Motivation...

Without wishing to sound like a standard 12 bar blues track - woke up this morning, got out of bed...and after having convinced myself that I should really go out for a ride on the bike while it's early and sunny, had an overwhleming lack of motivation to do so.

It's interesting how the human mind will concoct as many reasons as you can number to avoid doing something - "It'll take too long", "I'll look silly", "There's chores to be done"....

I was cycling across a field this morning singing "Watch Over You" by Alterbridge (badly), which was a simple nice experience - got some photos of Poppies in an Oil Seed field as well.  The British countryside is something that shouldn't be missed - get out there, enjoy the colour and forget the world for a while.

The fascinating thing about exercise, fitness and just getting out and about is that it's not just about training your body, it's training your mind to change the way you think about not just going for a run or doing some situps, but how you approach everything in your life.  I've found that since I've made the choice to pick up the handlebars and pedal my way around most of North St. Albans and the surrounding countryside, other things have fallen into place, like getting my washing hung out on the line, sweeping and mopping the floor regularly, and most importantly pushing harder with A Different Beat to get things done.

I've read a million times in books that Mind and Body are linked (we'll leave soul out of this for now, because that's an entirely separate debate) but.....this is also an interesting angle - we never really fully understand something until we experience it.  Perhaps that's just my skeptical outlook on all things intangible.....

Anyway this is getting too deep.  The best way to make bad times look better is to go and sweat it out a little bit, listen to some stand up comedy, and get involved with some others and have a laugh - organise a drum workshop with a few friends, do a whip round and give me a call, I'll come down and help you out.

Life is for living, so do that to the best of your ability!

Old ways of securing New business

I walked out of my local Budgens last night clutching a can of beans and some Cod Cakes for my dinner, and a fine sunny evening saw a group of 'youngsters' gathering with mountain bikes, ice cream, and twittering at each other with wanton abandon....(how poetic!)

Since my business corners not only on getting people to work better together, but promoting a love of music amongst young people, I saw an opportunity and so approached the group - with fascinating consequences.

How many of us assume that children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen hanging around in groups are clearly out to cause trouble? I'd hazard a guess that the percentage who answered yes to this is quite high. You'd be wrong.

Think about when you were a teenager - you get home from school, you do your homework, or at least pretend you have, you maybe have some crisps and try to watch TV which is all news that you don't understand or care about. So you go out to meet some friends and spend some time laughing, enjoying the outdoors, and messing about doing silly harmless things, only to be told off by miserable adults and avoided like the plague by anyone who happens to be a passer-by.

Bringing this back to the point, I went over to the group and simply said "Hi guys, do any of you like music?" and got a fantastic response - presumably because somebody other than their parents or a schoolteacher had given them the time of day. We had a very positive chat and they took some business cards.

By the time I'd walked away I felt far more comfortable in my neighbourhood knowing that the kids were alright. It also proved a theory that I'd been nurturing, which was that perhaps the best way of getting in front of the people you need to, is to just say hello.

Afraid of your own shadow?

The prescribed answer to everything is "NO!" - the cultural symptom of Britain in the 'naughties' seems to be stone cold fear. Everybody is afraid of bankruptcy, being mugged, getting dumped, being fired, losing their keys - and this seething, deep seated paranoia seems to have spread into business like an unchecked disease.

Banks today are afraid of going down the pan, businesses terrified to spend money - irrespective of the source of the fear, whether it is due to greed in more bountiful times, or media hype, it still grips us with it's foul slimy hands and influences our daily choices. Whatever happened to simple business and economic acumen? Speculate to accumulate.

My recent visit to the United States with Touchstone opened my eyes to the way the Americans conduct their daily lives. Funny as it may be for some to unkindly accuse them of being fat, stupid and humourless with no grip on sarcasm, they actually have things down pretty well as far as interpersonal relationships go. The overall attitude seems different from ours, and from what I can see they focus less on what they can lose or acquire themselves, but more what they can indemnify their friends, family and colleagues against, or - more to the point - what they can gain for them.

From observing different attitudes and behaviours on both sides of the Atlantic, it seems (and not without a wry smile of irony) that many of the problems with society, business and relationships in Britain today boil down to our desire to please all the people all of the time, and our inability to simply say "no, thank you". Our fear of reproach or unpopularity drive us to cruel heights and twisted views on what is acceptable.

So many complain about being treated badly by the people around them, when all it may take is a purge of old sensibilities and a fresh look at the way things can be done to effect a significant change.

Next time you meet somebody, ask yourself not what they can do for you, but what you can do for them - you'll be very surprised by the results.

Team Building - is it just a game?

A fine Friday morning and a brisk walk to work found me digging deep into the pages of Linked In to find some nuggets of wisdom hidden somewhere within. I read a few posts, nudged a few new contacts, and stumbled upon this.

An interesting discussion thread I thought - so I posted a reply which you can read by following the link, but I also want to publish my thoughts here.

"I will obviously defend team building activities since it is a large part of what I do, but I use the worn-out moniker of team building as a coined term. You can play games and have meetings until you're blue in the face, lets be honest - change only occurs if the people involved want it to. I can facilitate for hours and give insights, tips etc, but using me as a consultant is always going to be a waste of money if the Managers and Team Members have no desire to change their habits and the way they work.

Just like anything that requires a change of outlook, attitude and mindset, it requires effort on both parts to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Take weight loss as a poignant case in point. People who try fad diets and expect to reach a target weight as if by magic, sadly remain overweight. Those who make a conscious effort to change habits, enjoy far better results.

I therefore suggest that while some team building activities are linked tenuously at best to the overall outcomes required, it takes more than expecting a consultant to wave a magic wand and for a companies problems to vanish overnight.

I think alot of people in business tend to get blinded by conceptual theory and analysis - at the end of the day (and I don't mean this to sound as crude as it does) any team is just a group of people trying to do something together, and unless they're very very lucky people and love their job, they're probably thinking they'd rather be somewhere else. Contempt breeds contempt, so far from the 'skipping through a flowery meadow' image that most "team building" companies love to portray, the reality is usually more an exercise in damage control and pointing out to delegates that they will find life as a whole a far more pleasant experience if they put some time into forging stronger relationships with the people around them.

They don't have to be best friends, they don't have to swap recipes or watch the game together - they just need to be able to say "Hey, I don't think that's a good idea" or "yep, sure, I'll get that done so we can get this project finished".

Office politics is the mortal enemy of effective teamwork, in my personal opinion - gossip, intrigue, scandal. I've seen the most effective workers are those who ignore this and "just get on with it".

In a nutshell, I don't feel that demonizing Team Building is accurate, nor is it fair. We should perhaps take more time to look inwardly and question whether it is the processes employed that stand in the path of change, or is it us?