 Life is always evolving, most often in small unseen ways that are so subtle, yet over time create a big impact. It evolves when you make different choices to the ‘norm’. Consider your daily routines, how much of them exist because of well-meaning expectations as you were being brought up, rather than conscious decisions you have made listening to your inner knowing?
As I bring up my own children, although I have concluded many times in these articles that my role is to get out of their way and provide only love and inspiration, I notice how often I intervene. The compulsion to do this, I’ve decided, is driven by either others’ expectations of me as ‘the parent’ or my own desire to simply rest and have peace. As the school year starts here in the southern hemisphere, my eldest daughter has continued in her resistance to attending each day. She actually quite enjoys much of what she is being taught, and she so loves seeing all her friends, but she has a strong desire to go with her own flow and not dance to the beat of the ‘machine’. Both my partner and I sympathize with this desire as we have slowly found our own way back to tuning in to what we each want out of life. It feels like a moral dilemma of sorts as I advocate for people to live life from the inside out yet am forcing my child to ignore her inner world in order to conform. In this country there is a legal obligation for children to attend school between 6 – 16 years old, or for the parent to have successfully obtained an exemption by home schooling. I’m not sure I can picture myself home-schooling and, even if I felt the impulse to do that, I am not sure that is what she actually wants. Instead I am getting better at stepping away from the issue and listening in to whatever answers present themselves, like picking her up earlier and allowing her some regular home days that work for both of us. When I attended school as a young child, that was unheard of. Certainly it would have been rare to ever hear a teacher suggest a child having rest days to a parent, as ours does. Our children are changing and our world has evolved. Yet there is still so much well meaning advice plied in our direction, pressure to have our kids behave and conform. The default is still to micromanage every detail of their lives, with most parents lost in a sea of their own layers of doubts and self defeating thought patterns. Imagine as an adult if, in the next 10 years of your life, you have no choice about what you do day to day as our children do when it comes to school. Some of you may indeed feel like that, but you do have a choice. I want my kids to feel their own power, I want to cheer them on from the sidelines as they create a more evolved world. Regardless of where your life is at, you can – at the very least – start to become aware of your thoughts and feelings. You can start to become more aware of that inner voice that will unfailingly want to lead you towards your best life. It’s not the voice of doubt and doom I’m talking about, those are your unhelpful thought patterns, the ones that began all those years ago as you were taught to ‘behave’ and second guess your every desire. It’s the thoughts that pop into your head that seem to come from nowhere that are worth listening to. As I was going about my day earlier in the week, a reader that I exchange emails with now and again came into to my head a couple of times. So I decided to email him and just check in, as I did I got a sense he was going through some deep changes and the teacher in him is emerging even more, so I shared this with him. Not too long ago it would have felt both ridiculous and audacious to have said such a thing, the voice in my head would have told me I had just conjured it up. Yet this resonated with him and he was grateful I had got in touch, he felt supported even. A simple thing I know, but that one impulse has allowed more clarity for him in terms of his own direction, and more confidence. In turn it has given me more confidence to trust my own senses. As new generations are born they are less willing to be swayed from their inner knowing. For those of us trying to find our way back to it, it can feel lonely to take the path less travelled. Yet as you discover your inner world you will uncover the freedom you have yearned for And a world where we are listening to our inner voice, is a world more evolved than this one. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at shona@shonakeachie.com, I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You
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 And does it matter? When I was posed this question recently, that was my first thought. If we live in a multidimensional multiverse, with many realities playing our simultaneously, what is the significance of this reality in this time and space?
If we in fact are unique expressions of the one ever expanding source, and our own consciousness is playing out simultaneous realities far beyond our comprehension, if this particular reality changed its form and ceased to exist as we know it today, it just seems in some ways insignificant. For if there is life and more life, then it would imply that our consciousness would just continue on in other ways anyway. These are all the thoughts that welled to the surface within minutes of being asked the question, I could feel a playful bubbling sensation within that tells me my inner voice has more to say and is willing to play with me on this topic. My next thought was of sitting in the living room of an old friend many years ago. I think I was 18 or 19 years old. My friend’s father was a doctor of physics and, aside of lecturing on the topic, participated in a global committee considering all manner of big questions. “How many dimensions do you think there are Shona?” he asked. At that time, the consensus was apparently 10. Nearly a quarter of a century later there are growing bodies of scientists who are beginning to acknowledge that our ‘science’ is a glimmer on a speck of dust in the vast sea of collective consciousness out there. How would I define consciousness? As life, seen and unseen, in its ability to create independently and collectively. From the thoughts we are aware of, to those we are not, to the amazing capacity of the cells within and those particles beyond. So what does it mean for us, as a species, to become truly conscious? It really refers to the process of becoming aware of that which you were previously not. It’s a process of unlocking the power within. Each human arrives into this world knowing their power, knowing their worth; you only need look into the face of a newborn to see this truth reflected back to you. These little babies are probably the largest group of our species on the planet who know our truth. Then of course the human mind starts to take its course, its patterns (known as our subconscious) largely shaped in those first 7 years of life through impression and imitation. Unwittingly, and usually in well meaning, these patterns have a tendency to play out as some version of “you are not worthy” as we think it’s our job to keep and to teach our little ones to be safe and to fit in. So right from the outset, instead of teaching by example to tune into your inner knowing, your inner power, you are taught to fear. Over the years, you begin to attract many experiences into your life that reinforce the beliefs that started to form in those early years; you get what you think about in life. The average human therefore walks around completely unaware that, of the 60-70,000 thoughts they have each day, 90% of them come from their subconscious and are holding them back from achieving what we all want in life – let’s sum it up as happiness. Awakening to your thoughts, becoming aware of your inner dialogues, the feelings that correlate with them and the experiences that result, is the first step of awakening to your true potential. Once you become aware, you can’t help notice there are patterns playing out that make no sense for you today. You can’t erase your patterns, but you can start to create newer, healthier ones with time and practice. You become aware that you are the creator of your own reality. Over time, and with continued practice, feeling bad becomes less and less tolerable. You take those feelings as your inner cue that what you are thinking is not a match for your inner truth. You start tuning in more to the powerful voice within; the only one that can reveal your truths. No one and nothing ‘out there’ can give you those; they can only inspire you towards them. Becoming ‘truly conscious’ therefore means you are in tune with your inner world and dancing to the beat of your own drum. This is a state in which people follow their passion, a truly selfish state which paradoxically results in more acts of selflessness. For once you have tapped into the power within, you know that we are all connected. That you are me and I am you; we are a reflection of one another. Nothing in our life happens by coincidence, it happens with precision and patterning of an exquisite nature far beyond our ability to compute. Our life, the creation and expression of which is a reflection of our inner thoughts and feelings, therefore by our own design consciously or subconsciously, is played out through a series of happenstance and events that occur by our attraction. From all that I can observe, there are many today becoming aware of all of this and awakening to their own true nature and power. It is so because these desires were set in motion long ago and are now playing out with more momentum than ever before. We are co-conspirators in this evolution of consciousness. Coming back to the original question, it feels to me – at this stage – a mute one, for we are consciousness becoming aware of itself. A world where more and more people are becoming aware of their power within, where that power can only be accessed when you are aware of your thoughts and patterns and you are feeling good, is a world far evolved beyond the one I was born into. In a world where there is more of that gathering momentum, there is more trumped up versions of the old world (excuse the pun) rearing their head, it’s the desperation of a death dance, the end of an era of fear. Of course, this is playing out, and it is exciting to participate in, but it is only another chapter in our ever evolving world. This is a world of contrast, knowing what we don’t like and don’t want sharpens the detail of what we do want, bringing it into creation ever more rapidly. So if this evolution brings in a world of peace, you can be sure it will only be temporary; and really, would you want it any other way? With thanks to Les Butchart for asking the question. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at shona@shonakeachie.com, I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You.  I have a vision of a different world than the one we live in.
