On Sustaining the Gains (and Losses)

You are probably past the point of setting New Year’s resolutions and have forgotten the one you set last year.  Yet when you look back a year and look forward a year, it is surprising how little changes and how much stays the same.

Sure, 2011 was turbulent for many.  In Europe, we seemed to leave the year with an uneasy sense of unknowingness about what lies ahead in 2012 for the Eurozone.  And we are told that the world is now so connected that we don’t need New York to sneeze before the rest of the world catches a cold.  The sneeze could come from Berlin or Beijing or anywhere else for that matter.

Yet there is nothing like a conscience and a critical review to remind you of what you committed to and what you forecast might happen…. And writing a blog is somehow a very public way of saying that I commit to something at the start of a New Year.

So it was that I was surprised to find that I went public this time last year to reduce my bodyweight.  Apparently this is the most common New Year’s resolution that people make.  I did actually manage to lose a stone between January and April last year – only to put on 9 pounds between April and Christmas!

So often, (in weight loss AND in business performance), the gains are difficult enough to achieve – but even harder to sustain.  It is not that my body needs to be as heavy as it is.  It is more about habit – and changing the habits that have been laid down over a lifetime.  It didn’t take much for me to revert to my old habits as the summer came and the bees started to make honey!

Reading the press over the New Year, it was interesting to see that the UK population has become more and more obese – and some say over 35% is now obese.  As has the banking system and, perhaps many of the service organisations that try to service our needs – or so the current UK government thinks.

So the question for me is how to we can reduce weight and sustain a healthy lifestyle in a world that seems to becoming more obese.

My diet last year where I managed to lose a stone in weight was not really a diet.  I never felt hungry the whole time I was on the regime.  I simply reduced the number of calories I ate.

In a similar way, the two puppies that we took on in September are a good weight – because they get fed the correct amount of food each day.  It is interesting, also, that we have never been as healthy as our parents and grandparents were the 1940s when the country had food rationing.

It is not so much, then, about reducing weight.  It is more about eating the correct amount you need to achieve and maintain a natural bodyweight.

So, for this year, as well as reducing weight (another stone would do), I resolve to try to sustain the weight loss.  I would also like to do the reverse for my business – increase the revenues and sustain the flow!  Funny that in March last year I earned the most in a month when my weight reduced the most!

Maybe one idea works with the other.  Who knows?  Maybe the Lean Folk know.  Makes you think, anyway!

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The Future

Whilst exiting from the Underground Station at Canary Wharf yesterday, I saw an advertisement for a well-known global bank which said “The Future is Here”.  How banal.  How meaningless.  How hollow, I thought, when the banks are in such a mess.

Last week I found a quotation which, for me describes the future in a far richer, more eloquent, more creative spirit – written in an age when true creativity mattered more than contrived cloud-based global bank adverts.

Here it is:

“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths

offered by the present,

but a place that is created –

created first in the mind and will,

created next in activity. 

The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating.

The paths are not to be found, but made,

and the activity of making them

changes both the maker

and the destinations.”

John Scharr, Futurist

The trouble is, the bank in question is my bank!  What to do?  Makes you think, anyway.

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Occupy Everywhere!

I had a meeting early yesterday morning at the Frontline Club in Paddington. As I was leaving, some NHS folk were outside the entrance to St Mary’s Hospital demonstrating and making a noise. I did not go up to them and chat – I just took a picture. The window in the top left corner is where Sir Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin. As I walked away, I wondered what Fleming would have thought of all the noise?

I headed off to have lunch with an old friend at a restaurant in Paternoster Square – just by St Paul’s. It was a good lunch – and surprisingly crowded (when I had been told that all the traders in Paternoster Square had nearly gone out of business).   After lunch, I had a bit of time before my next appointment, so I decided to walk from St Paul’s down to Victoria.

I could only leave Paternoster Square by one exit – which was the one I came in on. Normally crowded with tourists and city folk, the square has been blockaded in by a squad of policemen and other less official-looking people who seem to be from the tented camp of the Occupy Movement.

 

I was surprised to see the tented camp still pitched around St Pauls. I wondered how long they will hang on out there (particularly now the weather is turning)?  Still, give the Occupy St Paul’s encampment some credit, they were pretty well organised and all seemed quite peaceful.

As I walked down towards The Aldwich, the whole of Fleet Street had been blocked by police cars, police vans and trucks with large sandbags.  It was a very strange atmosphere which I later realised was the end of the TUC march down the embankment.

A bit further on some folk were clearing barriers and a strange tent-like contraption came around the corner that posed for some TV cameras. The banner said “Occupy Everywhere” obscuring the sign for the Royal Courts of Justice. And it got me thinking.

With the world’s population recently increasing to over 7,000,000,000 people (or 7bn for short), in a strange way, we DO occupy everywhere already!  That’s the problem!  And we aren’t doing too well at organising ourselves to reduce the population size.  And there are now so many people getting heated up about all the problems that the planet itself is heating up more than we anticipated a few years ago.

