Clarity of Purpose

Anna Wintour: “People respond well to people who are sure of what they want.”

We somehow think that a clear purpose will come to us from above, as the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, or as Buddha achieved enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi  tree.  Some people are lucky enough to know early on their where their talents and interests lie.  Anna Wintour reckoned she was just 15 when her career in fashion was fixed[1].    For the rest of us, being clear about our purpose is hard work. 

There is no escaping the fact that a clear vision is essential to the success of any organisation, and essential to the success of those within the organisation.  

If being clear about your purpose was easy, though, everyone would be highly focused on their specific goals.  Sadly, that’s not the case for one very simple reason: being clear about your purpose means making a choice.  By choosing one path you close off others.  For many people that is very difficult; the grass always looks greener someplace else, particularly when things don’t turn out as you planned.  So our attention wanders to something we think might be more profitable, more interesting, or just plain different from the problems we are facing.  However, that is exactly why clarity of purpose is so powerful; choosing forces you to focus your time, resources, and energy on one thing.  And doing one thing vastly improve your chances of success.  The old saying that the hunter who cases two rabbits catches neither one is as true in business as it is in the woods.  

When we are sure we are doing the right thing, we can sink ourselves fully into the activity.  Free from distractions, we become absorbed in our work.  Disturbances that would normally cause annoyance are ignored as we focus on the job.   Concentration and effectiveness are at their highest when we have absolute clarity about what we are doing and why we are doing it.

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[1] When Anna Wintour was just 21 years old she told her co-workers that she wanted to be Editor of Vogue.  She achieved her ambition in 1988 and 24 years later she is still Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wintour.

Weekly Meetings

Meetings get a lot of bad press: too many, badly run, no preparation and of negligible value.  Yet meetings can be tremendously valuable.  A weekly meeting is an opportunity to plan and review, and to set the tone for the upcoming week’s work. 

Steve Jobs had a meeting each Monday with his executives to review all the products in development.  “Eighty per cent is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week,” Jobs said in an interview with Fortune in 2008.  “We don't have a lot of process at Apple, but that's one of the few things we do just to all stay on the same page."

I know if I were an executive at Apple I’d make sure I was up to speed by the end of Friday on what progress had been made, and what the plan was for next week because if I didn’t know, I’d be getting a roasting on Monday morning.  So not only did Jobs create accountability and visibility with these meetings, but he also made sure that all his executives had reviewed the past week and planned the upcoming week.  Sure, this was something they should have been doing anyway, but that Monday morning meeting made sure of it.  Not bad for 60 minutes of everyone’s time. 

Steve Jobs: An Unconventional Leader, The Sunday Morning Herald, Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/steve-jobs-an-unconventional-leader-20111007-1lcmo.html#ixzz1l2AZC5il 

How to concentrate for longer

It seems the modern world is designed to de-focus and distract us from whatever we are trying to do.  E-mail pops into our inbox every few minutes, or the phone rings.  Thoughtful people don’t call, but text, so the phone is never far away.  Of course a text is far too interesting not to read, even if it’s only the bank or when the shopping will be delivered.  So we are distracted anyway.

I see mothers walking their children and talking on the phone.  We can’t get out for a refreshing walk without staying in contact. 

We are now so used to constant interruptions and distractions that if there are no emails, no texts, or no phone calls, we double check our email, or go online for diversion.

Welcome to the digital age – designed to make our lives easy.   Now three screens is the norm, and our attention span is short and getting shorter. 

Concentrating on what we are doing is hard work.  Focusing requires discipline.  The brain wanders easily and often.  Thoughts and ideas pop into our heads all the time.  Try sitting still for 5 minutes and thinking about just one thing; a candle, a diamond or a flower.  Notice how many times your mind wanders.  Each time it wanders bring it back to the thing you are focusing on.  Notice how it wanders off again.  And again.  You will lose count how many times you have to bring it back to the task in hand, in just 5 minutes.

Focusing may be difficult, but it is also very necessary to produce anything worthwhile.

20 minutes seems to be the generally accepted length of time that a healthy adult can focus on something, although it will be longer if you are comfortable and proficient in the work.  So difficult things, problem solving, things you are learning for the first time or trying to master are more difficult to focus on for long periods of time.

