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Andrew Sayers

Another 4 years of build-up to the 2010 World Cup, promises of success, and fanatical support, came to nothing on the playing fields of South Africa. Crushing disappointment remains for all but those with just a passing interest and of course the winners.

The good news is that it was only a football tournament. Nobody got hurt and we all live to fight another day. I have sympathy for those that paid large sums of money to see a team underperform on the world stage but as with all things, there really are no guarantees. You pay your money and you take your chance, as the saying goes.

Speaking of sayings, one of my favourites, and one extremely annoying to the few burdened people that I play golf with, is ‘Coulda, woulda, shoulda’. I could have played a better shot. I would have made the green. I should have used a more appropriate club. They come thick and fast after every dud shot. Never after a great one! As a relatively new player, I still hit my fair share of bad shots, but my mind set has changed. I realise I can only affect the the shot I am playing right now. Not the ones I’ve already played. They are history and I have to learn from what I did wrong. Not the ones I’m going to play. Other than having the correct kit such as waterproofs if it rains (it is truly miserable playing golf whilst soaked to the skin) and a drink or a snack, there’s not much you can you do.

No, it’s just that one shot. Right here, right now….

As I view the position of the ball, the distance ahead and take into account wind strength and direction, it is this shot and this shot only that I am able to influence. My club selection done, I approach the ball and, stopping short, I take a couple of practice swings. I then address the ball, assuming my stance, softening my knees, moving my weight onto the balls of my feet whilst keeping my heels grounded. Club head square to the ball, breathing regular, I start my backswing, keeping my head still and looking at the ball and only the ball. I bring the club head through the ball at an even tempo, still continuing to look only at the ball. Only as I complete the follow through with the club do I move my eyes away from where the ball once stood….

Great shot or terrible, that shot is now consigned to history and the next one demands my undivided attention. There’s nothing that a ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’ will do to help.

And so it is in life and business. We can say ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda’ all day long about everything and everyone. But it won’t matter. Excuses and recriminations won’t help you. Learn from the past, be better prepared for the future, but give your here and now the courtesy of your complete attention.

Today can close the door on the failures of yesterday and open the doors that lead to the success of tomorrow. Today wants all of you to itself, and rightly so. Get out there, make the most of it. Not everything will go to plan, but hey, that really is life! And you know, sometimes, when plans go awry it can turn out for the best.

Thanks for stopping by.

PS – If you find your plans consistently come to nothing, maybe take a look at your plans. Go through them with a friend (or an Acquire coach!) to get a different perspective. It’s a good thing to have a plan but give yourself a fighting chance to start with

Whilst watching the BBC football pundits review a World Cup match the other evening I was struck by the intensity of the debate and it reminded me of the famous Bill Shankly quote:

“Football is not just a matter of life and death. It’s much more important than that.”

And there was me thinking it’s only football….!

Fortunately, very few of us have lives depending on our daily business decisions but wouldn’t it be great to be as passionate as the pundits? There’s a school of thought that says that to be truly passionate about our business endeavours, our business goals must be in line with not only our personal aims and ambitions but also our core values.

Are we in a position to have a business life that maps on to our personal goals? And our values? Do we know what our goals and values are?

When these things are out of kilter it helps to explain some of the ups and downs and time spent in the doldrums which affect us so often. The bursts of unsustained enthusiasm, the easy distraction from our paths. All could be explained by the lack of cohesion between goals and values.

More than a little food for thought. I could go on about coaching stuff at this point, but I won’t. I’m going to think on it a while. Why not do the same? Let me know if you have any profound thoughts!

Thanks for stopping by.

PS – There really is something to be said for doing what you love….

For England, there were two things that went wrong as early as their opening match. The first point was of course the result itself. 1-1 in game they were expected to win. For England to progress to the knock-out stages they needed to now start winning matches and if they wanted to win their group they really had to start scoring goals. With those requirements came additional pressures.

The second point is that the England goalkeeper, Rob Green, made a howler of a mistake that could haunt him forever if he allows it to. A mundane shot requiring the sort of save he would normally make with his eyes close ended up in the net after he failed to simply get his hands behind the ball. An error a schoolboy would be disappointed with. To make matters worse, his error was watching by millions of people across the globe.

The disappointment for me was that Rob Green didn’t get a chance to make amends for his mistake. I’m sure he was champing at the bit to get back on the pitch ( at least I hope he was). He didn’t get to play another match, so we have to hope that he accepts that none of us can change what has gone before.

So, what did England do in response to these early set-backs? What did they learn to enable them to improve and pick up their performance? We’ll never know how good they could have been because they did the opposite of what we all expected them to do. We expected the team to come out fighting and to show its mettle. However they didn’t. They went in to their shells and played like poor imitations of the players we know them to be.

I suspect there will be many for whom this will be their last World Cup. What a shame that they didn’t grasp the nettle of opportunity and assert their collective brilliance.

For the rest of us, as we get on with the important stuff of every day life and business, we should remember that what is done it done. We are where we are. How we choose to go forward is what counts.

Once again, it’s how we execute which is so vitally important. Review yesterday, plan for tomorrow, make it happen today.

Thanks for stopping by and if I can help you with anything in your business or career, please get in touch.

But if like me you’ve watched the BP oil spill drama unfold, you may have been left wondering something? What on earth happened to Plan B? Who would have thought that despite the (now evident) risks of operations at an amazing depth of 5000ft, there didn’t seem to be a plan for what happened if and when things went wrong?

For BP, this must be a worst case scenario. It’s share price has continued to tumble and the company is being vilified across the globe. One evening whilst watching the news I watched in amazement as Barack Obama called called for the head of the BP CEO Tony Hayward. Fortunately, Mr Hayward has handed over day to day responsibility to someone else. To little too late but hey… And where on earth was the BP PR machine? On holiday and probably not in Louisiana is my guess..

