While creating happy customers is one aspect of Naomi Simson’s business (and an important one), creating happy staff and stakeholders are equally critical components.

RedBalloon’s founder, Simson draws heavily on her experience as a senior marketer, having worked her way up over a 15-year period from marketing officer to product manager, marketing manager and director with well-known companies such as Ansett, IBM, KPMG and Apple. After leaving corporate life to become a mother, other priorities took hold and she decided to build her own workplace that people genuinely looked forward to attending every day.  Simson believes this is vital for long-term success and it’s something she is well versed in.  RedBalloon has secured a place in the list of Australia’s Best Places to Work produced by BRW four years in a row now.

RedBalloon are considered the pioneers of experiential gifting in Australia and New Zealand.

Although a recent arrival on the scene, here are some of the awards that they have won over the past few years:-

2013 –     #8 in the Top 50 BRW Best Places to Work in Australia (an award they are well and truly used to receiving) and one of only 9 companies to make this award 5 years in a row

2012 –     Secured a place in BRW Top 50 Best Places to Work in Australia.
BRW Fast 100 list from 2004 to 2009.  Red Balloon have also been a regular on the Deloitte Fast 50 for Australia, beginning in 2006.

2011 –     Australian Human Resources Institute HR Practitioner Of The Year – Awarded to RedBalloon Employee Experience Manager Megan Bromley.
-    Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Award – Awarded to company founder Naomi Simson (2011 Eastern Region winner for the Industry category).

2010 –    Hewitt Best Employers – One of only six companies to receive recognition.

2008 –    Nokia Business Award for Innovation – Presented to Naomi Simson at the Telstra Business Women’s Awards.

There are numerous other awards too many to mention here, and they are all centred around training, culture, team building and innovation.

In her book ‘Five Thanks a Day,’ Naomi Simson has compiled a collection of stories on the ‘how-to’ and science of saying thank you, the concept of which she also attributes as part of her success.

The name behind Simson’s endeavour was inspired by the 1956 Oscar-winning French short film Le Ballon Rouge (“The Red Balloon”), which takes viewers on a series of journeys with a young boy named Pascal and a whimsical red balloon that begins to follow him through Paris. That red balloon, a vibrant symbol of fun and happiness throughout the film, laid the foundation for Simson’s dream venture.

“I wanted to test if a business could be successful by simply listening to its people and its customers, and focusing on what would get people talking: the giving and receiving of experiential gifts that create memories,” Simson says.

Now, twelve years later, the company Simson founded in her family home has flourished into a six-time BRW Fast Company that has garnered many more accolades for its work environment, gift offerings, and employee engagement.

In an effort to bring RedBalloon into the business sphere, a corporate incentive service was created that offers employees reward points that may be redeemed for cash credit on the RedBalloon website. There are approximately 3,000 clients involved in this innovative program including such corporate heavy hitters as Qantas, Virgin Mobile, ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, Telstra and Origin Energy.

The work in this sector is not only rewarding for participating companies, but also for the RedBalloon employees coordinating the programs. “I have found my home in a business where they practice what they preach and ‘mix business with pleasure’,” says Matt Geraghty, General Manager of Corporate.

People Management

The work atmosphere at RedBalloon is just as upbeat and invigorating as the experiences they offer, and this is largely due to the high spirits of the employees.

“We believe that our people are our biggest competitive strength and, as a result, have shaped an award winning culture of fun, appreciation and recognition designed to attract and retain top talent,” says RedBalloon’s current CEO Kristie Buchanan.

A great deal of emphasis is placed on structuring the employees’ daily experiences to ensure that every work day is engaging and fulfilling.

“The framework – ‘Welcome. Tools. Grow. Flow. Appreciate’ – covers our approach to recruitment and on-boarding; what productivity tools we provide; how employees are kept connected to the flow of information; and finally, how they are recognised and challenged,” says Buchanan. “Our growth plans involve continuing to find more innovative ways to deliver meaningful experiences to our customers, our corporate clients and our employees. This could be in the form of products, in service delivery, in our marketing or technology.”

Check out for yourself why RedBalloon is one of Australia’s most sought after companies to work for and why it is also one of the fastest growing start-up brands in business today. I am sure it will give you food for thought. RedBalloon is another of the amazing companies we will be showcasing on our week long study tour in February of organisations that are changing the shape of the way we do business.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to join our February study tour and create the environment that attracts and retains the young leaders of the future for your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

I must admit I got caught out recently when I thought I was doing the right thing by this young tradesman. I needed some landscaping to be completed at the front of my property and it just so happened that at the same time I was considering my options, a young man (around 25 years) happened to drop by with a business card offering to quote me on the job. He had been doing some work in the area and noticed that I had been preparing my front yard for a major facelift. He seemed knowledgeable about his craft (landscaping and concreting) and was personable enough in a rough ‘tradie’ kind of way. Once I had seen his handiwork on some previous jobs, I felt comfortable he could complete the work to an acceptable level, so I decided to give him the opportunity. So far so good…

Given I did not know him personally, I wanted to make sure that I would receive fair value for money so we came to an arrangement that I would pay directly for any of the material needed (machinery hire; sand and soil supply; concrete delivery etc.), and he would charge me at a daily ‘labour-only’ rate for him and his mate which would allow me to keep within the budget I had set aside for the project. He told me in advance what the daily rate for the two of them would be and it seemed reasonable enough so the project commenced with me confident that I had covered all the bases and that we were both on the same page with our mutual expectations.