So if you are unfocussed and distracted, you are not alone.  But crucially you are not as productive as you could be, which means you won’t achieve as much as you would like. 

So what’s to be done?  How can distractions be cut down and concentration improved?  Here are 7 ideas:

1. Turn off email (yes, I know, but do it anyway)
2. Take time to get become more proficient in your field
3. Put your phone in a drawer for a couple of hours (you can pick up messages later)
4. Be clear about the purpose of your task (this takes a bit of pre-planning, but increases your productivity)
5. Use a stop watch.  Start the timer when you start work, and stop it when you get distracted.  Note how long you spent concentrating, and then little by little try to increase your concentration time.
6. Get out of the office and work in the library, park or zoo
7. Reward yourself for 1,000 words written, half the job done, or the phone call made.  Your reward could be a 10 minute break in the fresh air, or picking up flowers on the way home depending on how difficult the task was, and how long it’s been on your “to do” list.

One final thought on this vexing matter of improving concentration.  If we accept that good quality, focused work is difficult, we may want to be a little pickier about what we tackle.  Saying “no” to some, not doing others, or simply checking out how useful they are could save time for something more important.  And when you are sure you should be doing something, you will find concentrating a great deal easier anyway. 

What’s the Big Idea?

We are all working for something; whether it’s to pay for our children’s education, buy a house near the sea, or build a worthwhile business.  Everyone’s big ideas are different, but we all have them. 

Yet although these big ideas are important, often we don’t give them much attention.   It’s rare for them to be written down, or looked at from month to month.   Often they stay in the back of our minds as “someday-maybe” ideas; perhaps because we’re not sure we can achieve them we don’t dare hope.

Yet one of the biggest differences between successful people and others is that high achievers write down their goals, and make plans to progress them. 

Jim Collins called them BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals.  Stephen Covey referred to it as “Begin with the End in Mind”.  Many writers and successful people have, over many years, stressed the importance of knowing what you want to achieve.  So figuring out what is most important to you is a good first step in making them happen.  Then you need to commit them to paper or hard disk.

Of course there are many different types of people.  Whilst some people will recognise this reluctance to commit big, important ideas to paper, other people have lots of big ideas and write them down all the time.  They have so many ideas and dreams and plans, they can barely keep track of them all.  Their list of “Big Things To Do” is long, and gets longer by the day.

The Chinese wryly point out that “The man who chases two rabbits, catches none”.    So whilst it’s great to be creative and generate ideas, it’s vital not to get lost amongst the noise of what could, should or might be done.  Decide what's most important, even if it takes some thinking, reworking and crossings out. 

This list may have about half a dozen items on it, maybe a few more or perhaps a couple less - certainly no more than nine.  Why?  Because we can only focus on a couple of things at a time, so the more that goes onto the list, the less likely it is you will achieve them.  It’s better to have fewer, big ideas and get them done, than to have a shopping list as long as your elbow that gets ignored.

The value of knowing where time goes

Time and tide, as we all know, wait for no man.  There’s no better time of year to be reminded of that as we review the past year.  What projects did you complete?  Which ones weren’t even started?  What should have got done, but didn’t?  What was important to you?  What was your greatest success?  What was your greatest failure?  What would you do differently if you could replay the year again?

It’s an interesting exercise, and if you haven’t yet reviewed the year I’d urge you to do so.  I gained a number of insights from reviewing my 2011.

Certainly, the big things that I accomplished during 2011 were done with the aid of quite a bit of planning, focus and time.  Now that’s not to say that everything that gets planed, focus on and time to will have a successful outcome, unfortunately, but it does increase the chances.  And when I look back over my life at my major successes, I also recall the planning, focus and time that went into them. 

Which brings me to the value of knowing where time goes.  Because of the nature of my work, I analyse how my time is spent.  It provides an invaluable additional dimension to reviewing the year.  I can see how much time I spent on various different activities, and how much time I spent on my important projects.  It gives me another lever to make changes – whether I should be giving more or less time to certain activities or projects.

