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Steve's clean whiteboard
Here is a photo and a blog post from a guy who I mentored a couple of years ago – Steve Keevil. I like his attitude to a problem that dogs us all. A to-do list that you don’t do!
Here is what he says:
For a long time the white board contained a lot of items that I failed to do.
Ideas that were had and never achieved.
And then I’d beat myself up over my lack of achievements and then procrastinate from actually doing something proactive to change this. It became a slippery slope.
So this year… the simple rule is, if it’s not on the board then I’m not working on it.
So I’ve done the same here at Martonhouse.
The economic world is in tatters, your business is failing and your bank manager is knocking on the door asking for the banks money back.
What do you do?
One entrepreneurial London restaurant owner thinks he has the answer, by asking his customers to pay what they feel the meal was worth. His reasoning behind this is that like so many top London restaurants his own are very pricey and attracted accordingly top business execs, with their top all-expenses paid tabs. In a recession company expenses are the first thing to get monitored and shelved and as a result lunch is now more likely to be a sandwich than lobster thermidor.
At the end of their meal Peter Ilic’s diners are now presented with a bill showing zero, and if they so desire they can get a free lunch. Already though the idea seems to be paying off with many customers paying 10-20% over what would be the asking price.
Could this be because us Brits would be too embarrassed to pay to little? Would this idea only work in England?
This business model has already been applied to films, theatre and music (Radiohead’s last album was Peter’s inspiration). Could it be applied elsewhere? If so are we really brave enough to ask million dollar customers to pay what they think a project or product is worth?
More importantly in a time of monetary desperation would your customers be honest enough to pay the right amount?
Full story here.
What does your organization do when it wants to hire or promote the best person for a specific job or leadership position? The traditional answer is to test people for their IQ, technical skills to do the job, their personality or just by looking at their CV.
The late David McClelland, an American psychological theorist, identified a better way. He proposed that an organization should first study employees who are already top performers in that role, and systematically compare them with those who are just average performers.
What McClelland found was that a set of distinguishing competencies emerged: competencies that the top performers exhibited and the average performers did not.
Once you have identified those distinguished competencies, you can use those as a basis to hire or promote people who have the basic competencies to do the job plus the distinguishing competencies or help your people develop those strengths.
Using this methodology will help you develop a competency model that you can use to identify, train, and promote the next generation of top performers in your organization.
I overslept this morning. I Hate it when that happens. Oversleeping for me though doesn’t usually mean waking up at 8:58am and rushing off to working without cleaning my teeth, when that rare treat happens it really freaks me out. In my terminology oversleeping means only having 30 minutes or so thinking/personal time.
I get up every day at 6:45am. This gives me 1.5 hours to do whatever the heck I want – eat breakfast, watch the news, relax, do some research, prepare for the day etc.
This thinking time is invaluable for me, it really gives me a chance to reflect on the day ahead. Also I find it gives me time to fully awaken. How many people just roll into work half asleep? If I miss out on this time I find it has a dramatic impact on my productivity for the rest of the day.
The knock on effect happens at the other end of the day though and I often find myself getting tired around 9:30pm and then becoming more active again at 10:30, something I’ve talked about before here.
Trouble is as I get older I’m finding it more difficult as my normal time for going to bed is around midnight.
I read something the other day though which challenged these preconceptions. Steve Pavlina is a successful blogger who specializes in self development techniques. The difference with Steve is that he doesn’t recommend stuff unless he has thoroughly tested it himself.
Some of Steve’s favourite experiments are around sleep. He’s tried all kinds of things, including the controversial polyphasic sleep where you sleep regularly for only 20 minutes.
In this particular post Steve recommends going to bed when you are tired but always setting an alarm and getting up at the same time every day. This means some days you will get more sleep and some days less but hopefully it should be self regulating. This technique does rely on self motivation though, which means when the alarm goes off you get up straight away. Don’t hit the snooze button!
I tried this technique last Friday night as I knew I had a busy day on Saturday with a lot to fit in. My body said I was tired at 9:30pm, so begrudgingly I went straight to bed. Part of me was thinking I would be missing out on doing some great things by going to bed at this stupidly early time but to counter this I set an alarm for 6am to give me more time before the day really started.
The experiment was a success. I woke up when my alarm rang, leapt straight out of bed and felt immediately refreshed. I then did all those things I felt I was missing out on the night before, but with a fresher perspective. Then I had an incredibly productive day, fitting in much more than I expected.