Trump as President is not relevant in my world, it’s already history. The same would have been said if Clinton had won. I see a world evolving beyond the need to control others in order to feel powerful. True power lies within. Don’t get me wrong, I get angry sometimes. It just doesn’t last for long. Take a helicopter ride high enough to see the broader perspective. Sure, sometimes that helicopter might have to leave our atmosphere... But when you can stand back far enough, we are doing okay. We are headed in the right direction, humanity. Sometimes two steps forward, one back. Don’t be distracted by the backward step, instead revel in the one that has moved forward. Revel in imperfection, it has much to teach. Today is yesterday’s dream, or nightmare. The same will be said of tomorrow, it’s your choice. Namaste  The only thing your response to the title of the article tells you is how you are feeling right now. If you are in a good space, you will likely agree that this is indeed a wonderful world - certainly much of the time. But we all acknowledge it's not always wonderful and that there are always atrocities going on, even when we feel good.
That said, what possible purpose does it serve any of us to focus on the bad stuff? Unless of course you are able to provide direct help or your own circumstances are so much worse that it’s helping to sooth you into a better place. I listened to a man recently as he struggled to do just this, he could not let go of the terrible things that had happened in the world, and still happen, all around us. He was stuck on what a cruel world this is. Sure, it can be cruel. But what use are you if you can’t see a better place? When I felt inspired to write a short piece about the American presidential race recently, not my usual kind of focus, my only position was that neither person would lead America in an evolved way. Yet I also have this deep sense of – in the bigger scheme of things – we are doing alright us humans, the trajectory is headed in the right direction. Despite the many ego maniacs in leadership positions of one kind or another world wide, using the name of this or that to justify their thinly veiled ghastly behaviour in order to satisfy the part of themselves that feels the need to fill up with power, we have still achieved a lot in recent decades. When I was born nearly 45 years ago, it was into a very different world than this one. One that was, overall, more conditional than the one today. Freedom is the basis of life, and I see examples all around me of people being able to freely express themselves in ways that just would not have been allowed or accepted a few decades ago. Every action and reaction we have is based on our feeling of freedom. If you feel free to express the real you, you are likely to concur that this is indeed a wonderful life. If you are feeling oppressed in some way then you are likely not in a great space, whether mentally, emotionally or physically. The need for freedom is so strong it manifests in many ways, from the ugly to the inspiring. If you can’t get inspired in the details that are within your grasp, defocus. You are still here, the world is still turning, and the sun still comes up over the horizon every day. The magnificence of nature is breathtaking. Each and every minute your heart beats without you even having to think about it, the trillions of cells of your body go about their ongoing task of keeping you in the life you have accustomed them to, each and every day. Wherever you are, if you can look up at the sky, just take it in. In the daytime our focus is here on our planet, the beauty of a piercing blue sky, the awesome force of the winds, the clouds and the rain. At night the endless space you see before you filled with trillions upon trillions of planets, suns, universes, black holes, cosmos’ is quite incomprehensible; the gloriousness of Mother Nature abounds. Something is going right. I glimpsed a documentary recently about homelessness, and there was a kind of village of temporary houses that had been set up. The ‘camp’ had many families living in it and the focus was on ‘hand up’ rather than hand out. While I don’t recall all the details, I do recall the face of a man who was being asked what kept him going. I vividly remember the smile that broke out across his face as he said “the children”. He was remarking on the resilience of children, their play, regardless of the circumstances. Everywhere you are there is beauty of some kind to focus upon, even if it is only the beauty within. Do not deny your inner beauty, it is there. It may be obscured by many layers of expectations and opinions that the world placed upon you growing up, but one look at a new born will tell you it’s there in everyone. It can be obscured, but never extinguished. A young woman told me she had overcome 7 years of serious depression through meditation alone. It did not surprise me as I know the power of doing nothing for 15 minutes each day consistently. I also know depression is caused when we literally press down our true nature. By meditating she was allowing herself to start observing all the thoughts she was having and she couldn’t but help start to live in a more authentic way, thus feeling happier in herself. Another man quoted Carl Jung to me today “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious”, precisely. Many of us never allow our innermost feelings and thoughts to ever surface. If you are feeling any shade of grey, how about turning into it rather than stuffing it down? Stuffing down your worst fears and thoughts just doesn’t work; they find their way out eventually – whether through self sabotaging behaviour, poor health or seeming ‘accidents’. The inner you will not be repressed, it will keep trying to ‘talk’ to you until it’s so loud you just can’t ignore it. Equally, when you hear inspiring stories or quotes, or see something amazing, your heart sings. That, to me, is what makes this such a wonderful world. Nature will always find a way. Your true nature, the beauty you were born with, is still there and trying to talk to you all the time, how much are you listening? Imagine a world with even 10% of people following their passion, knowing their true nature? When you tune in to who you really are, you will see just what a wonderful world this is. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at shona@shonakeachie.com, I’m always happy to help if I can. You can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You.  The other day someone commented “Trump for President” and I vaguely wondered if that was the result, was the hoo-ha finally over. So I Googled presidential elections to see that, no, the ‘big’ day isn’t until the 8 November.
My first thought had been (groan) “surely not”, then I realised that neither choice is exactly an indication of anything evolved. Clinton is perhaps more refined in many ways, but what Donald Trump is to the mighty dollar, she is to the political arena, both fought and have thrived in their arena many times – but ultimately its an arena for game playing. Game playing is not for those who want authenticity, it’s not for those who want to understand the world through the eyes of another and it’s not for those who want to truly be part of a world more evolved than this one today. Those who know me understand I withdrew attention to most public media many years ago. The details of life that get focused upon and promoted are nothing short of depressing in most cases, so it has never much interested me. So my perspective does not come from the day to day details of the race, it comes from a broader perspective of character and evolution. Being a 1980’s teen, I remember the American dream through the eyes of European media. Everything seemed so much bigger in America, certainly that was true of the money machine, yet their media used to feed a very singular view. True of the vast majority of media. I know a ‘has been’, it is one of the reasons I left the UK. It’s a country I would describe as stuck in its past. That doesn’t mean of course that each individual is stuck in the past, but there’s a kind of collective consciousness that hails from the days of the power of an Empire, that pervades and creates a culture of entitlement. It’s creates heavy energy that makes day to day life feel like swimming in treacle. And this is how many have come to view America, a power in demise. A society that has been cosseted for so many years by its own publicity machine that it fails to even see other perspectives. The brewhaha about threats from Russia, Iran and then war against ‘terror’ perpetuating perceptions and hatred. Yet what did we see each time the mighty machine prevailed? We saw the ‘threat’ was not as imagined at all, we have seen societies and structures in decline, we have seen individual egos of all ‘sides’ creating a perception that did not match reality. Yes there have been atrocities over the years, on all sides, but what did tit for tat ever achieve? Those of us who are parents know from simply watching our children that no good ever comes from retaliation, it just escalates a situation. We know that from our own personal relationships and fights we have. The lure of revenge is powerful but ultimately fruitless, there are no winners. We are a society that is evolving at a rate faster than ever before. The younger generations see through different lenses as they always did, but these lenses are changing focus at a rate faster than ever. Partially it’s driven by the internet, but mostly it’s driven energetically. Energy is something I’ve come to understand more over the years, but I think it first felt most palpable to me when I saw the extension of the Berlin wall in my early teens, and then visiting the German underground hospital in Jersey, built from forced labour during its occupation, and then, later, standing on the beaches in Normandy, France. As palpable and negative as that energy is, it creates a stronger, opposite desire for a different world. There are those being born into areas of the world now that are war torn, or suffering from greater degrees of oppression than many could imagine, who repel against that energy they feel and – instead of seeking revenge – they are seeking a better world. This is a world sick of itself; there is stronger and stronger desire to create something different. So, for my 2 cents, whether it’s Clinton or Trump is irrelevant, neither represent an evolved world, both represent a step, hopefully the crescendo, in nature’s death dance. Neither can truly lead when there are fewer following. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at shona@shonakeachie.com, I’m always happy to help if I can. You can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You.  When I read that Vodafone and Sky are set to merge here in New Zealand, I had mixed feelings. As a former employee of Vodafone, I am familiar with acquisitions and mergers, in fact, I used to describe Vodafone as a ‘Pac-Man’ of sorts, that goes around the world gobbling up other telecommunications companies.
