Step Away From The Desk: How To Get Those Big Ideas

There was a piece in the FT on Monday entitled ‘How To Be An Iconoclast’ that featured Gregory Berns, professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University and author of ‘Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How To Think Differently’. Berns says that if you are in the same environment with the same people every day, you’re unlikely to have radical ideas: “the easiest way to create new ideas and remix old ones is to put yourself in situations you’ve never been in before”.

I’ve banged on about this in many previous posts but it still amazes me when I see companies - big and small - task their people to come up with great ideas, and expect that to happen at their desks or in the office. It ‘aint gonna happen.

That’s why I use train rides and coffee shops to do my ‘big thinking’. It’s why I’m going to Paris next month to start writing my third book.

So if your business or organisation is looking to produce new thinking, send your people out to a coffee shop, for a walk in the park, a train ride to see a client. If you liberate people from the corporate baggage of flip charts, brainstorm sessions and agendas, you might find that’s when the ideas will flow.

Try it.

A Lesson In Embracing Change

We often hear people don’t have a natural ability to deal with change, and that’s cited as an obstacle to implementing organisational change.
But I know someone who’s recently embraced radical organisational change with no fear or complaint.
He went from being a part-time member of a 15-person team to being in a team of 30 within an organisation of several hundred.
His hours have been extended significantly; he now has to leave the house much earlier and gets home much later.
He’s mixing with a totally new bunch of people, and has a lot of names to remember.
He’s now using technology every day, whereas before he didn’t have that much experience.
He has a new culture to embrace with its rules, quirks and requirements.
Apart from the fact that he’s knackered every day, he’s never complained once about this big change in his life. In fact, he loves it!
Have you guessed who it is? 
It’s my five year old son. He’s embraced the shift to full time education with no fear or grumbles. 
If only executives and workers could get in touch with their five year old selves, change might be a hell of a lot easier.

The Beauty Of A Tribe

Depending on what side of the Atlantic you call home, ‘Zappos’ may or may not be a household name to you, and the same goes for Tony Hsieh its CEO. This pioneering online retailer may not yet have reached European shores but it’s becoming well known as the business success story that grew to $1billion revenues in under ten years. Last year the company was acquired by Amazon in a deal worth $1.2billion. Tony has a book out - ‘Delivering Happiness: a path to profits, passion, and purpose’ (out in the US now/ out in the UK July) - where he tells the story of his entrepreneurial life, sharing insight into how he made Zappos so unique, and ultimately so successful.

I first saw Tony close-up at SXSW Interactive 2009 where he gave a keynote. I was impressed by how understated this successful entrepreneur was, standing on stage in jeans and t-shirt. Twelve months later it was great to be a – tenuous – guest (via my friend Espree Devora) on board Tony’s ‘Delivering Happiness’ bus one night travelling around Austin, Texas at SXSW 2010. What was clear from that evening was that Tony is a generous guy. We hadn’t properly met, yet here was the CEO of a $1B company personally fetching me BBQ food and letting me down a few vodkas at his on board bar. Reading his book you get a real sense of that spirit of generosity in hosting parties and bringing people together. He describes the loft apartment in San Francisco where he lived surrounded by friends, and his decision to buy the penthouse apartment so he could host huge parties. He wanted to create an environment where people could come together and hang out. Without realising it, he says, with his friends he had created and developed their very own tribe which was bringing stability and excitement to the group’s future. And that feeling is powerful as he explains in this excerpt from the book:

“The connectedness we felt was making all of us happier, and we realized that it was something that we had missed from our college days. I made a note to myself to make sure I never lost sight of the value of a tribe where people truly felt connected and cared about the well-being of one another”.

Of course, that spirit of togetherness is at the heart of Zappos; where he has created a strong and unique organisational culture that has become the brand’s USP and made it famous in entrepreneurial circles around the world.

I may not have labelled it as ‘culture’ at the time, but that same spirit has been evident in every successful business I have worked in, or with. That culture where you hang out with you co-workers out of the office, where you’d rather sit in the board room after hours drinking wine and playing ‘beat the intro’ than going home, where your work and non-work identies blur.

‘Delivering Happiness’ is a great story of Tony’s journey in creating and building Zappos, and of all the inevitable highs and lows along the way. Zappos’ success story may have different contributing factors but #1 is about that focus on organisational culture that resulted in great loyalty, productivity and customer service. And whether it’s about building a billion dollar business or transforming a school bus into a party bus for his friends, of course (of course!), it’s all about the people.  

“She was good at serving coffee”: Hiring On Attitude

I asked a client where he’d found his latest recruit.