I don’t think many people do this, perhaps because it reminds us of “clocking in and clocking out” and “command and control” type management systems.  No one likes someone breathing down their necks to see what they are doing every minute of the day.  And sometimes we don’t want to see the unpalatable truth ourselves.  But, certainly for me, unless I know where my time goes, I’m in danger of not giving enough attention to the important-but-not-urgent things. 

Eisenhower apparently remarked that “what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”  Which may go some way to explain why important things don’t always get done.

So one of my New Year resolutions is to track my time more carefully, and analyse it side by side with the big things I’ve want to do this year.  As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a big fan of measuring things.  It will be interesting to see whether increased focus in this area brings about improvements.

Deciding what’s important and why time management isn’t

You can’t manage time.  It’s like trying to manage your cat: a frustrating and consistently unsuccessful activity.  Time passes regardless of how important or trivial whatever you are doing is.  The sea ebbs and flows, the wind blows, and time passes.  All are unmanageable and completely disinterested in our minutiae.

What you can manage is yourself and your choice of what to do.  So time management has always seemed something of a daft name for our efforts to be more effective.  Self-management might be more apt. 

But time is a useful way of measuring our focus and energy on tasks.  Or indeed the time we spend not doing things.  It is, however, nothing more than useful; it’s not the whole story.  That’s because we can’t measure the value of our activities over a given period of time.  The value of what we are doing has a much bigger impact on our success than how long it took to do.

So that’s the first and biggest secret of time management – decide what’s important.  Because unless you know what’s important and what’s not, you don’t know where best to spend your time.  Or to say it another way, you won’t know how best to spend your life.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

Most people have dreams, ideas and ambitions that they hope they will achieve one day.  I’m no exception and I doubt you are either.

The only trouble with dreams is that it’s a little tricky turning them in reality.  Our ambitious dreams often get trodden on by the little sceptic at the back of our minds who tells us we can't do whatever it is.  And too often we listen to the sceptic in us, instead of the dreamer.

Randy Pausch, who was  Professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, USA until he died in 2008, once wrote “Get tenure” on his to do list.  He laughed about it and said it was probably naive to write such a big thing on a To Do list.  He said should have broken it down into smaller chunks.  Maybe he was right, but he did become a Professor at Carnegie Mellon and did turn his dream into a reality.  His book “The Last Lecture” talks a lot about achieving dreams and is well worth a read.

There is a nugget of an idea here, though.  If we were to put our dreams onto our To Do lists, we might start doing more to achieve them.  We might start breaking them down into smaller tasks, and get on and do something about them.  Because unless we start doing something, we will definitely NOT achieve our dreams - that much is certain.

Just about every time management course I’ve ever been on, and I’ve attended a few, has always asked the same question.  What did you do today to achieve your most important goals?  What have you done this week, or this month?  Sadly, many people admit they haven’t done anything in a long time.  Many people admit they forget, for long periods of time, about their dreams and ambitions.

It’s worth more than a passing thought as we jot down what we intend to do today.

Being Productive when Tired

There are different types of tiredness at work.  Like:

• No sleep last night because of noisy neighbours/  baby crying/ didn’t get in till 3am (delete as appropriate) tiredness
• Been in the office since 7am, now it’s 5pm and I’m running out of steam tiredness
• Had a super productive day, got loads done, and now tailing off fast
• Just got back from a business trip and I’m jet-lagged or just plain tired from several days intensive work
• Got a cold/ headache/ hangover/other type of unwellness
• Not got a good reason, just firing on much less than three cylinders and don’t seem to care …. tiredness
• You probably know other types of tiredness at work.  It’s a universal problem. 

No matter how many books get bought on Time Management, it’s a simple fact of life that we get tired and work gets a lot more difficult.  So how can we be productive when dog-tired?

As Philip Pullman once said – “A bad day’s work is a lot better than no day’s work at all”.

