Archives for category: General
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Three Times a Day

July 6, 2016 //
0

Whenever we want to improve at something, or fix something, we devise a plan – or an expert helps us do so. Then we have to commit to the plan. This is true for almost any change management exercise in business, which is another way of saying anything worth doing in business. Change is a constant after all.

This also applies to diet, exercise and health of course. It I want to get fitter, stronger or faster, I get a training program. If I’ve had an injury, an operation or an illness, I get a rehabilitation or recovery programme.

Let’s say you have a bad back, and you want to strengthen the lumbar region, improve your posture, or avoid slouching in your seat. You get some exercises.

But what’s the point of exercises that advise you to do them three times a day? We’re busy people and unless we do this stuff for a living it’s hard enough making time to do them once a day. Three times a day is too much of an ask.

I’ve had a few calf strains the last few years, and I’m advised to do sets of balancing and hopping exercises, three times a day. I’m usually good the first day or two, then I settle at one a day, then 3 times a week when I remember, for a few weeks until I decide I have recovered. Then I reoffend. My point is, I could probably spare 40-60 mins first thing in the morning and get it all over with in one go, but I can’t spare 20-30 mins spread over 3 instances in a 24-hour period. As George Herbert Walker Bush used to say, not gonna do it.

I know, if I was more organised, and maybe set my phone to remind me several times during the day, that I might increase my chances of success. I also know that there is a purpose to doing the exercises a few hours apart on a regular basis. What I don’t know is how you stay with the regime in a non-life threatening situation when you’re a busy person with demands on your time.

Tags , , ,
Categories Communication, Customers, General

Initiative

July 4, 2016 //
0

It’s always good to see people taking the initiative. It doesn’t happen anywhere near as often as it should. Having initiative and taking the initiative is a bit like putting ‘self-starter’ on your CV. Everyone feels it should be on there but few generally do it, at least not early in their careers.

I remember being on a train in London Paddington, about to head west, during the evening rush hour about a decade ago during the time when intercity trains were not just full, they were packed, in a Japanese commuting-style. This particular train was bound for south Wales, but stopped off at Reading, the first major stop 25 mins away and a city that was served by a train every 15 minutes or so. The train was packed, dangerously so.

Many of the travellers were heading for Reading, perhaps 40% of them in my very unscientific estimation. I happened to be standing wedged in a corner of one of the carriages when I overheard the conductor talking to a couple of colleagues. ‘I know what we can do,’ he said. Two minutes later, the conductor came onto the intercom, apologised for the schedule change and announced that the service would not be stopping at Reading.

There was a degree of huffing and puffing, the rain emptied to the point where everyone could just about get a seat, and we took off a few minutes late.

The conductor was probably not authorised to do what he did, but he got the train away, 500 passengers where able to get to their long distance destination on time, and 200 commuters to Reading were delayed 15 minutes getting home.

We need people to take the initiative and shoulder the consequences. That’s how we get stuff done.

Tags , ,
Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales

Breaking the Mould

June 24, 2016 //
0

Breaking the mould is one of the most underrated achievements I can think of. We’re so conditioned to conforming to the norms and adapting what’s already there to create something ‘new’. Which isn’t new, really. Then, when someone comes up with a truly different musical genre, device or way of doing something, you’ll hear people say, ‘well, that’s obvious, I could have done that.’

Yeah, but it wasn’t, and you didn’t! Maybe it was hiding in plain sight, but it’s only obvious in hindsight.

Have you been to Gloucester Motorway Services? It’s not like other motorway services. At all in fact. The building and landscaping is great, the decor is not at all what you expect, and the seating is comfortable. The toilets are clean and well kept. The food is lovely and reasonably priced. I’ve been in twice for a short break – it wasn’t there when I lived in Gloucester and I probably wouldn’t have gone since it was so close to home – and their decaff latte is probably among the top 3 cups of coffee I’ve ever had.

It’s got a farmhouse theme going on and sells some really nice products. It is, in fact, the complete opposite of a motorway services place. It’s genuinely breaking the mould. You’ll never look at one the same way again.

It takes an approach like this to make you realise that all motorway establishments don’t have to look like grimy monstrosities with toilets that resemble a war zone.

Oh, and it’s been awarded an architectural honour as well. A motorway services establishment! Awesome stuff.

