Recalibrate your risks?

Risks you can afford to take - Risks you can not afford to take - Risks you can afford not to take - Risks you can not afford not to take...

Four different kinds of risks... and do those risks look very different in the current climate? Risks that you could previously afford not to take might now need taking... Risks that you'd previously not think twice about taking - where do they fit into your current plans and performance?

Just like all elite performers, keep checking the fundamentals that underpin your performance, constantly update your understanding of the environment that you're performing in and check that you've got the most up to date and relevant tactics going. Your risk profile is an essential part of this and you'll have got into very strong risk taking habits in recent times when the environment has remained constant - in challenging, novel conditions, you can't rely on habits, you have to consciously and explicitly control the performance you're delivering and cash in on all of your past experiences. The main risk you mustn't take right now is too let your habitual thinking control everything uncensored - consciously competent risk taking is the order of the day!

3 Key Attitudes...

We know from the greatest people we've worked with that they're superb at consistently carrying around with them the ideas that...

Their natural talent is not enough for them to excel...

They have to constantly keep working on where to focus their desire to improve... and

They have to embrace change and drive change if they're going to truly be able to be great.

These become particularly important when results are hard to come by.

Do they work for you?

Eating my own dog food....

So I'm sitting on the stationary bike doing a warm down session after a half marathon on Sunday. It's a bike in a hotel gym though exactly the same make and model as the bike I use at my local gym. It's only a warm down session so I'm not going crazy -even so I start to become a little disappointed at my speed. My cadence (rpm) seems to be fine and I feel like I'm working at the right level of exertion but I'm simply not going very fast.

I start to tell myself that I must be more tired from Sunday's race than I thought I was - as I started to feel more disappointed still, I began to wonder if I should call it a day. Then I realised the problem. The bike at my local gym is calibrated in kilometres and this one's in miles.

Now my attitude changes completely. I become pleased with myself that I can do such a god job after Sunday's race and notice that I feel strong. I begin to enjoy the session, I push myself harder and am a little sorry when it's over.

I can't believe my series of schoolboy errors:

1. Don't assume because something looks the same, it is the same

2. Listen to how you're feeling as well as the data - feelings are valid data too

3. When you reference your performance to an external source you can demotivate yourself superbly

Note to self - in tough times, remember that your personal qualities stay with you - and don't change whether it's miles, kilometres or anything else...

Go on, be brave...

Whilst having a rare flick through the FT the other day, we happened across a book review for "Managing to Learn Using The A3 Management Process to Solve Problems, Gain Agreement, Mentor, and Lead" by John Shook. Not the most enticing of titles! However, the FT article was entitled "The Toyota mindset revealed", which got us interested straight away.

The review is here if you'd like to see it for yourself.

However, if you can't be bothered to read it, here's some bits that we thought were great and we wondered how many people were going to be brave in these challenging times and see if they could take advantage of these simple, but powerful ideas (or make more from them if you're already doing it!).

"Western managers think their job is to get results. Toyota thinks managers’ job is to design and sustain processes that generate these results as a matter of course. Western managers think they employ workers to do a job. Toyota employs workers to learn how to do the job better – to keep improving that process, and therefore the results. Western managers think management is about knowing the answers and telling other people what to do. Toyota disagrees again: if managers tell staff what to do, they take responsibility away.

The manager’s job is to help staff learn problem-solving skills and work out what they need to do for themselves. Real organisational leadership is about doing both – improving operations and developing people – at the same time in such a way that they are mutually supporting."

Highly simple, highly effective ideas. Very in keeping with the PlanetK2 view of things in relation to eliteteam concepts and very clear that if you ultimately want high performance that is culturally dependent and not reliant on individual leaders, then these kind of ideas are the way forward... especially when the performance demands are higher than ever.

Paradoxes of Performing...

in pressure situations.

Often the success of delivering when facing challenging conditions can be influence greatly by being able to hold two paradoxical beliefs at the same time.

For example, in Good to Great, Jim Collins introduces the Stockdale Paradox, in which he outlines the importance of being able to "confront the brutal reality of the situation you're in, while never losing faith that you'll triumph in the end. We refer to this as Stark-Optimism, and it's an essential quality to work on at any time, but particularly when you're going into threatening unknown territory (after all, it's named after a man who derived the idea whilst in a prisoner of war camp!).

