Lead a vivid life that does good

Month: September 2006 (Page 2 of 3)

What is initiative?

It's an interesting question isn't! What is initiative? Can you train people to have initiative? Can a person be held accountable for not displaying initiative? Does the culture of your company breed initiative?

An old philosopher Albert Hubbard says this "THE WORLD BESTOWS ITS BIG PRIZES, both in money and honors, for but one thing. And that is Initiative. What is Initiative? I'll tell you: It is doing the right thing without being told"

Hubbard tells the story Andrew Rowan said to the President,

"There is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia-are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?"

Garica wasn't told how to act, or where to look, who to contact, he just took the letter set out and made the right thing happen. Read the whole story if you have time.

Seth Godin calls it being a torchbearer and says this

Now, I'm not talking about working hard, or being dedicated, or putting your mission first. Being a torchbearer has nothing to do with how late you work at night, or whether you give your cell-phone number to your boss. No, I'm talking about the people with that rare skill, the ability to dig deep when the need arises — to get past the short-term pain and to pull off an act that few would have believed possible. In the new economy, people are doing things that have never been done before. Faced with the unprecedented, in an environment that's unstable, many people say, "It can't be done." The torchbearer is the one who does it.

I love Hubbard's quote. I think initiative is doing the right thing without being told. I think training helps, culture is important, accountability is paramount and these things can help people fell comfortable with taking initiative. I also think some people have been trained their whole lives to lack initiative and they must now retrain. Eventually it comes back to a readiness and ability to initiate action, the right action. Ultimately it comes back to the individuals deep resolve to do the right thing every single time. If that desire is not there they will never carry the torch across the finish line nor find Garica.

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

Well meaning people

There very few normal work days that I can recall like I do the 12th September five years ago. I had recently been given a job which meant I made the sluggish journey to Auckland three or four times a week. Typically I travelled before sunrise, but this day was not a normal day. As I steered the bulky green station-wagon north there was an endless chatter about only one topic on the radio. In the shadow of the Sky Tower I get out of my car to a radiant blue sky and hear some jet engines whine in the distance which immediately connected my thoughts to the sky in New York just hours earlier. What if?

Five years on and the anniversary of 911 brings with it repeat after repeat of the planes flying into the building or the towers collapsing. How hard it must be for the families of the dead to see those images again and again and again. Time after time the media replay the murder of their loved ones on TV. Oddly however, year after year we are drawn to the images, to the viewpoints, to the speculation of what is next. The world is not the same place it was when around 2800 people died in the US that day, merely ask the citizens of the now "liberated" and "democratic" state of Iraq, who have lost over 40,000 civilian family members in this war on terror.

The world is not the same, nevertheless it is exactly as it has been for thousands of years. Well meaning people and governments and religions are doing things that they think will make the world a better place, while all the time forcing their rules for living on the rest of the world. We see it in Christianity all of the time, people go around telling people how to live, or more to the point tell them what not to do, and forget that perhaps God made us for relationships. I heard this pastor friend of mine talking about the bible over the weekend and what it tells us about loving our neighbours. He sort of said that we have to be deeply compassionate for the needs of people around us, and how the question is not who is my neighbour, but who can I be a neighbour to?

All this got me thinking about creation and I wondered if most well meaning Christian people have missed the point. What if Christianity could be summed up like this? Love God and love People with everything you have. What if this whole Christianity thing is about relationships, deep, authentic, caring relationships? Imagine if people with nothing to offer could actually have a relationship like that with God, then He taught them how to truly live and to have deep, authentic relationships with people.

You know what, I think that would be the kind of Christianity I would want to be a part of…

Interview Questions

A timely reminder for people recruiting Drivers and Forklift operators.

Juggler Interview

Circus Manager: How long have you been juggling?
Candidate: Oh, about six years.

Manager: Can you handle three balls, four balls, and five balls?
Candidate: Yes, yes, and yes.

Manager: Do you work with flaming objects?
Candidate: Sure.

Manager: …knives, axes, open cigar boxes, floppy hats?
Candidate: I can juggle anything.

Manager: Do you have a line of funny patter that goes with your juggling?
Candidate: It's hilarious.

Manager: Well, that sounds fine. I guess you're hired.
Candidate: Umm…Don't you want to see me juggle?

