I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I’m home for dinner with my kids at 6, and interestingly, I’ve been doing that since I had kids. I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it’s not until the last year, two years that I’m brave enough to talk about it publicly.

I think that says something about our attitude to work when somebody has kept quiet about leaving the office at 5.30 and I know many, many people who are consistently working far too hard.

A recent Inc Magazine article ‘Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week‘ cited 40 hours as the optimal working week, suggesting that consistently working more than 40 hours/week actually achieve less. There’s a lot of long-standing research around this area and the graph below (source) does a nice job of summarising what Ford Motor Company found in the early 1900s, that the ongoing optimal work week was 40 hours a week. Working 60 hours a week would initially give 60 hours worth of results but quite quickly that person would then be working 60 hours a week and would be less productive than if they worked 40 hours. The message was that 40 hours a week was just fine, although it was OK to work a lot harder for a very short period of time.

 As a Motorsport fan, I find it easier to think about this in terms of how hard I’m revving my own personal engine:

I know that I don’t like just ‘ticking over’ work-wise and that isn’t where I perform at my best. I also know that I have a healthy upper limit of how hard I work. I know that I’m OK to stray above that upper limit (into the red zone) if I need to but I also know that staying there for sustained periods of time isn’t good. What is best for me is working in my ‘power band’, straying briefly into the red when I need (and want) to. This way, I achieve loads but I do it in a way which is sustainable.

Whenever there’s a ‘top 5 regrets of the dying’ survey published (e.g. in Bonnie Ware’s book), a recurring item in the top 5 is always ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’. Despite this, many people still put too many hours in.

Knowing that we each have an optimal zone and that working too hard for too long is not productive (or healthy), my questions for you are these: How hard are you working? Is it right for you? Is it sustainable?

This post is part 1 of a series on Personal Resilience. Future posts will be:

2 – Other sources of stress are also available

3 – How do you recognise burnout?

4 – How to be resilient

I’m not saying those things as a coach, reframing a challenge to help you see the positives; I’m saying those things as somebody who was ‘made’ redundant three years ago. The sense of opportunity, of excitement and of being in control was how I felt at the time and is most definitely how I feel now. I’m not even keen on the word ‘made’ as it makes it sounds like I was the victim of something that happened to me; not at all.

I’d had a good career with my employer; Some of my roles I’d loved, and the ones that I didn’t quite love were still fine. In my final two roles, I’d led a number of reorganisations with people applying for their own jobs before, somewhat ironically, becoming part of a wider reorganisation that meant my job no longer existed. And that started the journey of meetings with my boss with a HR business partner present, formal displacement letters, and eventually my final day in when I handed over my laptop, mobile phone and security pass! And I am so thankful that it happened.

On reflection, here are three of the things that helped me approach it as I did:

1 – Being really clear on the vision for my career
I know what I want to achieve in my working life. For quite some time, I’ve had a vision of what I want to have done by the time I retire; of how I want to play to my strengths and make an impact. For me, the opportunity of redundancy was something that helped me make a huge leap forwards towards that vision. For those that like imagery, I picture a career as being like a really long walk in the countryside; If you know your ultimate destination, then it makes choosing your path a lot easier and you can easily cope when the path that you’re on closes and you just need to find new paths to the destination, some of which might even be quicker and easier!

2 – Knowing that everything will be OK
I did have a few brief moments of worry throughout the process, but the things I knew about resilience helped me; I’d simply imagine how I’d reflect back on the situation in future years, knowing that I’d likely find that the experience would have been a great help to me and even the worst-case scenario was that I’d just be reflecting back on a minor blip. I really like the metaphor that’s sometimes used about resilience, looking at how it is only through the grit of adversity that an oyster can produce a pearl. That really describes my own experiences as I have learned the most from some of the tougher times.

3 – Having a support network
I’m a firm believer in the value of having a good support network of people who can coach, mentor, support and challenge and I’ve always made an effort to have a good support network as well as being there for other people. In times of change and opportunity, a support network is crucial. If you haven’t got one, then create one. I can’t even begin to describe how valuable this was, and continues to be, for me.

