culture

Why it’s always about you?

If people do a lot of things for others and it makes them feel good about themselves, are they doing it for selfish reasons?

Customers will only ever buy from you because they care about how the product or services will make themselves feel. For example, if Princess Mary is wearing XIII and you wear XIII, you are not wearing XIII because you like Princess Mary. You are wearing XIII because you think you’ll look better in the eyes of your friends and family because you are wearing something that Princess Mary is wearing. It’s for you that you are doing it, it’s not because of Princess Mary, it’s your narrative.
For more about XIII, see www.xiii.dk

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Success is a skill

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One way that racism consistently shows up for me as a black man is in constantly being underestimated, and there’s something exciting about being underestimated. I know that success is a skill and the traits that led you to be successful where you are will lead you to be successful wherever you go. This is because the traits always include how to intellectually evaluate opportunities and figure out what forces to bring to bear on them. If you have succeeded before in whatever field, take a moment to evaluate and see what happened. I think that your evaluation process will always end up at some combination of observation, planning and execution. And in all these combinations, there is a thread of flexibility, intelligence and sticking to your values.

NB: Today is the first anniversary of my mother’s death and this blog is dedicated to her. It doesn't mark the end of grief, but it does mark a transition in my mourning process. See it > Say it > Write it ❤️

No negotiation required

At the front of the curve are the early adopters, these are the people who are playing with new ideas in the culture, they are not people who are trying to preserve old ideas. If you are selling, get the value proposition identified and sell to the value. Sell to the customers problem, solve the problem, and then ask for the money, no negotiation required. Now if you are buying then it’s the other side of the coin. As a buyer you have to work out how much you want to spend, what the value to you is and then tell the supplier how much you want to spend, no negotiation required.

Hours worked that require compensation

During the discovery phase, we must agree that it’s a real problem and this problem has an impact on your business, then it is up to me to prove that I have a solution. I really enjoy helping organisations succeed, talking them through what’s holding them back and I like working with organisations that have a small company vibe, where I can naturally set up processes for them. I learned once and for all before the pandemic a real sense of knowing when a deal is worth pursuing. I don’t like “free” education and have no desire to give away my knowledge and experience, as it’s not my job to educate for “free”. Contact me via e-mail if you would like to evaluate what you should be measuring in your organisation.

Team culture

Leaders need to connect, challenge, build a culture, clearly communicate, and commit to where they are going. It’s teamwork that makes the dreams work, and you are not a team because you work together, you are a team because you trust, respect and care for each other. I think it’s the peer to peer connection in a low trust world that leads culture to change. Are you part of a really engaging culture? 

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
— Peter Drucker

This quote means that the culture of your company always determines success regardless of how effective your strategy may be. Our tribe need to get so engaged in what we do that they tell their friends and that’s what changes culture. It’s important to understand that culture beats everything! Culture beats strategy, culture beats pricing, culture beats technology, culture always wins. So, our job is to change the culture and we do that 10 people at a time who then tell 10 people and so on. 

It’s the cornerstone

Critical thinking is the ability and eagerness to identify gaps in logic or shortfalls in evidence-based argumentation. Sympathetic listening is that commitment to understanding the argument from the other person’s perspective. For example: “Am I really understanding this or that from the other person’s point of view?”

Now what sympathy means in these cases is I am willing to set aside, even if it’s just temporarily, that hunt for the slightest mistake in logic or reasoning. Setting that aside for a moment, so that you can listen really carefully to what your conversation partner is saying, so you can understand from their perspective what their intellectual project is or why it is that they are looking at the same world you are looking at but coming to a very, very different conclusion. I think critical thinking and sympathetic listening are both facets of a great conversation.

If it bleeds, it leads

What happens when you give everyone a microphone?

There will be a lot of noise out there. 
In the past when we had a gatekeeper who chose who had a microphone was both good and bad. It was bad because it silenced voices immediately and it was good because it kept microphones away from people who wanted to tear things down. When I think about what is on offer from the social media networks, it’s really important to decode this and understand that we are not their customers, we are their products. We do not pay to use any social media platforms and these companies (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are selling us and our data to someone else and have created a regime where they make us feel bad all day and the only way to feel less bad is to click something. That’s the cycle they have built and the problem with that cycle and the easily measured metrics of how many followers you have, pushes people to be purist, it pushes people to be angry and it pushes people to tear folks down. 

The phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads” basically means that the media loves violence. In other words, if a story involves a brutal death or injury of some kind (or the likelihood of it), it is likely to get higher ratings. 

When is the price right?

Price has always been one of the deciding factors for making purchasing decisions. Nowadays consumers are more willing to shop around the internet for “cheaper” prices across retailers and marketplaces rather than going directly to the brands website. I think in the world of algorithms, hashtags and followers, it’s important to understand the true importance of human behaviour.

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
— Oscar Wilde

The game of life

Packman c/o Nintendo

Some people see the thing that they want, and some people see the things that prevent them from getting what they want. Let’s play a game and the rules are that you can go after anything you want, but you cannot deny anyone else going after anything they want. You don’t have to play the game the way everyone else has done it, you can play it your own way, you can break the rules, you just can’t get in the way of someone else getting what they want.

“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy”
— Sir Isaac Newton

The Great Resignation

The Great Resignation is an ongoing economic trend in which employees have voluntarily resigned from their jobs in droves since the beginning of 2021. Without passion for the work, you are doing and the work of the organisation, your success will be limited. There has been a rise in over-50s with just enough money saved up to rethink their lives in the wake of the pandemic. 

