Drafting... not the drawing kind... the path of least resistance kind

Today I rode a bike further than I have ever achieved before... I'm not going to tell you how far I traveled but rest assured it was a looooooooooong way in a very small and impossibly hard saddle. I hurt. Really hurt. Others might have trained or at least, taken their husbands bike for a test ride around the block before taking on an event like the Santos Great Bike Ride but I live an exciting life of last minute decisions and ill-considered commitments and so I find myself exhausted and suffering this evening...

There were a few thousand people in the event so hopefully they are not all feeling the same as I owe several of them a debt of thanks for letting me ride behind them and reap the benefits of their hard work. Most of all I have to thank my good friend and ex job-share partner, Fern. I roped her in to the event and then proceeded to ride on her tail for most of the course. She's fun and generous and pretended not to be pulling me along. It was while we were in the second half of the ride that my mind briefly wandered from the intense pain I was suffering and I thought. "Oh no, Fern's propping me up again, just like at work. She's doing the hard yards and I'm just sitting back and going along for the ride". This doubting self-talk is not typical of me. I suspected low sugar levels so took one of the red snakes she passed over and a barley sugar for good measure.

Deciding that a fit of depression was only going to add more misery to an already insufferable ride, I decided to think about all the good reasons for drafting. It's benefits are obvious in bike riding - when a steaming peloton comes shooting past -  but I think there are benefits in the office too. Here they are:

1. It's efficient:  NASA said one of its F/A-18 test aircraft had a 29% fuel savings by flying in the wingtip vortex of a DC-8. So if you are feeling tired, burnt out and frustrated, find the closest office DC-8 and hook on. A surefire way to get you re-energized and you'll use less sick leave.
2. Drafting is co-operative: if we take turns in the lead position and work together, we can actually be greater than the sum of our parts.
3. It can also be a bit competitive or tactical: stay close behind your competitors  leaving yourself  more energy for a break-away push to the finish line when they have made a wrong move.

Be careful though. 

Having been at the back end of a peloton once that exploded into a sea of limbs, water bottles and falling bikes, I narrowly escaped with shot nerves and the sad realisation that there are no free lunches. If you are going to hook on to the back of superheros you better be prepared to get up the front occasionally or crash spectacularly with them...

How to be average ...

I know a few over-achievers. They are amazing people. Their efforts to save the less fortunate, climb mountains, excel in their careers, raise multiple children and look brilliant every day are worthy of note. They share their wisdom and then gush about our own (more mundane) achievements. They are put out there to set the example and shine a light on the hill for the rest of us but to be brutally honest, I am so over over-achievers. Their tales don't resinate. Their integrity is disconcerting, almost creepy. Their achievements are overwhelming and probably unattainable...

Sour grapes? No. Over-achievers contribute to society, their industries and families in ways I can't begin to emulate. I am thankful for their efforts but I don't want to be anything like them.

I think it's because I love 'average', most people I know are average and have average aspirations. After my friends have had a few drinks and tell me the things they like about me -It's normally just after I have slurred "I love you guys"... I'm often told I'm accessible. I take this as 'average' not, well umm, accessible...

Average is good. No great. It is to be revelled in. Do you want an easy and enjoyable life? Then harness your 'average'. 

It's good to be average at school because the teachers will be focussed on the naughty kids at the back and the naughty kids at the back will be focussed on the nerds at the front. Average school students can go a remarkably long way by just sitting in the middle and leaving them to it.

Its good to be average at the doctors, too. No one goes to the doctor wanting high blood pressure or low. We want to be told we are just like everyone else. Skin, weight, lumps and bumps. All average. Yippee..

I'm happy with my average family. No early starts for gifted children to get to tennis lessons or maths advanced tuition. No letters from the headmaster on delinquent behaviour. Two very average little boys is perfectly adequate. 

Average shoe size and dress size. Fine for buying whatever you want. In this case, there is a caveat on my push for average, it's perfect before the sales... Any woman who has scoured the bargain bins at the David Jones post-Christmas sales will not doubt have rued their average status when a fabulous pair of Jimmy Choo's was a available in size 11 only or those gorgeous Sass and Bide jeans were drastically reduced in size 4 (!!!!) .

Average at work...? Often neglected while we focus on the superstars and under-performers, but absolutely essential. Who else is going to keep the business running? Average employees are competent and comply with their terms of employment. They grease the machine and should be thanked. They don't tend to mess up their work life balance and don't darken your door with requests for their next promotion. More please.

