People Matter ∴ Do Good

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Tag: Hamilton (Page 2 of 3)

Authentic Community

27 October 2006 /

Last Thursday after we got into the Fast 50, I took a few people from work out to dinner with me to celebrate. At the table was Hav who just has an immense passion for agóge; Rob jnr who has such a detail mind and who keeps so many things I hate doing on track; and Cherie who is simply one of the most bona fide people I have ever met. Anyway I am sitting in this restaurant with a funny look on my face, watching my friends and just soaking it in and totally overwhelmed. There was something about the moment. A sense that in spite of everything hard we have been through, we're going to make it. I know this sounds a little corny, but you know what I am saying. It was an ordinary moment in an ordinary setting that for me became infused with something bigger. With community. Inspiration. Hope.

In two weeks time I have to talk on authentic community and I was chatting to a friend of mine yesterday about what that means. Community literally means 'in common'. People who gather together with something in common. Authentic according to dictionary.com theoretically means "not false; genuine". To me it means more than that.

It means being Real.

Honest.

Vulnerable.

Loyal.

An authentic person doesn't wear 'masks' to make them appear to be different than they are. They are honest and real about their struggles and failures. They seek help and are vulnerable.

I asked my two team meetings recently "How are you going? Really? " and generally I received genuine. Real. Honest. Vulnerable answers.

I think this small business called agóge. This business with people from all over the world, with varying educations, from different religions and diverse upbringings is starting to become an authentic community. A community that could actually make a huge difference in peoples lives.

It humbles me.

Lost for words

25 October 2006 /

2006fast50logoweb

We have all seen the Oscar's or MTV awards. Someone gets an award that they just didn't expect and end up babbling into the microphone about nothing. I have, in my own opinionated way, thought it was bizarre that these stars would speak publicly so badly.

Anyway last Thursday a group of us went to the fast 50 awards. We were sitting there and they said the first award is for the Fastest Employee Growth in the Central North Island. As they said it I was struck by the fact that we might actually win this, which was something I hadn't prepared for, "and the winner is Logistics Personnel".

What the? I then tried to get my team to come up with me (their legs became rocks), I lost my way getting up the front (there were only about 100 people there) and then was lost for words. Yes you heard it correctly, I, Andrew Nicol was lost for words. I blahed something about thanking my team about ten times and promptly left the stage. To this day I can't believe it!

Later we got another award for 28th Fastest Growing Company. I had a bit more to say about living people matter and my team, but I will never get over the shock of being lost for words.

You can read my viewpoint post to see some of my thoughts about our growth.

Buying Time

22 October 2006 /

I apply the brakes and decelerate for the booth ahead. An oldish graying lady slowly opens the booth window and greets me very pleasantly for 6am. Handing over a dollar coin is eventually followed by the barrier arm rising and my accelerating off down Route K towards Tauranga City. I am quite sure I it is the only toll road in the country, and probably one of the quietest roads as well. There are two many easy alternatives that only add a few km's and minutes to the trip to make it a success.

So why do I pay a dollar? Too save on fuel and time of course.

Later that day I was chatting to Greig about how stupid it is you can't get from 15th Ave back onto the toll road. It is stupid, for the record, because of lost revenue opportunities for them (there would be at least an extra car each day & I would get to save more time). Anyway I admitted to Greig that saving fuel can't be the real reason I take that road. I often drive around aimlessly in my car wasting more fuel than that. Furthermore saving time cant be the real reason because I would waste more time watching a couple of sets of TV ads than I would going the long way.

I was chatting to a friend the other day and she said that she doesn't read some stuff because she doesn't have time. I thought I can understand that. Later however, I thought it is not that we do or don't have the time, it is that we choose not to make the time.

  • I choose to save a small amount of time and lose a dollar. Knowing well I will waste the same amount of time writing this blog.
  • She chooses to spend the time on something else. Which is cool.
  • I encourage my team to take Lead Time to think and plan and read. Most of them choose not to because they are too busy and have no time.

We all have the same amount of time in a day, it is actually that we all choose to use it differently. We can choose to use it on friends or family or love or work or hobbies or watching TV ads or taking toll roads or reading stuff or not.

The only problem is that you never, ever get to live that time again.

Ok, I admit it, I was wrong!

13 October 2006 /

I have always understood that we are all made unique, entirely individual and wonderfully complex. But the implication of these thoughts often escapes me in action.

I think the problem is that I have never really, honestly believed that we are hard wired differently. A lot of the people that work for me that are smarter than me, had more significant and influential experiences than me, and have far more knowledge than me. Because they are genuinely more intellectual than I am, I struggle heaps when they don't see the big picture, or when they hear what I say and then do things completely differently.

