Thought for the Week

6 May 2024

OVERLOAD

No matter how carefully you plan your workload…no matter how great your contingency plans…no matter how predictable or otherwise the environment you are working in…

There WILL betimes when you speak or write the word: OVERLOAD. So many things to do and so little time in which to do them. They all need to be done at once and whichever one you start on won’t be the right one…

Do these words sound familiar? Welcome to OVERLOAD… Is there a way out? Experience tells me there are four things that can help – just don’t expect them to be as instant as flicking a light switch.

Keep your eye on the prize. Never forget why you are doing this thing in the first place.
Do one thing at a time – there’s anti-productive value in trying to do too many things at once.
Make a deliberate choice about which thing to do first. Think about whether you are going to get best value from a quick win or a big win.
Having made up your mind, stick to it – there’s anti-productive value in continually changing your mind.

29 April 2024

WHAT IF…? WHY NOT…?

Two important questions this week. What if…? Why not…? All too often we listen to voices telling us something cannot be done, or we cannot do something. Sometimes those voices belong to others; sometimes they belong to us. Sometimes they may be driven by rules, sometimes by convention, sometimes by previous lived experience, other times by intuition, and sometimes by we-know-not-what.

Whether it’s your project, your team, or yourself, I want to challenge you to ask these two questions – What if…? Why not…?

Keep going until you get answers. They may not be the answers you want but, once they have been surfaced, you have something to work with. Measure them against your questions – how do those answers stack up? Debate the answers – pick them apart – reassemble them in different combinations. Tease out the solid facts from the other things. Now how do they stack up? More convincing? Less convincing? Giving rise to more questions?

Sometimes you will get an answer you are happy with. Other times you will get an answer you have to live with. Always you will be better informed because you asked these two questions, and better informed people generally make better decisions.

22 April 2024

ABSTRACT IDEAS

I’ve never managed to track the belief that all ideas should emerge into the daylight fully formed, not needing any adjustment back to its source (assuming it even has one). My experience is that ideas – yes, even those that are sometimes characterised as a “blinding flash of inspiration” – usually start out as abstracts. Their shape is vague, the details fuzzy at best, the shadows hiding many thoughts yet to be had, colours yet to be added. They may go through many different versions before you settle on the “final” one – or is it the one which isn’t perfect but is good enough to go with… Even if you don’t end up going with a particular idea, the process of going from abstract to something more defined has still been totally worth the Learning Moments you would not have had without that abstract idea to start…

15 April 2024

THE CHALLENGE OF THE GREY AREAS

Anybody who wants a quiet life probably isn’t looking to be part of a team or a project. The reason for this is quote simple – much of what happens in teams and projects doesn’t live in the Black=Wrong Area or White=Right Area. Instead it lives in the Grey Area – that space where things can be wrong and right at the same time, depending on how they are explained and justified. Possibilities may be separated by barriers that don’t necessarily fall where or how you expect them. You may see patterns in what is happening, but those patterns may not necessarily connect across barriers.

These things are what I call the Challenge of the Grey Areas. Maybe others will see some of your Greys as Blacks or Whites, but they may not explain to you why that is, leaving you to apply your previous experience, imagination and instinct to try to understand their thinking. Perhaps that’s how they see your Grey Areas as well…

How to deal with this challenge? In my experience across diverse industries and organisations, leaders, managers, colleagues, the only way to effectively deal with this challenge is to communicate with open minds and expectations. To communicate persistently and consistently. Not with the objective of making all the Grey Areas the same as each other. but with the intent to understand why they are different, and how that can be a good thing. To learn from each other and explore the results different variations of Grey Areas can produce before deciding what your best option is going to be.

Yes, this is going to require some patience. Not every member of your team is going to reach a similar level of confidence and comfort with this open communication at the same pace, or for the same reasons. Respect each member’s journey to confidence and comfort – it’s much more likely they will respect yours as well. Explore ideas without preconceived “absolute answers” in mind because Together Everyone CAN Achieve More. The Grey Areas can be beautiful spaces if you are prepared to collaborate.

8 April 2024

SLEEP

There’s a trap waiting to catch out the unwary. I know this one well, because it’s caught me out quite a few times – and that’s even though I know the trap is there waiting for me. It’s the sleep trap. You know – the one you try to avoid by convincing yourself that giving up this little bit of sleep now will get you somewhere you really want to go. In fact, if you repeatedly avoid sleep, you can get more work done and end up ahead of where you plan calls for you to be…

You get tired for a reason – because your body and your brain need some down time. The more you try pushing past the sleep trap, the deeper you fall into its clutches because you are thinking and working more slowly than you would if you listened to your body and took a break. I’ve done some awesome problem-solving in my sleep because my subconscious brain has kept playing with ideas and possibilities without me consciously directing it. It’s pushed boundaries and done some really creative stuff that probably wouldn’t have happened without me investing in some sleep. Continually thrashing the conscious brain has the opposite effect to what is intended. Based on experience – some of it hard – I share these thoughts with you:

Take the time to smell the sunshine as the day ends, and enjoy the moment for what it is. Just enjoy the moment.

Take the time to smell the sunshine at the start of a new day full of promise and possibilities.
In between those times, enjoy your sleep, because you deserve it. Trust your subconscious to do what it does best without interrupting your sleep – second-guessing it will only send you deeper into the sleep trap.

1 April 2024

Dependable – Unspectacular – Critical

Because I spend so much time thinking about project teams and how they work, I see examples everywhere, including in nature, that speak to me about what characteristics would make a great team member. Takes this bee, for example.

Dependable – on task every day doing the things they need to do for their team. The hive can rely on them turning up and doing the business.

Unspectacular – aerodynamically, they might not be as spectacular as a bird. Don’t let that fool you – they have some very sophisticated flight mechanisms behind that unspectacular exterior.

Critical – each one of them makes a critical contribution to the operation and survival of the hive. They don’t do it because they are ego-invested in being recognised above their peers for doing it. They do it because tit is necessary and they are good at doing what they do.

Putting those three characteristics together would easily describe some of the best team members I’ve ever worked alongside. Perhaps the lesson for us to take here is this: The more we try complicating things with all sorts of theories to describe how and why humans do the things they do, the more we should be looking to nature to remind us that effectiveness doesn’t necessarily require complexity.

25 March 2024

Look in the dark places, for there you will find beautiful things

Whether it’s life in general or a project or team you are a part of, there will be times when you doubt yourself. Are you having enough ideas., or enough good (however you define that) ideas? Do you have good reasons to love and respect yourself? If you don’t feel like things are going well for yourself, you might be asking some of these dark questions. Where to find the answers…?

Look in the dark places, for there you will find beautiful things. Those places deep inside your mind and inside your heart that you might not visit very often. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that you’re too busy to look there. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself – despite having no objective evidence – that there are no beautiful things there. I know these excuses (because that’s what they are) well – I’ve used them a time or two myself. In hindsight, those are times I would have done well to take the advice I’m sharing with you to look in the dark places Each time there has been something beautiful in one of those places, just waiting for me to discover it

Keep your senses open. Deliberately make the time to look in the dark places, at the things you subconsciously know and think, and bring them into the light of day. It doesn’t matter that what you find there may not be big and grand to start with. What matters is that you’ve discovered the beautiful things that serve as a reminder that you are an awesomely valuable human being, and to look in the dark places more often.

18 March 2024

Is it a weed or an idea with potential?

One of my favourite definitions of a weed is that it’s a flower that’s simply in the wrong place. Because people can have some pretty fixed ideas about where the “right place” is (and why), they may characterise any flower not in one of those places as a weed. The same can happen with judgements about the attractiveness of the leaves or the flowers. Those decisions might be valid for the people making them, but that’s not the same as meaning they are valid for other people.

The same is true of ideas. When somebody doesn’t “get” an idea of yours because it’s unexpected, they may treat it the same as a weed, and try to either ignore it or make it go away. I know it can be hard, but try not to take that as a judgement about you. Providing some more context for how you came up with your idea, as well as some more detail about how you think it’s going to work, could be all that it takes for somebody to no longer be seeing a weed but instead see a thing of beauty and relevance. Believe in your ideas. Believe in yourself. Coming at a problem from a different perspective isn’t wrong; it’s validly presenting your lived experience. Believe in yourself.

11 March2-24

DISOBEDIENT TEACHING

Every so often a book appears that fundamentally changes how we think about something. For me, that book (currently) is Welby Ings’ Disobedient Teaching. It’s so challenging, I’ve read it cover-to-cover twice in four days. I am pleasantly surprised to learn that I have been disobedient in my teaching, and in my thinking about teaching in the past. I’ve pushed boundaries and taken risks, some of which have paid off better than others, and they’ve all produced valuable learning about useful ways to help grow my learners as well-rounded, self-believing, capable and contributing members of society – not just earners of marks for fixed assessment tasks. Even more, my doctoral research project is encouraging other people to be disobedient – in a positive way – in how they think about and practice teaching. The critical nature of the thinking required is also reminding me to continue being disobedient – in a positive way – that my time of disobedience is not yet finished.

There’s a challenge for us as educators to think about what we do as being about more than simply awarding marks for fixed assessment tasks. If those tasks aren’t about dealing with wicked tasks in collaborative and appropriate ways, I believe we are doing learners a disservice if most of the learning that happens is geared more towards the fixed marking schedule or rubric than towards the deeper learning which is possible, indeed, desirable. That’s not saying topic-specific learning isn’t important, but the ways in which it happens don’t have to be totally fixated on zero-sum individual competition, because so much of what learners experience in the world outside the boundaries of institutionalised learning involves some form of collaboration.

It means trusting ourselves and our learners to co-create the process as much as the outcomes. It means accepting it will take us time to develop and get used to having that level of trust and banishing the concept of an adversarial relationship between teacher and learner to wherever it belongs (because it’s not in our space). It’s about encouraging and valuing critical conversations, because disagreement and opposition are different things, but being brave enough to experience both. It’s about the difference between hierarchical and distributed leadership and growing people regardless of what formal titles or roles might be attached to them. It’s about creating and disseminating authentic stories of success.

As I reflect on the development of my doctoral project to date, one thing that strikes me is this: I could have been – should have been – more disobedient sooner in the journey. That doesn’t mean, though, that it’s too late for me to work some more disobedience into the finished product and where the journey takes me next… Thank you, Welby, for your recognition and encouragement of the disobedients among us.

4 March 2024

IDEAS IN A SPIN?

There will be times in the life of any project when you have convinced yourself that all your ideas line up perfectly for the result you believe you need to achieve. You’ve invested yourself in doing things a certain way. Everything is beautiful in project-land until another stakeholder points out that the direction you are going in isn’t the most effective way to get the end result you need. Now your ideas are all in a spin because it looks – on the surface – like a lot of hard work has just been invalidated. Life as you know it has come to an end…woe is you…

Stop! There’s another way to look at what’s just happened here. None of the deeper learning you’ve done is lost – it’s just going to be arranged in a different sequence. The desired end result hasn’t changed – just the path to get there. Sometimes you need somebody else to spin your ideas differently to reveal what you’ve been looking at all the time but just hadn’t seen yet. Two choices:

Get angry because change is happening whether you like it or not. The reality is that you probably will for a little while, so I would simply accept that. Just make sure it doesn’t get in the way of 2 –
2. Be grateful because somebody else shared their thinking with you. Celebrate the new thinking you’ve been directed towards. get on board with the change, own it, and see where it can take you. Now your anger can go from giving you blindness to giving you focus – and that’s definitely a “win” in my book.