Tags , ,
Categories Customers, General, Strategy

You Can’t Trust the Public

June 22, 2016 //
0

Never work with small children and animals, as the adage goes. But what about the general public, can you really work with the population at large?

The Internet and social media has allowed members of the general public unprecedented access to the general public itself, as well as to the rich and famous who have hitherto been protected from meeting too many not of their kind. You only have to look at examples of the trolling of well known people by insignificant losers to see this phenomenal change in access and communication media.

You can’t trust the public as a whole with anything important – and I say that as a member of the general public. They’re not qualified and can’t be trusted to take decisions that are to the benefit of society. I’m not being anti-democratic here. It’s why we elect officials by the democratic process, so that – in theory at least – they take the tough decisions on our behalf, the decisions that benefit the community at large – the community that elected them – rather than specific individuals.

As a 2016 example of why you can’t trust the public, you only have to look at the poll to name a new, official scientific vessel. Some wise-ass suggests Boaty McBoatface and the public flock to it like a shiny new toy. Hilarious, if it wasn’t such a classic example of the public will.

I don’t mind general elections, even the first past the post ones. It’s referendums that make me nervous, because then you really are looking at an aggregate of individuals voting, almost without exception, in their own personal interests, and every single vote counts. Clever chap, that Maslow.

 

Tags , ,
Categories Communication, General

Not To My Knowledge

June 20, 2016 //
0

I often qualify my answers to questions. It helps the questioner, I think, but also covers me to a degree.

One of the qualified answers I use most often is ‘not to my knowledge.’

If I’m asked something and I definitively know the answer, I’ll give my answer, pure and unadorned.

If I’m not definitively sure the answer to what I’m being asked is, I’ll append it with a ‘to my knowledge’. I realise this is somewhat redundant. After all, if I don;t mention them, who else’s knowledge were you expecting me to draw on?

My point when I answer this way, and the point I make now, is that in some cases you won’t have perfect knowledge, or it would take you too much time or effort to make it worth acquiring.

In this instance you go with what you know, and you move on.

Interestingly, one unintended output of constructing this post is realising that I hardly ever say ‘yes, to my knowledge.’ It’s almost always used with the negative response. Is this significant? Yes, possibly. Is it worth extending this post to explore why? No, not to my…anyway, you get the picture I think.

Tags
Categories Communication, General

A Sense of Urgency

June 15, 2016 //
0

A sense of urgency is the secret weapon of the self-starter. A self-starter adopts a sense of urgency because he or she understands that time is the most precious commodity, and wasted time can never be won back.

I try to instil this in my kids, with almost unwaveringly poor results. Whenever they’re asked to do anything around the house, or to get ready for school, they seem to head into a neutral gear, returning the aside I made to them once: ‘yes Dad, I’m on a sponsored go slow…’ They don’t buy into the concept of the sooner you start something and the quicker you do it, the quicker you can get onto something else. Either that, or they fly through jobs in a slap-dash fashion that necessitates a rework and the accompanying retort: ‘if only you’d done it right the first time, you’d be done by now…’

It’s all about balance. A sense of urgency – in work or play – combined with the right level of quality gets things done in the most effective way. Emptying a dishwasher, putting everything in the right place with no breakages and a sense of urgency gets the job done correctly in the least amount of time. This sense of urgency, using the dishwasher example, pushes us to group items for the same cupboard or shelf into one trip, so that we minimise aggregate journey time.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we fly around our daily work and house tasks like people possessed all day. Everyone needs downtime. Don’t get me wrong, I love to relax, and taking time out from work and play is key. But you can still relax well, relax effectively :-).

Tags ,
Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

National Self-Interest

June 13, 2016 //
0

People have a tendency to put themselves first before others, their company or club before others, and their country before other countries, which is to be expected. I always felt, somewhat idealistically, that when you were a professional soccer player you should be thinking country first, club second, self third. In reality, and especially the English Premier League, it’s the exact reverse of that.

When you have major events like referenda on participation in Europe, you would think that a tight federation would prioritise the continent or ‘mega state’ for the greater good. But, of course, there are degrees of tightness within the huge area and it’s almost always undermined by national self-interest. In fact, local self-interest gets ahead of both national and regional self-interest, so it’s pretty much business as usual.

The 64-thousand dollar question that many people wrestle with is this: is a large multi-country body like the EU right to want to govern us all at the risk of themselves becoming power hungry?