How often are people placed into work without actually seeing if they can do the job?

Quote from Seth Godin's Blog

Agree, disagree, have a question? – Post a comment now.

The grand strategy

"It is the translation of the grand strategy down into what people do every day, and be caring about what they do that is the single biggest challenge that faces every company." And I suggest every leader. It is certainly one of the biggest challenges that I face on an ongoing basis. I find this quote from a CEO who took part in the Covey 4 Disciplines course stimulates me often to assess how I am going as a leader. Frequently accepted wisdom would say just set the big goal, go for it, let the people do the work. Often however this doesn't cut it.

Last week while discussing a project it became apparent that we had not yet thought through a key part of the new project. There was an inherent risk that we get to project completion and then find we had missed some key thinking for the process. It is not the first time, nor the first project that this has happened with. Being more than a little deflated that such a critical component had been looked over, I head into this week with a hankering to nail off my part in leading and delivering great projects, and this brings me back to the quote.

It has three parts, "grand strategy", you need to have one prior to doing anything else; "translation of the strategy into what people do each day", this is about breaking our goals down to a level that people understand exactly what to do; "caring about what they do", this means really caring and caring can only really be shown by spending time with them. Three parts, and as I critically review myself, I am doing decidedly averagely at all three! I have therefore planned a focus day to clear the head and determine again what is wildly important.

I am encouraged that 'translation' and 'caring' are the single biggest issue facing every company and leader. I am not the only person to struggle with this dimension of leadership. We have all worked for leaders, even stunning leaders that fail to continually set clear goals, help you break them down and care about how you are going as precisely as they should.

To conclude, a friend txt me a quote from Churchill in the weekend. "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm" – Hitting failure after failure enthusiastically – hmm.

AGOGE MEANS BEING

It means more than just saying something, or telling others to do something, it means 'being what you say and teach'. I want to be true to the word Agoge, and true to the way I live my life. True to the company and people that make up Agoge.

Quote from Andrew

I’m a little fire engine ‘Flick’ is my name…

Imagine being an Airport firefighter in Alaska, on Tuesday I meet a guy who had done that job. In fact imagine being an airport firefighter anywhere. Generally it would be monotonous existence, clean the fire truck, drive down the runway to get for foreign objects (these are not people who stowaway…), do the odd plane crash drill, but then generally you sit around waiting for a plane to crash, nice! The job almost contrasts that of a domestic firefighter who fights fires, attends motor vehicle crashes, cleans up floods and nails roofs down. In their spare time they educate kindergarten kids, check buildings and hydrants, and play table tennis.

For the record if I had to choose I would be an airport firefighter, after all I would get to see heaps of planes and that perk compensates significantly for the boredom. To be candid, I feel like a domestic firefighter at the moment, bouncing from one fire to another, attending to accidents, cleaning up issues and nailing things down. In my spare time I try to educate some people, work on the building and have some fun. I feel like I 'flick' from one thing to another.

My dilemma is this; it is not my agreed function to be a domestic firefighter and being one comes at the expense of strategy and leadership development. When I don't develop leaders and give strong leadership, my team are ill equipped to lead their teams, when this happens we all seem to get more involved in fighting fires.

Anyway back to another day at the fire station…

NEWSFLASH – Just heard that Noamz had her baby! How cool is that!

PS – If you want to check out the pre-launch developments for the logistics opinions page go to andrewnicol.net\logistics

New idea, new space

I downloaded and listened to a Skypecast with Seth Godin yesterday on the way to Tauranga. On it he talks about 'small being the new big' and the application of that philosophy to blogging. He was basically saying that you need to find a small niche space for your business blog and just go about doing it. At the time it didn't actually ring true in my head.

This morning I wrote an editorial for the FTD magazine. The trick with an editorial is to write it like the editor has written it, and then refer to yourself in the third person. Below is an part of the article.

Is the transport industry in for some tough times? It appears so, particularly with higher fuel prices and a shortage in staff and drivers.

But Andrew Nicol, director and founder of agóge Logistics, disagrees. "We have total control over the success or vulnerability of our industry. The choice for us is simple; either sit on hands and do nothing or take action! Being PROACTIVE and having VISIBILITY are vital to ensuring our industry continues to experience profitable growth."