And that brings me to now. I absolutely love what I do. Every day, I get to play to my strengths, to do something that I’m really good at and to make a difference. My honest answer to the ‘What would you do if you won the Lottery?’ question is that I’d keep doing what I do now (although I might do some of it in a sunnier climate!). I don’t think I’d have reached this point yet had I not been ‘made’ redundant. Redundancy is an exciting opportunity in which you’re still in control. Viewing it like that is what makes it so.

(If this post looks familiar to anybody, that may be because I wrote it for the CIPD Manchester Branch Newsletter)

One of her important reminders is of just how different extroverts are from introverts, even if many people are categorised as ambiverts in being a bit of both. For those extroverts that don’t understand what it is like to be an introvert, Cain speaks of her own preferences: “I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing … I like to think before I speak (softly).”

Cain reminds us that the ideal environment for an introvert to be successful is very different from the ideal environment for an extrovert, but argues that we’ve generally developed a one-size-fits-all environment that is actually better suited to extroverts. If you want examples of environments that bring out the best in extroverts whilst hampering introverts, just look at most team meetings!

Cain seems to be on a real mission to redress the balance and makes the point that “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas”. This is a great point as it is all too easy to be impressed by the best talker or the most charismatic person, when the person that needs to be listened to most might be the one who isn’t saying anything.

I really like Cain’s work and I would offer two reflections:

- We are all different as people, and the Extrovert-Introvert characteristic is a very visible one. In order to perform at our peak, we need to take responsibility for understanding ourselves and for creating an environment around us in which we can perform.

- For those who lead others, we need to remember that people are very different. Some of the key components of developing a high-performing team are to make sure the team plays to everybody’s strengths, that team members understand each other, and that the team has ways of working that allows team members to perform. Considering the needs of introverts as part of this is really important.

To find our more, I’d recommend reading the book, visiting Cain’s blog, and I’ve included two videos of her: One is her recent TED talk, and the other is a longer Leading@Google talk. Both are worth watching.

TED Talk:

Leading@Google:

Which brings me onto something that I’ve been doing for the last few years that has been immensely helpful to me; The Strategic Latte. There are a group of people with whom I meet up individually from time to time for a Strategic Latte – some monthly, some less frequent – and all we do is chat.

Why ‘Strategic’? Because Strategy is the process whereby you stop and do some hard thinking; Where you look to the future and think about your goals; where you reflect on how things have been going, and make clear decisions about what you’re going to do and (just as importantly) about what you’re not going to do.
Why Latte? Because I’m a bit of a Latte addict and because I think there’s a real benefit of getting away from your normal workplace and into a coffee shop. That said, you don’t have to go to a coffee shop or even drink Latte for the Strategic Latte to work.

So how do you use the Strategic Latte?

Firstly, what kind of support do you need? I love the idea of a Personal Board of Directors; Who is going to challenge you, support you, stretch you, hold you accountable for what you’ve said you’ll do? If you’re going to have Strategic Lattes with a few people, go for variety and don’t pick people who are just like you. When you suggest meeting for a Strategic Latte to help each other, you don’t have to commit to meeting regularly for a year; Just meet once and see how it goes.

When you meet up, make sure you spend an equal amount of time talking about each other. The Strategic Latte is more than a chat, so when you’re talking about the other person ask them:
- how things are really going for them (not the usual ‘fine, thank you’)
- How they’re doing in terms of moving towards their big goals (and what their big goals are).
- What’s holding them back and how they’re overcoming any barriers
- Is there anything you can do to help

That’s it: Just a brief time to sit down and talk honestly and openly, and to reflect on things. .

I would wholeheartedly recommend that you give it a go and I’d love to hear your experiences.

1 – Not all advice is created equal

“82% of all quotes attributed to me on Twitter aren’t things I said”. Albert Einstein

When I’ve got a long holiday, I’m planning to read Einstein’s works to see if he did say everything that he’s quoted as saying as I am very suspicious. I’ve sometimes seen multiple tweets on the same day with the same quote attributed to different people which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. The reality is that it is easy to publish a blog post and even easier to Tweet. Not all will be accurate and well-researched. Some will be rants, some will be opinion, some will be wrong, some will be sales pitches, and others will be brilliant. I love Twitter and I read a lot of blogs. My point is simply this; don’t necessarily believe everything you read.

