.

I’d been a passable netball player in junior school but nothing exceptional.  Dad had been a runner at school in his time and the night before the cross-country he had given me two pieces of advice – to pace myself and to enjoy myself.

To this day, I don’t know why he and Mum turned out on a cold autumn afternoon to watch me run.

But when I emerged from the woods, I was running by myself…as I headed back across the fields I could see and hear my parents cheering me on.

I was placed 4th.  Not for my age group but for the whole school.

And I went on to be a reasonable runner.  No exceptional, not really competition level but reasonable.  If I’d wanted to run more Dad would have believed in me and supported me; as I explored other opportunities he believed in me and supported me.  It was an unwavering and unconditional belief.

I think my daughters (regardless of strong or loose blood ties) are lucky to have him in their lives.

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Where are all the great graduates?

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Prompted by a NZ Herald article about the shortage of jobs for graduates we advertised a graduate role on Seek recently.  What a disappointment!!!!

  • Only 30 or so responses
  • 80% from outside NZ
  • 85% didn’t bother with a cover letter, despite us requesting one
  • With the remainder the cover letter was generic and/or clearly aimed at a job that wasn’t the one we offered
  • It appeared that no-one actually visited our website to find out what it is that we actually do.

Where are NZ’s best and brightest?

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