 

The “inactivity rate” is defined as people neither in a job nor trying to find one, and apparently this figure currently stands at 21.3% in the UK. I think companies perceiving talent shortages in their local market must rethink their workforce models and their talent acquisition strategies. As a Londoner, I have always found pleasure in communicating to people from very diverse backgrounds. Perhaps it’s time for local businesses to start hiring people from diverse backgrounds. 

The key to diversity

The ability to be honest about your strengths and weaknesses is essential to leading an organisation. I think passion for the work and mission of one’s organisation is the fuel for a successful organisation as it impacts the other main principles in many direct and indirect ways. Diversity can be a competitive advantage because by having people from different perspectives looking at challenges and problems, you will get fresh solutions that are turning into business success. Everyone is biased, whether it’s an unconscious bias, cognitive bias, or misguided perceptions with regards to consumers.

Expect the unexpected

Photograph: © MBI/Alamy

As human beings we are always trying to make sense of the world and it’s very easy to be seduced by your own narratives. When things happen to us or to our communities or to our nations, we understand those events through the lens of culture, ideology or through our limited knowledge. Many of us have answers to these questions because we’ve spent years or decades in some cases perfecting our stories. What would happen if we just stopped and admitted that we don’t have a very good handle on the world situation and our theories are just that - theories. 

We are constantly coming up with stories about why the events are the way they are. It’s not like the people who are coming up with the stories are malicious or they are trying to draw the wrong conclusions about the world. Many are deeply well intentioned and want the best things for everyone else. It’s just the act of storytelling itself runs the risk for encapsulating from too little data to sweeping a conclusion. You can read an article from The Guardian about the heavy burden of being Black in a white space.

I don't know

c/o The New York Times

If you try to control everything, and then worry about the things you can’t control, you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of frustration and misery. I think “I don’t know” is the most powerful sentence you can use as knowing that you don’t know makes you a knowledgeable person.


Last night I was asked: What is a Metaverse?
I replied: “I don’t know”.
This morning, I did some research and I think the Metaverse is the following:

  • Digital currency

  • Marketplace / e-commerce

  • NFT’s

  • Gaming

  • Digital assets

  • Natural language processing

  • Online shopping

  • Social media

  • Social entertainment events

  • Digital humans 

There’s no shame in admitting that you don’t know. The only shame is to pretend you know everything. Click the Synthetic Data link, as these guys really know about the Metaverse.

Take time to shift your focus

I think that people with high levels of gratitude have low levels of resentment and envy. As when we take time to focus on what we are grateful for, we choose positive emotions over negative, thus we take steps to nurture our mental health and wellbeing. I was recently asked: How can we trigger gratitude in ourselves? And I answered, start with a gratitude practice, it’s like a workout or healthy eating plan for your mind and it’s simple.

 

Have you ever noticed that when you are looking to buy a new phone or a jacket all of a sudden everyone around you has it? That’s because, consciously or unconsciously, whatever we are focused on is what we see. If we want to trigger gratitude in ourselves, we need to intentionally shift our focus to that which we are grateful for. The simplest way to do this is through questions and prompts and a few daily rituals. Contact me via e-mail when you are ready to shift your focus.

“You can’t feel envious and grateful at the same time. They’re incompatible feelings, because if you’re grateful, you can’t resent someone for owning things you don’t.”
— Dr. Robert Emmons

Does this sound familiar?

Distractions have no effect on the truly focused individual as winners focus on the goal, not the pain. There four types of distractions or should I call them, interruptions you will face in your work:

1.     Meetings, office visitors and loud colleagues
2.     E-mail, telephone notifications and meetings
3.     Team lunches, calls from loved one, coffee machine conversations
4.     Social media, news websites, instant messaging 

According to Tim Ferris, we need to “…limit e-mail consumption and production. This is the greatest single interruption in the modern world.” What do you think?

Repetition is the key to success

To drive lasting productivity, make assessing your progress and enjoying the fruits of your labour part of your routine. I think life and work will always be messy, therefore, trouble shooting, firefighting and problem solving are how we spend a lot of our time so let’s make sure we enjoy it! Contact me via e-mail for practical, actionable tips, which will guide you to achieving even more throughout each day.

“For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
— Alfred D’Sousa

Start a good one

c/o Getty Images

How can we create new habits and stick to them?
We all have habits that we wish we didn't have, but don't feel as if we can change. There are ways to help you change habits and I think the best way is to replace it with a new behaviour as you cannot break a habit; you must replace a habit! It’s really a case of willpower, motivation, and then repetition.

 

The question I frequently ask to people who are risk-averse is, “What’s the biggest chance you have ever taken?” It’s amazing how many people react with a defensive answer when they realise what “safe” lives they have chosen to lead. Small daily habits are unparalleled predictors of long-term objectives, and this is true for both individuals and organisations. 

We are conditioned

A paradigm is a program in your subconscious mind, it’s both genetic and environmental that’s controlling your behaviour. Your paradigm is your conditioned behaviour, and you have to change your own paradigm, I’m working on mine every day, what about you? 

 

A paradigm is nothing but a multitude of habits that have been programmed into your subconscious mind to control your behaviour. It’s got nothing to do with how smart you are, it’s got nothing to do with what your formal education is, it has to do with your paradigm. You know what your paradigm is, just study your own behaviour - think of your results. If you want to improve your results, then the only way that you can do that is to change your habitual way of doing things. Your results are an expression of the paradigm not your intellect, so until you change the paradigm then nothing is going to change.