So put down your book on Richard Branson, unsubscribe to your motivational podcasts and take a good look at your neighbours, peers and friends with small paunches, noisy kids and regular jobs. They (you) deserve a hearty thanks for being average.

PS... The other caveat on average. Best disguised at performance review time..

Why I love geeks .. every single spotty, speccied, stuttering one of them...

On Thursday night the absolutely delectable Brian Cox was talking on the 7:30 report. When I should have been hearing him say: 

"I actually think it's the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Boson seems esoteric sometimes when you talk about it, but this is a theory that's been around since the '60s and the proposal is almost bizarre - is that less than a billionth of a second after the universe began something condensed out into empty space and it’s the Higgs field. It's almost as if you could say this space now (holding hands in front of himself) is full of Higgs particles, really full of them. There's actually more energy in one cubic metre of space due to the Higgs field than the Sun outputs in 1,000 years. Bizarre theory. But the theory is that things get mass by bumping into those Higgs particles, by interacting with them, so rattling around, if you like, in this empty space."

All I heard was:

"I actually think it's the Higgs Boson blah, blah, blah, billionth of a second after the universe began blah, blah, blah is full of Higgs particles, really full of them. There's more energy in blah blah blah, interacting with them, so rattling around, if you like, in this empty space."

My reaction shocked me. Instead of listening intently to the wonders of smashing particles together and the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, I was gazing at this divine creature of science like a star struck tween watching her first Justin Bieber interview.

It got me thinking about geeks in my life and how brilliant they are. For a start, there is the Propeller head and father of our two children. Then there are the brilliant people I work with every day, solving difficult problems and doing more for the advancement of the mining industry than some of our so called leaders. I quickly realised that I love geeks. Does this make me a geek too? Those of you tuned into Big Brother on Thursday night rather than the 7:30 report will probably think I am but I'll use the following as my defense: 

Reasons why I don't think I'm a geek:

1. I know nothing about Star Trek. Almost nothing anyway. There are Cling Ons I think? But I don't know much more than that. In fact I just looked up cling on and discovered that they are actually Klingons.. Sorry nerds...
2. I've never read the Hobbit. I know that they are small. Do they have pointy ears like the people on Star Trek? Perhaps they are related somehow?
3. I don't know the difference between C++ and Java. It seems strange to name one coffee based on it's origin and the other after the average grade on my primary school reports though.
4. I hate hate hate hate hate role playing games. In fact dressing up for a Medieval Night Ball  a few months ago was terrifying. There is no visible difference between that and mock sword fights or playing Dungeons and Dragons. 
5. And, I'm too scatterbrained and impulsive to be a geek. Learning how to use a 16 sided dice, write in PHP or sit through all the Star Trek movies requires patience and concentration. I was provided a low dose in both...

Having established, conclusively, my credentials as 'not a geek', I feel I can objectively share my top 5 geeks:

Brian Cox
What I really love about this particular geek is his enthusiasm and passion for science. He smiles when he talks and he wants us to be as excited about smashing particles together as he is. I still don't get what he's talking about but he makes me want to. Judging by his Twitter profile there's about a million other people who find him just as nerdilly spectacular as me.

Leonardo da Vinci

Surely the king of geeks. Sculptor, musician,  mathematician, botanist, writer, geologist (!!!), architect, painter, artist, poet, scientist and engineer! No wonder Mona Lisa is smirking. Those super-strong connections between his left and right brain dreamed up helicopters and solar power about 500 years before we really needed them!

Professor Frink (the Simpsons)
Every town needs a Professor Frink. While he invented a death ray, he didn't really want to use it. His other brilliant gems include a house that sprouts legs and runs away when burglars arrive and hamburger earmuffs. 

Alexander Graham Bell
Without the phone, would we have the smart phone? I rest my case. 

The Propeller head
The man responsible for introducing me (well introducing me to their ideas anyway) to the wonderful contribution of geeks is my husband the Propeller head. He is the only person to have ever said "when nano-bots take over the world' at a dinner party" and managed further invites. His hobbies include building drones and working on the next 'big app'.

Geeks change our world in wonderful ways and I love them all.

I salute you geeks. Make that a Vulcan Salute! 

Engagement part 2

Sunday is traditionally a great day for confessions... So here's mine.... I wrote Engagement part 1 in an attempt to drag myself out of my pit of despair... it was a great exercise because it made me realise that engagement is a choice.