Blah blah blah…

Let me tell you, it is really hard to write in the third person after you have been blogging for a while. When I blog I just give you a view or opinion and publish it. I don't have to make it newsworthy or elegant.

After I had finished I took a shower, which is where I do all my best thinking, and thought that we should set-up a blog for NZ Transport & Logistics Opinion's. Get guest authors and do maybe 1 or 2 posts a week. The cost to administer it is nothing, yet it may add heaps of value and be a place for candid opinions and ideas to feed our industry. Seth's idea and my writing an editorial come into one and a new space is born.

Now that I have the idea, I know I need to host it. Hosting it under the sub domain of 'agogeboy' just doesn't feel right for customers and general public, so I decided to shutdown 'agogeboy' and relaunch with 'agoge' via typepad.com. You would think I would have done that the first time, but I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. It also gives me the opportunity to host other people and internal blogs under different names.

So I am at a new location agoge.typepad.com or www.nicol.co.nz for my personal blog. Our transport blog will be launched in the next few weeks. It will be at www.agoge.net, I will keep you posted.

TIME SLOWS

"Scientists have played with atomic clocks, matched exactly, setting one in a plane to fly around the world, and another motionless, waiting for the return of its partner. When they reunite, the one that traveled rests milliseconds behind the fixed one. The faster you move, physicists have found, the less you experience time."

Quote from "Painted Deserts"

Benefits vs Features

Mark (a marketing guy) and myself were talking through a product launch we are about to do soon. I was chatting to him about the benefits of this new service that my team and I had put together. He diplomatically tells me some good benefits, but others are just features. He was right of course, and somehow in my haste to nail things I missed it. I thought I would check out some blogs and found this one with a rather good example.

"The lesson [about benefits] was hammered home for me a few decades ago in my first career. I was representing my employer, International Harvester at the International Plowing match. I was on tractor displays. My job was to explain all the features of the new tractors to the farmers.

I had memorized the details of the tractors – horsepower, PTO power, tire options, etc. I even prepared some cue cards with this information in case I forgot.

But I was jolted into realty when some farmer with crooked teeth stared at me after my dissertation about horsepower and said, "Can she pull a three-furrow plow in sandy clay?"

The question shocked me. I didn't know the answer. And I realized that that was the important question. I didn't know the answer and the company had not prepared me for it. They had given me facts – not relevance."

My lesson. I really need to get in front of some real customers to make sure we are not just talking about features, while they sit there thinking about getting stuck in the clay.

Quote from Benefits vs. Features – George Torok

Undercover surveillance at Starbucks

Image013 Starbucks is a rip off! $5.60 for a below average Mocha which pails in comparison to the Macho you get at "The Naked Grape". The Grapes' Mocha costs less, is interactive (yes, I say interactive) and tastes awesome! I sit at a table on the outside corner of Starbucks at Bayfair so I can read and watch the world go by, while I wait on Karina.

As I start to read I hear the family two tables back from me are speaking Spanish. I think of Costa Rica again, and this is the fourth circumstance that has reminded about it in the last week. I wonder if Costa Rica is beckoning me or if it is just like noticing a certain colour and make of car, merely because a friend has just brought one.

I intermittently read my book, sip on a bad mocha and watch people. I love watching, learning and contemplating people. Here are a few of my decidedly unscientific observations:

  • Men either go to the mall alone or with their partner, NOT with other men. Kind of makes sense I don't recall ever ringing Robbie or Alf and asking if they want to go shopping with me. Thinking I should do this one day as it could be hugely entertaining.
  • Teenage boys go in packs of 2 or 3. They are at the mall for two reasons only, girls or food. Shopping is not on their mind, if it were they would shop alone or secretly with their mums.
  • Almost all of the people I saw texting were alone, I only saw one person texting who was not alone and that person was obviously with her mum.
  • Older women dress to make themselves appear young, while the teenage women dress to make themselves appear old.

As I considered what my eyes were telling me, I thought about how we are relational beings, people made to interact with other relational beings, then this morning I finished 'Through Painted Deserts'. One of the few profound lines in Don's book says "Relationships between people indicate something of the nature of God – that he is relational, that he feels love and loss."  – an intriguing thought.

« Older posts Newer posts »