For those unfamiliar, Vodafone is a global telecommunications giant. In the US it previously owned a big chunk of Verizon Wireless, which it then sold for a cool $130 billion in 2013. As a CE, Russell Stanners was the first one I hadn’t really got to know when working in an organisation. He’s more of an outward facing kind of guy, perfect really for the mergers and acquisitions game. I must admit I’m somewhat impressed by this latest move, it makes perfect sense. Working in Vodafone, you couldn’t help but be awed by the Group’s beginnings. But that was a long time ago, when mobile telecommunications was a sexy game to be in. In New Zealand it started by acquiring Bell South (the contender to the incumbent mobile operator) in 1998, then iHug (fixed line and broadband) in 2006, and Telstraclear in 2012, making it the country’s second largest ISP. From the inside, it felt nothing short of frenetic. A heck of a lot of activity, not only disjointed, at times pulling in opposite directions. There was always the usual hordes of projects planned, or on the go, to streamline all the internal systems and processes. The legacy systems inherited with each acquisition largely remain, making the serving of customers an act of navigating spaghetti junction. Customer facing staff needing to perfect the act of swans on water. Many of the original Vodafone employees were still there, many still in sexy start up mode. Many more feeling our way through this culture that seemed entrenched in the past, wondering when we were going to either up the ante or take becoming more of a ‘utility’ at bit more seriously. Mobile isn’t sexy any more, it’s a necessity, and it’s what we do with it, those possibilities that are important. “a bit of a coup for survival in today’s world “ That is why the Sky merger could be a good move, for both companies. I know little about the inner workings of Sky, but as a customer it’s blatantly obvious that something has to change. No longer the consumer’s only choice, many are opting for viewing via other means. So a bit of a coup for survival in today’s world, with opportunities to woo customers with some leading edge products and services. New Zealand is a fairly small market, and with increasing competition there’s certainly little left to milk in the telecommunications world. Change is necessary for survival, so well done on that score. “to survive is one thing, but can it thrive?” My forte is change and transformation, inside out. While on the surface it might seem that someone in the change game would thrive at Vodafone, there was one big problem; Pac-Man is an outside-in game. In this changing world where, yes, there is an insatiable desire for the media and technology that this marriage promises, there is also born a desire for more meaning. People are tiring of the relentless nature of technological change and choice, the clambering for our attention in a fast paced world that many just wish to slow down, just a bit, to smell the proverbial roses. To thrive, I can’t help but still feel this new partnership will have to take a hard look inside itself. Start to figure out the deeper aspects of its meaning and purpose. With over 4000 employees involved in this merger, that’s a heck of a lot of potential to create something really special. But if the past is any indication of the present or the future, the merry go round will just keep spinning. My hope is that the company will take on more autonomy away from Vodafone Group, although it will still remain the majority shareholder with 51% of the shares. Not that I particularly found Vodafone Group a bad corporation to work with, but with its heritage, trying to maintain brand consistency and a call to its vision is a bit like herding cats. If this marriage has the freedom to reinvent itself completely, take on its own vision and purpose, I think it’s got a shot at creating something leading edge beyond just the products and services it might offer. Of course that will require more than just bringing in a brand agency, creating a vision and throwing money at a leadership development programme. With so much history, entrenched behaviours and cultures, it would require an act of deliberate creation, determination and tenacity to work on stripping back the layers and layers that stand between it and a simpler, cohesive and more consciously aware version that would thrive in tomorrow’s world. Companies that start to really leverage the locked potential in their largest operating cost, their people, will be the ones who thrive in the cultures of tomorrow. Think about it, does your company recognise you as a whole person? One who runs a household, leads a family, maintains a budget, makes decisions, builds relationships, or are you subject to the usual rigors of delegated authorities and privy to only a small percentage of the information flowing around the place via official channels and water coolers? The sad state is that most people don’t even recognise their own potential, they sense it, but can’t articulate it, lost in their own layers and history of often well meaning advice and expectations. Yet there is a definite shift, the yearning for meaning growing stronger among the masses. “companies who survive today will only continue to survive and thrive tomorrow if they start allowing for the potential within” The companies who survive today will only continue to survive and thrive tomorrow if they start allowing for the potential within. Will the new Vodafone/Sky merged company do that? Who knows, but there’s hope. What of you, the reader with your unlocked potential? Well it’s up to you to start exploring it, to start becoming more of who you were born to be. Remaining shackled by company convention is a choice to remain locked in the past, reaffirming the voices in your subconscious planted there at childhood, many versions of why you are not worthy. You are no longer a child, stop allowing yourself to be treated as one. I’m not suggesting you start fighting against company rules or societal laws. Instead focus on what does lie within rather than what doesn’t. You are worthy, you were born knowing it, and society just did a good job of helping you cover it up. The more you unlock your own potential, become the person you were born to be, the more these companies will change from the inside out, becoming places of meaning and purpose rather than just ambition and profit. For what are companies, what is Vodafone and Sky? They are people like you and I, and it starts with us. If you enjoyed this article you may enjoy reading Who Cares How You Feel? If we’re not already connected, just fill in your name and email at the top of the blog page to subscribe to my newsletter. I’d love for you to comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly - shona@shonakeachie.com - I'm always happy to help. shonakeachie.com is both a place where you can continue to read my articles (and even watch videos...soon), and it’s a portal for potential clients to get insights and connect with my consulting and mentoring services. It’s aimed at those who want to create change in their life or those seeking to evolve their business.  Photo by Sergei Zolkin Female hormones - and all their glorious effects in adulthood - rarely get discussed in workplaces. Men dare not, preferring instead to keep comments limited to jokes in down time. Women dare not, lest a crack should show in our armory and we should be thought of as 'less' somehow.