Having just returned form holidays to a tonne of work, end of year targets and a long time until the next holiday, I was doing a bit too much moaning... Everyone I was talking to (or moaning to) agreed politely that the structure, culture, cost saving, project list, blah blah blah were all making us feel disengaged. It took a respected peer to say "you're not real happy are you Lucy" to make me reflect that I was sounding just a bit negative... a misery guts... So I did some navel gazing new millennium-style and looked up 'Engagement' on the web.

I fully expected to see all the great reasons for having engaged employees:

• Companies with engaged employees have 52% higher performance operating income than those with low engagement scores*
• Companies with high levels of employee engagement improved 19.2% in operating income while companies with low levels of employee engagement declined 32.7%*
• Companies with both highly aligned cultures and highly aligned innovation strategies have 17% higher profit growth than companies with low degrees of alignment**
• Engaged employees are more likely to promote your organisation, your products, have less sickies and innovate.

The thing that grabbed me though, was an article about getting on with it and working with whatever culture you have. http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11108?gko=f4e8d

Lots of us complain about poisonous cultures and the resultant lack of engagement. This turns the defeatist argument on it's head.


*Towers Perrin-ISR (2006) The ISR Employee Engagement Report

**Strategy + Business:The Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture Is Key, Oct 2011

Ps.. If anyone catches me moaning about work this week, you have my permission to beat me around with a hard copy of the attached.

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Anyone who has worked with me would have heard me use the expression "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission".This little gem is whipped out frequently, either to give guidance to team members or to excuse myself for making independent decisions. It's effective.. most of  the time...

Working for a pretty conservative organisation made me somewhat nervous about the application of this wisdom until I read something a few years ago from Colin Powell: 

“You know the expression – it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. Well it’s true. Good leaders don’t wait for official blessing to try things out. They are prudent, not reckless. But they also realize a fact of life in most organisations: if you ask enough people for permission, you will inevitably come up against someone who believes their job is to say ‘no’. So the moral is ‘don’t ask’. Less effective middle managers endorse the sentiment “if I haven’t specifically been told ‘yes,’ then I can’t do it,” whereas the good ones believed “if I haven’t explicitly been told ‘no,’ then I can”. There is a world of difference between these two points of view.”

Who am I to disagree with a four star general? Using the 'Powell defence' enables me to get things done in a large organisation. I've crashed a few times though and have leaned heavily on the 'forgiveness' side of the expression...

Every day we are presented with opportunities to use our judgment. So use it. Weigh up the threats and opportunities and be bold in your decision making. No change or innovation comes from sitting on your good ideas. The resources industry is changing rapidly and with good planning and confidence your decisions will shape the future.

Engagement (part 1)

Sometimes I feel incredibly disengaged with work. I'll sit in meetings nodding and smiling at my colleagues but really I am thinking "how the hell can I get out of here and do something more interesting?" I had a particularly harrowing meeting a few months ago that coincided with my 4 year olds kindy concert. At the time of dropping my son off, I was not at all concerned about missing a bunch of kindy kids go through the noise and painful antics of "ag-a-doo-doo-doo, push pineapple, shake the tree,.. ." It took an arrogant peer dismissing some work that I'd done, feeling that I was being let down on a change I was pushing through and HR bogging me down in a policy point impacting my team that made me really question why I was at work...

That night I gave the propellor head a full debrief. He gave me a glass of wine. I went through all the usual wine-fired planning sessions (buy a newsagent, start consulting (what?), move to the big Australian, be a stay at home mum and adjust lifestyle accordingly,...). I then enjoyed the rest of the weekend. 

By Monday I was back in meetings nodding and smiling...

The fact is I did not really want to quit. I just wanted to enjoy what I was doing and make a difference. I wanted to feel engaged.

Here's some research on engagement:

• Engaged people have less than half the sick leave of the disengaged*
• Engaged employees are 87 less likely to leave the organisation than the disengaged**

Changing the organisation around me to make employees feel more engaged is a task for those with more influence and determination than me. Here's what I do for me when I am feeling disengaged:

• Talk to people, and work on projects where individuals feel excited, happy to share and enthusiastic. It rubs off.
• Its very tempting to grizzle to colleagues and most of the time they'll grizzle back. It's fun for a while but still leaves you in a pit of despair.
• Think of all the jobs worse than my own. I don't mean sewer repairs but other corporate jobs like mine that I still wouldn't want.
• Keep smiling and nodding your head... something better will happen soon...

Having engaged employees is good for business too. I'll cover that in part 2!

*CBI-AXA (2007), Annual Absence and LabourTurnover Survey

**Corporate Leadership Council, Corporate Executive Board (2004)’Driving Performance and Retention through Employee Engagement: a quantitative analysis of effective engagement strategies’