So what’s to be done?  The politicians can’t seem to fix it.  The international banks and muti-national companies can’t seem to fix it.  The Occupy Movement doesn’t seem to be fixing it.  Yet we continue with the old patterns of marching, demonstrating (for pensions that will never appear) – and thinking that someone else will fix it.

So whilst we surely do Occupy Everywhere already, we need better ways to occupy ourselves so we all feel a sense of purpose and usefulness – without having to rely on the consumer-centric values that have held the Western world together for the past 50 years.

Interesting times.  Not sure anyone has the answer.  But I am sure we will work it out somehow!  After all, Fleming discovered Penicillin by going on holiday.  The story goes that some tropical medicine folk were researching on the floor below and penicillin floated up to his labs whilst he was away.  Strange things happen when you bring diverse ideas together and go on holiday.  Can’t wait for the Christmas break!

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Opting In To Civilised Money

A couple of weeks ago, I took one of my sons to London. He wanted to go and see the Occupy London site near St Paul’s – during time that the Church of England were digging deep into their consciences to work out how they should react. A few days later, I was in Edinburgh with my daughter and went to the equivalent tented camp. In both cases, I took the time to try to understand what was in the minds of those protesting. There was a peaceful atmosphere in both camps – but a surprising lack of practical things for people like me to do. However, the two experiences got me convinced that the system is broken and that things need to change.
A chance Tweet on Twitter this morning gave me the opportunity to explore the issues further. The Tweet alerted me to a new sort of Peer2Peer investment site called CrowdCube and a new sort of bank – called Civilised Money – who were looking for investors.  The idea took my interest and I read to find out more.

I was particularly struck by the coincidence that the project is the brainchild of Neil Crofts.  I have been a keen reader of Neil Croft’s weekly blog – and applaud his ideas on Authentic Leadership.  On reading more about the Civilised Money idea, is struck me that this kind of Peer2Peer banking is just like Skype was in 2002 – only transposed onto the banking system.  It made a heck of a lot of sense, so I took the plunge and invested!

By the way, I am definitely NOT an investment advisor.  I am not even sure that by the time you read this, the investment opportunity will still be open.  But I am so encouraged that there are those protesting (making the issues clear) as well as those who are trying to find new ways to design banks.

I hope it makes you think a bit more about what you opt in to – and out of.

 

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Steve Jobs RIP

I cannot mark today’s Thursday Thoughts without a tribute to Steve Jobs.  He became a legend in his own lifetime and he has surely changed the way that we work,  play and think.  He will be sadly missed having made a unique contribution to those who live beyond his untimely death.

Before he died, he expressed his philosophy on death with simplicity and elegance:

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Steve Jobs, Rest in Peace.

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Predicting and Influencing the Future for the Better

Last night I had a fascinating dinner with a few friends at the Frontline Club where we discussed how you influence the future. We ended up designing a system of brainstorming panels which had 3D glass shelves and used 3D icons that could change colour and show pictures and movies – all hitched to a reconfigurable database the cloud! By 10.30 my mind was totally boggled and we headed home!

The conversation was triggered by last week’s post where we explored the idea of Presence as being a better paradigm to describe effective organisations and trying to show that the current obsession of process reengineering is so lacking as an organising idea for the new internet era.  This week I intend to look at whether or not we can predict the future – and we can influence outcomes at an individual, organisational and world level.

To start with, I love the quote by William Gibson: “The future is here.  It’s just not widely distributed yet.”  Since the beginning of recorded history mankind has held in some sort of reverence (or equal cynicism) those who say they can see the future.  The oldest book in the world is based on the stories of the ancient prophets.  Seers and clairvoyants have always held a deep romantic fascination for me as guides to some sort of futre picture (whether  good or bad) and they seldom seem to be accountable for whether their predictions happen or not.  Just as Gibson observes, seers and prophets might actually be in the future and are describing things that most of us can’t see yet because we are stuck in the past (perhaps tied up in processes that were invented by someone else long ago ;-)).

If you fancy your clairvoyant skills, then there is even an Australian website where you can enter them – and it keeps track of whether or not they come true!  Here is a list of War on Experts’ top 10 best predictions.  There is also an interesting podcast from Freakonomics on why we just love trying to predict the future and how louzy we are at it.

In my work, I find the basis of “back-to-front” thinking an absolutely critical tool when trying to find the best courses of action to achieve objectives.  You can’t really be successful unless you know what success looks like – and you can’t get there unless you have worked out how to get there back-to-front.  So, in many ways, the predicted (reinforced) path to get from where you are now to where you want to get to requires some sort of prediction and willing yourself into the future.