When we are at work, most of us want to remain professional and are likely to keep our masks in tact. In the throws of some hormonal fluctuation, if we do manage to keep the mask in place, often the inner dialogue is slightly less than professional. Our patience and tolerance are diminished - outwardly we might smile and nod, if you are lucky, but inwardly we are rolling our eyes, seething and thinking "how dare they..." or " I just don't have time for this crap". At home though we tend to let the mask slip. Those around us know first hand the effects these potent chemicals have with such regularity. Last week I found myself verbally unleashing momentary rage upon my kids for, well, being kids – making a mess, bickering, screeching at the first sign of anything blocking their flow; how dare they? Like Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk, I just flipped. Joking aside, one day I am at peace with everything around me, not easily flustered by much at all, the next I have all the tolerance of a pea. Out of the blue there are scripts playing in my head that have been silent for a few weeks, basically blaming everyone around me for their selfishness and insensitivity. I hear myself chuntering all the same things I used to hear my mother say, getting sucked into a vortex of thoughts, stories that reaffirm my righteousness. Then I observe with wonder and incredulity. Why did I speak to my children in such a way? “They’ll not trust me if I’m not consistent” I thought, then, “don’t blow it, you are meant to be their safe haven". The grip subsided, started to dissipate. “Goodness girls” I said, “I’m so sorry, that wasn’t nice at all huh? “ They reaffirmed and I apologised, again. In the next moment, one of them spilt something on the floor and the mad lady was back. “How dare you?” I cried. To myself I thought “stop, just stop, that is enough”. Exhausted I decided we had to switch it up, get some fresh air and burn off some energy. Good move. The energy I’d tuned into was so dense, it was pulling me down. Out in the sun enjoying the kids playing at the park, a modicum of tranquility returned as my energy found a different wavelength to tune to, my inner stillness. Thank goodness I practice regularly tuning into that inner stillness when I’m not so emotional; it helps me to find it when I am. I have heard it said that – at various points in the hormonal cycles – females are susceptible to the energy of female persecution through the ages, something I thought sounded totally farfetched when I first heard it. However, given we are always creating energy, and that all energy created hangs around, in a hormonal state I obviously give off some bad vibes and attract more. Rage certainly seems to spring from nowhere. I’m not sure that we can even blame biology for the hormonal state, because anthropological studies show that cultures vary in the way a woman’s hormones affect them. In societies where the females have been cherished, the emotional and physical state we recognize as ‘premenstrual’ or ‘menopausal’ does not exist. This leads me to the cultural expectations that we get locked into from a young age. Women going periodically schizo (I don’t mean this distastefully, there is no better phrase to describe the constant and extreme switches in emotional state), arguments ensuing and men rolling their eyes and sanctimoniously saying “ah, it’s that time again is it?” all reinforce the energy hanging around. Even in the workplace you can be sure everyone is thinking that when a female seems to ‘lose the plot’. With two girls growing into this world I am sensitive to the things that they can take on that remove them yet another step from their innocence – or ‘inner sense’. For really, that natural state that children come into this world with is the natural state within all of us. It’s the one I tune into when I practice mindfulness or meditation. If we can simply be the space in which these strong emotions arise, allowing them to be without attaching thought to them, they start to dissipate. While I’d rather not be schizo mum, at least I am at a point where I recognize it and try to catch it now. I apologise for it if I don’t catch it in time, and I hope that I’ll get better and better at simply being the space for that energy to pass through me like a wave and dissipate, it’s as important for my own wellbeing as it is for that of my kids. Still today I know female persecution exists, but for most of us, if we can start to let go of the hurts of the past, the bad vibes will have no place to exist anymore, they will dissipate and we can free ourselves of this taboo and move forward. This article was originally published on LinkedIn.  For most CEO’s, the notion of simply scrapping your entire management structure is a little uncomfortable to say the least. But let’s look at this more closely. Is your management structure adding value, or are managers actually the cogs in a cumbersome machine that is now past its best?
"people today want to be part of something meaningful" People today want to be part of something meaningful, feel empowered and valued for their contribution. Organisations must move past trite vision statements and values, made trite only because those who ‘do the work’ are often not involved in their creation, so the organization doesn't 'live and breathe' the words written on its collateral. Rallying to a purpose means involvement, which leads to commitment. As discussed in my last article on why trust leads to better business outcomes, traditionally we apportion trust in organisations in the form of access to information, decision making power and financial authority. This strips many of the people ‘doing the work’ of any real power, we want those very people to take a more holistic view yet we don’t treat them as whole. Better Brand and Bottom Line – Ditch Your Call Centre asserts that the role of a call centre is unnecessary, costly, and even harmful. But in Profit, Purpose and Personal Fulfillment Can Thrive Together - A Remarkable New Organisational Construct I discuss a wider - though similar - issue, learning from organisations who have transcended the issues faced by most by adopting more self managing constructs. So has the role of management become another middle man that is perpetuating unnecessary costs? Having been a manager for many years myself, it’s a question I’ve pondered more and more. Initially there was an ego attachment to it, a status that goes with having ‘power’, but then came the responsibility of having to achieve outcomes through others. Quickly I understood the value of intrinsic motivation and the ability to find and ignite it. There is certainly an art to good management, but the question is whether it's necessary. Do managers simply have to learn these skills because of what has, in essence, been taken away from those in the value chain (doing the work that lies at the heart of the company's existence)? Take away control and many lose that intrinsic motivation to succeed on their own. In an article, published in Forbes, Jacob Morgan talks of 5 must-have qualities of the modern manager. He covers removing roadblocks from the paths of employees to help them succeed, empowering and engaging people, having a handle of what consumers are saying online, which social and collaborative technologies are making their way into the enterprise, using those collaborative technologies to lead by example, being open and transparent, embracing vulnerability and sharing information and collective intelligence. These are great qualities, but still, I wonder where the value-add is. How many of these things would be necessary in an environment where those who plan ahead and those who 'do' worked together in self managing teams, are these not things that can be achieved by anyone with the right access, savvy and relationships? “there would be chaos” Those who are managers may not have faith that all the people they currently manage could self manage well. Some may even think there would be chaos. Yes it could be a bumpy ride at first, but people quickly adapt and evolve given the right support. There has to be a huge amount of effort put into training managers that move through the various levels of managers anyway, why not invest that elsewhere, cut out the middleman? Most people manage perfectly well outside of work, in all the other areas of their life, without someone managing them. Those you manage are after all parents, homeowners, leaders in the community, sportspeople and so on. With experts like Frederic Laloux (author of Reinventing Organizations) and Yanik Silver (author of Evolved Enterprise) around, there is plenty of support to create organisations that manage themselves in quite a different way. "firms that follow these principles have outperformed the S&P 500 by 1000%" The organisations of the future are those who rally to a real cause (both those who work in the organisation and their customers), encourage the whole person to show up (rather than the narrow professional slice that has become the norm) and have constructs that facilitate collaboration (internally and externally). In the book Firms of Endearment, the authors show how firms that follow these principles have outperformed the S&P 500 by 1000% over 10 years. If you want to stick with a management structure to achieve those things, you can, though it’s probably not the most efficient use of your resources in the long term. I’m not suggesting you fire all your managers, it’s the ‘managing people’ part of the role that is largely redundant. In the case studies that Laloux cites, the organisations that have transformed to self managing structures retained all their managers but in roles that added more value. Regardless of how to choose to evolve, evolve you must in order to thrive in today's world and in order to just to survive in the world of tomorrow. This article was originally published on LinkedIn. photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/45393120@N07/5997001123">HA0521-031</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>  While we want our people to take a holistic view, most people in organisations are not treated as ‘whole’. The very construct of the organisation is designed to strip them down to a narrow view, then we want them to be holistic in their day to day interactions. It’s not unique to our adult experience, it starts when we are young. We teach our kids to fit in, follow the rules, yet want them to think for themselves.
What utopia looks like is an organisation where those interacting with customers, or designing interactions, feel that they own a win-win outcome in that interaction and that they have enough skill and acumen to achieve it. That means that they understand the big picture, are privy to the information they need and empowered to achieve the outcome. Sure, there are skills involved in that, but it all hinges on trust. Talking to a tenured executive this week about the problems his organisation faces in delivering a great customer experience, he cites the common scenario of major stakeholders getting complaints from customers about the lack of help they’ve had from the organisation. He finds himself bringing together different people, who have looked at things from their constricted viewpoint, their limited span of control, and having to mediate a solution from a more holistic perspective. One that serves the customer and the organisation. Sound familiar? While ‘the customer experience’ has become a rather trite phrase, it is the thing that makes or breaks perceptions of an organisation when people have to interact with it. It’s the proof point of any brand you want to create and a vital barometer of your leadership. Whether an organisation exists primarily to make money, or is not-for-profit, whether it lives and dies by serving the needs and desires of individuals or is custodian or gatekeeper of a greater good, is irrelevant. All organisations benefit from a good reputation. Standing in the way will be the basic construct of your organisation, even ‘flat’ structures tend to have hierarchies with the power at the top. The power isn’t just about the level of financial authority and decision making, it’s about the level of input and access to information – important context that can make all the difference for the person dealing with a change that is intended to directly or indirectly help the customer, or simply in the day to day conversing with the customer and ‘doing their job’. The discussion in my recent article on how Profit, Purpose and Personal Fulfillment Can Thrive Together, focused on a new approach to organizational constructs. While this can only be driven by CEO’s and those they answer to, there is room in any construct for leaders to take an approach that allows their people to operate in a more holistic way, one that better serves them and the organisation. The issue of trust is a starting point. To trust your people to deliver win-win outcomes, aside of the skills they will need to be equipped with, you have to trust them with information, you have to listen to their input, and they have to trust you. When people trust you, they are willing to ask for help, willing to own mistakes. To gain that trust you have to firstly be willing to be vulnerable yourself, not infallible. Sure, you want to work with people who know what they’re doing, but to never make mistakes or to know everything? For most of us showing any sign of weakness is out of our comfort zone. Our survival instinct, the part of our brain that switches to flight or fight when we are in mortal danger, has become the modus operandi for the way we live. Although most of us tend not to live in mortal danger for most of our lives, we are constantly using our minds in a way that mimics that instinct. Notice as you talk to people that you are generally not listening to what they are saying. Yes you may be hearing the words that come out of their mouth, but you’re usually leveraging that to think about what to say next, rather than really understanding what is being said. Here’s the reason, while you came into the world with an innate sense of what is right and wrong for you, from the minute you are born on this earth others think they know better. Slowly but surely you start to become less of who you were born to be and more of who others think you should be. This thing called ‘ego’ forms, your mind’s perception of you are. Almost immediately we start to fight or defend in some way, outwardly or silently. Being vulnerable with the people you want to have trust in you is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. Leadership teams that can be vulnerable with each other can start to truly operate as a team and will be a lot more focused and successful as a result. But it is like wearing a very uncomfortable pair of shoes at first. As you get to know and accept your own fallibilities, so you will be able to listen to others and help them with theirs, freeing them to achieve the very things you want them to. Trusting your people to do their job in a holistic way means treating them as whole people. Any step towards trust in your organisation, even one small step, will be one giant leap towards a better customer experience and better business outcomes. This article was originally published on LinkedIn. photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/122099374@N07/16969244789">Dave Lewis</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">(license)</a>  Photo by Joshua Hibbert “If we can’t think outside the traditional organizational structure, the best we can do is to try and patch up the unhealthy consequences of power inequality with more enlightened leadership.” Frederic Laloux
As I discussed in my last article on why evolving your culture is, ultimately, the only way to win, the cycle of boom to bust is more akin to a slow death cycle given the construct of most of today’s companies. It is time to evolve or face extinction. The old constructs found in most organisations simply don’t work for us anymore. People - you, your staff and your customers – are evolving, they are looking for something more. If you have any doubts about this, just look at people across the generations and you will quickly see a pattern – the younger people are, the more they expect. This isn’t about money, it’s about meaning. After many attempts to implement significant changes and travel the road to transformation in traditional organisations, I know two things for certain: enlightened leadership is an improvement but not the answer, and the only person who can drive a true transformation in ‘the way things are done around here’ is the CEO or the Board, whoever is the ultimate decision maker. A conversation with my former boss a couple of years back, when taking on his new role, centred around how to create lasting transformation in that part of the company. The problem we were trying to solve was difficult to articulate at first, too often the brand experience of customers who contacted us was atrocious, there was an immediate need to stop hemorrhaging money, and the culture that pervaded that part of the company – which accounted for almost a third of the staff – seemed like it was taken straight from the Lego movie, it had been heavily micromanaged. I remember recommending that his leadership team read, action and embed Patrick Lecioni’s ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’ and ‘The Three Signs Of A Miserable Job’. My opinion at the time was these leadership fables tell you everything you need to know to get started building your team and creating a culture that will work for everyone in today’s world – win-win-win (bottom line, staff and customers). However what I missed is, regardless of how enlightened the leadership, in organisations where there is a management and support structure, all the processes and systems required to maintain each span of control breed mistrust in all those people who are not in those roles – often the very people doing the work that is the lifeblood of the organisation. If you have any doubts about that, think about the way information is handled, especially if there is a sensitive change taking place. All the classifications about who gets to know what basically tells everyone who is ‘not in the know’ they can’t be trusted. This week Frederic Laloux’s book ‘Reinventing Organisations' arrived in my mailbox. As soon as I read the words “The way we manage organisations seems increasingly out of date, deep inside we sense that more is possible. We long for soulful workplaces, for authenticity, community, passion and purpose.” I knew I had to have a copy; especially given that the book describes in practical detail how organisations large and small can operate successfully in this new paradigm. This was a book Laloux wrote after researching pioneering organisations that have been operating on breakthrough principles for a long time, as much as 30 or 40 years, and not just with a handful, but with a few hundred and sometimes tens of thousands of employees. Among the pioneers are for-profit as well as nonprofit organisations, retailers, manufacturing companies, an energy company, a food producer as well as a school and a group of hospitals. Back when I wrote Better Brand and Bottom Line – Ditch Your Call Centre, I cited many examples of the ridiculously expensive, soul destroying practices that surround call centres, a common function in many organisations. The conclusion in that article was to ‘cut out the middlemen’, let those developing products and services talk directly to their customers. In Laloux’s study he concludes the same, only in reference to the entire management and traditional support structure of any given organisation. This may sound radical and unworkable, especially if you are in just the type of role rendered redundant in the blueprint of these new organisations. However, ask yourself, just how content are you in your role? Do you feel you are really making a difference? Are you able to be completely yourself, the real you, or is there a ‘corporate’ version of you that turns up? Are you valued for the breadth of talents, passions and purpose that drive you? Like Laloux, I believe change is inevitable, and was excited to read concrete examples of companies that had transitioned from the traditional hierarchical structures we largely have today, to a very different paradigm. In those cases, the vast majority of the management and support teams remained with the company, albeit without their previous ‘powers’. Instead, these people found roles that added real value, in a way that allowed them to be more whole. What Laloux has written manages to interweave personal fulfilment and enlightenment, together with a fairly easily understood - yet scholarly - look at human development, giving context to organizational development. Most importantly, he describes in every crucial aspect what one needs to know to create such organisations. ‘Getting over our bad selves’, an expression I’ve heard people say jokingly with increased frequency, is key to making this transition. If you are still reading this, it means there’s at least a part of you ready to transcend ego and ambition for wholeness and purpose. For those who are the ultimate decision maker in your organisation, here is a workable way forward, a necessity for us to thrive. For those intending to start a company, you’re in the enviable position of being given a blueprint. What about the vast majority of you who are feeling ‘stuck’ in your role? Reading this may have given you a glimpse of something you now feel is beyond your grasp; it isn’t. Your actions will hasten change. If you can focus on the goal of uncovering your innermost self and being true to that, as I describe in Making the Shift from Ambition to Purpose, we will all be one step closer to a better world. This article was originally published in LinkedIn.  Photo by Joshua Earle Don't mistake the cycle of transformation to cost cutting as anything other than a vicious cycle, or more likely a death spiral, if you are not focused on evolving your culture.