I posted the other day about the styles of influence course I attended. As I have reflected on it, and spent time with the CBC guys and Vinney and Don, I have come to understand that I can be critical and biased when talking to people.

I think that we all have unspoken expectations of people, and then get frustrated when people fail to meet those expectations. We start thinking that they are intentionally doing this to bug us, and then our attitude towards them changes. When our attitude changes, our ability to influence the person positively dramatically reduces.

When all this happens who has the problem us, or the other person?

Me or you?

I have been humbled completely as I have considered some of these lessons.

Styles of Influence

11 October 2006 /

It is incredible to consider that in the last 2 days I have learnt more about myself and how I interact with other people, than I have probably done in the last 2 -3 years. On Sunday evening I had Vinney from idynamx staying with us from the US. He is a very astute and intelligent guy and it was fascinating to talk with him about Style of Influence and the implications into our lives.

On Monday I attended a one day course run by idynamx where we compared our personal styles of influence with other people I work with outside of agóge. To say that I found the day just intelligently stimulating and personally challenging, would be to dramatically underestimate its impact on my think.

Below is a summary of my unique design. I am, according to the Styles Of Influence, test a Creative Designer.

Creative designers want to get a job done and get it done fast. They influence others in a positive way through this use of clear thinking and a strong personality. Creative designers can influence in a negative way through intimidation or forcefulness. Generally creative designers are individualists who enjoy a great deal of variety. These people enjoy thinking up new ideas and helping to get other people to implement them. At times, they can be hard to get along with and seem like a bully or overly dominant. When a task is in full swing, these people may want to "bolt" before the project has been completed. They work best in an environment that gives room to be creative and yet one that has a certain measure of accountability.

Serendipity …

7 October 2006 /

[Sara]  Serendipity. It's one of my favorite words.
[Jonathan]  It is? Why?
[Sara]  It's such a nice sounding word for what it means: a fortunate accident. I don't really believe in accidents. I think fate is behind everything.
[Jonathan]  Oh you do?… So everything is predestined, we don't have any choice at all?
[Sara]  No, I think we make our own decisions, but fate sends us little signs and it's how we read those signs that determines whether we are happy or not.

These words from the video Serendipity, which I watched last night, got me thinking about destiny and fate and things that happen that may well be fortunate accidents.

I remember speaking with a friend a few months ago about fate and destiny. When I meet this friend it was a result of Serendipity. I rambled that I dislike the idea of destiny or fate or luck because it means I have no control over a situation (my nature of a control freak coming out again). What I was saying was that I want to have free will.

Then this morning I read Scott Adam's Dilbert Blog and he basically said we are all moist robots with no free will.

In a prior post I asked who is at fault if a guy pokes a bear with a stick and the bear kills him. Then I sweetened the pot by supposing the bear was actually an irrational guy whose religion says you need to kill people that poke you with a stick … The correct answer, and the one that no one offered as far as I could tell, is that it was no ones fault. Not the guy with the stick, not the bear, and not the irrational religious guy. Each creature acted according to its nature and its programming, as all moist robots must.

The bear is a furry moist robot. You poke him, he mauls you. It's that simple. The bear's brain isn't equipped for free will. Neither is yours or mine.

To add to all that Paul says that "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family", then adds just a sentence later that God "is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom". This just brings heaps of questions to mind like; If God decided, how can we be free? And what if he decided not to, do we still have freedom? Are there boundaries between destiny and free-will?

It seems I may have become a fence sitter on this matter, in a serendipitous way.

Cockpit/Crew Resource Management

6 October 2006 /

Here is the video clip that Trevor the A320 pilot sent me.

We were chatting about how easy it is to end up in the right seat (first officers seat) of a jet overseas nowdays and that a day is potentially coming when pilots end up in the right seat without having ever flown a small plane. A concern is that they become too inexperienced to speak up with authority when needed.

Speaking up is not an issue for this first office (John Wayne). Trevor called this CRM the old way…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh5oS-NZeQg]

Yesterday I went flying, the guy in the right hand seat (in my case the instructor) was sick, so I did some rather challenging forced landings on my own. I also found out that the aero club will ditch the Cessna 152's as soon as the next Alpha arrives. I guess I wont finish my PPL in the 152 after all.

Fly by Wire

5 October 2006 /

A320airnzBoarding your plane and taking a seat next to an Air NZ pilot wouldn't excite most of you, but it was one of the most interesting flights I have taken. I sat next to Trevor an Airbus A320 captain and pilot trainer as he was being repositioned back to Auckland.