So here are my ten tired, tried and tested ideas:

1. Work on your To Do List – and prioritise it.  Make sure everything you need to do is written down and then decide what needs to be done next.  The act of sorting out what needs to be done, and in what order, is motivating in itself, and more often than not prompts thought and action on the task.
2. Set your stop watch to 15 minutes and work on your Most Important Task.  Just 15 minutes, even if you work slowly.  Getting started on a task, even a little bit, moves things forward and will make the next 15 minutes easier to do.
3. If you can, take a nap.  Even a short nap can make a huge difference in your productivity and might make the difference between a decent day’s work, or a totally wasted day. 
4. Work on routine admin stuff, like expenses, filing, accounts or something that doesn’t take too much brain power.  I often that I can get quite engrossed in little tasks, and get quite a lot done despite initial tiredness.
5. Track your time.  You are most likely to waste time by web surfing, reading the paper or generally wasting time when you are tired.  And most likely to lose track of time when you are tired.  We do it without thinking, or realising how much time has gone.  If you track your time then at least you get reminded where the time is going, and can use another technique to try and get back on track. 
6. Learn something new.  Reading is productive, and a good way to learn about important but not urgent things.  So if you’ve been meaning to learn a new software package, or get up to date on industry trends, tired time might be perfect timing. 
7. Give yourself a deadline.  Not having a deadline for tasks can be a huge problem – when everything is urgent, but nothing absolutely has to be done today.  Work ahead and figure out deadlines for mini-tasks and work in hour long chunks, tracking your productive time in each hour.
8. Work with someone else.  Hold a meeting, a telecom or something that requires interaction with someone else.  It’s amazing how you perk up when reacting to someone else’s ideas and views.  Just be careful not to waste someone else’s time in the process of trying to rescue your own day.  I like holding meetings at the end of the day because it helps everyone keep going a bit longer, and the ideas are just as relevant.
9. Work on something you love.  It’s always easier to work on something that naturally inspires you.  It may be better to get something done in an area that flows easily during tired time, and work on more difficult things when you are fresh.
10. Remind yourself of your ultimate goals.  Not giving in to tiredness is difficult, and often the only way to do it is remind yourself why you do what you do, and why you love it.  It’s easier to motivate a tired brain when you know why it’s worthwhile. 

What are your top tips for working when tired?  I’d love to hear them.  And I promise not to disappear for such a long time again!

Decide what you want

Deciding what we want is difficult, for the simple reason that there are so many things to want. And if we want too many different things, we end up with nothing. Which is why so often we end up break New Year Resolutions, or other fine goals we set ourselves. It’s not that we don’t want whatever it is (being thin/rich/a good dancer) that we resolve to achieve, it’s just that we don’t want to give up other things that we want even more.

So setting goals and objectives is mostly about making difficult choices.

But if we are clear about what we want, and we want it badly enough, very often we become unstoppable – whatever the goal.

H L Hunt, the oil tycoon, apparently said:

“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities, and go to work”.

It’s not only good advice, but succinctly put. And I don’t think its overstating it to say that it’s the secret (if indeed there is a secret) to success.

Whenever I have wanted something badly enough, I have figured out a way to get it. (Right now I just have to figure out how to want a 2.5 hr half marathon badly enough to train and starve myself for it ….)

Being clear about your goals is central to achieving excellence. But it’s also one of the most challenging aspects. Which is perhaps why there are many ballet dancers, but only one Darcy Bussell, many runners but only one Paula Radcliffe, many business people but only one Bill Gates, many investors, but only one Warren Buffett …. Yes, of course, all these people have talent. But all of them challenged their focus, their time, their energies on achieving their single most important goal.

Make the process your goal, not the outcome

Making the process the goal, rather than the outcome, seems like strange advice. Indeed in my last blog post I set myself the goal of running a half marathon in 2.5 hours or less. But what if I get injured before the race? What if I’m ill? Even if I don't run the race it doesn't mean there won't be another, or that my training will be wasted ...

Goals mostly focus on outcomes: winning business, running marathons in a certain time, achieving a certain outcome in a meeting, etc. But these goals rely on a host of external events: customers wanting to implement a solution when you have the staff available, being fit to run, or other people agreeing with your views. To a large degree we have little influence over these external factors.

What we do have control over is the process. The quality of our proposals, the amount of training we do, being open and fair in meetings. Focusing on the process is what really gives us the advantage. Yet when we are focused on the goal we can sometimes forget the importance of each of the tiny steps along the way. Managing time, creating opportunities, being thorough in preparation all add strength to whatever goal we are trying to achieve.

