Category: Social Enterprise NZ

How to get promoted!

6 September 2017 / Andrew

“What did you do to get promoted?” she asked, hoping for a leadership gem. “I got lucky” I said, knowing it wasn’t the whole answer.

I had just been sharing about the period of my life where I went from being a courier to a senior manager in New Zealand’s largest courier company over a five-year period.

To be honest ‘luck’ played its part. I joined when the company was growing exponentially and promotions created spaces. But luck alone doesn’t account for it. There were a bunch of other people who didn’t get promoted.

I believe I was promoted because I locked on to an axiom early on in my career;

Do all of my job and half of my boss’s

Doing ‘all of my job’ stopped by boss having to jump in and do it for me. [Note: If your boss is doing some of your job, fix that first. Not cool!]

Doing ‘half of my boss’s job’ meant I was learning outside my existing roles and helping my boss. When opportunity popped up, I was a logical choice.

Trying to do one and a half jobs, doesn’t mean I worked 1 1/2 times harder. It is hard work, but it also taught me to lead my teams better and focus on what was important.

“Do all of my job and half of my boss’s job,” clearly won’t work in every setting. But maybe it’s worth a try.

∴

Nowadays being a CEO/Founder it’s a lot harder to do my boss’s job, but my focus remains largely the same. I need to ‘Do my job and half of my future job.’

If I want to the organisations I lead to have a global impact, the leader I am today is not sufficient for the future.

Letting Go

7 April 2017 / Andrew

“You don’t understand,” I said partly in jest, “It has nothing to do with their fear of change. It’s ALL my own insecurities.” As soon as I heard the words leave my mouth, even though I was meaning them to bring humour, I knew they were true.

I was trying to work out what my role should be in Agoge, the social business I founded and own. Hearing these words changed everything. I realised that so much of my identity and status and self-esteem was tied to being the leader.

And allowing my insecurities to win, would eventually lead us to lose.

This week Jim Grafas, was promoted to CEO of Agoge. I couldn’t be more excited to see a person who I trust and who is an amazing friend take the role. More importantly he is a phenomenal leader who people love to work with, who deeply cares for people, and who passionately believes in Agoge’s vision of People Matter ∴ Do Good.

I will tell you something else about Jim. He doesn’t yet know everything he needs to know to be CEO, which means he will make mistakes. Which is exactly how he will grow.

If I allowed my insecurities to stop me stepping out of the way. Then I not only stop myself growing, I stop Jim, and the amazing team beneath him from growing as well.

If you want people to grow, you have to let go.

∴

Since having the insight about my own insecurities, it’s amazing how often I have heard it in others. So many leaders and managers and even parents are holding great people back, purely because they won’t let go.

Our role is to help people grow into the best possible version of themselves.

We don’t do that by holding on.

We do it by letting go.

If you want people to grow, you have to let go.

———————————
Finally in case you’re interested. I haven’t retired. I’m now the MD of Agoge and still passionate and emotionally invested in its future. I’ve also teamed up with Vivek to co-found a new social business, that aims to have the same ethos and purpose that Agoge does, but solve a different problem.

How to build momentum

7 July 2016 / Andrew

One of the things my son and I do for weekend kicks is launching ourselves down our street, which has a reasonably steep hill, on skateboards. There’s something about gaining momentum that is fun and exhilarating. And as the formula P = MV rightly points out, the bigger you are the faster you go.

As a social entrepreneur I also love momentum. I love growth. I’m not scared of BIG, and I not so secretly desire to use the organisations I am involved in, to have a global impact. I want them to take over the world and do good.

I also want the organisations you are involved in to succeed. And grow. And gain momentum. That’s where the formula comes in.

Momentum (P) = Mass (M) x Velocity (V)

Momentum in an organisation requires Mass & Velocity.

Mass

Mass equals people. Without people there is no momentum.

It would be easy to think, that the more people you have the more momentum you have, but that’s only partly true. Mass is about density. And density when it comes to organisations is about quality.

100,000 likes might increase awareness, but it won’t bring long-term momentum on its own. What organisations need are dedicated, high quality people, who do great work and bring mass.

Mass is about getting as many great, activated people as possible.

Velocity

Velocity is different from speed. Speed is how fast something is moving, whereas velocity how fast it moves in a direction. Velocity is heading somewhere.

If you have 100 people moving incredibly quickly in different directions, then they are pulling against each other. You have speed, but not velocity.

In an organisation, everyone needs to be moving fast AND in the same direction.

Without velocity you have no momentum.

So…

Momentum (P) = loads of dedicated people (M) heading in the same direction (V)

[Science lesson over]

∴

Now consider the organisations you are involved in. Do they have momentum?

More importantly.

Are you doing your best to bring Mass (dedicated involvement) & Velocity (heading in the same direction)?

We can all be apart of something big that has incredible momentum.

We just cant do it without climbing on board, and then launching ourselves down the hill.

Its never the right time.

8 March 2016 / Andrew

Over the last couple of years I have met quite a number of incredibly intelligent uni students who want to make a positive dent in the world. Many are passionate about social enterprise and using business to change the world.

As their degrees come to an end and it’s time for them to move to the next thing, almost all of them choose grad programmes at big corporates. They reason that they can make some money, pay off their student loans and then once they have everything all together they will start to change the world.

What they miss of course is the fact that it is never the right time to start something new.

There are always loans that need to be paid off, and in the future families that need to be supported.