Worse, much worse, an unprecedented ecological disaster is developing that is wreaking havoc on the US coast. Natural habitats are being destroyed, as are the livelihoods of many thousands of people.

Back to BP for a moment, it’s worth bearing in mind that this could be any oil company who has fallen victim to these events. Rented equipment and I’m not sure that BP was even operating the rig when things went wrong. There must be a number of CEO’s giving quiet thanks that it’s not them in the firing line.

I don’t have the answer to these particular issues of course, but there’s a lesson to be learned for all of us from this sorry mess. Have a Plan B. Contingency planning is something we all need to do. Things go wrong. Despite best laid plans events often take an unexpected turn for the worse.

Let’s give some thought to what the risks are, how likely they are to happen and how serious the outcomes might be. And then plan accordingly should the events ever happen in full or in part. Something is better than nothing.

Feel free to get in touch to discuss.

The short answers are “No” to the former and “Yes” to the latter.

So that’s it. Thanks for stopping by….

Kidding!

I would liken it to distance learning which has opened up academic opportunity to millions that have previously not had the option of further education. Naturally, there are times when distant learning can be difficult. For example, if you’re doing a science course and you have to run a complex experiment, it’s unlikely you’ll have a full lab set-up at home, but most of the time it works extremely well for all concerned.

One to one distance coaching can be hugely successful. We utilise calls, email and video-conference calls, typically via Skype.

Of course, there are times where it really does make sense to have a hands-on, on-site engagement and we do a lot of these, but for the most part, distance coaching can be highly effective.

To that end we have numerous overseas coaching clients as well as here in the UK, some of whom are 100′s of miles away and some extremely local. The internet makes the world a small place and technology is so good now that a client can be on the other side of the world and it just doesn’t matter.

So there you have it. Distance coaching works. It takes commitment to putting in the time but it can be highly successful and extremely rewarding for all parties. Another advantage is flexibility. Can’t fit a coaching session into your usual working day? This isn’t a problem for either local or distant coaching. We have a number of executive coaching clients that prefer an out of hours time slot. And of course, if we’re talking different time zones your 6am could be my 2pm and so on.

If you’d like to engage a business coach but have resisted due to lack of local resources or you’re short of time during your regular working day, that needn’t preclude using the services of a business coach. So feel free to get in touch to discuss your individual requirements.

Thanks as ever.

And the problem?

Working to somebody else’s rules…

You can find it at http://www.michaelchriston.com/small-business-marketing-strategy/whos-rules-are-they-anyway/

Check it out and let me know what you think.

What was fascinating about the conversation was that having sat and listened to what was required and what the end result should look like, I asked what I thought were some basic questions. How are you positioning yourself versus your competition? What is your USP, if any? What are your core focus areas and what are you secondary areas of interest? What is your strategy going forward in terms of emerging markets and technology?

Long silence.

I suggested that it might be a good idea to have this information before throwing large sums of money at marketing campaigns. And that having some supporting collateral would also be useful.

Nodding heads.

So what are the answers…..? Long silence.

Would it be beneficial to have some time with the key stakeholders in a room together to get this stuff worked out? Nodding heads.

The next step is a one day session working through these very key areas, with me acting as the facilitator. A good facilitator doesn’t need to have industry specific knowledge but in this case I know the customer’s marketplace very well so can add even more value to the process.

As a coach I enjoy the role of facilitator and it’s a role I do perform well (I know that sounds immodest but it’s true). If you find yourself with a need to ‘fill-in the blanks’ for your business or for a particular project, feel free to get in touch. I’d be happy to act as coach or facilitator for you. Just leave a comment and I’ll get right back to you.

In the previous post we were talking about something being broken, fixed and improved, in order to be stronger. In that post the subject was me. And a dodgy knee caused by my stubborn stupidity amongst other things.

But you have to admit that the parallels to businesses with issues are striking. Think of this. There’s a business problem, albeit small, and so you ignore it. It’s gets a little worse but you can still work through or around it. Eventually the issue can no longer be ignored. It’s got to the point where the business can no longer function normally anymore.

So what should one do? Limp along with a fundamentally broken business, whilst losing valuable customers and staff? Or maybe look to address the issues? And in doing so work to ensure that the problems are dealt with and unlikely to return. And of course finally, to not only fix the immediate issue but to become stronger for the experience.

All sounds very obvious so far right? But you’d be amazed by how often issues are just left to fester. Things either slowly fall apart or people learn to live with them.

One of the many things a business coach can do is help organisations to deal with exactly this kind of scenario. Sometimes it takes an ‘outsider’ to be the bad guy, to call it as it is and suggest appropriate responses and changes. The keys are objectivity and independence. A coach has a brief to help the business. Whilst it’s important, in my opinion, to have an understanding of the broader scenario, a good coach will work to the brief for the benefit of the business, without being swayed by politics or other influences.

We evaluate a problem, propose remedies, assist in implementation if required and help you and your business emerge stronger than ever.

In fact, we help with this scenario more than any other. If the above is familiar to you or there’s another issue or question that springs to mind and you’d like to talk it through with me, please do get in touch. I look forward to hearing from you.

So here I am needing to train for a 20K off-road event next month and unable to run. I need to rehab my knee first before entertaining serious training. I ignored the warning signs and I’m now paying the price.

The good news is that I’ve established that I neglected some things in my training which, along with just plain doing too much too soon, contributed to the injury. So along with fixing this particular problem, I now know how to improve my fitness regime.

I will come back stronger.

Business parallels? You bet! One for next time…..

If you need assistance identifying or fixing issues within your career or business, please get in touch.