Stone Henge?

 

During a weekend when I expected only to learn my old friend's news, I also discovered unequivocally and through disbelief ...that Stonehenge is actually written in just one word

Sitting on my hands

If you allow 28 high performing leaders to go unguided around the houses in search of common purpose you can still achieve a similar outcome to that possible in half the time by following the tried and tested process outlined in the "Naked" post ...I pledged to leave today's meeting without my frustration around this.

Frustration is behind me and here I capture it as a learning instead ...there are many ways to skin a cat.

The lack of process made engagement difficult for me so when frustrated in this way in future I will push harder for a clear objective so that if I know a process I can share it and potentially influence the team to use it.  If there really is no logical process I will try and better accept "the flow".

Naked Vision ...and setting strategy

Defining vision and strategy at the beach is not quite what we had in mind but it has been that kind of holiday: sunbathing, defining the status quo, eating, defining what great will look like in 3 years time, sunbathing, defining the bridges from now to the future, eating, defining how to cross the bridges in the right order ...and sunbathing.

However, personally, my greatest learning was that I am totally immune to nudity

...I couldn't care less.


NB this was all business oriented stuff, I still purport being present as the best way to face life itself.

"It all starts with something, it all starts with one"

"It all starts with something, it all starts with one" Ane Brun, the truest lyric.

When my great friend unburdened her rabbit-in-the-headlight-feelings about what lay ahead of her at work, I realised that although we'd both been working for the same number of years, business and management theory had not been her companion as they had mine.

Lesson 1, therefore was VISION

"It all starts with something, it all starts with one"

 

Less Booze more Listening ...an introduction

Post India and back in the throws of real life I find myself with a lovely new home, a satisfying new job, a legal battle and my favourite bottle of fireworks that is my emotional life.  I learned so much in India: what I needed, how to balance my mind and as I am finding out ...how to evade myself!



Our Team's "Procurement Professional"

Last week I found myself amongst 80 truly global colleagues in Lisbon, Portugal at a conference targetted at "performance".  I dutifully partook in the workshops, finding an inner resiliance that broke through my cold, nausea and general flatness to ensure that nobody took my lack of energy as a sign of me being "just another buyer". I also absorbed two sessions by British speaker/trainers.

Little alcohol passed my poorly lips on "party night" so I was attentive and aware of both speakers.  The majority of my co-pros were only enamoured with the second speaker; a vigourous, creativity-inspiring chap who I'd seen before at a Risk event in Cambridge, however, I think they missed a trick.  Speaker number one talked repeatedly about the simple value of reflective learning.

Reflective learning is at the core of what I have become.  India gave me the chance to put my regular adult life (built of mistakes and successes) under the microscope, it allowed me to study those parcels of experience and to understand the lessons that were wrapped up in them. All work is, is a microcosm of life and speaker number one's message (received by those who were neither too hung over nor too arrogant to take it on) had the potential to be supremely performance enhancing.  In order to maintain and capture my own reflective learning, I have created "Learning Space".