2 – Advice needs context

Given a particular piece of advice, it is often easy to find a piece of advice that suggests exactly the opposite! It doesn’t matter whether it is business, entrepreneurship, fitness, dieting, social media, or productivity it easy to find contradictory advice. For example, my fitness has slipped somewhat over the last year and I’ve done a bit of searching round for a workout plan that will suit me and found loads of contradictory plans. I’m sure many of them are good but unless they’re suitable for where I’m at now and where I want to be, they either won’t help me as much as they should or could help me damage myself in the process. Whenever you see or hear advice, look for the context that it is set in so that you can get an idea of whether it might be suitable for your situation.

3 – Your own advice is better

There is an easy trap to fall into of looking to success stories and aiming to copy whatever made somebody else successful. Lauryn Ballesteros wrote a great blog post on this after working with Seth Godin: If Richard Branson can do it, then so can you. Steve Jobs obviously figured it out early on as he talks in this video about discovering that

“…everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

If you can’t see the video embedded above, here is the original on YouTube.

Successful people like Branson and Jobs didn’t try copying others; they’ve been successful because they have been themselves. Nobody knows you or your challenges like you do. One of the most powerful aspects of coaching is that it helps people work out the answers for themselves; If you know what is holding you back, you won’t find the best answers from others. Instead, try coaching yourself, do some mutual coaching with friends (more on this in a future blog post), or get some professional coaching. That way, you’ll get advice you can trust, tailored to you, and you’ll learn and grow as a result.

Finally, if you want an illustration of what it is like to listen to and respond to advice from everybody, then watch the following video. I wouldn’t bother watching the whole thing as you’ll get the idea after less than a minute but I think it is a great metaphor for what it is like to ask for too much advice!

If you can’t see the video embedded above, here is the original on Vimeo.

But don’t just take my word for it; What do you think and how does this relate to your experiences?

So, it was back to the drawing board and I kept on bouncing possible business names around with my wife. Every name we came up with was naff! We were out walking our dog in the Ladybrook Valley (known as Happy Valley) and still bouncing around naff business names when we spotted a Kingfisher. I love seeing the Kingfishers; they are absolutely beautiful birds and I feel really inspired every time I see them. After it flew off, we agreed that it would be really easy to come up with a business name after seeing the Kingfisher as we were both feeling inspired. And that was when it clicked; Kingfisher Coaching! A quick check for the URL and business name and we had the name!

Kingfishers are beautiful. People that only ever catch a glimpse of them talk about seeing that vivid electric blue colour, but they have a lot of orange that many people never see and there is so much more to them than meets the eye! They’re so well-designed that the shape of their beak has inspired the design of the Shinkansen Bullet Train in Japan. My graphic designer was as excited as me and I’m delighted with my logo – which has Kingfisher orange as the main colour and that beautiful electric blue for the dot of the ‘i’. I love the name and I smile whenever I see the logo!

Kingfishers are beautiful, incredibly designed peak performers, inspiring, and not always how they appear at first glance. So are people. That’s why I do what I do and I love my business name and my logo.

 Image credit: Surfgirlly

So, my focus of blogging & tweeting is on subjects that support people, teams, and organisations to be peak performers:

- Coaching & Mentoring
- Positive Psychology
- Goals (setting them and achieving them)
- Resilience (how to survive and bounce back from the less-than-perfect times)
- Doing the right work (playing to strengths)
- Teamwork
- Innovation & Entrepreneurship
- Using time effectively
- Procrastination
- Helping others & being helped (through support networks)
- Making changes and making them stick
- Feedback as one of the keys to peak performance

However, I am a person as well as a business so I will tweet about other things (especially after 6pm & at weekends):

- Motorsport (I love F1 and motorbikes)
- Social Media (I’m a very social person and I really enjoy using social media)
- Really good stuff on TV (like Spooks, and definitely not like X Factor)
- Gadgets and technology
- My puppy (who takes a lot of my time, so sometimes gets tweeted about)
- Coffee (an obsession)
- I’m likely to tweet every time I see a Kingfisher as I find them inspiring (and inspired my business name)
- Awesome charities like Retrak (after I spent a month in Uganda last year and was privileged to go into the slums and talk to street kids)

I don’t think I’m a completely open book on Twitter, and there are some things that I tend to save for Facebook:

- My wife and step-kids
- My faith (I’m a Christian and a lay minister (Reader) in the Church of England)
- Football: As a passionate Liverpool supporter who lives in Manchester, there are times when I keep quiet!