Gretchen Rubin in her wonderful Happiness Project blog has written some wise words about paradoxes. Sometimes to achieve the outcome, we have to focus on the process and forget about the goal.

One Year, One Run

Setting a goal a full year ahead is always satisfying. There’s plenty of time to do what needs to be done, and a nice warm feeling of having something to aim for. But as the weeks and months tick by, the reality of doing the work sets in: quickly followed by growing panic as the deadline looms.

One very short year ago I set myself the challenge of running a half marathon. The Reading Half Marathon, to be precise, which I ran last Sunday. At least I ran most of it, my feet and ankles complained bitterly towards the end which slowed me to a walking pace. I took 7 minutes off my Henley Half Marathon time, and wasn’t last! Yeah!!! And I achieved my goal - even though I wasn’t nearly as well prepared as I could have been, or as I would have liked.

A year ago I struggled to run one mile, let along 13. I was very nervous of joining my local 3 mile Saturday morning Park Run. So although I don’t yet have the Kenyan runners quaking in their running shoes, I’ve made a lot of progress.

As always with projects, be they running, software or other changes, things never turn out as you expect. I thought if I took up running my excess weight would drop off me automatically, whatever I ate. I have to tell you that ain’t so. I thought I’d have two running buddies to keep me company, for all sorts of reasons that didn’t work out either (although one volunteered as a marshal on race day and sent me off and welcomed me back with a bright, encouraging smile). I thought running would be easy. It isn’t.

So it’s been a year of learning. Learning about motivation, my body, and my limitations. Learning that if I don’t put the effort in, I don’t get the results back. And learning that there’s a great deal to be learnt from others: authors, friends, trainers, coaches and people you meet along the way. (A huge thank you to all of you!)

Reading Half Marathon was run on the same day as the New York City Half Marathon. Over 16,000 runners took part, compared to about 10,000 in New York. Our fastest runner was Simon Kasimili from Kenya at 1 hour, 3 minutes and 8 seconds. New York was won by Mo Farah from Great Britain in 1 hour 23 seconds. Both deeply impressive and scarily fast. There’s a big difference between the best and the rest.

So although this project started out as being “One Year; One Run” it’s turned out to be just the beginning. The next goal is to run October’s Henley half marathon in under 2.5 hours. It won’t make headlines, but might give me a small feeling of satisfaction. As well as sore feet....

Running Lessons

With five very short weeks before the Reading Half Marathon, I met up with my (virtual) running buddy on Saturday to compare notes. I say virtual, because it has been almost a year since we met in person – even though we’ve exchanged many email excuses for why we couldn’t make a running session!

We both bemoaned a whole number of well thought out and credible excuses – including injuries and some big life changing stuff that got thrown at us. But the fact remains that during a full year, neither of us lost any weight, neither of us is as fit as we should be, and neither of us feels prepared for this half marathon. That’s despite a year of so-called preparation. Wow – how could that have happened?

We agreed we’d learnt some lessons. So here’s my list:

• Running isn’t a substitute for eating well. I have to eat sensibly if I want to lose weight – running won’t melt excess weight away. I hate to say it, but I think this might be an age thing.
• To get better at running I have to show up: at practice, on a Saturday morning, for races, for training runs.
• A great coach helps a lot. Providing I show up on a Wednesday…. thanks Tom!
• Having a committed running buddy helps a lot. Doing it together is always easier; thanks Jacqui!
• Get the right kit. Running shoes that don’t rub, light-weight jacket for the rain (how useless is it that I still won’t go running when it’s raining?), warm weather kit, the right socks, a calibrated distance measurer (and I thought it was a cheap sport!!!).
• Make a checklist for race day
• Keep a training log
• Have races in the diary to keep focus and momentum on training
• It takes time and patience to form a new running habit; to lose weight, to get fitter, to build up stamina, to get to like (ha ha!) running.

Looking back at my notes before the Henley half marathon, I weighed 5 kilos less, and was running a 5K distance 5 minutes faster than I’m running it right now. Crumbs, that’s a bit of a wakeup call. Time to put those lessons into practice!