People - you, your staff, your customers - are changing, looking for more. There are many in the morning of their life who don’t need to wait for the sunset to know there’s more, there’s a yearning for meaningful exchange. But most companies are not ahead of this change, many recognise it but don’t know the answers and don’t make seeking them a priority. The current construct of the majority of our companies is still driven by the qualities of the white, western male; I think it was the book Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath that first provoked that thought in me. Changing the construct, the way of doing things, is like crossing the Rubicon for most executives. The question is, what can companies do in order to leverage today’s diversified population, with all our talents, needs and desires? And why would you want to? Let’s take the process of choosing between limited numbers of options from a business case, which is a common place way of informing decision making in an executive board room. It is rare for anyone in the room to debate whether there are other options, never mind stand back from the options and question whether the problem being solved is even the right problem. Debating and defining your problems is a critical step in determining where to put your focus, are you taking the time and involving enough people in the initial part of the process? While ‘fresh thinking’ can be a great thing, in reality, it's not always entirely welcomed. While it seems common sense to involve downstream deliverers and recipients of a product or service upstream in its development, it rarely happens. Smaller companies that are growing tend to be more inclusive by necessity, employees feel their opinions and ideas are valued, that they need to pull together to address the problems before them. But as the company grows, processes, systems and specific roles start to push out that sense of being valued as an individual and the inner loyalty crumbles. Yes, we live in a faster paced world, and few folk expect to have a job for life. Despite that, most companies are still looking for highly committed employees. There's an old saying that really resonates "the key to commitment is involvement". A few years ago, an HR colleague and I were pondering how the company we were working for could get ahead of being seen as a utility in order for it to start turning more profit. The problem being the company had been at the forefront of making communications mobile; many of the original employees were still there and continued to see the company as the sexy start up that had brought about a revolution in the way people went about their daily lives. The culture was still deeply wedded to the ‘start up’ mentality and yet driven by a global corporate with big shareholder expectations. Customer perceptions and expectations had also dramatically changed. Among the literally hundreds of projects on the go, addressing the culture to any degree of substance wasn’t among them. If you’re lucky, you’ve got employees who are debating this kind of thing, though in most cases it will be a side bar conversation rather than a solution that the company is actively seeking. So how do we make it centre stage, invite more ideas? The obvious answer is to create a more inclusive process to involve your people in meaningful conversations to take the organization forward. But creating a process, without also investing in your people, especially your leadership, would be a serious mistake. For the most part, people need help to uncover what is within them. That is where we should focus our efforts, because through personal transformation you create an energy that is infectious. I remember working with a head of department a number of years ago who was a clever guy, but difficult to work with. He was always late for meetings, or didn’t turn up; he’d make derisory comments and just generally do what he liked. He was in charge of a large department, multi million dollar contracts and a lot of his team’s work impacted on the organisation’s reputation. Along with some other senior managers he was sent on an intense leadership development programme. This was an out of office, away from home, stripped bare type of a deal. But he came back a changed man, and it changed his relationships, and the people around him. The organisation reaped the benefits of the newfound cooperation in many unseen ways. Therein lies the rub, back to the business cases and returns on investment. Investing in your people, your culture, is often difficult to quantify. I’ve heard executives agree it is common sense and we all know it’s the right thing to do, but you have to prove it. Why is that? I'm quite sure that those of you who hold the purse strings know a wise choice when you see it. Let’s take a different approach to our corporate lives, one that seeks, values and leverages the best of people. Let’s get back to a place where we trust our inner knowing, and start to see our work lives as a vehicle for our passions to thrive (no, I don’t mean a sneaky liaison in the back office). Whether you see it yet or not, we’re not going to win where we stand. You need to be more to make more. It’s time to take a leap, cross the Rubicon, to build a better team, a better company, a better world. This article was originally published on LinkedIn.  In growing up you have become immersed in a shroud of rules, rules that simply do not serve you; shed the shroud and unveil the life you intended to life.
Did you ever stop to think what a ludicrous world we live in? We invent so many rules it is ridiculous. There’s the written rules, the doctrines of religion, law, politics, then there’s the unwritten rules, society’s conventions. Tune into your own moral compass and let go of the cumbersome impossibility of living to everyone else’s standards. Freedom is the essence of our soul, every emotion we ever experience is in relation to how free we feel. We are too willing to put up with feeling bad, feeling powerless, it’s time to start tuning in to your inner knowing and turning the dial to feeling good. As I would walk to work each day from the ferry, there was one guy I’d often see – well, hear - who would walk along with his headset on and belt out a tuneless rendition of “Whiskey in the Jar”. He was completely sober and, as tuneless as his singing was, it brought about a frission of energy, a wonderful zest for life and ‘letting go’ we all paid attention to. Like many of you, I was encultured into a life full of ‘rules’. From the minute you wake up to the minute you go to sleep your life is dictated by rules. Rules that we, as humans, have simply ‘made up’. Let me give you another example. When my daughter started at daycare last year, she was almost 4, and – unknown to me at the time – the centre had ‘rules for eating lunch’. They raved about the healthy meals that the kids get cooked, and I assumed it was the process of their friends eating a new variety of food that would encourage the new kids to give it a go, surprising themselves that something new tasted good. But no, at 11.30am the kids get their lunch, and it’s a cooked meal. I don’t know about you, but I can’t face anything with any taste until after about 1pm, prior to that I need bland offerings. However, each to their own. The kids are told time and again (the teachers call this ‘encouraged’ but I’ll call it what it is to illustrate my point) “eat your veges, they are good for you”. Like Pavlov’s dogs they are applauded for eating the good stuff and punished if they don’t. “Oh no, we don’t punish them” I was told. Mm, so re-presenting the broccoli they didn’t eat at lunch and withholding the afternoon tea until it’s eaten isn’t punishment? No longer is my daughter in an environment where she can choose what she eats and when, she can’t go with her flow. There’s no need to dictate what they eat, provide a healthy variety and kids – heck let’s widen this to anyone – will choose the food and quantities their body needs. Yes, sugar and refined flour will mess with our chemistry and therefore our choices, but I did say provide a healthy variety of choices. We have rules and more rules. Laws that make no sense. I have decided the next time I get stopped for speeding and they ask why I was driving over the limit I’ll say “because I felt it was safe to do so” as it will be the truth. I saw an article in the AA magazine on ‘form’ versus road signage. It’s been proven that a tree lined road will slow motorists down, whereas open landscaping speeds things up, much more effectively than signage. You are born knowing right from wrong. Truly, you are. I know it’s hard to believe given the level of stuffing we’ve all had knocked out of us in the process of growing up. Most of us are conditioned into thinking we need someone to tell us the rules or society will collapse into chaos. This was in actual fact what the daycare centre told me “we can’t let the kids choose, there would be chaos!” Who are these people who decide the ‘rules’ we follow? Politics has become a game of power and ego. In religious doctrines you will find rules taking you down a rabbit hole further and further from the essence of its teaching. You are born with an inner knowing, innate wisdom. All growth adds to our collective consciousness, we evolve and our children are born wiser than we. Just in the last few decades alone we have evolved at a pace beyond previous decades, centuries even, with many social intolerances now starting to dissipate. It is a battle of the mind versus inner wisdom and knowing. There is a deeper part of you, and you know it exists because you connect with it in every moment of clarity you have, that knows right from wrong. You know what is right for you, and you don’t need others to tell you what it is. As adults we have years of conditioning to unravel before we can get there consistently. You can start today though, you get clarity through stilling your mind. As I wrote in Live the Best Version of Your Life the most common regret of the dying is “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”. If you wonder who the real you is, just start with any activity that helps you to free your mind of those cloudy, crowding “what if’s” – go for a walk, dance to loud music in your living room, take a ride on your bike, go for a swim, whatever works for you, that helps bring you back into balance. It’s from these points of clarity that you make great decisions about what works for you and what doesn’t. Over time you can learn to get in that feeling, that headspace, more readily, and for longer. Reading through some of my earlier takes you through this step by step. In the meantime, go break a few rules. Start with things that are inconsequential, maybe you’ll take a pee on the hillside when you go for a walk, or do a rendition of “Whiskey in the jar” on the bus, whatever it is, be free to do what is right and feels good for you. This article was originally posted on LinkedIn. photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/16903262@N02/1802363801">Ice hole swimming</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>  Get your developers and marketers taking customer calls; you’ll soon stop developing anything that requires your customers to endure to pain of calling you. Seriously.