26 February 2024

CONTRAST

The more involved I become with photography, the more I appreciate Black and White photography as an art form to express and explore the contrast between light and shadow. Perhaps it’s also because it reminds me of collaborative teamwork and project management. The light represents the things we know (or think we know). The dark represents what we don’t know yet – in fact, we might not erven know that we need to know it. The shades between black and white represent the things which lie between the definitely unknown and the definitely known and give depth to the overall picture. A dramatic contrast between light and shadow in an image is not necessarily a bad thing – it may help us to see important details we would otherwise miss. The same contrast between light and shadow in a team or a project may indicate things we need to investigate in more breadth or depth to understand the whole of what is happening. In both cases, I think the lesson is the same: You don’t need to be afraid of contrast. Take the time to appreciate it for what is there rather than being afraid of, or disappointed by what is not there.

19 February 2024

HOW MANY DECISION-MAKING LENSES DO YOU USE?

Anybody who knows me reasonably well knows that I’m mad-keen on photography. Since I’ve moved from basic point-and-shoot, through a bridge camera, and to the interchangeable lens world, I’m able to extend the range of subjects and styles I can shoot through one critical part of my gear collection. That’s’ the glass – the lens I choose to put on the front of the body.

Sometimes I will shoot the same subject with different lenses because I want to achieve different effects. On other occasions, I will decide that I’m only going to work with one lens. The decision on which to use depends on the end result that I can see in my mind’s eye. Sometimes I will have that in mind before I walk out the door, other times it will be influenced by circumstances I hadn’t anticipated before starting out. What’s important is that I have options and the ability to change my plan – even if I planned to only use one lens, I still have the others with me, so I’m never left regretting not having the one I want available at a moment’s notice.

Managing a team or a project follows a lot of the same principles that I experience in photography. There’s knowing what you want as an outcome, working in a dynamic environment where some circumstances may be more liable to unpredictable change than others, having more than one lens through which to examine problems or opportunities, the ability to try out different options (lenses) to see which one is going to give you the most appropriate result, learning through trial and error how many different results each one can give you (something you become better at anticipating the more you use each one).

A macro decision-making lens means you can get down to the really fine detail in a small part of the plan.
A wide-angle decision-making lens means you can see how a decision will impact other areas of the team or project.
A zoom decision-making lens means you can project the impacts of a decision further into the future.
A prime decision-making lens means you can more easily focus on part of the situation while still keeping at least overview information about the rest of the situation.
A full frame decision-making lens means you can capture more information from a situation than a crop sensor (less experienced) lens.

As a photographer, I know about a thing called GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) – for me, that might involve acquiring a few more specialised lenses to extend the range of things I can do. A fair question to ask would be how much use some of those expensive and more specialised lenses might actually get, and my intention certainly isn’t to end up with more lenses than anybody else just because I can. That means working out how much I can do with what I already have before acquiring more.

As a team or project manager, I have a similar question to answer. Am I going to be more effective in my role by learning even more problem-solving and decision-making techniques, or learning how to use the ones I already have more competently first? Am I going to stick with one decision-making lens, or try some different options to see which gives the most appropriate results for the problem or opportunity I’m dealing with?

The question I want to leave you with this week is: How many decision-making lenses do you use?

12 February 2024

RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB?

There’s an old saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer, you see every problem or opportunity as a nail to be hit on the head. Whether it’s life in general, or a project in particular, the answer is rarely that simple. You might argue that you are a hammer specialist, and you’ve dealt with lots of problems and opportunities in the past using only your trusty hammer. Dealing with a problem or opportunity isn’t necessarily the same as resolving it, because there will be times when a different tool would have helped you to achieve a better result.

It might take you a number of attempts using a tool that’s new to you before you feel as comfortable with it as with your trusty hammer, but having to build up experience and ability isn’t a good reason for not trying to use that different tool. As you become more skilled using it, you may even come to enjoy it more than your hammer.

When you look in your mental skills toolbox, you might find a few tools in there that have gone a bit rusty because you haven’t used them for a while. The best way to prevent your mental tools going rusty is to use them Maybe you’ve got a problem or opportunity where the best resolution will come from using multiple tools – different ones for different parts of the job.

Sometimes you may have a problem or an opportunity that seems to defy resolution. For whatever reason, you can’t get any new tools, so you are limited to the ones already in your toolbox. You know what the end result is that you are trying to achieve. Ask yourself: “How can I use these tools in a different combination, or in different ways to achieve that result?” Finding the right combination, the right different way, might result in a few starts that don’t go where you need them to go. Is it frustrating when a promising start doesn’t go somewhere? Absolutely! Is that valuable learning? Double Absolutely! Learning a lot about how not to produce the result you want helps you to tease out the little things that do go well, and combining all those little things is what will take you where you need to go. It won’t be easy, but your persistence will pay off in the end.

5 February 2024

PEACE

My thought this week is a simple one. It’s that peace is good for us. Imagine what would happen if the energy that went into devising new and fascinating ways of killing other human beings went into tackling global issues like poverty, hunger, diseases, and climate change. Imagine the outcomes if we did things with each other instead of to each other.

The same principle holds true in project teams. That’s not to say we should do away with conflict. Constructive conflict should be encouraged so we can explore different options and different answers. With some goodwill and flexibility all round, amazing things are possible. Destructive conflict – where the people are attacked rather than the ideas being debated – is the one we need to work towards eliminating, because that just mentally traps us into places that are uncomfortable to be in and uncomfortable to get out of.

Peace is the absence of destruction. It is the acceptance and celebration of the benefits of not all being carbon copies from one mold. It is the seemingly impossible and awesome outcomes we can achieve doing things with each other instead of to each other. You know – John Lennon really was onto something back in 1969 when he released “Give peace a chance.” We might be pleasantly surprised at the outcomes.

29 January 2024

GRATITUDE

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the concept of gratitude. I think it’s one of those concepts we are familiar with, but don’t stop to think about as often as we might, because we are so busy with other things in our lives. That means things like health, wealth, and employment may be taken for granted (if we have them), especially if we can’t remember a time when we’ve been without them. These things are important, although their relative importance will differ from person to person, and depending on the circumstances of the moment.

My thinking has been focusing on two particular areas of life that I am particularly grateful for, because they keep me grounded in the work that I do. Those things are the ability to be mindful, and having friends.

The ability to be mindful – to be able to mentally live in a moment that steps outside of the rest of what is happening around me and to reconnect with the natural world. Being able to breathe fresh air, to listen to the sounds, and take in the smells of nature. To be aware of these things without trying to judge them or interpret them the way we think (or are told) we need to do with so many things in the worlds in which we live and work. To give myself permission to simply BE, and to do that for as long as I need to relax my mind and body, and to lower my negative stress levels. For me, it’s time spent with camera in hand, and it doesn’t matter if I only have one lens with me or I’ve taken my glass collection with me. My “thing" is flower portraits and, when I'm “in the zone”, it’s not unusual for me to spend 10 minutes or more with a single bloom (because I’m usually shooting outside) to get just the image I have in my mind’s eye. I’ve noticed that my breathing slows down, as does my pulse and my stress level (even while I’m waiting for the sun, the clouds and the breeze to co-operate with my intentions for the image). I am grateful for my photographic mindfulness time because it really does keep me grounded. How you choose to practice mindfulness is up to you – all I can advise is not to let other things take permanent precedence over mindfulness when you need to de-stress. Enjoy your mindfulness time. Self-care is not selfish.

Friends – are more than the people to whom I behave in a friendly way, and who behave in a friendly way towards me. Friends are the people whom I can count on to “have my back” when I need support. They don’t think I am perfect, and they don’t expect me to be perfect – because they accept me for the human being I am. They accept me for who I am because I add something valuable to their life just by being myself. Sometimes I may need their help to actively solve a problem; other times I may simply need them to be a listening ear while I talk my way through a problem to discover the answer I always had but just didn’t realise the importance of. What they offer me is given without expectation of payment – they do it simply because that’s what friends do for each other. Whether I have a lot of contact with them or a little doesn’t determine the strength or duration of the friendship. My oldest continuous friendship now stretches back 57 years, to a time before I even went to school. It’s probably 15 years or more since we’ve physically seen each other, but we still keep in touch, because distance doesn’t define our friendship. While my friends list is smaller than the list of people I know, I am grateful for every one of those people on my friends list. Each one of them helps to complete me in ways that only they can. We may not always agree with each other, but that’s not what friends are for – the strength of our friendships is measured by how much we can disagree with each other and still respect one another.

Take the time to acknowledge the things you are grateful in your life. Give them the value they deserve, because doing that will also help you reflect on your own value as a human being.

22 January 2024

CHOOSE WHERE TO LOOK

Where you choose to look determines what you will see. If you look down towards your feet, you will see a very small picture of where you are planted right now, inside all the rules about how things have always been done and must be done. Raise your focus more towards eye level and you will see more of what is happening around you, including the beginnings of opportunities to do things differently and better. Raise your focus still higher and you see even more opportunities, with fewer barriers, because Blue-sky Thinking starts from the premise that all things are possible.

Regardless of what anybody else says, the choice of where to look is yours. Why would you not look towards the sky-full of opportunities? Because achieving them might not be the easiest thing you’ve ever done? Chances are that’s true, but that doesn’t give you a reason for not believing in yourself. I’ve spent the last 25 years telling learners that I start from the point that I believe in them until they give me good reason not to. Even the most challenging – and there have been a few who earned that description – have never got me to the point where I will give up on them (even if they have given up on themselves). It’s all a matter of making a deliberate choice where to look.

15 January 2024

CLARIFY WHAT IS IMPORTANT

Welcome to 2024. Dare I ask how you are going on those New Year Resolutions? Did you make lots – all with the best of intentions – and you’ve since found out that making that many changes in one go just takes you too far outside your comfort zone? Or did you only make a few, so you could give each one the right amount of intention to ensure successful change?

One of my resolutions for this year revolves around clarifying what’s necessary to achieve a desired end result. As many of you will know, I’ve been bashing away on a Doctor of Professional Practice (Leadership) journey for few years now, and probably the best advice I’ve received about the Thesis Monster Thingy (although it runs contrary to my natural inclination) came from Mentor Sam and Mentor Ruth: Clarify what is important and do that. You can always fine-tune the thing after assembly is completed – that’s a lot easier than trying to make everything perfect first time around.

I think of this part of the process as similar to this path in our back garden. The pavers aren’t perfectly shaped, the gaps between them aren’t regular, and the weeds occasionally pop through as distractions. None of these things, however, stop the path being fit-for-purpose and doing what it is intended to do. Clarify what is important. Then make the thing work. Then engineer the thing to be better. Perhaps another way of thinking about my mentors’ advice is this: Alphabetically, necessary comes before nice, and nice can’t happen unless necessary is achieved first.

18 December 2023

BE KIND TO YOURSELF

Welcome to the last Thought for the Week for 2023. I will be taking a couple of weeks away from some of the hustle and bustle of work, reconnecting with nature, doing some family things, and doing what it takes to get my thesis finished. All of this will be happening in a more balanced way than it has recently because of a conversation that happened some eight hours ago.

The words of wisdom this week come from my wonderful doctoral mentor, Dr. Ruth Myers. When we met this morning to discuss the remaining work on the thesis and how I planned to go about it, she looked me in the eyes and said these words – “Be kind to yourself.” The same words I’ve said to so many learners and colleagues over the years – and sometimes said them more convincingly than I’ve followed them.

You’re not a machine. You won’t win prizes for promising to achieve workloads only machines could achieve. Both your mental and physical fuel tanks will empty themselves out if you don’t take some deliberate action to stop that happening. Take the time to sit and just look at the flowers or the trees – soak in their colours and textures, and breathe in their smells. Disconnect from your electronic devices – the world won’t end because you are reconnecting with yourself for a while.

You may take a few items off your to-do list, deciding they didn’t need to be there in the first place. Alternatively, you may change the order of some of the things on the list. These things will happen because you appreciated the value of Ruth’s words and made a deliberate decision to be kind to you.

Have a happy, safe, and relaxed festive season. Be kind to you, and to others – just because you can. I’ll see you back again in 2024 with some more weekly thoughts.

11 December 2023

SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

There are bound to be plenty of times when you get told not to sweat the small stuff – just sweat the big stuff and the small stuff will take care of itself I’m not saying that’s not true sometimes, but I am making a case for there being a time to sweat the small stuff. it’s a bit like planting a garden, when you take your thinking from the grand design right down to the level of the individual plants and what you want them to look like. That’s the direction this week’s thought was going in – until tonight when I logged into a function I use frequently at an organisation I do some work for and discovered that the layout had changed since yesterday (without warning), and I started thinking about UX instead.

My first reaction was that I didn’t like the new layout- simply because it took me about 10 seconds to figure out how it worked. I liked the way I’d always known it. Then I paid attention to the pop-up message on the bottom right of the screen where a real person (whom I know) said the people in the background had sweated the small stuff to give users like me a better experience. When I realised they were right, it caused me to wonder why I hadn’t thought to ask for the improved functionality before. The point is that the change didn’t have to be big to be worthwhile from my viewpoint as a system user. If the people running the system had thought only about the high-level issues and not about the interface (relatively small stuff) that hundreds of users just like me have to navigate, there are things we sometimes need to do that would have remained more difficult than they needed to be. Those particular difficulties have been resolved now – because somebody DID sweat the small stuff on my behalf. As a user, I am grateful.

4 December 2023

IDEAS NEVER DIE

We are a good thinker. No – we are an awesome thinker! No matter what the situation, we always come up with the best answers to any problem – first time, every time. That’s probably what we expect of ourselves – because that ‘s what we think other team members and stakeholders outside the team and project expect of us. Being right first time is how our team is going to complete this project ahead of time, under budget, and exceeding every expectation the project’s sponsor has. Every idea we have is somehow born perfect, only gets better as we work on it, and never dies. Right…?

Not right. Our ideas are a bit like these rose blooms captured in our back garden this morning. Born small, Grow bigger with development. All similar, but not identical – variations on a theme, but still beautiful in their own right. Each, in turn, matures and drops its petals as it is surpassed by newer blooms in the bouquet. The dying and fallen petals don’t represent lack of fitness for purpose – they represent fitness for a new purpose. The dropped petals break down on the ground and act as fertiliser for the plant, feeding its ability to develop new blooms.

That’s how it is with your ideas. The older ones don’t die as if they never existed – they fertilise the development of new ideas; ones that are beautiful because they’ve been nourished by the ones that came before them. Rather than trying to hold onto those old ideas as if they were the only ones, celebrate how they have supported the development of each new idea that is better because of the ones that came before it. Ideas never die – they mature and lead to more ideas, different ideas, better ideas, and that’s a bit part of where your team and project successes come from. Celebrate the idea life cycle.

27November 2023

REMOVE DISTRACTIONS

Something you’ve probably been told many times, in relation to working on projects, is about the need to “see the big picture” – complete with all the detail so that you can properly appreciate how all the different bits of the project come together. This raises the question of whether you need to see every little detail in order to know what is happening, or if you could be more selective in the detail you look for and still do a great job. Let’s use this image of a rose I captured in our back garden this morning to illustrate what the answer to the question might be. I actually captured two different versions of this image – the first in full colour, and this one in monochrome:

The colour version has all the detail that the colour can give it – the delicate pink of the bloom, the greens of the leaves, the early morning shadows with the bloom emerging from the shade as if under a spotlight… All the other detail you see in this image is still there, but it’s hidden behind the vibrance of the colours. It’s as though having more detail means I actually see less.
This version, in shades of gray through to black strips out all the distracting colours and allows me to focus on the beauty of the foundations I otherwise wouldn’t see clearly – the vein structures in the leaves. the faint ripples in the petals, the interplay of light and shadow on the different layers of the bloom, and the buds still to open.

Sometimes you need to remove distractions to see the framework that holds everything else together before you start thinking about, or appreciating other details. When you are reporting on your project plan and progress, remember to check what qualifies as distractions for the various stakeholders you are reporting to – then make sure that’s the level of detail they get. Removing distractions helps them to contribute most effectively to your project.

20 November 2023

RECHARGE YOURSELF APPROPRIATELY

We all know that we should – need to – take action to recharge our mental and physical batteries, because we can’t keep functioning at full capability indefinitely. That means taking the time to step away from what we are working on and do something for ourselves. Sometimes the problem with putting the theory into practice is that we feel under pressure to work harder, longer, not let the team down – there are all sorts of things you could add to this list. That means we feel under pressure – whether or not the pressure is real – to get back to full performance quickly. Whatever we do to recharge ourselves has to be quick. We make choices that give us a quick “feel good rush” – even if we know deep down that those things aren’t good for us. Because the rush doesn’t last long before it starts to wear off, we need to do it again, and again, and again… The amount we invest in the rush increases, the rush lasts for less time – and our performance isn’t increasing the way we hoped – at best, it’s standing still, but more likely continuing to go backwards. This is a self-destructive cycle that’s going to have inevitable consequences.

Keep up the bad recharge choices for long enough and you might end up slowly burning out. Even if you know at a factual level that this is a probability, it’s likely to be the people around you who perceive its effects more accurately, because they are also going to be on the receiving end of them. The worst case scenario is that you don’t slowly smolder away – you actually flame out. You reach the point where you are unable to perform at all.

It’s hard – and it needs some bravery – but you need to make the time to think about your recharge choices. Commit to making changes while you are still in conscious control of the choices you make. Speak up and let the people on your team know you need to step away from the pressure for a little while, rather than relying on anybody else to make the decision or the commitment for you. Speaking up isn’t a sign of weakness – it’s a sign of strength and personal integrity. Choose a new recharge method that you will enjoy. (because, if you don’t enjoy it, why would you choose it…). It could be something you gradually stopped doing as much as you used to, or it could be something new that you want to try. Give it time for the new recharge to start having its full effect, because that’s where the longer-term, sustainable benefits – which are the ones you really want – are going to come from.

Personal example: Anybody who knows me well knows that my quick rush came from Coke – Coca Cola, before anybody gets any other ideas. Definitely didn’t do my figure any good in the quantities in which I used to consume it, and really didn’t improve my performance in any other ways either. I may not have flamed out because of this choice, but it also didn’t stop me from burning out because of work stresses when it happened. I haven’t completely given it up, but consume very little these days. My recharge of choice is now photography. It’s a much longer-lasting recharge, mentally, physically and spiritually – and that puts me in a better mental space for the work I need to do.

13 November 2023

DETAILS

Something we’ve probably all had drummed into us since we were capable of paying attention is the need for details. Plans without details, we’ve been told, are plans that aren’t likely to do very well when it comes time to execute them. Whichever plan we are talking about – strategic, tactical or operational – it’s come from a vision that only outlined the high-level details; a bit like this rose image that I captured in our back garden this morning. There’s a broad outline of what a red rose flower should look like, but the finer details are still to be decided and filled in. The finer details will be developed on an ongoing basis – always aligned with the original vision – but also reacting to a range of environmental factors that influence how the plant grows.

I don’t let not having all the details at first glance tell me this isn’t going to be a beautiful rose. I water it, feed it, protect it from pests, taking expert advice when necessary to ensure I’m providing the appropriate support. The lesson I take from our roses is this: Control the details that I can, and trust the process to take care of the ones I either can’t control or don’t need to be directly involved with.

6 November 2023

TOGETHER

There are times when you just want to be left alone to do your own thing. That might be because you are confident in what you are doing (and don’t need anybody else being involved right now), or it might be because you think that’s what’s expected of you. You’re a problem-solver – that’s why you are part of this project team, after all – and what does it say about your ability to solve problems if you aren’t doing it on your own?

Voluntarily collaborating on a task with somebody else is NOT a sign of weakness. Asking for help is NOT a sign of weakness. Knowing when you can deliver something better together than you can alone IS a sign of strength – providing you aren’t looking to get together simply as a way of getting out of doing your fair share of the work (because that has its own set of consequences). Asking for help, especially when it’s a reciprocal request, is exactly what an effective problem-solver does. It leads to what I call “The benefits of together”:

1.You produce something better than you could do on your own.

2. You know somebody’s got your back – just like they know you’ve got theirs.

True awesomeness doesn’t happen just because of your own Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and ATTITUDE – it comes from “The benefits of together.” I would not be where I am today, working on the next exciting stage of my life and project adventure without “The benefits of together.” Try it for yourself – you’ve so little to lose and so much to gain.

30 October 2023

CELEBRATE YOUR PURPLE PATCH

The term “Purple Patch” is one that I don’t see or hear often these days- but that’s maybe a generational thing more than anything. If it’s not one that you are familiar with, it refers to a period of success or good fortune, where everything appears to go right.

I can’t tell you that coincidence doesn’t have anything to do with it, but I can guarantee you this: the effort you put in on a regular basis, both collaboratively within the team and in the work you do on your own, definitely does have something to do with it. You become effective because you don’t give up, because you keep learning, keep trying new things, and have some fun along the way. When your purple patch comes – and it will come – it happens because you’ve earned it. Celebrate your Purple Patch – it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.

23 October 2023

WHY NOT TRY…?

So often we make up our minds about the outcome before we’ve done the work, and we only have a single vision outcome in mind. Being clear on what we want to achieve isn’t a bad thing; in fact, having that clarity of focus can save us going off in interesting but non-productive directions (rabbit holes, as my doctoral mentors call them). Before we get trapped in thinking which says there can only be ONE vision outcome for an opportunity or a problem, let’s consider that some of those rabbit holes might have something at the bottom that’s a better vision outcome than the one we had already pre-decided, so having a look can’t be a bad idea. Trying a different idea to the one you started out with means resisting the instant reaction of saying “No”…

This image is a classic example of this thinking in action. it wasn’t the vision outcome I originally set out to capture (because I hadn’t changed some of my settings back to my default preferences since the previous time I used the camera). That resulted in an image that was way over-exposed for my original vision outcome. I could simply have changed the settings to something more appropriate for the scene, and re-shot the image, deleting this one. I made an instinctive decision to keep this one, and to try accentuating some elements of the over-exposure in post-production to see what result I ended up with. The result is no longer a faithful reproduction as the eye would see it of a group of blooms. Instead, it’s something more stylised which highlights certain aspects of the scene without becoming bogged down in all the fine details. Had I not been willing to try something different this image would have been lost forever. Secret: I actually like this one more than the next one I captured which had all the “technically correct”/conventional settings.

Today’s thought: Before you give up on idea that might be a little different, why not try…?

16 October 2023

NEW DAY – NEW OPPORTUNITIES

As the sun rises on a new day, you have two choices.:

Remain with yesterday’s opportunities – now in the darkness of the past.
Open yourself to the opportunities in today’s light. Yes, you might need to look carefully for them. Yes, they might be in parts of the picture where you would not normally look. Yes, they might be different to what you are used to looking for. Yes, they might be more exciting and worthwhile than you expected. You owe it to yourself – and the people who look to you and believe in you – to be open to new opportunities.

9 October 2023

Is good enough good enough?

How good is good enough? Yes, it’s important to set clear standards for your various project deliverables, and the sooner you do that, the less possible confusion there will be later. When you’re setting those standards an important question that should be front-and-centre is “How good is good enough”? This is where your knowledge of the end users and uses of your project deliverables is invaluable. You could take the view that nothing short of perfection will do – and that opens up the whole debate on whether it’s measured statistically or some other way. Another question is around when you’re building in more “good” than is absolutely necessary for the intended use. That doesn’t mean you try working out just how little “good” you can get away with before anybody notices, but it should have you thinking about whether being over-fit-for-purpose will be either noticed or appreciated. Remember – it’s your customer or end user who defines what “good enough” means in practice, and their purpose is probably more important to them than your technical competence or innovative brilliance is to you.

Take this image, for instance. Technically, it’s been captured using a 70-300mm crop-sensor lens on a full frame camera body. That means resolution is around 10 megapixels as opposed to the 24 megapixels it would have been using a full frame lens. For anybody who’s really into the technical side of photography, they might say that a crop sensor lens on a full frame body doesn’t make sense, and that the resolution is too low for an image like this (especially if it’s being blown up and printed). From my side: I needed the reach, my big full frame lens only stretches to 120mm, and I didn’t have my crop sensor body with me, so I made do with the gear I had on hand. For the audience I had in mind and how they would likely access the image, the resolution was good enough. Yes, it might have looked a little sharper using a full frame lens, but the difference isn’t enough to mean this particular image isn’t good enough for its intended purpose. None of this really matters to most of my intended audience, though. For them, “good” is how they feel when they take some time from their day to just be in the moment with the image. If they honestly experience that moment of “good” my job is done and good enough is good enough.

2 October 2023

Beautiful Power

You may have noticed there was no “Thought” last week. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking; just that I was focused on getting ready for a conference I was presenting at. Normal thinking is now resumed, however.

A stop I always make on an Auckland road trip is at Huka Falls, just north of Taupō, where the Waikato River drains from lake Taupō. The sheer power of the water as it runs through the 15 metre-wide canyon is awesome to see and hear, and the colour of the water is really beautiful. I’m sharing this image I captured last week for two reasons:

Sometimes you just need to stop work and experience nature because it’s there. Fresh air in your lungs, the opportunity to stretch and move around – these things are better than processed products as revivers for your thinking equipment.
Being in the moment gives you the opportunity to practice mindfulness – focusing on what you think and feel without the need to interpret it or make judgements about it. I let the power of the water as it flows over the series of falls take away stress and anxiety, balancing my emotions. I focus on my breathing and experiencing the moment for nothing more or nothing less than what it is

You don’t need to find yourself a waterfall to experience the benefits of mindfulness. My advice is simply this – to find a space where you can simply focus on being in nature and give yourself the time to reconnect with yourself. Self-care is something you owe yourself simply because you are worth it – not just once, but regularly.

18 September 2023

Perspective

If there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that there will be times during the life of your project when things just don’t come together in the shape that you’d originally imagined or planned. Sometimes the disconnection or blurry focus may be project-specific. Other times, it might be a team-specific thing. Maybe it’s a “you” thing, that is only indirectly related to your team or the project you are collaborating on. There are two ways in which “perspective” can be an issue. The first is in deciding which of these areas the problem lies in, or if it’s more than one area at the same time. The other is in understanding that there’s probably more than one way to look at the problem. Added to that, you’ve probably been conditioned – or told outright – that there’s only one way to look at the problem. The challenge for you comes because no matter how hard you try, and even if you only see one probable cause, you still see more than one possible solution.

Because you see possibilities that others don’t doesn’t mean that your perspective is wrong. Maybe you are seeing the problem through whole different sets of experiences and reactions compared to the other members of your team. Maybe your inbuilt tolerance for risk-taking differs to theirs. You aren’t going to know which of these things are true, unless you:

Explain to them why you think the things you do. There’s nothing wrong with having to help others understand your thinking – the act of explaining or demonstrating is a powerful tool for helping you to refine your own thinking, and that’s got to be a good thing.
Ask them why they think the things they do. Pay attention with open eyes, ears, and heart. That’s where you can get some valuable new insights to merge in with your thinking (or change how you understand your team-mates not just as fellow collaborators, but as human beings).

Yes, this means being prepared to be vulnerable, because you might end up sharing some things that are slightly outside where you thought your comfort zone was. The same goes for the others on the team. Yes, it means treating what you learn with respect, but it’s SO worth the effort. You will find yourself opening up to perspectives you would not have discovered on your own, and that’s where the true power of being a collaborator happens.

11 September 2023

Check your resilience tank

You are part of a team that you’re happy with. You’re working on a project that you’re really interested in and you want to do an awesome job with it. In fact, you KNOW you’re going to do an awesome job, because both the project and the team are things you are prepared to invest a lot of yourself in. Everything is so exciting that nothing is going to stop you going full speed ahead from start to finish.

Once you really get into the journey, and a few things start not going according to the original plan, that’s when you really start drawing from what’s in your resilience tank. Whether it’s physical, mental or spiritual, you may not notice the level starting to drop because you’re still pretty excited about this thing you are part of and anyway, it’s OK, because you’ve still got plenty in the tank before you need to worry about slowing down to refill the tank. If you are only looking at the speedo for your project progress and not the resilience tank, that tank’s going to run dry without warning – I’ve learned that the hard way.

The best advice I can share is to honestly check your resilience tank level frequently. There’s no prize for seeing how much you can do before your tank runs dry, because I guarantee you it’s going to run dry at the most inconvenient (stressful) time. Plan to take breaks to top your resilience tank up on a regular basis. You can work that plan out before your journey even starts. Okay, you might need to make some adjustments once the journey is under way, but that’s much less stressful than having to take a break because you no longer have a choice. Regular resilience tank top-up breaks will lead to better performance all the way from the short-term to the long-term parts of your project journey.

As my very wise friend Vicki Yarker-Jones from Tea Time Me Time (https://teatime-metime.org/) often reminds me, self-care is not selfish, it’s essential. To support anybody else in what they are doing, first you need to support yourself.

4 September 2023

See what YOU see

You have the same information as everybody else in your team. The lens through which you see it, though, is yours. Backing it up are all of your lived experiences and how you’ve reacted to them – things that are unique to you. Those experiences don’t make you any less important as a team member, and they don’t make how you see things invalid – they simply make everything different from your viewpoint. There may be times when others in the team put pressure on you – maybe quite heavy pressure – to see things their way and not your way. Remember these two things:

There’s no guarantee that your team-mates saw the only problems or the only ways of solving them – the pressure they put on you isn’t going to make that statement so.
Solutions often have more than one way of getting there, so that doesn’t mean only one way of getting there is right.

Living proof of this argument – the azalea blooms in this week’s image are actually bright pink, with dark green foliage in the background. A little negative editing rendered the image in delicate shades of blue. Two very different views – but seeing the difference doesn’t make one right and one wrong. Before you see solutions – see possibilities.

28 August 2023

Let the light find you

There will be times when it seems like everywhere you look is darkness and despair. Nothing is going right, and you are convinced (despite any empirical evidence to prove it) that things will keep going wrong and never get any better. Let me ask you a question: What if that’s not true?

You are probably familiar with the old saying: “I’m beginning to see the light” – and you know that’s what you are expected to say, even though you don’t really believe it’s true. You are absolutely convinced that you are never going to see the light, because there’s no way you can master the challenges in front of you. You’ve either given up searching for the light, or you’ve been looking in places where there is only the darkness of confusion, uncertainty, and disaster.

I know all these statements, and the attitude that goes with them. There are times when we’ve been Best Friends Forever. The problem is that we haven’t been friends based on truth – we’ve been friends based on suspicion and unfounded assumptions. Every time I have opened my mind to the possibility – no, the probability – no – the certainty – that there is a solution to my problem – the light has found me. That’s not saying that the solution has been instant – some of them have taken a lot of work to turn from idea to reality.

When I’ve looked back, though, I’ve realised that I knew instinctively where the light was going to come from. What I needed to do was give myself permission – because nobody else could do that for me – to let the light shine and guide me. That’s the advice I want to share with you this week: Open your mind and your heart, and let your own light of possibility find you. You are capable of so much more than you think when you let the light find you and push away the darkness.

21 August 2023

Creativity Lock-up

So – you came up with the solution to a problem that the others in the team hadn’t thought of… Good for you! Your next challenge might be to avoid having your solution sent to the Creativity Lock-up because others don’t think the same way you do. The question is whether the rest of the team are going to send your idea to the lock-up because it’s different enough they don’t really understand how it will work – or you are going to lock it up because of what you think they will think. You have two choices here:

Work to explain your idea in ways the others can understand. Having to reword or revise it is a great way for you to clarify your thinking – so that’s actually a win for you. Don’t go giving anybody else permission to take your win away.
NEVER put your idea straight into the Creativity Lock-up because of what you think somebody else might think. Your thinking is just as good as anybody else’s. The fact that you got to a solution in a way that’s different to how they came up with their solutions (or might have done if they put any forward) doesn’t make yours any less valid or valuable. Believe in yourself – you are worth it and you deserve it.

That mental shed is where you store ideas that might come in useful later, or where you might work on them a bit more before letting them out into the world. It is NOT a lock-up where they go to never be heard from again.

14 August 2023

Leaders set examples

Real leadership is about more than a word in a formal title. It’s about intentions and actions. Intentions to share information rather than hoarding it. Intentions to help develop each of their team members to be better versions of themselves, to bloom to a potential they may not have seen in themselves. Intentions to value not only individual blooms, but to also value the collaborative blooming of the team. Actions to coach and mentor their team members as they make theory come to life in their own circumstances.

Leaders understand they must bloom first themselves so that each of their budding team members has an example of success to look to, an example to emulate as they work towards their full blooming potential. Everybody in the team won’t bloom as carbon copies of the leader, and they will each bloom at times that are most appropriate for them – thanks to the leader who went first. As each team member blooms, they in turn set an example for the others alongside them and those who come after them. All this from that first blooming leader who set the first example.

7 August 2023

Let no barriers hold you in

Sometimes the barriers you perceive may be as hard and as real as these old iron railings. Other times they may be things that you imagine are present, even when you can’t actually see or touch them. If you don’t question them, in a way they become real and unyielding. The jonquils in this image may sit behind a real barrier, but that hasn’t held them in from doing what they are best at doing. For me, they are a classic example of several important lessons: 1) The barriers built by somebody else for another purpose don’t stop them doing what they are best at doing. 2) The barriers built by somebody else for another purpose don’t hold them in from being noticed by anybody else while they are doing what they do best. 3) If you accept other people’s barriers without question, being the best you can be could end up being a lot harder than it needs to be.

When I composed this image I reframed the barriers as something that positively added to the story I wanted to tell. That’s a more positive and creative approach than simply bemoaning the fact the old railings were between me and the image I originally wanted to capture. The barriers challenged me rather than holding me in – and that’s what barriers should do for you.

31 July 2023

Life Is A Bridge

There is where you were (or where you think you were). There is where you are (or where you think you are). There is where you want to be. Your thinking is the bridge that connects these points. Sometimes the bridge may lead you down, and away from where you want to be. Sometimes the bridge may lead you up, closer to where you want to be. Some events may be within your control. Others may not. Your thinking about the events that happen to you is what influences the direction in which the bridge takes you – the dark direction or the bright direction. Nobody else has the right to make you think things you do not want to think, but you get to choose which side of the bridge you want to be on

24 July 2023

APPRECIATE

There may be times when you feel a bit battered by life and rough around the edges. Maybe it’s connected with your work; maybe it’s your life outside of work that’s got you wondering where to turn next. Deadlines that have you juggling priorities. Tasks that stretch you outside your comfort zone (or where you thought that zone was). Events that you have no ability to influence – all you can do is control your reaction to them.

When you look at this flower I captured a couple of days ago, what do you see? Petals that are battered by the elements, and clearly past their best? A beautiful, vibrant centre? Now see yourself as the flower – what do you notice? Someone who’s still standing strong, and not bending down before any challenges? Someone who’s still a beautiful person at the centre, who still has so much value to contribute to whatever you are involved with?

If there’s only one piece of advice I can share with you this week, it’s this: Appreciate that no matter what happens in life, no matter what decisions you make – even if a few of them turn out to be mistakes (Learning Moments) with the benefit of hindsight – one thing remains true: At heart, you are a beautiful human being. Nobody can take that away from you.

17 July 2023

First Impressions

There are old sayings to the effect that first impressions are the ones that count, and that you should always trust your first impression/instinct about something. I’m not going to completely disagree with that, because there have been times when I’ve been right about certain people or situations. There have also been times when I’ve been wrong, completely wrong, and those times are why I raise the question of whether there are times when you should question the evidence you think is in front of you instead of blindly accepting it.

Sometimes what we perceive to be reality is influenced by what other people tell is reality is, or by what we think they would tell us reality is if they were here right now. The words or actions of others should never be a replacement for our own thinking or questioning.

Equally, because something looks like something we think we’ve seen before, that’s not the same as us being right about what we are looking at now. It should never stop us asking what else we could be looking at. Similarity is not the same as exact duplication. Effective problem solving and decision-making comes from challenging first impressions and being open to other facts being the correct ones in the current situation.

For anybody wondering, this image is not slightly stylised blonde hair shining after application of shampoo, conditioner, or colour (although you might think it looks like that). It’s actually tree bark seen in mottled sunlight, with the application of Intentional Camera Movement when the image was captured. First impressions can be misleading if they aren’t questioned…

10 July 2023

Bent Not Broken

When you feel the weight of your own expectations and fears, together with what you think are the expectations others have of you, weighing down on you the way the raindrops are weighing this flower down, here’s something worth remembering. When the rain stops and the sun comes out again, the stem will straighten and the flower will once again show its full awesomeness to the world. In the meantime, the raindrops will have helped sustain the flower, contributing to its ability to stand tall and be awesome again.

No matter how heavy you feel your load is, remember you may be bent, but you are not broken. Every experience that weighs you down also gives you the strength to stand tall again. It may not feel like it at the time (and I can sure talk from experience about this) but even the heaviest negative experience is no match for the strength it helps to grow in you. You WILL rise again, and you just might be even more awesome than before the rain of experiences temporarily bent you over. Believe in you.

3 July 2023

WHY?

Sometimes something will be said or done that makes you question why. Why are you doing what you are doing? Why are you doing it that way? Why do you think the things you do? Why do you believe you will reach the goal you’ve set for yourself (whatever it is)? I could go on with a much larger list of “Why” questions, but my purpose isn’t to win the prize for the longest list of “Why” questions. it’s something more simple and more valuable than that. It’s to remind you that “Why” doesn’t translate as “Nobody cares about…” (what you are passionate about). It doesn’t translate as “You can’t do that” (just because you’re doing something that has some uniqueness to it). It doesn’t translate as “There’s not much point in being passionate about Thing A because Thing B is really what you will be measured against” (since Thing A is what started your whole adventure in the first place).

You know why you have passion for Thing A – deep down you’ve always known it. “Why” is simply an invitation to you to reaffirm your passion and commitment. It’s an invitation for you to remember critical thinking is not an end in itself – it’s a tool that helps produce multiple possible answers to your original question, each of which has value because you brought it into existence. “Why” is an invitation to reflect on what you are doing and how you can demonstrate its value to others. It’s one person’s question, or maybe their statement – but it’s NOT an instruction to move away from Thing A that you are passionate about. It’s a challenge to demonstrate Thing A cannot be separated from the critical thinking that helped create it – they are indivisible and their value is greater together than apart.

26 June 2023

COLLABORATION – THE DELICATE DANCE

Whether or not you are leading the project, you know what your part of it is meant to look like. You’ve interpreted the instructions, asked the questions you think necessary to clarify anything you weren’t sure about, and produced what you thought was required. This is the point where the delicate dance starts, because your part has to fit together with parts produced by others – parts that you may have little influence over. It also has to survive the judgement of others, and there’s no guarantee their thoughts will be a smooth mesh with yours. When differences of opinion annoy you, there are some things worth remembering:

Just because somebody might think differently to you, that doesn’t make them right and you wrong – even if they are senior to you in the hierarchy.
Ask questions – try to discover why their views are different to yours. There might be some valuable learning for you in their response.
Disagree strongly if necessary, but respectfully always.
The delicate dance of adjusting expectations and outputs might just lead to a better output than you would have produced by avoiding the delicate dance.
The more you practice the delicate dance, the better dancer (collaborator) you become.

19 June 2023

GROW

It won’t be easy – but it’s often said anything worth having or being is worth fighting for. Worth pushing past the times where you feel like you are in the dark. Worth pushing past the times when it feels like others are throwing you shade or openly trying to keep you down for their own reasons. Worth believing that others playing the negative game against you says a lot about them, but knowing what they do or say doesn’t diminish your value in the eyes of people prepared to look at who you really are. Worth believing that you are born to flower and make a positive difference for others, and that some people will simply be more ready to accept and embrace that difference collaboratively than others. No matter how tough things get, be willing to grow towards those willing to collaborate with, and support you. Even if you only grow a little each day, that’s a day when you’ve fulfilled an important part of your purpose. Somebody else learned something of value because of you. Grow positively because you can, because you matter. Grow because nobody else has the right to put you down. Be the best you can be, because you matter. Grow.

12 June 2023

COMPOSITION

Something I always keep in mind as a photographer is composition – how the various elements of an image are going to come together to tell a story in the finished image. How do I need to position myself in relation to the various elements to achieve the result I’m aiming for? Where do I want the viewer to focus? What do I want them to think or feel? What will happen if the composition I have in my own mind doesn’t match the composition they are experiencing? If I have to explain my composition to anybody else in detail, does that mean I failed because we see and experience different things? If they see something other than what I intended to compose, does that mean they are wrong?

Because I’m not a commercial photographer, that makes it much easier for me to compose what I want to see – I don’t have income that is dependent on composing what somebody else is paying to see. Arguably I have more freedom to experiment because I don’t have the pressure of deadlines or (potentially) dissatisfied customers. I can re-compose without penalty (other than my own annoyance that an original composition didn’t work quite the way I imagined it would). I am free to find beauty and value in compositions that “went wrong” – as with this image. The camera captured (reasonably faithfully) what I saw, but my primary editing software “threw a hissy fit” and saw much of the detail very differently to how I saw it, refusing to see things the way I did.

Determined not to let the software beat me (for reasons I still haven’t fully understood), I re-composed and re-edited the original image to what you see now. On reflection, while I still like the original composition (and I will go back to it one day) , I think I like the revised version better, because it reveals details from the original I might otherwise not have seen.

Substitute “thesis and associated artefacts” for “photography” and this analogy pretty much describes my journey towards the Doctor of Professional Practice qualification. I knew what my composition would look like even before I started the formal part of the journey. Many of the elements have remained the same, some have been de-emphasised, and others have been deservedly rescued from the shadows where they might have remained had my mentors not prompted me to see and consider other possibilities. The final composition will be very different to the original, yet still faithful to it.

The more I remain open to new possibilities, the more I grow as a practitioner of photography, and as a practitioner of leadership and management in the vocational education space. My lesson from this is that seeing different compositions of the same image is not a matter of “right” or “wrong” – it is a matter of us both experiencing the composition according to our unique frames of reference. There is no “wrong” answer – only variations of “right.”

5 June 2023

AIM HIGH SHINE BRIGHT

How high should you aim? As high as you can go – then add some more distance to that. because only aiming as high as you think you can go may not take you anywhere as far as you are capable of going. Believe it or not, comfort zones are made to be expandable. Why would you deny yourself the opportunity to do something just because you’d never done it before? That lack of prior experience is NOT a sign that you aren’t capable of doing that thing- it only says you haven’t done it yet. Whatever task you are attempting to master, it won’t be easy, but there’s tremendous positive value in each attempt, because each one adds to your ability to do more and do it better as all your knowledge and experiences are connected together to influence what you do and why you do it that way.

Aim for the stars is an oft-repeated saying. Even if you fall short, you will still hit the moon, and that’s going a lot further than capable people who never try. For anybody that tells you the moon isn’t going very high, you might want to remind them of this: The light reflected by the moon makes it possible for many people to see in the dark. What you have learned through experience is what makes it possible for many others to do things they might not otherwise be able to when you share it with them. Your light has taken away some of the darkness of their lack of self-confidence. You have helped them to learn and experience some of what they need to know for their professional and personal life journeys, equipping them with what they need to go further and achieve more.

Be the best and brightest moon you can. That is a big part of why you exist – to light the way for others.

29 May 2023

THOUGHTS

Those little things that pop into your consciousness when you least expect them. Sometimes they will even wake you from a seeming deep sleep (they do me from time to time). Sometimes they might arrive fully in focus; most of the time they arrive a bit blurred around the edges and take a bit of time to resolve their scope.

You could trust that your memory will call them back whenever you need them – but it often doesn’t. Record them when you have them. How you do it is less important than doing it – even for the ones that arrive in the middle of the night. Make sure you put them somewhere obvious (for you) so you can find them again when you’re ready to add some more detail.

Ove the years I’ve been working on my doctorate I’ve amassed quite the collection of thoughts; in fact, you could say I’ve become a “Thought Hoarder.” Sometimes a thought might “sit in storage” for a year or more before I need something in that general area and check back through the archives to see what I’ve already got. Some thoughts may be overtaken by events, but there are definitely others that will mature with age, so I really do advise keeping them around for a while before deciding which ones you aren’t likely to need again.

22 May 2023

Serenity

There are times when you need the serenity that comes from stepping out of the fast lane of busyness and tangible achievements that can be measured – even admired and celebrated – by others. How relaxing and recharging is it to stop, to really see the sights of nature, to smell the smells and hear the sounds, and appreciate them as if you’d never been aware of them before. Time spent recharging with nature is refueling your spirit, something it’s easy to overlook in favour of being things, doing things, accumulating things…staying in the fast lane even when your spiritual tank is emptying out. Keep an regular eye on your spiritual fuel gauge – frequent top-ups are more effective than waiting until your tank is empty and you can’t go any further.

16 May 2023

The wood and the trees…

Sometimes when you’ve been on a path for a long time, you can start to lose sight not only of where you are, but also of the signposts that led you there. You can become so focused on the little details immediately in front of you that you lose sight of the bigger picture of where you are heading. In other words, you can’t see the wood for the trees…

Much as you want to keep going – you really want to get to the end of the path, or at least to the next fork (decision point), and it still seems such a discouragingly long way off – you need to listen to the voice that reminds you how far you’ve come on your journey. The voice that reminds you of the importance of decisions already taken. The voice that directs you back to some of the work you’ve already done. The voice that guides you to open your eyes and distinguish the wood from the trees. The combined voice of my doctorate mentors last week who guided me back to something I had done eight months ago, and which is an important foundation for my progress on the last stages of this particular journey – the wood among my trees (Thanks, Ruth and Sam – much appreciated).

Be brave enough to look back along the path you’ve travelled. The time taken to pause and examine what you’ve gathered along the way is not time lost that can never be made up. Instead, it’s an investment in making better decisions as you move forward again.

8 May 2023

Possibilities

If you look to see only what you expect, that’s probably what you are going to see. If you are prepared for the possibility there might be more than one way to see what’s in front of you, and that there might be more than one appropriate answer, you are ready for the excitement of possibilities.

There are seven different edits (so far) of these rose blooms in our back garden, because I wanted to check out a particular feature of the editing software I was using. None of them are “wrong” – each one simply represents a different possibility that saw the light of day because I was willing to find out what was possible without prejudging the outcomes.

If you know that you can’t be wrong, how exciting is it to explore possibilities and to see what hasn’t been seen before.

2 May 2023

Opportunity

Where to find opportunity? A question that’s often asked, in the expectation that there is some defined place where it is stored, just waiting for us to come and deliberately choose and pay for it. Perhaps it is – but I’ve never found it, of that’s the case.

The reality is it’s all around us. We will see it if our eyes are open to the totality of our world, rather than being focused only on the “here and now” in front of our noses. We will see it if we are prepared to imagine possibilities rather than only perceiving the literalness of what is there in the moment.

I could have seen nothing more than a discarded feather floating on the surface of the pond. In a sense, I would not have been wrong. What I chose to see was an opportunity where the lighting and the angles would combine for an image that’s different to what I’m normally trying for. Had I not been consciously choosing what to see, I would have missed this opportunity forever. Maybe this one image might now take me in a slightly different direction for my photographic journey. Maybe I can learn something from this opportunity that I can apply to other opportunities in my preferred genre. What’s important is that I took didn’t walk past this opportunity – I stopped and lived in whole of the moment to experience where it might lead.

24 April 2023

Grow towards the light

Something I’ve discovered (the hard way, more than once) is that there are people who come into your life where it seems like their whole mission is to throw you some shade. It’s as if they believe that by making you look bad, they will somehow make themselves look better, or maybe their lives are so messed up destroying you (or attempting to) is the only thing they think can make them feel better.

What’s dangerous is not so much their mistaken belief that shading somebody else automatically makes them some sort of hero – it’s that you start to buy into the shade they are spreading. The moment you start to believe in their shade is the moment where it becomes harder to grow towards the light of opportunity and awesomeness, because you are now contributing to that shade.

To adapt some words from the late Leonard Cohen, as long as you can see the slightest crack in their shade, you keep pushing towards it, because that’s how the light of your awesomeness will keep getting in. You are too strong for the shade to win. You have so much of value to share with the world. You can choose how this picture develops – with the shade in the foreground as the main subject, or as the background where it can fertilise your growth instead of stunting it.

The choice is yours. Choose to grow towards the light – not because it’s easy, but because it’s right.

17 April 2023

Too busy to pause…?

How many times have you said to yourself that you are too busy to take a couple of minutes to pause – you have somewhere to be, something to do, and it just can’t wait…? Keep doing that often enough and burnout is the inevitable end result.

Take a deliberate decision to build some pause time into your schedule. I did it this afternoon on my way between jobs. What’s important is not that I spent ten minutes just enjoying the view at Ivey Bay on a beautiful autumn afternoon – but that I had ten minutes not thinking about ANYTHING to do with work. Time to focus on breathing. Time to focus on BEING. Does it matter that for ten minutes I wasn’t producing tangible output? No. What matters is how I felt about myself after my pause in the sunshine and how that mindset was carried forward to the job I was going to do and the people I was working with.

10 April 2023

Knowledge is the produce of the mind

The knowledge you gather from life and work experiences is like the food you harvest from your garden – some for use now, some to store for later use, and some to share with others who can benefit from it. Keeping it all to yourself is selfish, and doesn’t increase its value.

Look after your mind garden well. Feed it regularly. Weed out the negative thoughts and feelings that can damage your knowledge crop as it grows and as you place it in storage for later. Be willing to share or trade your crop – the act of exchange is where its value can increase many times over.

3 April 2023

The Brick Wall

The immovable barrier between you and what you are capable of achieving. often – and I know this from experience – that mental brick wall can feel as real as a physical one. No matter which way you look, there is no way past it, because it stretches as far as your eyes can see. Eventually, you may even stop looking for a way past, accepting that the brick wall of fate will always lie between you and what you want to achieve.

Dare to think differently. If you cannot progress directly past it, is there a way for you to go around it, under it, over it…? You can choose to bash away at the wall, investing your time and emotional energy bemoaning fate for building a wall in front of you that you don’t deserve. Alternatively, you can choose to keep hold of your passion and your dreams and focus on doing what you can every day to make them even more real. The brick wall is only strong enough to stand against your passion and your dreams if you choose to let it. It has no power of its own, so don’t go giving it any of yours.

Remember – there is more than one way to get where you are going. What you prove to yourself in defeating your brick wall is the powerful example you share with others for dealing with their own brick walls.

27 March 2023

Collaboration is Art

You’re a brilliant individual, there’s no doubt about that. You can do amazing things, often delivering more and better than you promised. Collaborating with others takes your performance to a whole new level, however. Let’s use these rose blooms I captured yesterday as an analogy. Each one is brilliant in its own right. Together, though, they are a work of art that is greater than the sum of its individual blooms. A collaborative project team is like these blooms – brilliant individuals, but a work of art when you work WITH (rather than simply alongside) each other.

Create art every day – you are worth it.

20 March 2023

Power your ideas into your future

Your ideas may not need anything large or technically complex like this steam-powered locomotive to help turn them into reality, but there are two attributes you WILL need just as much as the locomotive does to do its job:

Horsepower – to start the “doing” happening so your awesome ideas don’t remain stuck at the “thinking station” without ever departing, until such time as they simply get forgotten about.

Stamina – to keep things moving. There will be times when what you are trying to do will seem harder than you can cope with – that’s quite natural – and this is where your stamina in the long run will carry you past the moments of doubt towards your intended destination.

This is not the same as saying you need to be a machine to make your ideas happen. you still need regular stops to top up your fuel and carry out any necessary self-maintenance. Looking after you is essential if the horsepower and stamina are to matter.

13 March 2023

AWESOMENESS

A simple thought for this week about awesomeness. Don’t let yours become swallowed up in the bigger picture. Your awesomeness deserves to be in the sunshine rather than the shadows. You make the world a better place to be because you are here.

6 March 20123

Curiousity

You’ve probably heard the story about curiousity and what it did to the cat… It doesn’t have to be that way, and the old story certainly shouldn’t stop you being curious. Let me put it to you like this:

If you rely on other people to tell you everything you need to know – it’s not going to happen.
If you ask no questions – you will get no answers (or, at least, no new answers).
If you are curious (like the cat) – your research and critical thinking skills will improve.
What you learn now may not be used until later – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn it if you don’t see an immediate use for it.

These things I am reminded of by watching our cat every day. While she has certain routines for different times of the day (and different types of day), she’s not afraid to let her curiosity take her where it will at other times. I have a huge store of knowledge that will come in useful one day, most of which I’ve enjoyed gathering, and I’m not slowing down gathering more, because curiousity is more often fun than hard work. After a good day’s gathering, my reward is to practice something else I’ve learned from the cat – a good sleep to recharge my mental batteries for another day of curiousity tomorrow…

27 February 2023

Take A Break…

When everything on your “To Do/Must Do” list looks too much, and you can feel your performance slipping backwards towards the point of no performance at all… I’ve been there recently, and I want to share with you the advice that my wonderful wife gave me: Take A Break… Create a few moments to focus on something you really enjoy. You will thank yourself for it.

13 February 2023

DETAIL

Have you ever noticed yourself getting frustrated when you are trying to explain a concept or a task to somebody else and they just don’t “get it” the same way you do? That doesn’t mean there’s anything “wrong” with them. It might just be that they see the detail in your picture differently to how you do. Everything is perfectly clear for you, but so it should be – it’s your picture , after all.

Maybe you need to try presenting the detail in a way that works for the person on the receiving end of your picture. Once they can see something to work with, then you can start to collaborate.

To take an analogy from photography: This morning I captured an image of a white rose in our back garden. The image on the camera screen looked pretty much like the image I had in my mind. When I loaded it into my editing software, all that saw was total black (not just black where it belonged in the full colour image). If I posted what the software saw, it would take a lot of imagination to see anything at all, never mind a white rose. Collaboration on a project involving roses would have been all-but-impossible. Creative adjustment of a few settings, including a change from full colour to monochrome, might not have given me the image I originally wanted, but we’ve now both got enough detail to see a white rose and start collaborating on a rose project. The fact that we may perceive that detail in slightly different ways doesn’t mean either of us is wrong. All I needed to do was change my thinking about how to present the detail; to accept that there was not “one right way” (mine).

Remember – detail isn’t always 100% objective, and subjective detail isn’t necessarily the same thing as bad detail.

6 February 2023

REINVENT YOURSELF

I am what I am – I can’t be anything more than that. I shouldn’t dare to dream, because maybe I’m not that good after all. Nobody will take me seriously at what I want to do. I’ve had my failures in the past, and they prove I’m not good at what I’m passionate about…

I should know these words well – I’ve said them to myself often enough. I remember when I was working on the factory floor and studying for my first degree (in Business Psychology) because I wanted to get into HR (specifically, Training and Development). Not one of the employment agencies I approached knew what to do with me, because they’d never had anybody like me wanting to make a move like that before (from caterpillar to butterfly).

What it took for me to make that reinvention happen was one man – one of my tutors who saw the same potential I thought I had. When I sat down with him to ask for advice on how to turn all my expensive new qualifications (B.A (Business Psychology), and New Zealand Diploma in Business) into a job, he offered me no advice; instead he offered me a job. There were only two conditions: I had 23 hours in which to say “Yes” – and I started work in 24 hours’ time. He was that confident I would say “Yes.”

Within a short time of starting that first teaching role, I was also involved in Training and Development for Foodstuffs (Wellington) and Royal New Zealand Air Force (Base Ohakea). Those experiences, together with the ten years spent facilitating the Applied Management collaborative project course, rank among the happiest times in my life because I was privileged to work with teams of people making real magic happen, and there was just as much magic at the personal level as there was at the professional level.

Now I’m reinventing myself again with a Doctorate in Professional Practice, working towards creating a role that doesn’t currently exist. The fact that it doesn’t currently exist doesn’t mean I’m wrong, or I’m not capable – it means I’m first. There are some things I’ve learned as part of my current reinvention, which I share with you:

Some people just flat out won’t support you having a dream, let alone pursuing your dream. Don’t let their lack of belief or support become yours.
Some people won’t understand why you want to reinvent yourself. Don’t let their lack of understanding become your lack of belief in yourself. If you are serious about being able to make a real difference for others, you will find a way, even if you have to make it yourself (do it the hard way).
Reinvention isn’t easy. There will be times when you feel like giving up on yourself and your dream. Nothing worth doing is ever easy. Look out for the small successes, because enough of those added together mean you’ve just worked some serious magic.
You’ve been a caterpillar to do the work necessary to reinvent yourself. Believe in the butterfly you are destined to be, because you are awesome and you are worth it.

30 January 2023

Exposure and Focus

Think of yourself as a photographic image. You probably have an ideal of how you want that image to look. In your mind the exposure and focus are spot-on. In reality, repeated or continual exposure to events that stress you outside your comfort zone means you can lose focus on your own wellbeing because you are always reacting to what other people need (or what you think they need). I’m not saying that being aware of what support other people need is bad – it’s actually one of the good signs that makes you the wonderful human being you are. When the camera settings for exposure and focus aren’t correctly set (as in this image), the result won’t be what you imagined, and no amount of fancy software is going to create what wasn’t there in the first place. Likewise, when your brain, heart and spirit aren’t set right, you won’t be happy with who you are. Take the time – make the time -to step back and think about what will make your reality picture more like the one in your mind. Your own exposure and focus need to be right before you can serve others effectively

23 January 2023

Pause – Reflect

It’s been a beautiful provincial holiday weekend here in Wellington, New Zealand, with time taken to relax as a family and to do things that aren’t connected with work; just to pause and reflect on life in general. On a road trip to Palmerstone North on Saturday, I was once again reunited with one of my favourite roses. Yes, she’s beautiful., especially in the right light… She is named “Christchurch”, in honour of the 51 Muslims murdered in a terror attack in our largest South Island city in 2019. For me, that’s another reason to love her always, as a “closer-to-home” reminder of a thought that first hit home for me when I visited what’s left of the former Dachau concentration camp outside Munich, Germany, in 2004. That thought is simply this:

This world could be a much better place to live if more people spent more time doing things with other people instead of to them.

Take the opportunity to pause from time to time. Reflect on how making others lose just because they are somehow different to you isn’t the only way for you to win at life. Reflect that “different to me” does not directly translate as “wrong” – we can learn more of value from exploring differences than regarding them as things to simply be eliminated. Reflect that diversity is a foundation of collective strength.

16 January 2023

Do Different

There’s an old saying that if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. Sometimes you just have to Do Different. Give yourself permission (instead of waiting for somebody else to do it for you) to – think about possibilities you don’t usually think about, try things you don’t usually try, learn by doing…just because you can…and enjoy yourself while you are doing it.

Anybody who knows me knows my love of photography – mostly flowers (and particularly roses) in the garden. Yesterday I took my own advice to Do Different and see what I could do with a capsicum in a more “studio” setting. True, people who are more skilled at photography and editing than I am might look at this image and find lots of things I could have done differently – even I see some, but I’m not going to beat myself up about them. The point of the image is that I got outside my comfort zone to see what would happen, and what I could do. Producing a technically perfect image wasn’t important – Doing Different and learning from it was. By the way – I had fun Doing Different.

9 January 2023

Wrong can be subjective

Too often we judge something to be “wrong” because it doesn’t fit our preconceived ideas about what “right” should look like. We’ve made a judgement about fitness for purpose with an implied assumption that what we produced isn’t fit for any purpose, never mind the one we started out with.

This hydrangea image is a perfect example. For some reason, my normal editing software seemed to get confused by the black background, causing it to fail to see the colour and much of the detail in most of the flower. The colours and details were all seen perfectly by the same software in other images I took of the same flower using exactly the same settings, just with different coloured backgrounds. Playing around with various settings to see if I could “rescue” anything I liked from the situation, I ended up with this image. While it’s not what I originally visioned, being a very different style to what I normally try for, it’s really growing on me because it’s different. Now I’m visioning how big to print it and where it’s going to look most effective hanging.

If I had stuck inflexibly to my original vision, I would simply have written off everything that was invested in producing this “wrong” image. Being willing to challenge my concept of “wrong”, I’ve ended up with an artwork that I would happily pay for because it matches an element of my personal style, even though it wasn’t what I went out specifically looking for on that day.

While there might be times where “wrong” is the correct eventual judgement, that doesn’t mean it should always be our first judgement. A decision to question that first judgement will often bring us unanticipated value.

2 January 2023

SOAR

As the sun goes down on the year that was 2022, it’s natural to look back on the year that was. At all the things we did and didn’t do. At all the reasons – real and imagined – we used to explain those things. We can’t undo that year, because it will always be part of what has made us who we are. We should rightly celebrate the things that went well – there are valuable clues there for doing those things again and improving on them this year. We should not “beat ourselves up” for the things that didn’t go as well as we hoped or planned, or our self-punishment will cause us to hide away from the valuable Learning Moments they contain.

Instead, look to the sunrise of the coming year. Commit ourselves to soaring higher, further, and better than before. To being the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be. To value the evolutionary improvements and achievements as much as the revolutionary ones. Not to reinventing ourselves as some sort of mythical “new person”, but as a developing version of the person who already exists.

Take the time to contemplate before committing. January 1st doesn’t require a definitive list of commitments, some (or maybe even many) of which will be abandoned when it’s convenient to do so. Know in which direction the sun of our future lies and adjust how we fly as necessary to keep heading in that general direction. Spy out the landmarks where we can rest on our journey, where we can evaluate progress on our flight plan. and give ourselves permission to take those rest and evaluation breaks. Refueling our mental, emotional and spiritual tanks will enable us to soar more effectively in the medium to longer-term than if we try soaring without a break. The quality of the journey is more important than the destination.

26 December 2022

Rest and Recharge

The festive season break at year’s end is often associated with eating and drinking more than usual (or more than may actually be good for us) and the giving of gifts (that may cost more than we can realistically afford). There’s somewhere I think we need to focus more than the commercial extravaganza that seems to have become the whole of December, and that’s on giving to ourselves. Giving that’s not about lots of money and lots of “things” – but is about looking after ourselves. Taking the time to get out in the fresh air, not doing (or even thinking about doing) work. Taking the time to live in the beauty of the moment and smell the sunshine. For me that often involves taking my camera with me so I can focus on the beautiful moments and record them so I can live them again when I’m not able to get out in the fresh air. I don’t have lots of kit, and it’s mostly “entry level” pieces. It’s not the amount of kit that I have, or what it cost that’s important; it’s real value lies in the way it leads me out into the fresh air when it’s time for a Rest and Recharge break.

It’s also about being able to share those moments through my images with others who could benefit from a relaxing moment or two in their own days. Knowing that my own Rest and Recharge breaks might encourage somebody else to take a break in the fresh air themselves makes my own breaks doubly worthwhile.

Look after yourselves. Do it deliberately, rather than waiting for somebody else to do it for you. It’s not about how far you go or how much you spend – it’s about taking the time to reconnect with you and being who you are (instead of who you think other people expect you to be).

19 December 2022

To have luck – First show up

I’ve waited for several weeks for this distinguished gentleman rose, Christophe, to bloom at Lady Norwood Rose Garden. When all around him have been doing their thing, he has continued working to his own timeline, meaning I’ve visited a couple of times a week for several weeks to observe progress. On this particular day, the rain was fairly persistent but I found what I had been waiting for – a range of partly open buds, plus three fully open blooms. Photographic heaven achieved (for me) because I continued with the planning and the execution until I could capture the images I had been envisioning since the end of the previous flowering season.

The lesson here is this. I didn’t trust the result to luck that I had no influence over. I kept on showing up, vision in the front of my mind and tools ready to go. If I didn’t keep showing up, especially those times when it wasn’t particularly convenient, I would have missed some beautiful moments on a rainy Saturday afternoon that would be gone forever, and the images I captured would have been forever unseen.

As i get more into my photography, the more I’ve come to realise that photography is something of a metaphor for life and work in general. What you get out relates closely to what you are prepared to put in. Some things you can control and others you can’t, and focusing on the things you can control generally brings better results for the effort committed. The more you vision the desired result, the more likely you are to deliberately do things that contribute to achieving it. Above all, you need to invest yourself in showing up. Only by continuing to show up will you really vision and experience what is possible for you, and the difference you can make for others.

12 December 2022

Enjoy the journey

As many of us are busily heading towards the finish of the year/start of the holiday season, the most valuable lesson I can share with you is that more isn’t everything. Going faster than anybody else, doing more than anybody else, being (supposedly) better than anybody else – these things are not the real “victories.” There’s a good chance they are only imaginary; they are certainly only things that exist in the short term if they exist at all. Being remembered for the quality of who you are and what you do is way more valuable than being remembered for the quantity.

Slow down. Engage all your senses with there you are, what is happening, where you are intending to go, and how you are intending to get there. Be mindful in the moment. Being the best version of you that you can possibly be happens when you learn from, and enjoy the journey. The journey will teach you so much more about the importance of being you than the destination ever will if you open your mind to the possibilities of the present and the future rather than the problems of the past.

5 December 2022

POP

There may be times when you choose to blend into the background. There may be plenty of different reasons why that might be an appropriate strategy for you. If you have an ambitions goal, though, you will need to POP – stand out from the background. When you POP, more people will have a chance to appreciate the value you help create with them just through being you.

28 November 2022

The Janus Hour

In ancient Roman myth and religion, Janus was the god of such things as beginnings, gates, transitions, and endings. He is reputed to have had two faces, giving him the ability to look both backwards and forwards in time. I like to think of sunset as the Janus Hour gift he shared with us. At the end of our day, as the sun dips towards the horizon, we have the opportunity – if we choose to take it – to look backwards at the day that was. The opportunity to celebrate the good things that happened to us, and to remember the good things we did for others to make their day a little better. The opportunity to look ahead to when the sun comes up tomorrow and to anticipate the things that may happen to us; to plan the things we want to make happen. The opportunity to appreciate our reflections as they happen rather than forcing the pace. The opportunity to treasure each of today’s learning moments because they are the foundation for tomorrow’s sunshine.

21 November 2022

Leadership and Management Lessons from my Cat: Be who you really are – not who you think somebody else expects you to be

The BEST version of you is the version that’s true to who you really are. It’s the one that doesn’t pretend to be the person you think other people expect you to be – because different people will expect different things (and you may not know what most of those things are). This is important, because you can’t effectively be all things to all people. Know what your values are – take the time to think about them – then say and do things that are consistent with those values. Your values don’t make you perfect, but they are a constant guide to being awesome. When you are awesome and consistent, your values become obvious to yourself and to the world. Words and actions aligned to your values are what everybody else really expects, because they are who you really are.

14 November 2022

Be in the beauty of the moment

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing numbers of people reported feeling like they couldn’t keep up with all that was being demanded of them. No matter how much they did, it seemed like more was always expected of them, but with fewer resources and less time to produce the expected results. Like the hamster on the treadmill, they could never go fast or far enough, and they were feeling increasingly less satisfied with what they were able to achieve.

Devoting more time to work demands (either real or imagined) doesn’t automatically lead to getting more done. In fact, it eventually starts to have the opposite result – less produced, of lesser quality, and a burnt-out person who has no life outside of work, and not much life inside of work.

No matter how difficult it is – and it will be difficult at first, if you are on that “work is everything” treadmill – part of the solution is being in the beauty of the moment. I’m talking about a moment that isn’t about work. A moment where you just smell the sunshine and soak in the beauty of nature. Breathe slowly and deeply. Repeat for as long and as often as necessary. This is nature’s way of “refilling your tanks” because you can’t make progress when your energy and spirit tanks are empty. Invest this time in yourself – you are worth it.

7 November 2022

Rise early. See the day’s potential. Act

When you rise early, you see a potential in the day that exists only at that moment. While your mind is uncluttered with all the busyness still to come in your day, take the time to open your senses to nature. Just be in the moment. Let the beauty of the new day come to you as the sunlight pushes the darkness away. Appreciate the changing of the colours and shadows. Different perspectives are not a matter of automatic right and wrong, but of personal perception. Focus closely and absorb the tiny details that make up the bigger picture.

Choose to enjoy today. Not everyone will have that choice, so your decision and your actions can make the world a lighter and more positive place. Be the sunlight for others so they can have their own day of potential.

31 October 2022

Windows reveal

Whether a leader or a follower – or somebody who moves between the two roles depending on the needs of the situation – there are two windows each of us looks through (or should look through). The outward looking window reveals the world as it is, and that’s the starting point to work towards what it could be. The inward looking window reveals us as we are, and that’s the starting point to work towards being the best version of ourselves that we can be.

If we look through only one window, this only reveals partial reality. If we choose to look through the window that doesn’t challenge us, we reveal a future that isn’t all that it could be. If we look through the window with the toughest challenges on the other side, meeting them will reveal aspects of ourselves that might otherwise remain hidden.

Revealing the best version of ourselves means looking through both windows. It means honestly appreciating what is revealed. It means taking the time to understand our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. From this understanding come our intentions, commitments, and actions.

25 October 2022

Purpose

Have you ever wondered what your purpose is? Perhaps you’ve felt like a wandering seabird, flying high above the waves of life. In one direction, you face towards a horizon of uncertainty – you know there’s something out there, but you can’t make out what it is, or even how far away it is. In the other direction there might be a bit of turbulence and some rocks you need to navigate around to arrive at a destination. Even though it might not always feel like it, bumping the rocks on the way past is an important part of you becoming who you are meant to be. This is all “big purpose stuff”, though, and it’s OK for that to change as your journey continues.

What about the “short term stuff” – “What is my purpose today?” Maybe it’s as simple as just “being.” Being the friend or family member you are to others. Being the person who makes a difference in the little part of the world you can directly influence through the small things you do, because those are the foundations of the big things. Being there. Care for yourself – it is through caring for yourself that you develop the empathy to care about and for others, and that’s your daily purpose, since the world will be a better place because you care.

17 October 2022

Savour the journey

Sometimes life might feel like a bit of a jungle of competing demands, unreasonable expectations and where you are going might not be clear. Other times, even the winding path will stand out from the jungle, allowing you to plan your way ahead. Neither of these are permanent states – you will move between them as you react to the world around you, and as you refine your ideas about where you want to go and why reaching your destination is so important. The best advice I can share with you is not to focus so much on the destination that you overlook the value of everything you learn during the journey. Every experience contributes to you being who you are today, and is a part of the foundation of who you will be tomorrow. Even the negative experiences, and the challenges you don’t think you mastered as well as you intended along the way, are still sources of positive learning if you are prepared to accept them that way.

10 October 2022

Celebrate

It’s time to celebrate:

All you’ve done (including the many things you once thought were impossible for you)

All you’ve learned – so much more than you expected

All you’ve achieved so far – and all you are still capable of achieving

3 October 2022

Leadership lessons from my cat – Always have a `Plan B`

Sometimes we joke about needing to have a “Plan B” – but don’t take the joke seriously. After all – nothing could possibly go wrong with our perfect “Plan A.” What if something doesn’t go according to your original planning, though…? That’s when the time spent contemplating what “Plan B” might look like – and maybe putting a few things in place (just in case) becomes an investment in stress reduction. One of the great benefits of this investment is that if you don’t raw on it now, you can always store that thinking (and any actions already taken) up for use later. This is one investment whose value will never decrease.

26 September 2022

Beauty – More than Perfection

Think how many times you have been encouraged in your life to strive for perfection. Only perfection will do, you have been told. You reach the point where you believe this, and you start second-guessing yourself when it comes to what anything you do should be [insert whichever of your senses is appropriate here] like. Perhaps you get to the stage where you don’t even start things because you have already convinced yourself that you won’t be able to achieve perfection. If you have started a task, you may have difficulty completing it because you think it still needs to be done just that little bit “better”… In case you are wondering, yes, I am writing from experience…

The reality is that you can still achieve beautiful outcomes even if they don’t match pre-determined standards of “perfection” – and beautiful outcomes are not bad things. This magnolia blossom I captured in the Wellington Botanic Garden recently may not be “perfect” if your standard of perfection is petals that have no spots or other marks on them. Those spots and marks don’t stop it being beautiful, however. The lesson here is that beauty doesn’t exist only when something is supposedly “perfect.” Don’t let striving for perfection stop you achieving beautiful outcomes that make a difference in the world, even if that difference is one person at a time.

19 September 2022

Value the journey…

All too often we are told to “reach for the top”, as if only the view of life from the top of whatever is important to us is worth experiencing… I have no problem with aiming as high as we think we can go, then adding some stretch to that. Even if we don’t reach the “very top” (wherever or whatever that is), we will still have outperformed anybody who didn’t make a conscious decision to be the best they could possibly be.

What we don’t hear as often, however, is how much we should value the journey. No matter what level we have reached at any given point in time; no matter how long it has taken us to get there – just being on the journey has made it possible for us to learn things about what it means to be us that we would never have learned if we did not attempt the journey. The most valuable discoveries do not exist only at the end of the journey – they are there for us to find and value every day. Be open to finding them, willing to receive them, and prepared to value them through your future thoughts and actions.

12 September 2022

What you look for determines what you see

When you fixate on one thing, or on a vision that has only one possibility, you close yourself off to so many other possibilities of awesomeness. Take the time and be open to see everything in front of you before making closed judgements.

5 September 2022

Turbulence

Sometimes life (or maybe a particular project or assignment you’re working on) can seem a bit like this sand landscape at Plimmerton Beach – ups, downs, all over the place, no regular patterns – just constant turbulence. As whatever time period you are measuring progresses, areas that were dark become illuminated, while others that were in the light now slip into shadow. It may seem that the only certainty is more turbulence.

You can invest most of your time and other resources into trying to level out the sand of your task, to eliminate the turbulence. Before you commit to this, think about the advantages of a certain amount of turbulence:

You will experience thoughts and feelings that won’t happen without the turbulence – and they won’t all be negative.
You will see possibilities you might not have seen without the turbulence – and they may suggest new or better answers to problems than you would have come up with otherwise.

Yes, turbulence can be unpredictable, and challenging to deal with. Adapting to it instinctively might take some time to achieve, but it’s definitely worth the effort. Don’t be afraid to ask for, or to accept help – those are signs of strength, so don’t let anybody convince you that working collaboratively is a bad thing. While there will still be times when you have to achieve on an individual basis, it’s your collaborative handling of the turbulence that is the foundation of your individual performance.

29 August 2022

Imposter? Not.

There’s something it’s really important for me to do – in fact, I’m quite passionate about it. There’s a little voice inside my head that keeps telling me I’m an imposter – I’m not good enough – I don’t belong. I know that little voice well – in the past, I’ve been aggressively trained to hear it by people who certainly weren’t qualified to make such judgments. In hindsight, the sad thing is I actually paid attention to that training and spent more time believing it than it deserved.

It’s more worth paying attention to the voices from outside my head, like the voice of my friend, awesome Mawera Karetai who pops up in my chat at the most random times to remind me I’m not an imposter, and that I do belong in the space I’m playing it. I’ve never worked out how she knows it’s exactly the right time to pop up in my chat, but it always is.

The lesson from my own experience is this: Seek out the voices who believe in you, who will be there to support you. Understand that sometimes those voices will seek you out – it’s serendipity. They don’t believe in you because they have to – they believe in you because they can see with more clarity than you can sometimes the value that you have as a human being. They can understand with more empathy than you sometimes show yourself the determination that has already carried you far beyond where the negative voices said you belong. They can project forward with more certainty the powerful difference you have yet to make for people you have yet to meet. Choose the voices that lift you up in preference to the ones that do their best to tear you down.

I am not an imposter. You are not an imposter.

I belong. You belong.

22 August 2022

Rest and recharge for tomorrow

As the sun goes down at the end of the day, take the time to relax gently, rather than continuing the day’s hectic pace right up until your eyes close for sleep. Give your brain time to wind down, your pulse and stress levels to drop. Enjoy a relaxing meal and time with family and pets. Maybe you might want to fit in a little exercise, if that’s the most convenient time for you. Reflect on the day; celebrate the things that went well instead of dwelling on those that didn’t go so well. The positives will definitely help you rest better.

Resist the temptation to fill tomorrow’s calendar with 10 priorities you need to take care of. According to burnout expert and author Jess Stuart, priority is a singular word – one of the most profound pieces of wisdom I’m grateful for her sharing with me. That doesn’t necessarily mean doing only one thing tomorrow, but it does mean not trying to convince yourself that everything has equal importance, and that you can do more than you realistically know you are capable of. Having a calendar that’s not overloaded definitely helps with my recharge for tomorrow, and I know it’s something I need to keep telling myself to make sure I don’t slip back into that familiar over-stress territory.

15 August 2022

To lift another first you must be able to take the load

It’s easy to say that we have a duty to look out for our fellow team members, friends, family…indeed, it’s often expressed quite openly that this is what’s expected of us. Before we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into caring about and for others, however, there’s something we need to ask ourselves: Are we ready to take the load? Self-care shouldn’t be something optional; it’s something we should have as a first priority. Only when we have taken care of ourselves are we able to successfully lift others who need a helping hand.

8 August 2022

MOVE

A leadership/management lesson I’ve learned from our cat – MOVE. Exercise is something we should always make the time for. There is no prize for sitting in front of the computer screen longer than anybody else. Rise up from the chair and stretch all those muscles. Take some breaths of fresh air. Your brain and your body will thank you for it.

1 August 2022

Be proud and stand strong.

You’ve already been through so much and done so much to get where you are right now. Maybe you haven’t realised it yet, but that makes you a strong and valuable human being. Be proud of all you’ve achieved so far, because it makes a powerful statement about who you are. Stand strong when you face the future. Yes, sometimes events may make getting where you want to go more difficult. Some people may tell you that you aren’t good enough to get where you want to go. They aren’t you, and they don’t know you the way you do. Draw on your strength and face your future with determination – you are capable of so much, and you deserve to achieve all the success you are capable of. Nobody else has the right to take that away from you.

11 July 2022

Stand up and say what needs to be said

Stand up and say what needs to be said. It’s the only way others are really going to know what you are thinking. It’s also a great opportunity for you to really think about the six important questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. Regardless of whether you are a leader or a follower, the advice applies equally. Communication is never as effective when it’s treated as something that’s optional rather than compulsory.

Rob

25 July 2022

Reflection – with time comes clarity

Reflection is something that, as leaders, we encourage and support our followers to do on a regular basis. It’s also something that we should be doing ourselves, so there’s no disconnect between what we say and what we do.

Effective reflection is a process that allows for the effect of time. No matter how many of us experience the same circumstances, we do so at a pace that is unique to us. No matter how certain we might be at the start of the process about what we will perceive by the end of it, the ripples of our thoughts will settle when we are ready to appreciate the outcome. It’s OK for details not to be clear at the start of the process, or even through much of its duration. The speed of your reflective ripples settling should not be measured against what anybody else says is happening for them; instead, we should pay attention to the patterns that form and break repeatedly as clarity begins to form in our thinking. Value comes from trusting the process and appreciating the result for what it is, because that’s the starting point for our next decisions.

You could force the detail of the words to leap at you from the page, or you could enjoy the picture and let the words come to you more gently. Either way, you will get the same message, but one way will be less stressful than the other.

Stand up and say what needs to be said

Reflection – with time comes clarity

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