The first couple of days I needed to be off site in meetings so I didn’t get much opportunity to observe what my contractor and his mate were doing. Each day there was evidence of progress in the right direction albeit slower than I expected, so I assumed that things were on track and I paid him as I had agreed to do at the end of the first two days of work. By day four I was beginning to get concerned that the project did not seem to be progressing as fast as I had hoped but I put that concern down to me not being knowledgeable in the ways of landscaping. Whenever I raised my concerns with my young friend, he assured me that things were progressing well and his super confidence seemed to allay my fears enough for me to question myself and my expectations rather than him and his abilities. By now I felt we were two days behind where we needed to be if I was to keep within my budget, so I decided to remain around for the next day to observe first-hand the work that was being done for me by our landscaper and his helper.

At the end of day five, the penny had dropped for me.

Here’s what I witnessed. The general theme of ‘a days work’ by my young landscaper….

Arrive around 8.30-8.45 am. Take the next half hour preparing site works (i.e. unpack the ‘ute’ while chatting about the night before with his mate). Set tasks for the mate to complete while answering mobile phone calls for another half an hour. Do some work for about an hour before taking a break. Complete the morning break and work for another hour before leaving the site together at around 11.30 am to have lunch. Come back an hour later, and work until around 2.30 pm when it was time to clean up. Leave at around 3.00 pm (sometimes earlier I later discovered) to go and quote on other jobs.

As you (and I) will discover from this scenario, a day of work for two tradesmen consisted of probably only five to five and a half hours of actual work. The rest was made up of late arrival, long meal breaks and early finishes interrupted constantly by mobile phone calls and a lot of watching by the tradie’s mate while the tradie did the skilled work.

That evening I quizzed my young contractor what a ‘fair days work for a fair days pay’ meant to him, and much to my surprise he answered that if he is on site for four hours or less it is charged out at a half day rate, but anything over four hours was a full day regardless of how much time was spent on site working. When I mentioned that it seemed like I was actually paying for a full day for two of them for only 1.5 hours more that his half day rate he shrugged his shoulders and said ‘this was what we agreed on.’

And he was right!

In my eagerness to engage him and cover what I assumed was all the bases, I left out one very important aspect of our communication. At a daily ‘labour-only’ rate – what constituted a days work? I wonder if you have you ever been caught out like this as I was.

And here is the valuable lesson I learned from this recent episode. When giving freedom to people without framework built around that freedom, what you are actually doing is giving them licence not freedom. This is because freedom and autonomy without proper framework takes away accountability, and without accountability freedom for the individual is a fairly hollow experience for all concerned.

This recent experience of mine translates directly across to the workplace, especially with our fast changing workforce where we are attempting to create cultures filled with the young Gen Y whizz-kids of the future whom we want to attract and retain. In our rush to engage with them and their self belief that anything is possible for them (instilled into them via parents; schools and the media), we need to be very careful that we do not give them licence without framework in the name of self determination and autonomy. It is a fine line between the two but it can be a slippery slope if we are not more careful as their employers.

I guess you may be wondering what was the final outcome for my landscaping project? Instead of it being an enjoyable win-win experience for both of us, once my trust had been broken I believe it developed into a lose-lose experience instead. My project took double the expected amount of time to be completed and henceforth my budget blew out significantly, and the extra work that I had agreed my eager landscaper could do once the main project was completed was given to someone else to complete under tighter and more specific guidelines as a result. So my young landscaping friend got less work in the end and I paid more than expected.

Here is an excellent link to a blog written by a young and eager Gen Y achiever Kejia Zhu, an employee of Facebook. He’s a 29 year old guy who was born in China, grew up in the UK and now lives in America. Kejia wrote a blog this week which received a lot of attention worldwide because it speaks to the heart of the overblown expectations of the Gen Y generation and their search for instant success before they reach thirty. In his blog Kejia talks with a fair degree of insight about the value of patience and the wisdom that comes with age and years of experience in a world bludgeoned by stories of overnight fame and success.

When I read what Keija says about his 92 yo grandfather’s achievements and his own new-found insight into the meaning of success, it gives me heart that there is a place in this world for every generation if we are prepared to step back and honour the unique perspective that people of each each decade of learning and discovery brings to the table.

http://kzhu.net/does-life-end-at-35.html

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to create the environment that attracts and retains the young leaders of the future for your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

Photo Credit – ‘Grandpa stealing wifi for his beloved iPad’  – Keija (@Kzhu)

And where there is an Information Resource Centre where books are borrowed and returned on an ‘honour’ system; where there are no bells or buzzers because the students are responsible for their own time keeping; and where appreciative enquiry, team teaching and collaborative study in an open learning environment is the order of the day. If you remember those old school days between 15 and 18 years of age when you sat in dreary classrooms while the teacher stood at the front and filled you full of information that you had to commit to memory and regurgitate at appropriate times, then it’s time to consider a new form of student utopia.

Because here in Melbourne, Victoria, we have a new style of teaching which goes to the core of what ‘education’ should be all about. If you consider that the word education originates from the Latin root ‘educare’ which means ‘to lead or draw out,’ not ‘to push in’ as most of our educational models of earlier times seem to reflect, you may begin to gain an inkling of what our newest secondary educative model for students from Years 9-12 is aspiring to achieve.

This is no experimental laboratory of learning. It happens to be one of our newest and most ground-breaking educational institutions, in the form of Nossal High School, built and opened as recently as 2010 by our Victorian Government as one of only four unique Selective Entry Schools in the state. Student competition to gain entry to this open learning environment is fierce (likewise the teaching staff), and the high achieving, socially aware and community minded alumni that Nossal is producing is testament to an environment where discussion and debate across a wide range of subjects with a wide range of peers is the norm. Nossal’s truly unique environment gives students the freedom to utilise ‘break out spaces’ around the school during class times, to independently study or meet with teachers for advice and support.

When you walk through the school, you will marvel at the open plan teaching spaces; the light, bright and airy feel to the whole physical environment; the internet cafe style study areas; the whiteboard tabletops for group project brainstorming; the many informal lounge areas for ‘chilling out;’ the casual teachers’ offices furnished with comfortable lounges for students wishing to have ‘one-on-ones’ with their selected teacher; the adaptable physical spaces that convert in a few minutes from auditorium to smaller, more intimate ensemble areas; the breakfast, tea and coffee facilities conveniently located around the common areas for students to avail themselves; and the extremely well equipped specialist teaching facilities.

Whether it be physical education, music, english, the sciences, maths, cooking, drama, languages, humanities or other elective subjects, the student-centric, learning-rich physical facilities are state of the art. The school even has a wonderfully equipped IT resource department that is solely there for students and teachers to leave their computers or other IT paraphernalia for hardware repair or software de-bugging or system set-up as the case may be.

But what is most striking when you explore the community is the quiet confidence of the students actively engaged with teachers and each other in an open learning environment or walking purposefully to their next study elective, ubiquitous iPad in hand, in a respectful atmosphere of collegial enquiry and discovery. When you stop and ask any student at random, what they do for fun outside of ‘classroom’ time, you will invariably hear the answer that ‘the whole experience of learning is fun here’, so the lines are very blurred between what constitutes schoolwork vs free time at Nossal High School.

In the pursuit of individual excellence via an environment that allows students to grow step by step to reach their full potential, not only do students learn from their teachers but also the teachers learn from their students. In the words of Nossal High School’s organisational ethos, “We believe that teachers and students are forces that exist for each other and therefore promote and encourage an environment where both staff and students are treated equally with respect and understanding.”

The school’s curriculum is based on Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner’s principles of the ‘Five Minds for the Future,’ (Gardner, 2008) and it achieves this through exceptional learning, outstanding teachers, gifted and talented students and an innovative and dynamic adult learning environment. This is a philosophy that future leaders will need to develop certain cognitive abilities, which Gardner defines as the ‘five minds:-’ the disciplined mind; the synthesizing mind; the creative mind; the respectful mind; and the ethical mind. As Nossal High School’s website states, each domain is explored under this framework, so that students gain a high level of analytical thinking in a way that doesn’t limit their learning.

The Disciplined Mind – Individuals will need to be an expert in one area – they will need to develop depth and breadth in specific disciplines.
The Synthesising Mind – Individuals will need to be able to gather together information from disparate sources, find links, transfer and communicate this knowledge.
The Creative Mind - Individuals will be rewarded for being creative – that is the ability to construct a box and think outside of it, and approach problems in unique ways.
The Respectful Mind – The world of today and tomorrow is becoming increasingly diverse. Accordingly it is imperative to respect differences and similarities and promote tolerance and understanding, hence the significance of Physical, Personal and Social learning.
The Ethical Mind - Individuals need to be able to act ethically – that is to think beyond their own self interest and to do what is right under the circumstances.

Even the naming of the school was chosen with much thought invested into the process.

Sir Gustav Nossal is an internationally renowned scientist and a significant figure in Australia’s medical and scientific community. He was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (1965-1996), Professor of Medical Biology at the University of Melbourne and President of the Australian Academy of Science.

Gus Nossal has received numerous awards and recognitions throughout his career. He was knighted in 1977 for his ground-breaking work in immunology and made a companion of the Order of Australia in 1989. He was awarded the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 1990 and in 1996 he won the highly prized Koch Gold Medal for major advances in biomedical science. He has been identified as one of Australia’s national living treasures.

He has been listed in annual Australia Day Honours four times, including as Companion of the Order of Australia in 1989, ‘For services to medicine, to science and to the community,’ and a Centenary Medal Winner, ‘For distinguished service to the study of antibody formation and immunological tolerance’ in 2000, when he was also named Australian of the Year.

It is fitting therefore, that the school is named after Sir Gustav Nossal, such a prominent and inspirational figure who believes in state education and has brought true benefit to the world. He continues to be an active champion of the school and its work, and at the beginning of each year he is an enthusiastic attendee at the opening assembly to present badges to the newest intake of Year 9 students.

The school’s Information Resource Centre, as the educational hub of the school, holds an extensive range of print as well as digital resources to complement the curriculum being delivered at Nossal. The IRC also holds an extensive fiction collection, general non-fiction books as well as audio visual resources and equipment.  The programmes being delivered by the IRC are wide and varied. Complementing the guest speakers and performers who visit the school throughout the year, the Information Resource Centre also runs a range of interesting and exciting programs and competitions for the all-round development of the students.

Given that we live in a cyber-connected world, Nossal High School aims to empower students to become ethical ‘cybercitizens,’ who approach the use of IT and e-learning in a systematic, disciplined and respectful manner. They are encouraged to challenge data and synthesize their findings. As the schools says, ‘A Nossal Cybercitizen knowingly adopts cyber ethical approaches when digitally interacting at local, national, regional and global levels. The overall philosophy is to use e-Learning and ICT to develop responsible, ethical student learning pathways in Virtual Learning Environments, the intranet and the World Wide Web. The digital pathways are to be used to develop logical thinking, problem solving, collaborative techniques, ability to synthesise and creativity in our students.’

Through the use of IT, underpinned by Cyber ethics, the school is challenging the students to become knowledgeable about the nature of information, comfortable with new technology and, able to recognise its relevance and potential. Cyber ethics is defined as the values, beliefs and behaviours needed to ensure safe, responsible and respectful use of digital technology.

This is the future of education that I envisage for our children if we are to create a world that is going to be sustainable for generations to come and where the focus is not purely on growth for growth sake and the insatiable consumption and global inequity that comes from such a single-minded approach to the modern economic reality.

It is fortunate that pockets of our world are now inhabited by educational institutions like Nossal High School. It is my fervent wish that this and others like it will be the model of educational best practice that public and private schools alike will aspire to become, because students that graduate from these secondary schools and on to tertiary study are the leaders we will be looking to in the future. Maybe one day, instead of a handful of secondary schools like Nossal, we will see centres of learning of this ilk spread throughout our communities. I hope so.

What are your thoughts on the future of education? I’d love to read them.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to select the right people for your roles and how to leverage that knowledge for the benefit of them and your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

Two young fish were swimming in one direction when they happened to meet an older fish heading the other way. The older fish nods at them and says… “Morning boys. How’s the water?” The younger fish swim on for a bit and eventually one of them turns to the other and says… “What the hell is water?”  Even though this story told by award-winning novelist David Foster Wallace is all about ‘missing the obvious’ it also a salutary lesson about context and how it defines meaning. Fish are defined by their water environment. Without it they wouldn’t exist, but as the story goes, it is so pervasive in their lives that they remain blissfully unaware of it even though they exist only because of it. And so it is with people. We are who we are because of the context in which we find ourselves, and that can have a huge impact on the type of profiling assessments organisations use in recruitment, and why I believe it is wise to steer clear of ‘personality profiles.’

Based on my research, I believe it is wrong to assume that ‘personality profiling’ is an accurate indicator of performance. You may not have heard of the ‘Broken Windows’ theory, but it is an excellent example of how context defines meaning and motivation, and how its application during the 90s dramatically arrested the crime epidemic in New York City. Broken Windows was the brainchild of criminologists James Wilson and George Kelling. They both argued that the crime epidemic was the inevitable result of environmental disorder. For example, if a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by it every day in that community will conclude that no one cares and that therefore no one is in charge. Soon more windows will be broken sending a signal that anything goes leading to other ‘minor’ crimes such as aggressive begging, graffiti proliferation, minor misdemeanours and so on until there is a major breakdown in law and order. This theory says that crime is contagious and it starts with a broken window and spreads to an entire community.

In the early nineties when William Bratton, a disciple of the Broken Windows theory, was first appointed as the Transit Police Chief and charged with the responsibility of cleaning up the crime epidemic on the New York subways, he focused first on cleaning up the graffiti and the estimated 170,000 daily fare evaders rather than the more serious issues of violence confronting the subway system. Arrests for misdemeanours for the kind of minor offenses that went unnoticed in the past, went up fivefold between 1990 and 1994, and as a result the Transit Police began to turn around the experience of citizens being safe on the subway.

After the election of Mayor Giuliani in 1994, Bratton was appointed head of the NYPD and he applied the same strategies to the city at large. He instructed his officers to crack down on the minor ‘quality of life’ crimes that bedevilled the city such as public drunkenness; public urination; littering; graffiti vandalism; aggressive window washing at intersections etc. and before long, crime in the city fell as quickly and as dramatically as it had on the subways. Even though Bratton and his likeminded peers were originally told to focus on the things that really mattered such as violent crimes and murders, they had the courage of their convictions and eventually their approach laid the foundation of the vibrant and relatively safe city that Manhattan is today.

I know this from first-hand experience because during the mid 90s when I was leading my World Best Practice Study Tours, our weekends in the USA were often spent in New York, and on many occasions I walked the streets of Manhattan after midnight feeling totally at ease and safe, plus I also took a few very late night rides on the subway and never felt intimidated by the experience. I can’t say that I would feel as safe walking around the streets of my own city, Melbourne after 10 pm on a Saturday night as I would in New York.

I was so impressed by my personal experience that on subsequent study tours I led my groups of Australian executives to other police departments which had applied their own version of the NYPD strategy. In particular we undertook visits to the inner sanctum of the Chicago Police Department to study their Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy universally known as CAPS which has been recognized as one of the most ambitious and successful community policing initiatives in the USA.

So what is the point of these examples that I am sharing with you here? Well this week we have finally heard the details of the allegation that one of our most respected AFL football clubs had been running a programme of systematic testing of supplements on their team of elite footballers over the previous couple of years. An internal investigation by the club itself resulted in findings that were damning of the club’s governance in allowing a “pharmacologically experimental” environment (their words) to occur within its organisation.