So, that’s me.

I started off by highlighting that I am passionate about effective engagement and why it is so important to get this right, to work in close collaboration with team members to be sure that all customers needs are addressed and, by way of introducing this I used a collage depicting some of the insights and experiences I have had working with global teams, covering sessions from team effectiveness through to problem solving and celebrating success!

Engaging with stakeholders is all about building relationships with people who you affect through your work, or who could make an impact on your success and it is therefore crucial that we get this right.

Identifying stakeholders at various levels determines the appropriate level of engagement and this should be built into your processes throughout the lifecycle of the project. I co-facilitated a stakeholder mapping exercise with a large cross-functional team that was preparing for a key investment decision for a project. After brain-storming, we used a 4 quadrant grid to help identify individuals extremely interested in the future of the project and who would have the power to enable progression or remove blockers i.e. the high interest / high influencers.

By doing this exercise it brought the team to an aligned view for setting expectations on four categories for how to engage;

1. Manage closely
2. Keep satisfied
3. Monitor
4. Keep informed 

This allowed us to develop clear plans and identify accountable owners, which made significant contribution to the projects delivery and decision making. It enabled an effective governance interaction to take place having identified key 1:1 interactions. The end result was a win / win situation; the project team understood the customer’s needs, these needs were addressed and the formal governance output was a success leading to a real feeling of partnership.

There are many methods of engagement, ranging from focus groups or task teams that consist of a small group of representatives to discuss relevant issues or gaining different perspectives for the project, to questionnaires and electronic tools, which provide structured methods covering larger communities to communicate progress or status. Holding face-to-face 1:1’s with individuals enables a more in-depth discussion to take place whilst interactive events or workshops are great for bringing people together for bouncing ideas off one another but the key is about creating the right environment, making sure these sessions are interactive in a way that everyone feels able to provide their input. I’ve used all four methods, as I am sure most Project Managers have, but tailored to suit the needs and expectations for all stakeholders. Being part of a global virtual team, co-located across UK, Sweden and the US, has proven a challenge to hold such privileged face-to-face workshops but, these have proven to be priceless when they happen!

It is also conducting yearly reviews, looking at each group of stakeholders and asking yourself and them how they have a voice within the organisation or project and whether the current mechanisms are working:

What’s working well…

Even better if…

To summarise, stakeholder engagement isn’t something to do from time-to-time. It is something that should be built into your processes recognising that some individuals will need to be more actively involved than others BUT… it is important to note that you won’t be able to engage with everyone all of the time!

If you can’t see the embedded video above, please click here to see it.

Ries defines a startup as ‘a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty’ and argues that it could generally be done a lot more effectively. As he unpacks this, it is clear that the thinking can be applied to organisations of all sizes as well as startups.

There is one aspect of The Lean Startup that I want to focus on in particular; the pivot. This is apparently old thinking in startup circles, but was new to me. The concept of the pivot arises from the fact that startups are harder than typical New Product Development as you don’t know exactly who the customer is, or what they want (just like The unclear path). So, as a startup develops, the pivot is a change of direction (firmly grounded in everything that has been learned) that moves you towards success.

Ries develops the following points:

• It can take a number of pivots before finding success.
• Reducing the time between pivots allows for more pivots and increases the odds of success before money runs out.
• Focusing on the learning required in order to pivot can drastically reduce the time between pivots (by developing the minimum viable product); each iteration is simply testing a hypothesis.

We know that lots of projects fail and I see a lot of change programmes and reorganisations that seem to be constant, without delivering the expected impact. Perhaps Lean Startup thinking is what we need in these situations; to run a series of really intense initiatives which will produce just enough learning to pivot and drive towards the successful outcome.

As soon as the book is available, I will definitely be reading it and posting a fuller review but (on the basis of the presentation) it looks great.

What is your experience of startups and pivoting?