Come on, hands up, how many of us live in fear and dread of having to call any company for help? Generally speaking, it’s a fairly hideous experience. You want someone to answer, quickly, who can actually help. You would think this is simple, but generally it’s not. I came into the customer service industry through the back door, so to speak. Starting at the complaints end, I saw the rich, fertile ground for improvements. Simple improvements that often get overlooked. One radical improvement in customer service though, in my opinion, is to get rid of your call centre. Call centres are an amazing hive of industry all of their own, likely devastating to your brand and bottom line (despite the often heroic efforts of those working in them). We’ve made a science out of something that simply shouldn’t be. Let’s step back. You are the provider of a product or service. You want your customers to buy what you offer, remain loyal and recommend you to others. So brand is important, feedback is important and continual improvement is important. Here’s the thing. Call centres as a rule tend to remove the customer from your business and cost you a phenomenal amount of unnecessary money. In larger companies we’re often talking tens of millions of dollars each year in staffing alone. Then there’s the technology, any other capital investment and – most devastatingly – the damage to your brand. Think about how they came to exist. Back office staff were getting too many calls distracting them from their ‘day job’. So call centers were born; a false economy. My interest in customer experience transformation has often meant I’ve found myself in roles managing call centre contracts, or having one in my portfolio. In my last role, one of the most visionary people I’d worked with went for the big ‘call centre’ job, I was horrified. Worse, he wanted me to come and help him create a transformation. Now don’t mistake my statements here for any derision towards customer service professionals, quite the opposite. The people who work and rise in the industry are extremely dedicated, insightful, resourceful and knowledgeable. But, frankly, they are often set up to fail. For a call centre to give great service, it requires a number of things. Here’s what typically happens in organizations with a call centre ‘machine’: A call comes in from a customer – why? Because the company has failed to provide something the customer needs. So the first thing is, how do we recognize this customer? Where we all fall down in our thinking is to assume companies are like Big Brother, they know everything about you when you call. There are various forms of CRM (customer relationship management) systems that can – in theory – help companies to not only identify the customer but give a good indication as to why they are calling (begging the question, why not fix it before they call). I say, in theory, because most technology would work amazingly well if it was all the company had ever owned and all its basic operating systems were the most compatible and up to date. In reality, most companies now have so many legacy systems it takes an army of specialists to even map it all out. So, if you happen to be a customer of a company and use several of its products or services, to think the company would know our whole profile is a given, but it’s often not the case. Once you’ve got past they ‘who am I’ part, then there’s the ‘what am I calling about’ part. This is often sent with yet another silent prayer, or, depending on your experience of queuing and being identified, many expletives and a desperate hope that this actual person you are now talking to will be able to help you. To do that requires a huge amount of training in the company's products and services. Now, what do you think is often the first thing to get canned when call volumes and/ or company expenditure is too high? Good learning and development specialists, most managers, staff and customers all want employees to be excited about the brand that they work for, to be advocates outside of the workplace. In reality, very little investment gets made in this and any training becomes about how to press which buttons, with very little context about the bigger picture. Then there’s the knowledge about the detailed inner workings of the product or services themselves. “Isn’t that what training is for?” people ask. Mm, training is useful but not to learn the contents of an encyclopedia, which is what it can be like trying to understand the in’s and out’s of some products or services. This is where Knowledge Management Systems come in. A bit like CRM systems in term of their issues, with the added complexity of requiring constant upkeep and input. I’ve yet to see a fully ‘locked and loaded’ system, hence the array of post it notes and signs adoring many call centre desks. So once the inadequately trained person on the end of the phone manages to somehow find an answer to your plight, the next task is to track customer issues and make improvements to your product or service. Well, that’s what you’d think. Even companies with fabulous tracking systems (again, the same system issues arise as for CRM systems and Knowledge Management systems), generally fail to take adequate action. The reporting system, if there is one, produces statistics. Decision makers might look at the reports and say, oh, it’s only x% of revenue or our customer base, accepting certain degrees of failure in their product or service; though it can be a leap to say these things get connected to even this degree. At best there will likely be a handful of improvement specialists that tend to then fail to have a real impact in terms of systematically reducing the call/failure demand based on a lack of overall understanding and commitment of the wider leadership. It would make good sense to have a customer service representative involved all the way upstream, when you have a new concept and then start the design, or particularly when you are redesigning an existing product. This is a rarity, even if they are involved, it’s seldom with any kind of sign off - even when there’s a direct impact on call centre resources. Then of course there’s the internal politics of call centers. The typical dynamic is a mutual loathing between customer service and the developers and marketers. Imagine instead a customer service department that was looked upon as the ‘looking glass’ of success or failure of the company. Where those developing the upstream products and services regularly visited to hear first hand what customers had to say. Likewise, imagine customer service departments that live and breathe the brand and are active users and advocates of your products or services. There are companies that have programmes to encourage or enforce this, but these are often short lived due to costs. When it does happen though, it opens up a whole new perspective and, for a short time, dialogue begins. A new found respect can be seen and the customer gets considered right upstream where they should always have been anyway. So here is the point, why do you have a call centre? Take a long look at the costs here, direct and indirect. If you can look through all the points above and say, “we are doing those well”, then great, you are in the minority. If not, seriously, take a close look at this self destructive machine you’ve created and either set it up for success, or get rid of it and send those calls upstream. Dare you. This article was originally published in LinkedIn. photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/10295270@N05/4500117446">R.I.P Dare</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>  Photo by Sander Smeekes We are becoming lonelier, and it’s killing us. This is the basic premise of an article I was sent this week, supported with lots of facts and figures, and sited social isolation as the key driver. I have a slightly different take on it, that is, people have become something they are not in order to fit into a culture that is not even serving us anymore. People have become disconnected from who they really are and who they were born to be. If you are not connected with your own inner self, how can you truly connect with the world around you?