There is some fairly extraordinary research being run at Princeton University into human consciousness that records how the human race reacts to specific events around the world.  With the help of correspondents around the world, events that can be expected to bring large numbers of people to a “shared or coherent emotional state”. The following is a partial, illustrative list of criteria and examples:

  1. Suddenness or surprise. Terror attacks, especially where they are not usual.
  2. Fear and compassion. Large natural disasters, typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes.
  3. Love and sharing. Celebrations and ceremonies like New Years, religious gatherings.
  4. Powerful interest. Political and social events like elections, protests, demonstrations.
  5. Deliberate focus. Organized meetings and meditations like Earth Day, World Peace Day.

There seems to be evidence that human consciousness actually changed a few seconds BEFORE any jet was rammed into the Twin Towers with the monitoring of  these”eggs” placed round the planet by Princeton University which generate random numbers.

Results still show that one of the main ways to make the world more peaceful and better place is to get a group together and go into a group meditation.  Forget about thinking.  Just sit and meditate.  So whether you believe we can see the future or not, by changing our own consciousness, it appears that we can actually make the future more peaceful!

As Niels Bohr is famously quoted: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”  but I am certain we can influence and make the future happen by our actions in the present and by envisioning the future back-to-front into our lives.

Beautiful day here.  Hottest September afternoon in the UK on record, apparently. Off to go and meditate with the bees and raise the level of peace vibes on the planet!

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Jobs, Dots and Coincidences

In the week that Steve Jobs gave up as CEO of Apple, I was reminded by a good friend, Cliff, of part of Jobs’ address to Stamford students in 2005:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever – because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

The idea that “dots will connect down the road” is such an interesting one. So many things become obvious with the benefit of hindsight. So it was, whilst on holiday in Sicily over the past ten days, that I was thinking about the importance of coincidences when looking back in life.

How many times in your life have you thought “That’s a coincidence!” – and the event or chance meeting has led to something important developing further down the road?

There is also the famous puzzle about how many people you need to gather together in a group for there to be less than a 50% probability that two in the group will share a birthday. The answer is not, as may would think 183 (or a half or 366) – but it is, in fact, a mere 23!  Therefore coincidences are actually more common than we might at first think!

James Redfield in his book “The Celestine Prophecy” develops the main character with him beginning to notice instances of “synchronicity”, or the realisation that coincidences may have deep, sometimes spiritual meanings.

And, as Einstein charmingly said: “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

To bring me back to Steve Jobs – his creations (or the creations of Apple) have been important at certain transition points in my life – whether they be the first Apple 2 I bought in 1980, or the Macbook Air I ordered today because my MacBook Pro that I got when I set up Objective Designers 3 years ago packed up last week!

Whether you believe these deeper meanings or not, REFLECT ON IT: When have coincidences changed your direction in life – or the decisions you have made?  They have for me. Maybe they have for you?

Please think about these coincidences that have turned your life….and, if you think you have a good story, please put it in the comment box below!

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Reasons for Encouragement: Keeping the World View

In the week that the US space shuttle programme came to an end, the BBC put a cut-down and edited version of the film “Round the world in 90 minutes.

You can watch the older version on YouTube in five fifteen minute cuts:

Let’s hope that the planetary consciousness that the outstanding programme has delivered will continue to see the world as a fragile ecosystem and not as a toxic dumping ground for consumer madness (per the previous post).

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Reasons for the Crisis: Designing for Obsolescence

In a week where the Murdoch media empire appeared to lose its power, I came across this video “The Story of Stuff”- perhaps the most important “News of the World” that Murdoch’s empire was at the heart of ignoring.

Even if you have seen it, watch it again: it will make you think again about how the world works.

It is interesting how, with the launch of Apple’s Lion operating system we are still seeing “Design for Obsolescence” as one of the main design principles from what many say is the best design company in the world. It’s time for Apple (and the rest of us) to re-think design for the 21st century so that we can close the circle, not keep pushing the 99% waste down the pipe. Designing for Pull has to be a major factor in this redesign philosophy – and something I will come back to in future posts.

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Innovation at the Edge of Elecricity

Although this is almost exactly a year old and quite US-centric, the video below “Innovation at the Edge of Electricity” was made. It has some great stories that may well make the minds of anyone living in the US or Europe boggle at how true innovation is happening in the developing world without any “help” from regulators or lawmakers.

As technology is forcing industry convergence, it is not just the Western-style Telecoms regulation that is getting in the way, but the rules and regulations from the Electricity and Banking Industries too. For instance, look to Africa, not Europe or the US if you want to see what true innovation is on mobile payments.

Many of the stories are particularly helpful when we think at how we should rollout faster broadband to the so-called “Final Third”. Innovation has always happened on the edge of the network. Surely it is time for us to include some of these new ideas from the “edge of electricity” and adapt them to our own requirements. Or will we let the regulators carry on regulating our service industries to die a slow, painful death?

Well worth watching to the end.

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