In all the conversations about Manchester United’s manager and their disenchanted player Wayne Rooney (Rooney wants to leave, manager Ferguson feels betrayed) there’s a little snippet that hasn’t got much attention. Apparently as the story started to get very public, Rooney was injured on the training field – had to be carried off on a stretcher – after a ‘tackle’ by fellow player Paul Scholes. I’m sure the fact that Scholes is a revered and passionate player at the heart of the team who has played for Man Utd for most of his career, was just one of those amazing coincidences, and tells us nothing about the strength of feeling in the rest of the team …
picture: Dan Zen
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is full of outstanding musicians. Watching them play, I realise that a distinctive common feature of the players is that their beautiful sound, virtuoso dexterity and sheer musicianship, are executed in almost complete stillness. Watch the first horn play a difficult line, and the only detectable movement is from the three fingers that touch the keys. Excellence does not need showmanship. Sometimes excellence demands stillness.
picture: digitalART2
There are important parts of what we do, that do not have an end. When we talk about building a website for example, the implication is that the job is complete once it has been ‘built’. Except things change (see Bryony Thomas’s nice take on treating a website as an employee). Customer service isn’t a one-off project either, it’s an attitude, structure, and way of working. As someone who is instinctively a ‘destination’ rather than a ‘journey’ person, that can be a hard lesson. What’s made me think about this particularly? Well, actually, the household laundry. Not helpful to get frustrated that ‘it’s never finished’ or ‘I’m way behind’ – it never is and you always will be – maybe better to enjoy / tolerate / learn to live with the journey.
Photo: Trixibell
Meeting tomorrow to wrap up a current campaign where we’ve got some excellent results for our clients. We’ve also learned a few lessons. It’s interesting watching the dynamics in this kind of meeting. Sometimes people are so careful to ensure that they are not seen to have made any mistakes, that they forget to learn. Sometimes I am one of those people
It’s such a common question that we hardly notice its meaning. ‘Who do you work for?’ We barely notice it even when we talk about someone – as I did yesterday – who ‘works for me’ or ‘used to work for me’. Yes, mostly we take it to mean ‘who do you report to?’, or ‘who pays your wages?’. Let’s be clear though, its implications are quite different. The real answer may be that you are working _for_ yourself and your family, you are saving for a house or for retirement, you are making your contribution to society. In a few cases this might be entirely consistent with the answer you actually give when someone asks you the question. For many of us though, I suspect the answer we give is ‘I work for Derek / Sheila / your boss or company’s name here’: and that just isn’t true.
NLP people will tell you that our brain believes what we say out loud. Even if it’s not true, even if that’s not what we really think.
So when someone asks ‘who you work for’, think about your answer, and say out loud something that you want your brain to believe. And when you start to talk about an ex-colleague as ‘someone who used to work for me’, then maybe we could think of a fairer way of saying that too.
Important time now for the new business: some serious interest from some seriously interesting people; need to work on funding (which needs business plan); need to work on the network who will help deliver the service; need to set up meetings and generate some business. All are important. The balancing act, is to devote the right amount of energy and time to each. The mental balancing behind that, is to do the important stuff first, even if – especially if – it’s the stuff that I enjoy least (like say, picking a completely random example here, setting up meetings).
Fortunately, I’ve decided I have to write a blog posting first.
Photo: tourist_on_earth
1. The local coffee shop says it has never been busier, and they are surprised, as they expected to be an early casualty of people cutting back on discretionary spending.
2. A household name in doors and windows quoted us a laugh-out-loud high price for a replacement door, admitted that ‘they don’t sell many of these’, and ended the call.
3. One of our many local charity shops is dutifully offering ’3 for 2′ packs of its (charity!) Christmas cards.
It’s a confusing picture of the economy at the moment, almost as if we don’t quite know how we’re supposed to behave.
Picture: 30cakesin30days
So after all the prohecies of doom, the UK figures on retail spending last month showed a very small drop. All that noise and frenzy, and maybe things aren’t really that bad. Except we’ve had our attention distracted by the noise and frenzy.
Walking the dog yesterday afternoon, I passed a mother and child. The child was probably three years old, dressed warmly against the chill of the early twilight. The mother was on her mobile phone, and had been since they came into my view. As our paths crossed, I could hear the child saying “Mummy my trousers are falling down”, as she continued to chat. He was right, they were.
Beware the distant voices, they might be distracting us from the real business at hand.
A friend of mine used to be on the board of a medium-size company that was very successful and grew organically and by acquisition. Some years ago he parted acrimoniously, and was not entirely private with his opinion of his former colleagues.
He moved on, and made good things happen at other companies. I spoke to him yesterday. His business unit has just been sold. To a large competitor. Which is run by the CEO he used to work for.
He does see the funny side of this; at the same time he does not expect to last long.
Despite what we would sometimes like to think, it’s a small world. Even if it’s hugely satisfying at the time to burn the bridge, it’s very unlikely to be a good strategy.
I recently started singing with a local choir. A vote was taken at the last rehearsal about dress code for performances. Talking to other members, it was clear that a debate about this had rumbled on for many months. In the end, the vote was to choose between ‘no change’ (all black), or going to a mandatory white blouse for the women.
It would be easy to satirise this. But it’s not easy to handle in real life. Everyone has an opinion, it’s all subjective, so how do you reach a decision? Consensus is difficult, a ‘leadership’ decision may not be acceptable (perversely because it’s not a very important issue), so what is the best course of action? Perhaps uncomfortable compromise is the occasional price of democracy.