As a child of the 70’s, I was intrigued by a recent Australian drama series called Puberty Blues. Its focus around the lives of young teens really took me back to that time when we emerge into the world forever changed by our hormones. The show is fairly gritty and depicts the young men as arrogant louts who need to maintain an image of cool by ‘dissing’ the chicks. And the girls of course generally abide by this etiquette of the time and get themselves into all sorts of hot water because they really felt they couldn’t say no to the guys. What really struck me about this series was an interview I read in a magazine with the young actors who were asked whether the lives they were acting out bore any resemblance to their own. Their answers were heartening, the guys were blown away by how macho and stand offish the young men they play are, the guys of today being much more comfortable with being more tactile around their mates and talking about their feelings. The girls talked about the young women of today being much more comfortable dictating their own terms. I was listening to an Abraham Hicks talk recently where I heard wise words that really resonated with this. The essence was that we get wrapped up in trying to impart our wisdom to the younger generations, when in actual fact they are born wiser. Knowledge is accumulative in the greater consciousness, our experiences and lessons are woven into the very fabric of life itself and slowly but surely we evolve. Things change, probably over about four generations, pretty quick really. Technology aside, when I think back to where we were only a few decades ago when I was growing up: Americans was locked in the Cold War with Russia, in Europe we still had a wall around East Germany, South Africa still had a system of Apartheid, being gay was not something anyone (not even a celebrity) admitted to – ever, people still debated whether smoking was bad for your health; and the role of men and women was changing. Allan and Barbara Pease have written much on the topic of the male/female differences (I like Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps), and I always thank them for introducing the idea to me that all men and women have a degree of typically masculine versus typically feminine traits. Most of my generation in Scotland were the product of homes where the mum was a housewife and the dad worked, yet we were being educated that woman had equal rights and many are now out there trying to be superheroes, with the generations following looking at the stressed, burnt out versions of their parents and deciding that is not who they want to be. Good. Being born a woman in this life has been an interesting experience. For all talk of ‘equal rights’, what we saw in the home was not that. We had no template for what it even meant. This is evident in our corporate cultures today. Even in companies that espouse attractive values, generally the reality is still a construct that fits and plays upon our more masculine traits (particularly in the way decision making takes place) with little time invested in two-way communication and the growth of our people and culture. I’ve worked closely with senior managers and ‘leaders’ in Executive positions for the last 15 years, I’ve seen women become more masculine time and again in a bid to be successful in the workplace. One was determined not to become like that because of a female boss she’d worked for who was publicly renowned for being masculine in her manner. Yet I'd observe her in meetings with her mannerisms and speech all but saying ‘watch me as I sit here and scratch my imaginary balls as I show you who the alpha dog is’. On the flip side, she’d often talk of her young teenage kids, texting or taking calls from them, and we’d see a more feminine side – but where had that woman gone in her workplace dealings? It’s an interesting world alright. The point I keep coming back to is this, we were all born with characteristics, traits and talents that – for one reason or another – we have felt the need to cover up or change in order to survive. This does not make for a happy life. We have organizations filled with people who feel like they are one person on the inside and another to the outside world, turning up each day to a prescribed job description, managed by performance reviews whose outcome must fit a bell curve. Imagine organizations filled with people who are in tune with themselves, bought in to the vision of the organization and allowed to simply let their strengths and passions flow. How do we get from here to there? We have made some enormous strides in our society, and we evolve – eventually. One person at a time, one decision at a time. So how miserable do you need to be? How lonely? What’s it going to take for you to come out and be who you are? What will it take for you to choose happy? This article was originally published on LinkedIn.  Photo by Jessica Polar About a month ago I was having lunch was a previous boss of mine, he remarked that it still baffled him how confronting it was for some people to work with a person being themselves. The more I would say what I really thought, the more it made certain people start to spin out.
He values people’s authenticity. I’m not saying he always liked it, there were times we wanted to kill each other (not literally but it was nice to have a cartoon version of it in my head on occasion), but his preference was for passionate authentic people. The line of thinking is you get a lot more discretionary effort and much better results. I agree. But it’s an interesting subject, authenticity. Wikipedia says authenticity is the degree to which one is true to one’s own personality, spirit or character, despite external pressures. Sounds great, but how many of us truly know our authentic selves? If you do, well done. But for me, it’s still an ongoing journey. For years I’ve been interested in psychology, always drawn to the multitude of personality and character tests that exist. While some basic understanding is helpful – like the revelation we aren’t all wired the same way i.e. some people prefer interaction with others while others prefer tasks, some people are introverted, others are extroverted, and (a big one) men and women are quite simply different – it can quickly get very complex from there. But I’ve come to realize that psychology is about understanding people with their nature and nurture swirled together, with ongoing life events that reinforce things we’ve come to believe about ourselves and the world. Let me give you an example. A child is born, in its early years it starts to sing. Its parents say “ooh, maybe stay away from the singing”, backed up with a few grimacing looks or laughter every time the child does its best rendition of Old MacDonald or Twinkle Twinkle. Now this child has just added a layer to their true nature, some ‘nuture’, a layer that says “I can’t sing”. Starting to recognize the layers? We’ve each got hundreds, probably thousands, of these layers. What I mean by being who you are, is to be the person under all those layers. So how do you even know who that person is? As I said, it’s a journey, one that involves being confronted by the same issues time and time again, going round the same loop. A common example of this is in relationships, we attract the same types of people time and again, the same issues in different guises. Many go through their entire life repeating the same old issues, feeling sorry for themselves. Instead, if you look at your part in these situations, and learn from them, you take away some layers and move on. The story of my relationship with one of the people my old boss referred to as being "confronted" when I was being me, provides a great example of just this. Her personal story is not relevant here, but it’s now easy for me to see I’d attracted an old scenario again. A domineering, overbearing person trying to force their opinions on me. And initially (and for a long time) I reacted as I always did, in defense. Now, I’ve always been ‘professional’, so “in defense” was of course within those boundaries - lots of ranting to the boss, drawn out ‘discussion’ and heated debate over this or that, platitudes and compromises, all of it exhausting. But I’m a fighter, especially of injustice, so it’s fair to say the pictures in my head as I was ‘professionally’ dealing with this person weren’t of a cartoon variety. Right there, there’s a ‘layer’, “ I’m a fighter”. I was so sure that being a fighter was my true nature. But how could it be? I never liked fighting, there’s a clue. But I wasn’t going to be diminished either – the true fear – not realizing until now that the true me will never come to light while it’s repressed by this fear. Funnily enough then, it turns out my true nature is not to fight, not to defend. None of it sits comfortably; it’s simply what I learned to do to survive. But now I know there’s a different choice. Now I know if you give attention to something it simply fuels more of it. So now I am learning to switch that off. Consciously at first. The driver/survivor in me is no longer required nor helpful. I don’t want to waste my communication skills in defense all the time, it’s too wearing. The outer and inner me simply weren’t a match. Are yours? So I made that decision with that person at work, and ended it by being authentic. I stopped trying to be nice or professional, in our final fight I simply said “I won’t be bullied by you or anyone”, and walked away. Then I stopped giving any energy in that direction, I knew it was done. My energies went into the more productive transformational stuff I was there to do. This earth needs more people being who they are, rather than who they’ve become. Certainly the corporate world needs it, politics needs it, and the government needs it. Be who you are, you’ll be better for it and so will we. This article was originally published on LinkedIn. |
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