The reality is that now is as good a time as ever.

In fact, now is the right time.

If you are brave enough.

∴

Note to self. Now is the right time. In fact there has never been a better time to start something new.

Stop hiding behind a thousand reasons not to, and start.

3 ways to stay focused on your goals

23 April 2015 / Andrew

A number of years ago Bill Gates’ mother held a dinner party and invited both Warren Buffet (super rich guy) and Bill along. At the dinner party she ask what they believed was the single most important factor for their success. Both Bill and Warren gave the same one-word answer: “Focus.”

Focus is one of those annoying words that continually collides with my life. Historically I would not regard myself as a particularly focused person, but slowly over the years I have been improving. As I have improved I have realised that FOCUS requires constant, well focus, on three areas:

1. Turning Goals into Priorities

In order to be focused you must know what you are focused on. The word after all means “the centre of interest or activity.” Without having goals, both in business and personally, you won’t have interests or activity to centre yourself on.

But just as important as having goals, is reviewing them very frequently and setting actions. For me this involves a weekly review of my goals and strategies to set the course for the week, then almost daily reviewing these and setting actions for my day ahead.

Simply said. To focus you must have goals and resolve to take action daily.

2. Be in the Right Space

Now that you have your priorities you need to have a work-space where you can actually get on and do the work without too much interruption. As your all know, not all work spaces are the same. Some of us have our own office and others work in open plan.

The key thing to remember is that different focus, requires different spaces. Sometimes I need to work in my office as I need the tools there to do the work. Other times I can sit with my laptop in a café. Other times I go on a walk with a piece of folded up paper and a pen (so I can leave my phone behind). Depending what you are focusing on determines the space you should be in.

Once in the right space and ready to focus, it’s important to eliminate as many distractions as possible. This mainly involves communicating with the team around you that you are focusing a major goal for a period of time.

3. De-clutter ALL Distractions

I was reading yesterday that the average Facebook user in New Zealand checks Facebook 14 times a day. Social media is great for connection with people, but for most of us it distracts us from their goals. Similarly in our work-spaces there are distractions everywhere, so it is little wonder we struggle to focus. As I’ve become more focused I have had to take some pretty radical steps and a few of these are below:

Implement GTD (Getting Things Done). It’s a book. Buy it. Implement it.
Have a tidy work-space and try to only have the work in front of you, that you are focusing on. This stops distractions.
Turn off every type of email notifications on every device. My focus doesn’t last long, the last thing I need when a new email arrives is an excuse for my brain to get distracted.
Turn off notifications on your phone. All of them at first, then bring the critical ones back in. Social Media are unlikely to be the ones you turn back on. While you are at it, delete the most distracting apps from your phone.
Relentlessly remove yourself from email lists. The goal of an email is to distract you and get you to check in on their website. Our goal is to not be distracted and to have as much focused time as possible.

Distraction is everywhere which makes focus incredibly hard. If focus is important, you need to radically reduce the distraction. You can still clear Facebook, or check out websites. Just not when they prompt you and not when you are focused.

∴

Becoming more focused is a constant struggle for me. I get constantly distracted and interrupted and I take on too much. All distraction comes at the expense of the goals I think are really important for me.

That said, the more I focus, the more I appreciate the value of focus and the more determined I become on my quest for more.

I’d love to hear if you have tips for becoming more focused, so comment and let me know what you think.

So the water that comes from the Well is not 100% pure?

18 October 2012 / Andrew

Mid sentence Jim exhaled an audible groan and instantly we burst into uncontrolled laughter. The groan just reflected the thoughts echoing in our heads as we bounced, banged and rocked our way along the red clay road in a remote rural area of Cambodia. Our hosts were taking us, no, bouncing us to a village where BioSand Filters where in production.

We had come to Cambodia to see the good.water wells that Good Trust had funded and our partners Samaritans Purse have installed. Once at the communities we saw the wells, turned the handles to pump water, took photos and asked questions. It was incredibly satisfying to see clean water pouring from a hand pump on a well that we had enabled. Yet after watching them pump water, they promptly poured it into these bizarre looking concrete containers that trickled forth clean drinking water.

To be honest, before seeing Bio-Sand Filters (BSFs) in action I had not appreciated the importance they played in providing clean water. I very naively thought that we put a Well in, and the water was fresh and ready to drink. It is close, and infinitely better than drinking brown dirty water directly from the rice fields, which is what they did before, however when the water is filtered through a BSF is is 99% free of the germs and ugly stuff that causes sickness.

They are awesome!

Once we arrived at the village where BSFs were being built, we saw how actively involved the community was in constructing them. SP provided the molds and materials, and the people set about building almost a 100 BSFs for each home in the area. BSFs are very low maintenance and last up to 15 years. (If you want to know more about how BSFs work click here).

And the cost of the materials to provide clean water to a household for 15 years?

$30 !

∴

Personally what struck me most as I left the communities we visited was not that they had clean water, but rather how incredibly fortunate we are.

To get clean water they hand-pump water, carry it back to their home and pour it through a BSF. I on the other hand not only shower in drinking water at the turn of a tap, but water my lawns with drinking water in the summer.

And, for the price of feeding my family of 5 takeaways on the odd occasion, I could provide a family with clean water for 15 years!

Lesson 2 from Cambodia visit 2012: Bio Sand Filters are awesome value and worth the investment.

Subscribe

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories