Training Blog

Just back from a mellowing week in Scotland, breathing sea air and getting some rest – very refreshing. Anyway, the point being that it gave me time to really think about some of the key issues that are currently affecting our businesses. What I realise is that over time we have lost an element of focus that was serving us so well.
 
Focus is key in anything you want to be successful at. Imagine this – you want to be a successful hockey player and it´s the most important thing to you. Every morning when you get up you say to yourself "I am going to be a successful hockey player because…." and you focus on what actions you can take to make that happen. During the day, you see visual reminders (team photo, written goal list e.g. 30 minutes of aerobic training today) of your key activities to become a successful hockey player. At night, you review what you managed to achieve towards this endpoint and list out the 6 most important things you need to do tomorrow to move you towards your goal. The following morning, you recommence the ritual again.
 

How well do you think this person will progress towards their goal? Powerful, isn´t it?
 
So, the pledge from St Andrew´s is that we will redefine our organisational goals in crystal clear terms, create our visual reminders and regain an acute focus on what we need to do to take it to the next level.

I´ve been givne some financial planning spreadsheets that were originally written in Lotus 123 with a .123 file extension – so they´re old, very old! I´ve spent some hours trying to work out how to use them in Excel, as I don´t have the Lotus Software.
 
Now, you can get a converter for the .wk1/2/3/4 file extensions, the later version of Lotus 123 but Excel just doesn´t read the older ones. I was just about to give up hope when I hit on an idea which worked, you´ll be pleased to know if you have the same problem. I did visit a forum that advised getting a ´reader´ for Lotus which I tried. It did allow me to extract the data but it loses all the formulae – the whole point of the spreadsheets.

 
So, here´s what you do. You go to Corel and download a trial version of their office suite, containing Quattro Pro. Once downloaded (about 176mb so not too long on Broadband) you can open your files with Quattro Pro, which even lets you select a a Lotus 123 mode and then save them in whatever you wish, pretty well preserving all of the functions in the original sheets. Being a businessman, I wasn´t sure whether to share or sell the solution;-) I decided on ´share´ so that you´d think I was a complete humanitarian too!

Whilst hunting through the thickets of the world wide web yesterday, I came across a brand new forum for NHS staff. It appears to be designed as a chat medium for NHS professionals to post their true feelings about the NHS, it´s changes and any government plans in an anonymous format.

 
I suspect that this will become really popular because my own experience with the NHS is that open discussion is suppressed in case it does not fit with the desired direction. Consequently everyone moans behind the scenes but actual open productive resistance to projects is largely unseen. This is unhealthly in any organisation but in this environment it means that the people who really know how it all works rarely get to say what they think. NHSforum will certainly change that.
 
However, what I really wanted to say was that this is a great new communication channel for commercial professionals, such as oursleves, to advertise to healthcare professionals. We´ve done a deal already and so we wish the new venture every success!

Our automated appointment & event reminder system is currently being redesigned for different target audiences. One of the highest users of text messaging is the teen market and so we are developing a re-branded version just for them.
 
Last week I had to sit down and write the advertising scripts for this market and I realised that suddenly I speak the wrong language. Admittedly we all speak English. I, however, am using English version 1.3 and it appears that teens are using version 7.5 XP KGB CIA and I am having considerable trouble translating! What I do know is that to use the same language that I relate to (ancient 36 yoa) e.g. set yourself text message event reminders to become more organised, just won´t cut it but I´m really struggling with the alternative e.g. be cool central by texting your mates from your PC.
 
Has anyone else had the same issue and how did you get round it? I thought about using our children for translation but then I realise that teens themselves seem to have their own local dialects… Argghhhh!

We´re currently raising around ?1.5 million for a new venture that creates an entirely new advertising channel. It´s one of those in-between amounts that sits us slightly above your average individual/ business angel and yet sub threshold for your average VC.
 
We are getting a number of investor networks showing interest but then they all want a fee up front. My fear is that they are perhaps more interested in the fees than the venture. So far, every one has said they think the venture has a real chance of raising funds. On the one hand that is encouraging but on the other hand I would expect a more mixed reaction if everyone is genuine i.e. some highly enthusiastic (because the venture is a sound one) and some highly sceptical. I was wondering if fellow business people out there have experienced these investor networks and what their opinion was?

As I previously rambled, we have just returned from sailing around the Northern Ionian in Greece. For anyone interested we used Kiracoulis Yachting and chose a Gibsea 37 for six of us – two adults and four children. I thought I´d share the leadership experience…
 
Firstly, what can go wrong when you are in a 37´ space with nowhere to go? Well, where do you start? Clearly, most of activity in sailing is time driven e.g. if we don´t tack NOW we will be in that fishing net or if you don´t get those ropes organised well will look very stupid trying to moor a boat stern to a quayside without a stern line! Equally, swift action is paramount for safety, especially in rougher seas. We sailed in everything from a force 1 to a force 6, the latter creating quite a sea.
 
I started by establising some clear lines of authority. I was overal skipper and whatever I said went, regardless of opinion at the time, although I was always happy to discuss courses of action post event. Although this sounds autocratic, its motivation was to ensure that in the event of an emergency or safety issue I had the maximum opportunity to ensure we ´won´. I then established roles – my wife was in charge of foredeck, mainly for anchoring and the children had a strict rota for helping out. All ´nice´ tasks such as reclaiming the anchor, helming, collecting the fenders etc were rotated through the children according to how helpful they were. We did introduce a further rule that any niggling about who´s turn, they´ve done more than me etc resulted in an automatic bar from the day´s fun tasks. This completely cut out all further moaning.

 
Overall, we felt the trip was a great example of how to utilise effective leadership, in a planned way from the outset, to ensure that a potential stressful and sometimes risky pursuit was conducted without hitch and in a fun way.

Highly chilled because I´ve just got back from two weeks in the sun and so thought I´d provide a few snippets that I observed whilst away.
 
We sailed the first week on a 37´ Gibsea around the Northern Ionian – more later. The second week we spent in an all-inclusive 4-star hotel on Corfu. We got a discounted rate to such a degree that we were convinced the hotel would be awful but in actual fact it was excellent (Hotel Aeolus Beach in Perama, just South of Corfu Town, if you´re interested). It had two nice pools, a pebble beach with sand further out and more food & drink than you could shake a stick at.

 
What was impressive was that the restaurant manager was constantly on the floor. He clearly had set very specific guidelines for his staff but very much lead by example. He never walked past a table with dirties on it without removing them and went immediately to request more food for any section of the buffet that got low. This meant that the otherwise frustrating nature of hotel buffets was actually surprisingly pleasant in the Aeolus Beach. The impact this had on the staff was two fold – they either adopted the same behaviour with a smile and genuinely tried to do the best they could under sometimes difficult circumstances or… they adopted the same behaviour without a smile – either way, the service was excellent.