This regimen included weekly injections of multiple substances off-site from the football club without proper medical oversight from the club’s medical staff, all in the name of cutting edge ‘sports science.’ To compound the issue, the poor quality of record keeping and lack of proper protocol was such that it has been difficult for the authorities investigating the matter over the past six months to determine precisely what was given to whom over the period of time in question. The club leadership has since acknowledged officially that, “…(there were) mistakes in terms of governance and people management, and we apologise for them.” I definitely do not intend to comment any further on the pros and cons of what went on at that football club because I am sure that it has been well and truly ‘sliced and diced’ from every possible angle in the media this past six months since the story first broke. What has brought the whole sorry saga to a head, I believe, is the anonymous talk-back call from a concerned mother of one of the younger players involved, wrought with distress over the possible long term side-effects on the future health and well being of her son. After hearing her sobbing call on the radio late last week, I am sure no caring parent could avoid being moved by the genuine fear that these young men may be facing in the future with regard to their physical and emotional health, and the issue of workplace health and safety and informed consent that seemed to have been missed in the rush to gain a competitive edge on the field.

This brings me to the point of my blog – the amazing power that ‘context’ or environment holds over one’s individual motivation and how it could be that professional athletes at the peak of their careers would allow themselves to be experimented upon, week in week out, in clinics and locations away from the open and transparent environment of their football club. These are highly motivated young men spanning in age between late teens up to late twenties and early thirties and while some of them may be young and naive and at the beginning of their careers, others would have been around the professional football environment long enough and of a mature enough age to question in more detail what they were being subjected to. The reason why such highly professional athletes with highly tuned levels of motivation and self preservation would be prepared to subject themselves to being uninformed ‘guinea pigs’ in a climate of experimentation without due consideration given to their own health and safety tells a lot about the power of environment on individual motivation. i.e. “If all of my peers and fellow team mates are agreeing to this regime of weekly supplement injections, and if our coach whom we revere and  cohorts of his are leading the way in this experimentation to give us the edge on the football field then it must be okay for me. Besides – who am I to buck the team ethos of doing ‘Whatever it Takes’ to win the ultimate team prize – AFL Championship glory at the end of the season?”

If you or I were to be faced with the same decision to be injected with unknown (and in some cases unproven and highly experimental) substances on a weekly basis in order to improve our performance at work, I know what the answer would be. A big, fat, “You’ve got to be kidding me -  NO,”  I expect. And if we were pressed on the issue we would probably go running to the authorities screaming about the employer’s right to play ‘Big Brother’ and put us into this situation. In the cold hard light of day, I imagine that not one of those professional footballers would agree to such a preposterous idea, if indeed they were faced with the same request to give uninformed consent to their employer to experiment on them as an isolated individual. I assume that their motivation for self preservation would take precedence over their motivation to win at all costs.

This is the key to motivation in the workplace and why the profiling that I do focuses on motivation within the context of a given role and environment and not on the reliance that some organisations have on ‘personality profiles’ because that type of testing just doesn’t have validity. To assume that anyone would have the same motivation or behavioural style within all contexts is a fallacy. Current research says otherwise, and so does common sense in my opinion. Next time, as an employer, if you hear yourself saying, ‘why can’t we find motivated staff?’ or your recruitment people write those employment ads that ask for ‘motivated, self starters,’ you need to take a dose of the reality pill and ask yourself this question… “Motivated to do what and under what context?”

There is so much more I could write about this topic of motivation in the workplace, and certainly today our more enlightened leaders are learning the lessons about creating the right environment for people within their midst to flourish, rather than succumbing to the illusion that it is their job to lead from the front of the parade as if being a champion is all that it takes for others to follow. A colleague of mine, Anita Kropacsy, has been researching this topic of ‘Strength-Based Leadership’ where the creation of a values-driven environment that encourages creative people to channel their motivation towards doing meaningful work is the key to the sustainability of our companies of the future, and I must say, her discoveries on the essence of modern day leadership in this rapidly changing world  dovetails exactly with the work I have been doing on how to uncover and assess individual motivation in the workplace.

If all it takes is a heroic ‘champion’ leader leading from the front, then I would remind you of the saga currently facing the football club that I am referring to in this article. This is because the coach that has led this ill-advised lurch to the very edges of experimentation on its players is indeed a modern day, well respected ‘champion’ of the game and celebrated hero of the club whom I believe had reached almost mythical proportions in the eyes of some of his football playing peers – a recognised champion for whom winning was the only prize worth having I suspect, and whose point of view no one had the temerity or strength to override.  If the coach who was driving this programme of supplement experimentation was your average ‘Joe’ who didn’t come with the aura of success surrounding him, I wonder if all of the players would have fallen quite so quickly into line?

When it comes to motivation – everything is contextual, including the culture of leadership that is in play. We ignore this fact at our peril.

I would love to read your thoughts and comments here on this subject of motivation vs context.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to create the right environment for your people so that their motivation is channelled in the most appropriate way for all concerned.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

It seems like every day we read of more and more people being let go from their current employment or losing their contract, when only a week earlier their immediate future seemed secure.

Regardless of what our political leaders say about the current situation, I think no one can deny that our general confidence about the economic climate today and years to come has taken a battering. In my experience of working on behalf of companies to assist their people who have been confronted with the reality of moving on, here’s some of what I share with them.

I never gloss over the fact that this can be a very painful time for them, but as they come to understand during this process, while externally driven change is outside of their control, how they choose to view this transition is not. I can think of no better example of this principle than what nature teaches us about the elements critical to metamorphosis, and how transition can lead to transformation if we believe in that possibility and allow it to unfold.