I don’t have a fixed view on this, but I would like to see more people and nations put the greater good ahead of their local fiefdom and themselves, and not be quite such ‘me feiners‘. This doesn’t look like happening any time soon, if this is anything to go by. Maybe that’s the point of nationhood in the first place.

Tags ,
Categories General

Productivity and Ageism

June 8, 2016 //
0

It sometimes seems to me that personal productivity is a rather elegant bell curve, with age on the ‘x’ axis and effectiveness on the ‘y’.

When we’re young, we’re learning how to do stuff. It takes us an age, the stuff that we take for granted and do on autopilot when we’ve got a couple of decades at it under our belt. Then, as we get older, we seem to lose some of our faculties and get slower. We can compensate for the lack of mobility and strength with experience and an agile mind, but as we get much older the routine stuff – involving major and minor motor skills – is like that of a pre-adolescent.

While I realise the concept of the circle of life is nothing new, it nonetheless amazes me how much we can get through between the ages of 16 and 60, compared to the relative plodding progress either side of that range. We have experience, expertise and energy. I for one, given the financial turmoil of the last decade, hope that my productivity doesn’t dip until I’m well past retirement age. Either that or I need to have found an income source that requires cerebral heavy lifting rather than the literal variety. This seems much more scalable, since if it’s something like books or software I’m producing, I can sell additional units at next to no extra cost.

Perhaps we’re missing a societal trick with this ageism lark. Maybe, as our energy levels decline but our marbles remain intact, we should simply move to a different type of work and productivity, rather than simply succumb to the stigma of the three score years and ten. This move would need to be at a community level, not an individual one. After all, the generation retiring now is literate, and probably computer literate at that.

Tags
Categories General

A Firm Handshake

June 6, 2016 //
0

What is it with a limp handshake? When someone greets you with a wet fish for a handshake, it’s sometimes hard to shake off the first impression that someone is weak, diffident or not interested in you.

A firm handshake costs you nothing and sets off that first-time greeting or regular hello on an equal footing, no pun intended.

Notice that I’ve titled this post ‘a firm handshake’, not ‘the firm handshake’. I’ve written before about my love for the definite article, but here its sister the indefinite article is better. There is no single firm handshake, unless, I guess, you’re a practising member of a quasi-secret society.

Any kind of firm handshake will do. It doesn’t have to be a bone-crusher. Go into the greeting with something in the mid-rage of grip solidity and adjust according to the grip you’re given.

Incidentally, if you do come across one of those people – male or female – who has to grab you like a vice every time, or you simply have smaller hands, then I find that slightly pointing the index finger takes the knuckles on your hand out of alignment and alleviates the pressure. Then you can eyeball them with your favourite ‘I’m onto you matey’ look.

Tags ,
Categories Communication, Customers, General, Sales

The Wrong Way Round

June 1, 2016 //
0

It’s easy to be self-absorbed, and to think that everything revolves around us, and is geared to us. After all, the human race has been doing it for centuries, believing that the earth was the centre of the solar system. We still do it.

Aren’t we lucky that the earth is revolving at thousands of miles an hour and we don’t fall off, or over?

Aren’t we lucky that we can eat so much that naturally grows around us?

Aren’t we lucky that the composition of the air around us is OK for breathing?

Isn’t it great that we’re naturally suited to a planet with nice ambient temperatures in the -50 to +50 range?

Er, no to all of that…

We have it the wrong way round of course. We forget that we are the product of millions of years of evolution, that we have gradually chiselled ourselves to fit the environment, not the other way round.

The man-made world is geared around our bodies, the position of the sensory organs within our frame, our dimensions, and what makes us exist. As Mark Twain once said – and I’m paraphrasing here – isn’t it great that my glasses fit perfectly round my ears? You can make the same argument for bikes, cars, keyboards, everything.

I’m sure we wouldn’t devote as much priority to bedrooms in our houses if we didn’t spend a third of our lives in them. We sleep on average 8 hours a night. Aren’t we lucky we have comfy beds and nice bedrooms with calming, tranquil decor?

Looking at things the right way round – not the wrong way round – and putting what’s important at the centre of our thinking, rather than ourselves, helps us be better people, better marketers, better business people, better politicians.

Tags , , ,
Categories General
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »