You’ve heard of beer goggles right. The experience of allowing alcohol to somewhat taint a persons normal scale of attractiveness for the opposite sex.
Well maybe we don’t actually need alcohol to taint our view of people.
Maybe we allow our picture, our framing story of a person’s life to form an inaccurate view of a person we barely know. A wrong view no less.
Last night we had dinner with some friends and in the course of the meal we were chatting about one of our friend’s parents. I was really surprised to learn some cool and funky things about the dad. I have known that person from a far and never would have pictured him in the context I was told about. I was pleasantly surprised.
I think I do that more often than I care to admit.
It was as though I was looking through an orange bottle at a person. My framing story was wrong. My view was tainted.
161 | 365 Yesterday I forgot to take my camera with me, so this is a shot from my phone.
Author: Andrew (Page 26 of 43)
10 years ago today a great challenge was before me. On one hand I was compelled to care for my wife in labour with our first child. On the other hand was my desire to watch Team New Zealand defend the America’s cup. Trust me, balancing the two, while at a hospital is very difficult.
Today that baby girl is 10 and she too is balancing. Only her balance is physical on an imitation Rip-stick. I tried it out tonight. Trust me, balancing on two wheels is very difficult, particularly for an old guy like me.
Yesterday I was speaking to a person who used the term “work-life balance”. It’s a fascinating term. Work-life balance almost implies that you work and then you have a life. Life is far more complex than just work or life. Sports, family, children, finances, churches, work, friends, exercise, relaxing, entertainment, hobbies and the list goes on.
For me there is a continual struggle to balance all of the facets of life. Not just work and everything else. Maybe, we have the wrong term. What if instead of teaching people to have work-life balance, maybe we need to teach people to have “whole-life balance”.
Whole life balance I suspect is harder than balancing a wife in labour and the Americas cup, or an old guy riding a rip-stick.
Whole life balance. Provocative?
You know that experience you have when you first turn the light off and everything goes pitch black. Then slowly, over a period of time, your eyes adjust. This process is called night adaptation. It takes roughly 8 mins to half adapt to darkness and around 30 mins to get full night adaption.
Once our eyes are adjusted. We can walk around with very little light as though it was daylight. We get used to walking around in the dark, and the night feels very bright.
Suddenly someone flashes a bright white light towards our eyes for less than a second. In that second our night adaptation is destroy completely and it will take a further 30 mins to completely restore it. We start fumbling around in the darkness again, wishing it were really daylight.
I took this photo yesterday morning. The bright light is not the sun, it is a street lamp that illuminates small exposed patches in its vicinity, while still casting deep shadows into the darkness. Dawn is breaking in the background. Daylight is coming.
Here’s the point. How bright a light will I be to the people around me? Will I be a bright white light that has significant radical impact? Or will I be like the streetlight, an artificial light that illuminates small patches while leaving deep shadows?
I’ve been thinking lately about how we are all creative. Every single one of us, in some way enjoys creating. Its as if we were created to create. And yet we are all creative in very different ways.
Some people create through art and paintings. Some people create through music and dance. And then other people create through welding or building or software or written words or stories or laughter or process or clothing or teaching or parenting. Why you can even have creative accountants.
And then once we have created. We look at what we created and say “it is good”, and our creation helps create us.
Today’s photo is a part of the Birthday cake, Karina, my very creative wife made for Kyla’s tenth birthday. It is the zero of the ten, and is a banana cake with icing edges and a slightly hollowed centre with blue jelly on top.
Very creative.
One of the hardest parts of being a parent is watching from a distance as your children develop friendships. We know that true friendship can craft our children, develop and enhance them. But we also know the wrong friends could have a long-term negative influence on them.
We would like to determine who our kids are friends with, but we know that they must learn those lessons themselves.
So we watch and coach. We listen as they describe hurts and share their joy as they discover true friends.
This is a picture of some of Kyla’s friends. We headed to Rotorua, for gondola and luge rides to celebrate her upcoming 10th birthday. Kyla and her friends were incredibly well behaved, had heaps of fun and enjoyed the day.
I am proud of Kyla. I am proud of the friends she is choosing. I am proud of how she connected with each of them yesterday.
So far so good. Long may it continue as we head towards her teenage years.
“So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadow boxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what I should.” – Today I ran 5 km’s. It’s been a while and it was hard work. I had to keep setting small targets. I’ll run to this corner, and then I’ll run to these shops. All the while I had the end goal of completing the run in mind.
As I was running I was thinking about how hard work life can be. Paul talked metaphorically about running with purpose in every step. Sometimes the goals we are called to, seem so unattainable and so distant.
It is easier to give up.
To stop running.
It reminds me that I have to set small obtainable targets and run with purpose to each one. Then move to the next target with purpose.
This is how improvement comes, how perseverance comes.
Then we complete.
We finish.
We win!
Here is my problem…
I have three roles I need to fill. ‘Customer super star’. ‘Administrative genius’ and ‘Executive assistant’
Role A: Customer super star.
This role will be to take external calls. It will wow our customers, provide them a stunning service and generally win them over. We are looking for someone who has a vibrant personality and who loves connecting with people.
Role B: Administrative genius
This role will handle a variety of administrative functions within our company. It will be responsible for billing to training clients, supporting our trainers and assisting in payroll and countless other functions. We are looking for someone who has a high attention to detail, loves getting things right first time and enjoys admin work.
Role C: Executive assistant
This role will support the Management Team through and will co-ordinate and develop many of our internal processes like Health and Safety and our Quality Management System. We are looking for some who can document new simple processes from scratch and be able to keep the somewhat crazy members of our management on task.
Role D: All of the above.
In all roles you will need a fun upbeat personality, be flexible in the hours you work, a great self manager and have good to advanced PC skills.
Here is my solution…
No actually, you tell me.
I am happy to consider any person, young or old, man or woman, slightly crazy or slightly sane, for one or more of the roles. Each of the roles above (a-c) are, in reality, part-time positions. But combined (d) the roles would make a full time position.
The key is I really want passionate people working for me. People who have strengths that actually align to the work they are doing. People who enjoy doing the work they are doing.
If you are interested in one of these roles part-time, then apply for just that role (A, B or C). If believe you have the unique talents to be able to do all three roles then apply for D.
More information
Roles B and C (and therefore D) would need to be based at our national support office in Te Rapa, Hamilton. A picture of the view from your desk is attached.
Role A could be based in either our Auckland or Hamilton office.
Agoge is a young, innovative, nationwide company that specialises in providing ingenious services predominately to the transport, logistics and supply chain industries.
You can find out more about Agoge by visiting our website http://www.agoge.co.nz/working-for-agoge or give Andrew Nicol a call.
Apply
So let us know what you think and send a cover letter and your CV to crazyteam@agoge.net.nz
Remember as a kid if you wanted to be doctor, you simply dress up as doctor and you're good to go. That simple. In real life training to be a doctor is a lot more complicated.
As I flew to Christchurch this morning, the Head Steward on the Jetstar flight was in training. The trainer was providing practical insights, small tips, and cautions to the trainee throughout the flight. Apart from the announcement about Australian quarantine laws on a New Zealand domestic flight, it really was real-time experiential training.
In Christchurch I did some one-on-one training with one of my team. Not in real-time, but still practical, small tips and cautions to help him in his role.
Sometimes when we think of training, we behave like we are training doctors. But training should just be simple, experiential and primarily one-on-one.
154 | 365 – Dress Up – Jayden IS a doctor, checking up on Talia.
Did a lot of thinking about the word ‘good’ today. Good is such a generic and possibly overused word. In some circumstances it is a powerful word (He was a good man), in other situations it is somewhat non-descript (I’m good thanks).
It can be a virtuous word, a respectable word, an excellent and moral word.
I was at the beach enjoying a good coffee with Jim today and several guys came up the rocks where they had been diving. They had a good catch of Mussels and Kina. This is a good shot of the mussels arranged on the boardwalk. They are a good size and I’m sure they will taste good. As we walked away a fisheries officer turned up. He did a good job of connecting with the divers. I hope the divers were good and hadn’t exceeded the quota.
Good is an interesting word indeed.
153 | 365 – It is Good
E. B. White once wrote, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
How often that describes me. I want to make a difference, to change, to improve the world and the lives of the people in it.
And yet.
I want to enjoy life, have fun, and to be honest park myself somewhere obscure and do nothing but wax lyrical about making a change without actually doing anything.
Planning when I have both desires is difficult indeed.
Today I took this photo of the Agoge Support Office just before our management meeting. It’s the start of another week. A week in which I plan to make a change.
We will see what happens…