Goals in Theory and Goals in Practice

January is a time for resolutions. I’m not immune to Thinking Big about all the things I will achieve in a New Year. But this year I have a more pressing problem – a goal I set myself almost a year ago. 10 months ago to be precise. Because it seemed like A Good Idea at the Time, I also roped in a couple of friends so that I couldn’t squelch my way out of the commitment.

Only now, 10 months later, can I see the full brilliance of my dreadful plan. Yup, it’s almost half marathon time again!

Last March I set myself the goal of running Reading Half Marathon. Although I ran (including a bit of walking, limping and moaning like mad) the Henley Half Marathon, that was A Long Time Ago. Three months ago in fact; that’s three months of focusing almost entirely on holiday and Christmas Carbohydrate Loading.

So now all my goals in theory have caught up with me, and the true horror of goals in practice is staring me blankly in the face.

• Two months to lose some weight.
• Two months to run further than the end of the road.
• Two months to find some running shoes that don’t give me blisters.
• Two months to salvage some small amount of self-respect amongst family and friends who listen to me talk as though I actually can run.

So this is where theory meets practice. Having set the goal, persuaded my friends to join me, and paid the entrance fee, the whole lunatic idea has got a momentum that I can only follow, huffing and puffing and wishing I were anywhere else instead.

As an old colleague once said “Be careful what you wish for, it just might come true”. Oh, my!

Slow and steady progress to your goal

The lessons that business can learn from sport are well documented. I’ve written before about sports psychology in business, in particular about goal setting. At the time of my previous post I had only just started running. I was bright-eyed with my new running shoes and a great deal of enthusiasm.

My running shoes are now rather muddy and annoyingly prone to giving me blisters. And I am decidedly frustrated at my slow-coach style. I had to pull out of the track exercise last night because my legs just wouldn’t respond when my brain said accelerate. There was no more go in them. No matter how positively I thought about it. It’s a wry lesson.

In business, as sport, there is no substitute for slow and steady progress with an eye held firmly on the target. In business, as in sport, progress is often painfully slow.

Confucius is credited with saying:

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

I repeat that advice to myself almost constantly as I run (completely ignorant of Confucius and his musings): just run, don’t stop, keep running. As you can tell I’m not what you might call a natural at this running lark, but after 6 months of plugging away at it I have just completed my half marathon. When I started I couldn’t run a mile without medical assistance.

So when I read Gretchen Rubin’s blog post quoting Vincent Van Gogh, it got me thinking:

“If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.”

It is beginning to dawn on me just how difficult it is to make real progress with my running. Difficulties in business can be equally frustrating. Yet keeping on going, continuing to make small steps may be the answer to both. Maybe understanding my limitations with running will help me understand my business better too.

I wouldn’t have believed 6 months ago that I could run a half marathon, and now I don’t believe I can run one in anything like a decent time. But if I continue to train, maybe I won’t be quite as hopeless in another 6 months. Maybe.

Dig deep for Ovarian Cancer Action

Many of my long suffering readers already know that I completed my first half marathon last Sunday. Indeed many of them have been encouraged to support Ovarian Cancer Action - the charity I was running for. They have already heard me moan about how unbelievably difficult it was to run 13.1 miles.

I guess completing a half marathon is an achievement, even if it did take me a full 3 hours to do it. I only marginally beat the pantomime horse, who seemed to have walked most of the distance. But who cares? I ran most of the distance (yes, I know, I am the slowest runner ever … ) and learnt more about myself than I really wanted to know.

First of all I learnt that not being fully prepared isn’t the greatest idea in the world. I hadn’t done enough training, not lost enough weight and hadn’t really understood what running 13 miles meant. My iPod was overestimating my practice runs, so I was lulled into a false sense of fitness security – thinking I had been covering longer distances than I had. You live and learn. But the psychological trauma of realising I had only run 9 miles when my iPod said 10 miles, and my legs said 24 miles was not something my head was ready for. And the humiliation of needing to be talked up that endless hill by a 14 year old boy on a bicycle is something I will train long and hard to resist next time.