The Story of the Butterfly
A man had kept the cocoon of a butterfly for a long time, when one day he noticed with excitement that the little insect was beginning to come out. The cocoon looked very strange, as it had a very narrow opening and it was hard to imagine how a beautiful butterfly was going to force itself out of it.

With great anticipation the man watched the butterfly slowly struggling to get out of the cocoon. He then became very impatient with the whole process and convinced himself that the butterfly was not going to be able to push itself out. So the butterfly wouldn’t have to go through all of that pain, the man decided to help it out of its cocoon. He picked up a pair of scissors and snipped open the cocoon.

Immediately, and with perfect ease, out crawled the butterfly… dragging a huge swollen body and little shriveled wings!

The man waited eagerly to see the marvellous process of the wings expanding but the poor butterfly never did develop its wings. It stayed crawling painfully through life instead of flying through the air on its beautiful wings as nature had intended. What the man didn’t know was that the great labour and difficulty a butterfly has in passing through such a narrow opening in its cocoon, is nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings. This prepares the butterfly for flight once it achieves its freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and flight can only come after a struggle.

How many times have we wished and hoped that we can take the easy way out of a situation or our struggles? How many times have we allowed our past failures and painful experiences or current difficulties to stop us from forging ahead? Pain, disappointment and trials are what strengthen us. Our current restraints don’t define who we are. It is often by making a conscious decision to learn from our experiences, that we can truly move forward.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like some help with your personal career transition, or if you would like to support your staff as a result of decisions you are being forced to make regarding their employment future.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

This was the question that Mastin Kipp, blogger to over 600,000 people daily on his site www.TheDailyLove.com asked of himself and all of his followers recently. It is of particular significance to me this week because a very dear friend and colleague of mine is going through one of those moments as I write. I thought I would pose this question to my friend and to every one of you and in so doing, remind you of the quote attributed to famed author, J.K. Rowling, whom we all know had quite a long relationship with life’s dark clouds before the silver linings finally shone through. As J.K.  said… “Rock Bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” Who hasn’t had a time in their life when every seed that was sown seemed to fall on arid ground? I know I have…

He goes on to say that he believes that having a logical point of view can be extremely limiting and if we truly understood this, we wouldn’t be quite so quick to apply meaning to the events of our lives. i.e. Just because we feel good or bad doesn’t mean what’s happening is good or bad.

His explanation of the conflict that ‘good vs bad’ can produce in us is thought provoking. Mastin explains it this way… “When I was doing drugs and drinking alcohol, in the moment I felt good, but nevertheless I was unaware of the long term effects of my actions, and when I’m working out in the gym it may hurt like hell, but there is a massive long term reward for me.” He goes on to share his thoughts on the counter-intuitive nature of things and that what’s bad might actually be good and what’s good might actually be bad, and that we need opposites to learn, to grow and to evolve, and maybe the worst things in our lives, seen from a new perspective, might actually be our greatest gift.

The late Viktor Frankl, MD, PhD, is a celebrated neurologist, psychiatrist and author of many books on existentialism  including his world renowned, best selling book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ In this seminal book Frankl, a holocaust survivor, chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus, a reason to continue living.

One of the most poignant and yet inspirational movies I can remember, also touches on this subject of making meaning out of the worst imaginable circumstances. It is an Italian film subtitled ‘Life is Beautiful’ directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. It is based on his father’s experience as a concentration camp survivor. It covers the experience of a Jewish Italian book shop owner who must employ his fertile imagination to shield his young son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp during one of mankind’s darkest periods in history. The 1997 film was a critical and popular success, winning Benigni the Oscar for Best Actor as well as the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Foreign Language Film. I highly recommend it to you and guarantee that even though it is a subtitled film, the emotional impact of its message will not escape you.

Given that it is most probably hard wired into all of us to make meaning of every event in our life, what are the choices we make as a result? Although we hear the comment at least once a week, if not daily in business… ‘that was a good result…that was a bad result,’ the reality is there is no such thing as a good or bad result, just a result. We put the meaning of good and bad upon it. A better way of describing a ‘bad’ result might be to say… ‘That result is not bringing me closer to my goal, so what am I learning and what do I need to do instead… adjust my actions or reassess my goal?’ And a better way of describing a ‘good’ result might be to say… ‘That result is leading me closer to my goal, so what can I learn from that and what can I do more of as a result?’

But back to the topic of dark clouds and silver linings. I say to myself; my very dear friend; and to all of you reading this blog who may have or will experience utter despair or personal doubt some time in your life… Life is Precious and so are You, and the meaning you discover about this time in your life may be the most profound lesson you ever learn about yourself and the difference you were destined to make.

So look beyond those clouds and see the infinite possibility that exists within your Universe, and celebrate life with all of the mysteries it bestows upon you. As the co-creator of your life, keep the faith and forge ahead in whatever direction your heart is pointing to right now… and trust that the meaning will find you.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to know more about how together, we can help you find the deeper meaning in your life.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less.  Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick?  Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

For all of those people who woke up to the news this morning that the Wimbledon men’s singles drought has finally been broken after 77 years by Briton Andy Murray, spare a thought for the message he shares. I feel it teaches all of us something about the true meaning of success and what it represents.

What was most telling for me when I heard that Andy had been struggling to deal with the immense pressure of feeling that he was carrying the weight of the nation on his shoulders, was his acknowledgment that he could not have done it without the support of a very special person. The Scot dedicated his victory to coach Ivan Llendl, an eight-time grand slam winner who had never captured the Wimbledon title himself, losing twice in the final. Since teaming up with Llendl last year, Murray says he has matured both on and off the court, and the success of that relationship has certainly born fruit, because he has reached the final of the last four grand slams he has entered, winning two of them.

In Murray’s own words… “For the last four or five years, it’s been very very tough, very stressful  – a lot of pressure… Ivan believed in me when a lot of people didn’t. He stuck by me through some tough losses the last couple of years. He’s been very patient with me. I’m just happy I managed to do it for him.”

We all love to hear about the lone hero who overcomes insurmountable odds to win through in the heat of the battle and we know that without total commitment to the cause or the objective, a well thought out plan, combined with unrelenting application to the task and consistent practice, winning may remain a distant or unfulfilled dream.

The Often Understated Value of Support

But I want to touch on another aspect of the winner’s armoury which I feel is a major part of their strength and their resilience, and that is support. In a society where so much emphasis is placed on competition and the accumulation of trophies or ‘toys’, regardless of whether the field of success is in sport, business or life, I sometimes wonder if we miss the value of the support we give and receive along the way…  such as the right words at the right time from someone who believes in us when our own self belief has taken a battering…  or the opportunity to work together and share the bouquets and the brickbats as we strive in concert towards meaningful shared goals.

In a world where competition and accumulation seems to be driving so much of the current thinking, spare a thought for cooperation, and character, and care for each other, and cast your mind back to the time when you last felt you were a winner. I guarantee that the joy of winning and the feeling it engendered in you would have been a hollow feeling if you did not have special people around you to share it with at the time. And what about the journey towards that success? Would you have achieved it without the help and support and belief of others?

I know that in all of my business endeavours over the years, the experiences which I remember most fondly are the ones where I was part of a collaborative team of likeminded people who believed in each other and their desire to make a difference. So please spare a thought for all of those people who support you in your endeavours, especially the unsung heroes in the background like the Ivan Llendls in the life of Andy Murray, and when you do that ask yourself who in your life would benefit from your support and your encouragement and your time?

Too often we strive to make a difference on a grand scale, whether that be through the accumulation of ‘material evidence’ of our success, or saving the world in an altruistic way, and we forget about the difference we could make to the lives of the people whom we touch every day, such as our children, or our partner, or our business colleagues… or the next person we meet on the street.

Cooperation not Competition

My wish for you is that you don’t look back on a life filled with ‘busy-ness’ and stress and mindless accumulation, and regret that you lost sight of those you met along the way. Surely Cooperation, not Competition should be the legacy of our generation? Otherwise we face an increasingly disconnected world and one where the gap between the haves and have nots becomes a huge divide that threatens all of our existence and safety. But that is a topic for another day.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to know more about how together, we can help you to achieve your goals and dreams.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

Photo Credit: Susan Mullane, USA TODAY Sports

Now that you have set a well designed goal and you know where you are heading, here are six steps to keeping on track.

If the barriers are not ecological in nature, then consider what you have to do to overcome them. Are you willing to do whatever it takes?

Step 2: Assessing Your Options
Have a closer look at all of the options you have to overcome these barriers and how will you go about them. What other options or alternatives might you have to achieve your goal or goals? How broad and creative is your behavioural flexibility to try those other options, if what you try does not move you forward towards your goal?

Step 3: Actioning Your Plans
Now that you have outlined your options, you need to choose the most viable ones that you will actually put in place. What specific steps and actions do you need to implement to make these options a reality?
•    What will you need to do?
•    When will you do this by?
•    How will you know you are progressing?
•    How will you measure this?
•    What impact will your actions have on others?

Step 4: Reviewing Your Progress
You need to review your progress while you are on the journey to achieving your goals. Do this at regular intervals – maybe weekly or even daily – depending on the goal or goals you have set. This is known as Critical Path Analysis on larger projects. If you are making progress, excellent! If not, then you may need to look at changing your actions, or in some cases even, reassessing your goals. In doing so, ask yourself… “Is this goal too big?”  If so, then break it down into smaller chunks that make achieving your end goal more manageable.  Remember, you take a thousand mile journey one step at a time.

Step 5: Celebrating your Success
Always remember to celebrate your progress and your successes along the way. No matter how small an action may be, it all contributes to the end result – which is your ultimate goal. This helps to keep your confidence ‘spiral’ going up, and drives you to continue on the journey. And remember, obstacles along the way are only signs that you are moving towards your goal. If you weren’t moving towards it, nothing at all would be happening.

Step 6: Dealing with Unplanned Obstacles  With regard to unplanned obstacles that you meet along the way, know that this is just part of the journey and that your ability to bounce back while you keep your eye on the main prize is what will set you apart from those who are less resilient than you. When faced with “No,” I always like to say to myself… “It’s never No until it’s No and then it’s never No, because N.O. = Next Option or Next Opportunity.”

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to know more about how to set and achieve the goals that matter most to you in your life.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

We all accept that having goals to work towards give our work meaning as well as a way of measuring our progress along the way, but unfortunately too few people actually have a blueprint for setting those goals in a meaningful way. Here are some steps to Goal Setting MASTERY…

M – Measurable and Motivating:
What will be the evidence you look for to measure your achievement of the goal, or your milestones along the way, so that you know you are on track? Also, if the goal is not motivating to you then you may not be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it.