Another good example of the paradoxical thinking you require is the need for Robust Agility - how good are you at maxing out your strengths and leveraging every ounce of performance from them, while focusing on developing new, essential talents for the demands of the challenge you're facing. Simply being Agile isn't enough and simply hoping you're strengths will see you through will limit your effectiveness. You've gotta strive to be great at both.

What would using those paradoxes do for your performance?

More done in less time...

We received the following feedback on planet K2 yesterday. Not only did it make us feel quite good about ourselves, but we also realised that there's quite a bit we can learn from these select words, particularly when it comes to filling the physical component of the performance pie...

"My training continues – making the right eating choices still goes up and down, but increasingly more ups than downs as time goes on. I’ve no doubt that my current physical performance and state of readiness contributed to my recent success and I have to say, it all started with the principles from your workshop.

The business pay-off? Afternoon slumps are a thing of the past and I’m getting more done in less time. Bonus!"

What can we learn from this gentleman?

First, most change in behaviour is not a straight line. There will be ebbs and flows in how well we do what we set out to do. The two keys to his success in making sure an ebb did not lead to a total lapse?

• To have a constant reminder of his commitment to pursuing his goal. He used the colour blue to remind him, gave himself a blue screen saver on his work PC, wore a blue wrist band got himself a blue water bottle (he was training for his blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu!).


• He accepted that making changes to habits will not be a straight line. Stuff gets in the way! He has a young family, a demanding job and walks past an award winning bakery on the way to work! He judges himself by how well he sticks to the behaviours and also by how well he gets back on track after a slip up. First prize is to have no slip up. Second prize is related to how well he recovers from slip ups. This doesn't mean he's easy on himself, but it enables him to retain perspective and root his efforts to change in reality, not in a fictional perfect world.

The fitter he gets and the more healthily he eats, the better he performs at work. He's choosing his fuel more wisely and making sure he's training appropriately. Good food choices and regular exercise are now physical performance fundamentals for him. Without them he'd be getting less done in more time! So he's controlled the things he can control (no-one else puts food in your mouth!) and has systematically developed his physical capacity to perform.

Do you know what your physical performance fundamentals are? Are you in control of them? Do you have a strategy, not only for what you intend to do, but how to stick to them? Commonsense? Perhaps. But how commonly are you applying this commonsense? These simple physical performance fundamentals become even more vital in allowing you to deliver consistently to your best in the face of changing demands.

So, are you choosing to get more done in less time or less done in more time?

Consistency of performance in an inconsistent world

Looking for a previous article from HBR on resilience I came across the attached old favourite which seems as pertinent now as it did in Jan 2001 (when the market was bouyant).

The Making of a Corporate Athlete

Negatively stressed? What's your chosen response?

"It's subtle this performance coaching stuff, but it works. This time last year if circumstances had been the same I'd have been sh*!ing myself and unhealthily pessimistic. This year I'm still pessimistic, but understand that this pessimism is actually useful. If I use it appropriately, it helps me to perform better. Also, last year, I'd have eaten crap, drank too much and responded negatively to the stress. Now I think... 'I feel stressed, better go to the gym'."

Roughly these words were said to me by one of our clients last week who has been coached around performing in challenging circumstances. He understands how to perform a lot better now and this new self awareness has enabled him to choose how to respond to the feelings he is experiencing in these testing times, and therefore use them to stay in control and fully confident of his own performance.

Is anyone else feeling the strain? How are you currently responding? How would you like to respond? Are the answers to these last two questions the same?

Keeping your head...

...while all others around you are doing a good impression of something without a head, requires a lot of mental toughness.

Like anything that's difficult, the more you prepare for the challenge, the more of a fighting chance of success you have when the key moments actually arrive. So, given that the playing field has changed somewhat at the moment, the need for top quality preparation becomes ever more important. We've learned a lot from helping people prepare for key sporting moments... and we think what we've learned translates pretty well.

We could write a lot on mental toughness and mental preparation, but that's probably for another day. So, instead of that, have a look at our thoughts on how to use 3 cornerstones of performance (control, confidence and connectedness) to help you have the best chance of delivering a great performance, even when the world around you is making it very tough to do so. It works for people at the Olympic Games... so can it work for you?

Once you've read it, tell us what you think! Go on, we'd love to know that you think.