I also learnt something about digging deep. Alliterations always have a jolly ring to them, but when you are living them they look a little different. Digging deep last Sunday meant remembering why I was running (because someone else had to endure the pain of chemotherapy) and why it was important (because I want future generations to have a better chance). Digging deep also meant keeping on going, when all I wanted to do was stop. Digging deep meant trying to think of something other than what might be happening under my socks.

I also learnt that it is worthwhile to stick my neck out to try and achieve something worthwhile. I’ve now got a great deal more respect for people who regularly run, cycle, walk and abseil down buildings for causes they believe are important. Without those people we wouldn’t know half what we know about cancer, how the heart or head works.

So thank you everyone who supported me, and Ovarian Cancer Action. My Just Giving page is http://www.justgiving.com/Caroline-Eveleigh0 if you would like to add to the bellow of voices who want a higher chance of survival for the lovely women in their lives who are unlucky enough to get ovarian cancer.

Make your Goals Realistic

As regular readers of Getting to Excellent already know, I think setting goals is tremendously important. Goals improve performance by focusing the mind on a particular outcome, help to remove distractions, and provide motivation to achieve something. So as a tool to manage ourselves, and other people, they are kind of handy.

But they are not simple little beasts - far from it.

A goal that is too easy encourages complacency, and might even result in something not getting done at all, or taking too long to do.

A goal that is too difficult becomes demotivating because you don’t/can’t achieve it, and either blame yourself for poor performance, or whoever encouraged you to try for the goal. Either way you come away dispirited and sure that “setting goals doesn’t work”.

What’s wrong in both cases is that not enough thought and data went into setting the goal. After all, what you are aiming for is the best performance possible from yourself or someone else. Not a sorry wreck at the end of the exercise.

Figuring out current performance, comparing performance of others of similar ability, and figuring out what a realistic improvement could be, are all ingredients to a realistic goal. The answer you get might not be the nice round number you first thought of, but it is likely to produce better results. Yes, it will have taken a little longer to arrive at, but it will also encourage a higher level of commitment in whoever is doing the work.

I’m forever guilty of setting unrealistic goals with my running, whereas a little more thought might help motivate me, rather than demotivate me. The same goes for sales targets, marketing objectives, delivering projects, passing exams etc. etc. A touch more realism, and a touch less optimism, might produce much better results in all areas. True of all things in life really.

The gentle art of working together

People can be prickly sometimes, can’t they? We easily get upset when left off the email distribution list for one of our projects, or when someone doesn’t invite us to a meeting. Rightly so – work is an important part of everyone’s lives.

As work becomes more complex, and pressures build to do more, we need better ways to collaborate and share. Email gets a message from one machine to another, but does nothing to help organise and prioritise. The internet has done a great deal to put more at our finger tips, but sometimes the result is overwhelming – so much information, so much to do, and so little organisation.

Within Anatec we use Microsoft SharePoint to share information and coordinate goals. That’s not a great surprise as we are Microsoft Certified Partners. But I think everyone’s needs concerning collaboration are pretty similar. Here is my top ten list of what’s important to get the best out of other people:

1. Be clear. Collaboration sites need to have a good hierarchical structure so information is easy to find. Colour coding by department can help orient people in a large site.
2. Make it attractive. Just because it’s work doesn’t mean to say that the look and feel of your collaboration site isn’t important. The better it looks, the more likely it will be to be used. Have a house style so that fonts and headline sizes are used consistently: it’s a lot easier on the eye.
3. Consistency of purpose. Make objectives consistent and visible and ensure company communications reflect current priorities.
4. Time to think. Make key documents or discussions available to everyone involved. The more time people have to mull over a problem, the better their input will be.
5. No surprises. Ensure key dates are visible well ahead of time. A shared company calendar with dates for exhibitions, people’s holidays, key presentations, etc. helps to keep people focused on the major events during the month.
6. Make it inspirational. Whatever your line of work there are people who will live better lives as a result of what you do. Share the inspiration with your co-workers though words or pictures.
7. Keep content up-to-date. Intranets are a great place to share things, but they need to be kept up-to-date and they need to keep people’s attention. If they always see the same old stuff, pretty soon they will stop reading. If there is a key report you can share though your intranet, then do. People will get familiar with the structure and content by using it more.
8. Make it interesting. Is there a relevant RSS feed you could include on your home page? Can you use appropriate and attractive pictures to help get your message across? It all makes work more enjoyable, and collaboration more effective.
9. Don’t make it optional. Whenever a new system is introduced, there is always resistance. Don’t be tempted to keep emailing documents, just because it’s easier. Put the document on your collaboration site and then email the link. Keep on eye on what people are accessing to make sure its being used.
10. Get everyone involved. Collaboration is exactly that – people working together to create something more than one person could do alone. Ensure there is a structure to the way you work, then use it at every opportunity - in meetings, as a way of discussing things, even as internal presentations.