A – Achievable and Authentic:  Is the first step achievable by you or does it require someone else to do something first? If it requires the actions of someone else first, then you may be waiting a long time to get started. With regard to authenticity, you need to be sure that you desire the goal congruently – i.e. that it is in alignment with your values. If not, then you may well unconsciously sabotage the result. Keep asking yourself – “For what purpose do I really want to achieve this goal?”… to discover whether it fully supports or otherwise conflicts with your core values.

S – Specific and Sensory:  Make sure your goal is specific. Vague goals means vague results. And the more sensory-specific you can make it the better. i.e. What will you see, hear and feel when you have achieved your particular goal or outcome?

T – Time Sensitive and Towards (the Positive):  Ensure that this is the sort of goal that has a possible end in sight. Studies show that people who set a deadline ‘by when’ a goal must be achieved (if it is a short or medium term goal); or those people who set a timeline with milestones to be achieved along the way (if it is a long term goal), eventually achieve their goals if they persist. People who do not set deadlines or timelines are less likely to achieve their goals. Make sure also that your goal is stated in the positive. i.e. What DO you want to achieve, not what don’t you want to achieve (i.e. towards the carrot not away from the stick), because the unconscious mind does not visualize a negative, it only works in directions and images. e.g. If you are telling yourself that you… “Don’t want to gain weight (or) You want to lose weight,” for instance, then your unconscious mind will continue to see and reinforce that image of weight being gained or weight remaining on. Instead focus on… looking at yourself in the mirror with the new physique you desire to have… according to the goal setting criteria set out in this list.

E – Ecological and Energizing (to you):  Is your goal ecological? Or are there critical parts of your life, or special people in your life, such as family, who or which may suffer if you achieve your desired result? Also, is it energizing to you to achieve your goal or outcome – can it be your passion? Will it entice you to want to achieve?

R – Realistic and Relevant:  Aim high but make sure it is still within your capability. If the goal you set for yourself seems completely out of your reach then you may not even bother to try. And be sure that it is relevant to you and to those for whom you care deeply.

Y – Yesterday in Years to come:  What I mean by this comment is that while a goal is something you set for the Future, there is real power in stating or writing your goal as if it is already happening in the Present tense, or better still – written in the Past tense as if it has already been achieved. Your unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between Past, Present or Future, so why not train your mind to accept that this goal is something that is already being achieved or has already been achieved? This is a very powerful suggestion to your psyche. This is what is taught in Sports Psychology to peak performers and high achievers. Why treat yourself any differently to them?

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to know more about how to develop and apply the power of your focused mind, especially with regard to Goal Setting.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

It has often been said that we consciously use only 8-10% of the power of our mind every day. If that is the case, then 90% of the most powerful resource we have may be going untapped, or at least, underutilised. Here is a tragic story I read many years ago of the misuse of focus when it mattered most…

During 1978, the great Karl Wallenda, patriarch of one of history’s greatest tightrope walking families was booked to do a series of breathtaking solo walks on a high wire stretched 120 feet above the ground between two hotels in San Juan. Halfway across the cable, Wallenda suddenly lost his balance, plunged to the ground and was killed instantly.

When the media and his family later analysed what had happened, they discovered that Karl Wallenda had been focusing this time on the one thing that he wanted to avoid at all costs – not falling.

As his widow explained later… “All Karl seemed to put his energies and focus on this one time was not falling, rather than successfully and safely reaching the other end of the tightrope. He even went to great pains to personally supervise the installation of the tightrope guy wires – something he had never concerned himself with ever before.”

In the past, his sole focus had been on reaching the other side safely and from that perspective, he had total trust and faith in his rigging team. The telling point about this story was that this particular walk was Karl’s planned finale before he retired and as a result his many years of total focus and concentration on the job was being deflected on to other things when it mattered most.

This story provides a tragic example of misusing the combined power of the conscious and unconscious mind which, when the focus is deflected in this way, can pull you towards an outcome that may be the exact opposite of what you want. It is no different to getting bogged down in ‘solving the problem’ and focusing all of your energies on this result, rather than re-focusing on what your original goal or outcome was in the first place and allowing things to unfold as you progress. Just think of our combined governments’ “wars on terrorism” and “wars on drugs” and “wars on cancer.” Have we seen a reduction of any of these three major problems of our time or an increase over the past 20 or so years? Maybe our combined focus has been in the wrong direction? I’ll leave you to ponder on that one.

Often through having an outcome-directed approach you will find that problems dissolve or you will discover other ways to go around them because of your flexibility and your resilience and your total focus on the objective that you have ahead of you. There is much more I would like to share with you on this topic of the power of focus and combining all of the energy and power that you have within your mind, but for now I will just leave you with the thought that all of our most influential leaders over the generations who have been able to achieve their amazing results, have had just two things in common – focus and persistence. Think of Ghandi, or Churchill, or Mother Teresa or Abe Lincoln to name just a few.

Focus and Persistence

This is no different to being able to harness the energy of the sun with the use of a magnifying glass. Focus allows you to burn a hole in paper, and holding that same focus longer allows you to burn a hole in wood. If you consider all of that amazing energy and power your mind has, imagine too that your life can be the magnifying glass for your accomplishments through those same two applications – Focus and Persistence.

I will share more insights about this in future articles.

In the meantime, here is an amazing You Tube example of exactly what I am talking about. Trust me it is well worth your investment of  five minutes to watch the video. Enjoy!

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to know more about how to harnessing the awesome power of focus in the work you do.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less.  Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick?  Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.