Obviously a one day trial does not equal a successful experiment but I’m going to continue with a full trial starting tonight. More as it happens.
Last night I was forced into a quandary. I’d had to confine myself to one room of the house as the rest of my house was being ventilated in order to get rid of the smell of petrol fumes (long story, don’t ask). Luckily the room I was allowed to spend my evening in just happened to be my study which houses my all-round entertainment/work station, my iMac.
So I was left with a choice, a choice which I didn’t figure out until 4 hours into my evening; I could either try and recreate a lounging around in front of the TV scenario or I could use my time productively.
Initially I chose the former and spent a couple of hours being frustrated at broadcasters on demand/streaming services. After that I spent a little more time just browsing the web, again very unproductively and again frustrating. More importantly by this time boredom was setting in but it was at this point the thought struck me, what could I be learning right now?
The answer to this question was a new piece of software that I’d been meaning to get to grips with, which I then sat down with for an hour and thoroughly enjoyed my time.
So the moral of the story is this, sometimes the environment we find ourselves in doesn’t lend itself to what we want it to be. If this is the case, don’t just sit around getting bored and frustrated, do something about it and try to use that time for the greater good.
As for me, the fumes will probably still exist in my house tonight so I will probably spend another evening (or maybe even two), in my new learning zone.
This post follows on from the post about Tribes by Shaune. What Seth is saying is that these days the greatest gains are to be achieved by being seen as a leader – to have a tribe as he says it.
Great! What has this to do with training and learning? All too often, if you are in training and learning you follow. You deliver what the client wants, what the company wants. You may even be a leader of a training department / company / devision / organisation. But so what if you are? You are still a follower in the big picture.
Well how about we stop doing that? Just stop working like that. Instead we start delivering what people need. There is a difference between want and need. Identifying the need and fixing the need is what is required during these difficult times.
We are the trainers, the experts, the people who see things from the outside. This is our (new) role. Not to only fulfill briefs, but to do more.
So trainers, now is the time to dig deep, to be seen as a leader. A person with solutions, ideas, new ways of thinking and exciting developments. No one knows who to turn to. So make it you!
If you are looking for some design inspiration, maybe for a rebranding exercise or if you are just trying to raise your visibility a peg or two then help is at hand. Smashing Magazine have a post today about the 7 Ingredients of Good Corporate Design which should give you some good pointers and get you started.
I’ll add one thing to it though, which should apply to each of the 7 ingredients – keep it simple.
Image courtesy of Today’s Inspiration
A conversation with someone you don’t know very well can be extremely difficult. From the beginning it’s a brief slippery slide down the slope of small talk before the conversation runs dry.
There is a simple trick though that everybody can pull off and it doesn’t take a genius to execute it either. It involves 3 little words – “Tell me more”.
The simple fact is this, you can’t just talk at somebody for a conversation to work, in fact if you really want to engage a person you need to dig deeper to find out some common ground.
For example I went to a christening at the weekend and even though I knew a few people there it certainly wasn’t enough to pass for 4 hours of entertaining conversation, so an extra effort had to be made. I got chatting to a guy and during the usual small talk about the weather he let drop that he got caught in a shower out on his bicycle. A-ha, some common ground there as I like cycling too. “Tell me more.” He cycles to work everyday and then goes off for an extra bit of exercise after that. “Tell me more.” He finds that cycling is really good for keeping the legs in shape but doesn’t help with the belly at all. “Wow, I wondered why I wasn’t getting rid of my gut. Tell me more”… and so on. Before you know it you’re gassing like old friends.
This technique also works extremely well in business too. Building a relationship with somebody before you hand out your business cards is really important. Dig deep, find out what your potential customers might be looking for before offering them a solution.
Let them express themselves, discover common ground, share a vision.
Repeat until successful.
Image courtesy of http://www.lhsdrama.com
Today’s quote comes from the remarkablized Seth Godin. I urge you to think about this one next time you’re coming up with a project idea, or a new way to hook customers in, or a radical product concept, etc, etc.
“Over the top isn’t… over the top any more.
The bar keeps being raised. That service you thought was so remarkable is now standard. Sorry.”
Here at MH Towers we have a crack team of professionals to help you get that perfect job and soon you will be able to lavish yourself with video guides and online help in the form of our suite of career management tools.
If however your job interview is tomorrow you should head on over to Lifehacker where they have some simple top tips to prepare for the big day.
The Learning Journey 
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