Collaboration through intranets is not new, but options are opening up for smaller companies to use tools that the big boys have enjoyed for years.

“Do or do not …. there is no try”

I’ve never seen Star Wars, but Yoda’s advice rang true on Sunday morning as I waited to start the London 10K. As part of a crowd of 25,000 runners it was an amazing, if tough, experience. But I finished, and I didn’t walk a single one of those 10,000 metres, and I was very happy to have achieved a personal goal: particularly as I had been daft enough to sprain my ankle just a couple of months before.

Although I achieved it, and although I did train (but not nearly enough), the thing that made the biggest difference on Sunday morning was the voice in my head as I slogged through London’s streets. This was the voice that told me to keep my body upright, the voice that reminded me to look ahead and not to slouch, the voice that told me to lengthen my stride.

So whilst Yoda’s emphatic advice is inspirational, getting expert help to achieve my goal was what made the biggest difference. I learnt how to lace my shoes, which socks to wear and to what not to carry when I run. And it all helped enormously.

So thank you Tom, for your kind and patient help. Thank you mystery man with an inspirational quote to remind me that achieving goals is important. And thank you London for being such a wonderful city to run in. I’ll be there next year – a little fitter, a little slimmer and a little more determined!

Five Criteria for Greatness

This is not my list, but paraphrased from someone else’s blog post. She had read about James Dewey Watson, who discovered the structure of DNA with Francis Crick. Ruby's original post appeared on Zen Habits and is well worth a read: Why Discovering Your Obsession Can Lead to Your Greatness.

The list apparently came from a speech Watson made on why he deserved to discover the structure of DNA.

1. Go for broke - if you are going to do something important, do it.
2. Have a way to get the answer – if you haven’t a clue, you’re going to waste time.
3. Be obsessive – think about it night and day.
4. Be part of a team – have a partner to bounce ideas off and support you.
5. Talk to your opponents – share your ideas, cooperate and talk to others.
6. Never be the brightest person in the room; so you can always learn something.

I was so impressed with the list that I keep a copy in my notebook. I hope you get something useful from it too.

Why measuring matters

What we choose to measure makes a big difference to what we finally achieve. In business it is financial results: sales revenue, profitability or share price. In sport it is goals scored, distance run or races won. But these “lag indicators” can only measure the success of past actions, they cannot predict future success. Measuring the things that contribute to the final result is what keeps you on course, and guides future success.

Before I sprained my ankle I was training to run a half marathon. Running 13 or so miles seems like a very big challenge to me, even though it would be easy for many people. Although I cannot control the final outcome (success/failure/jubilation/humiliation) I can control the “lead indicators” along the way such as number of kilos lost, overall distance run in a week, number of times I train in a week or attending running club. None of these things on their own will guarantee me success in the half marathon, but week by week they will increase my chances – even with the occasional injury.

The sales pipeline is one business equivalent. The number of people who enquire about your product or service as a result of marketing campaigns might be the lead indicator. Or the number of visitors to your web site who view more than 4 pages. Or the number of sales conversations you have in a week. Or whatever. Taken in isolation none of these things guarantee healthy financial results, but they are excellent progress indicators.

So measuring the right things really does matter - whether you want to run a marathon, or enjoy financial success. The key is choosing the right measures, and being consistent in monitoring progress over time. And if some of your measures turn out to be not as instructive as you anticipated then change them; they are there as helpers on the journey and not the final destination.