“She was good at serving coffee”.

He’d met her working part time in a coffee shop and had liked her attitude. Once they got talking and discovered she was looking for a new role, he snapped her up. It wasn’t about her skills, it was her attitude.

And a reminder of the importance of hiring on attitude/culture. Because you can teach skills, but (usually) you can’t teach attitude. Last year I sat in on some interviews where my client was recruiting for a customer-facing role. Every candidate had the right skills and experience, but not everyone had that culture fit.

When I was a manager in my 20s I sometimes took company culture for granted, assuming most candidates could soak it in. I was wrong; I made a couple of hires where the person didn’t fit and that led to issues over productivity and team dynamics. But one hire stands out: the guy had been working at a casino. He had buckets of passion and enthusiasm, a great personality but zero experience. I hired him and we trained him up. All my clients loved him.

From A Random Email To A Roof Top In London: Meeting Martijn Sjoorda

I know it's only early days, but this year I'm really enjoying extending my network and meeting new people. One of those has been Martijn Sjoorda. Martijn is a smart guy who helps people and businesses change. He’s a Partner in Dialogic Leadership and Fresh Orange in the Netherlands and we ‘met’ in April 2008 via the website of Tim Ferriss’ '4 Hour Work Week' where I saw a comment he’d posted. I got in touch and sent him some propaganda about my own book; I’m not sure what he thought about my unsolicited email, but fortunately he happened to like my website. We started a dialogue. 20 months later - and after one aborted attempt in Amsterdam - we finally met last week. I love random connections coming to fruition like this; too many people try to contrive 'networking', forgetting the importance of serendipity and coincidence.


Martijn's over-riding passion is to make organisations nicer and healthier places to be in; he despairs at people who leave 70% of who they really are at home. Martijn’s got a great take on people and business so I took some time to grab a short interview with him.



 If the video above is not displayed properly, you can see it on YouTube here

Don't say 'it's not my job'

Seth Godin had a great blog post the other day entitled ‘All I Do Is Work Here’ about how some people don’t take collective responsibility at organisations – they say, ‘oh no, that’s nothing to do with me, all I do is work here’.

It reminds me of a company that I worked with. They had this really great culture where everyone from the CEO down took full and collective responsibility for what happened at the company. Everyone answered the ‘phones; when a courier turned up anyone who happened to be around would sign for a package; people in finance and admin roles stayed close to the core of the business and ‘got’ what the business did, they knew who the customers were, so they could engage with them too. This created a really strong culture that came to be at the heart of the organisation. But as the company grew, it was decided that there needed to be more organisational structure so workers could be more focused on their respective roles. A mantra of ‘that’s not my job’ was encouraged to focus on individual responsibility.

I don’t like the idea of ‘it’s not my job’. Whatever the size of an organisation, if every part of it can be encouraged to live and breathe what it does; rather than be head-down and siloed in their own role or department, that kind of culture will shine through and can really contribute to a company’s success both internally but also externally.

DO IT! Take the leap...

Success in realising your professional – and personal – goals is about having the confidence, balls and tenacity to DO SOMETHING about your dreams, goals and aspirations.

So you have to be good at taking the leap, to action your ideas.

To re-invent your business, win that new client, change your organisation, take up that new hobby, organise that date, book that trip to Paris. Whatever.

Ideas alone are not good enough. You need action.

It’s like that bloke I know who runs a shop. Every time I go in there he’s talking about giving the shop a makeover and a lick of paint. He’s always talking about it, what colour to paint the walls, when to do it, but it doesn’t get done. Ditto my friend who keeps on talking about putting on a charity night at the local pub; my supplier who talks about changing the company’s name and launching a new website; my friend who talks about quitting her job to follow her dream.

So stop talking about and start doing it.

Embrace Uncertainty!

For me, life and business has always been unpredictable.
From 7 years working for a media group with a fluid, evolving role, to 9 years working for myself, I’ve never known what's around the corner, never had a grand plan. Instead, it’s all been gloriously random.

This was what my session with Melissa Pierce at this year's SXSW was all about - the beauty of the unplanned life. It’s a constant theme in many of my business relationships. I talked about it recently with Chris Barez-Brown of ?What If! and he agreed that even for a company like ?What If!, it's difficult having long term plans.

So I forget sometimes that this scrambled up world of work is not everyone's story. A friend of mine who's been made redundant is keeping busy at an interim sales role while he's applying for tens of jobs. But he told me he was very frustrated that he couldn’t plan for the future; not just career plans but what he and his wife were doing at the weekend. He found this uncertainty unsettling, and understandably so. And sure, if you're used to stability and a role with certainty, that change can be a huge culture shock.

I guess uncertainty is something I have got used to. I know what I’m doing next month, but literally, I have no idea what I am doing in July. Sure, that’s scary when you run your own business but I like the opportunities that come from being open-minded and reactive. A meeting tomorrow can – suddenly – change things. That’s always been my story.

So who knows what the rest of 2009 will bring. Is it going to be tough? Sure. Is there going to be uncertainty. Yes.

Success and survival - as ever - will be about being flexible, reactive, quick to embrace and monetise opportunities and my strategy for the next few months will be that I have employed before: MAKE IT UP AS YOU GO ALONG.

Getting Better At Internal Communication

Here's my 90 second take on addressing that age-old problem in every organisation - internal communication

Keeping It Real Whilst Knowing Your Audience

When it comes to your business style, whether you work for yourself or for a big organisation, I’m a real fan of keeping it real, of being your true self in business relationships. Doing it any other way is just not effective, what’s the point of not being yourself?

But you must remember who your audience is. I’ve had days when I’ve been at The House Of Lords meeting a 'Lord' in the morning and with a nightclub brand in Hoxton in the afternoon. Such is the glorious eclecticism of my client base. But that creates some considerations in how you approach relationships. Your offering and your brand personality may stay the same, but you might have to tailor your language. Not literally, but in how you manage the relationship. You’ll bespoke your message and translate your approach to work in their world. Because what might be everyday language for you might be jargon for them.

Of course this is not news for anyone who does business with people in different territories. In Monday’s FT Zhang Qing offered advice on how westerners should set up business meetings in China. He observed that Chinese businesspeople have a much lower lead-time in planning meetings and schedules; if you were to attempt to schedule an appointment a month or so in advance, it might be suggested that you fix a time once you arrive. Such has been their pace of economic change that one month could be regarded as a long time in the future, so they are much more impromptu.

So whether you are juggling different client sectors, different cultures or just need to respect different client personalities, remember that ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL.

Spreading Your Company Culture

I’m a firm believer in the importance of brand personality being a key ingredient in any business or individual’s success. By ‘brand personality’, I mean the bit in your offering or your values that marks you out from the crowd. As many have commented before, we live in an abundant marketplace with so many companies offering similar products and services. That’s true for most of my clients so the challenge is identifying, communicating and living that point of difference. For many, the company culture is what sets organisations apart; the spirit that unites its people, where the brand equity is not just in a mission statement, but it runs through all the staff as part of their DNA.

So I was interested to read about a ‘life swap’ concept in the FT where the ad agency Iris was encouraging executives to swap not just roles but also apartments and cities between London and New York. I’ve always been a fan of role swaps because it helps people understand each other’s roles, it aids communication and makes the organisational culture stronger. But this swap goes one stage further; its reason is about spreading culture from one office to another:


Ian Millner, chief executive of Iris, says there are a number of reasons the agency likes to “life-swap” rather than merely job-swap its employees. “Most ad agencies are pretty similar – the only real difference is culture,” he says. “It’s our competitive advantage and it’s very important. So initiatives like the life swap are very powerful tools in making our culture consistent around the world.” [Financial Times, April 6, 2009]

What a great way for spreading and instilling company culture…

When You're Hiring, Make Sure You Hire On Culture

The thing about SXSW was not neccesarily that I learnt tons of new stuff, but that the panels and speakers articulated what I already felt in a new and powerful way. Case in point: Tony Hsieh of Zappo's keynote included an insight into their recruitment philosophy. They hire - and fire - people on a culture criteria; not just whether they can do a job effectively. So much so that there is a two-tier interview process. The first to see whether the candidate can do the job, the second to see if they fit in with the company ethos.

I have always felt this - all companies should do this.

I've seen so many small businesses trip up when they grow bigger and don't pay attention to whether the candidate has the right spirit to fit in. Sure, they can do the job, but does the person reflect the culture of the organisation, do they have the brand DNA in their personal DNA? Lose the spirit of what makes your company special and you'l lose your edge, your business and ultimately, your clients. It's a defining part of any offering.

I have handfuls of examples of people at all levels who were hired because they were good but failed or jeapordised business success because they didn't fit in. And I have been working with a client who recognises this only too well - which is why they are successful. They've been interviewing for a new role. Seeing loads of people who can do the job well, but no candidates yet who have that 'spark'.

So if you are recruiting, ask yourself does the candidate have the spark? Remember, it may be more important than experience. Because you learn experience but you either have spark or you don't.