Trevor has been flying for 40 years and you can tell straight away he is an experienced and safe flyer. In his 40 years flying he has never had a major incident, never had an engine failure, nor forced landing. This is as much a testament to aircraft maintenance as it is to his attitude and skill.

A320cockpitOnce we established that I was on my way to my PPL (so knew an incredible amount about flying), we talked Navaids, GPS, airports, handling of 737 vs A320, maintenance, CRM (Crew Resource Management), industry changes, ATPL training, the airworks accident last year, sims and pilot attitudes and leadership.

Interesting Facts

  • Wellington Airport was not closed on Wednesday. Trevor landed his Airbus, it's just the ground crew couldn't work in the wind.
  • Dunedin Airport is the hardest (=riskiest) airport in the country to land a jet in.
  • Airbus A320's self trim (Makes them heaps easier to fly)
  • At FL30 (30,000ft) and engine failure in a 737 required an immediate and positive from the pilot to stop it going over on it's back. An A320 will re trim, and put the plan into a descent.
  • Wherever possible they take off with reduced thrust to save the engine life. In the A320 they take off with the cabin pressurization off, which again saves engine life.
  • Great pilots come as a result of great attitudes.

Disjointed implications

  • The media never give you the whole story.
  • I'd rather fly in a A320 (or a next generation 737)
  • If reduced thrust take-offs improve engine life, then to what other areas or things could this principal apply?
  • Being great at anything, sport, flying, spirituality or leadership is all about ATTITUDE.

Trevor said he was going to email me a funny clip about CRM. If he does I will post it here.

Yesterday I learnt how to cheat the church!

30 September 2006 /

I'm serious. I went to the Global Leadership Summit and Andy Stanley said that he learnt to cheat the church and that we should learn to do the same. Anyway, as is the very nature of sort of day, we were subjected to a torrent of great leadership material. The challenge for me is now to incorporate my key lessons, into what I am being as a leader.

Bill Hybels – Life Cycle of a Leader

Quote
"4 Statement grid for key leaders. They must have
    – Intelligence
    – Be Energetic
    – Have Relational IQ
    – Have a win or die spirit"

"If we lead well, people live!"

Lesson
The life cycle of me as a leader (our influence) should go up and up to my dieing day.

Andy Stanley – Focused Leadership
What he meant by cheat the church was that we shouldn't cheat our family of our time, rather we should cheat the church of our time. It wasn't a money thing.

Quote
We spend more time in our organizations because we love progress and because we are afraid.  If I don't it wont … is an example of being afraid.

Lesson
I need to play to my strengths and delegate my weakness, and the less I do the more I can accomplish.

Jim Collins – When business thinking fails the church

Quote
Building something great is not a function of your circumstance; it is a function of your choices and discipline.

Lesson
And this is reflective of my thinking this week, I need to ensure I continually develop to become a great leader and learn from other leaders.

Bono – An exclusive interview www.one.org

Quote
I have always thought smack in the middle of a contradiction is a great place to be.

Stop asking God to bless what you are doing. Find out what God is doing because it is already blessed.

Lesson
I am compelled to be generous with my resources. How can I lead others to do the same?

What do Vision and Mission really mean?

27 September 2006 /

Vision, Mission, and Strategy. Typing these three terms independently in to google returns over 1.5 billion hits. Even as a group of words over 20 million hits are listed. Little surprise that the observations of what these words represent is as varied as opinions on life itself.

Most experts say you must have Vision and Mission statements. If your people don't know where they are heading they will get lost. It's difficult to disagree, unless you have read vision and mission statements for companies and then talked to the people on the ground to see what really happens.

So I thought, just to add to the confusion, I would give my inference on Vision and Mission, to which I am sure many people will disagree.

FIRSTLY – Whatever you do it must be relevant!

Vision – Is timeless, it is what you want to be, and what you are. For agóge it drives what we want to be in 10, 50, 100 years time. "We will live people matter…" is a philosophy rather than a goal.

Mission – Is timebound and specific. It is what you want to do and achieve now. Mission is a fighting term in my mind, this is where we are taking the battle. It is a broad goal that changes as the business grows and adapts.

Strategy – Is the translation of the Mission into specific actions and goals. It is the determining of what you will do when and how to fulfill your Mission and Vision.

So why do I put all this down in this post? Well because this week is a focus week for me, a week in which I base myself away from the office to read, think, reflect and review how things are going. Not just work, but people, and me. As I have engaged the brain this week, I am really happy with our Vision and Values, but I think our Mission and Strategy is very much lacking.

Is the agóge mission clear and the strategy compelling? I think not.

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