Self awareness

Phew!

I was beginning to wonder if I would ever blog again.

Job: new, very stretching growth targets, new strategy to develop.

House: sold old house, found and bought new one, moving end March.

Baby: due, well, about now. In fact, was that my phone?

Anyway
Given time contraints, I would like to introduce a new style of blog here: the video blog.

Episode 1: self awareness. You may have heard me mention this, and I may even have picked you up on it if I've seen you not being self-aware.

It is perhaps the most important character trait to develop, in enabling you to reach your full potential.

Watch the video, smile, and please add comments below.



By the way, the blog post I refer to in the video is here.

Further posts are brewing so as baby, job and house settle down a little, I shall return!

Harnessing talent

The past few weeks have been even busier than usual, and blogging has been pushed into the background I'm afraid.

To avoid another day passing with no posts, I thought I'd share this email, which I received today, from a former team member - announcing some great news.

It struck me how important it is to spot and then harness talent, to avoid it being wasted. This person was in a role that didn't give any outlet for his creativity. I changed that, moving him into a donor retention marketing role, and he has subsequently shone in a similar position.

I'm glad I had the chance to manage him, and I'm sure he'll go onto great things. Anyone who writes emails like this to his mates will go far...

(I've anonymised it with XXXXs.)

---
Subject: Ah, what the hell...

Gentlemen,

Sometimes in life you've got to roll the dice. You've got to defy logic and all the evidence before your eyes, and go with your good old-fashioned gut instinct. You know what it's like. You're not sure why you're doing something, but you do it anyway. Think Kevin Costner in "Field of Dreams". If you build it, they will come… And 99% of the time you're right. At least that's what I've found.

Of course there are exceptions:

- When I hired XXXX
- When I hired XXXX
- When I said to my old boss "he's boring, but you can probably trust him" when she asked me about a potential new recruit. His name was XXXX. [he ended up moonlighting]
- When I stole booze from XXXX's house after her surprise birthday party
- When XXXX, XXXX and I decided to have a quick lunchtime pint in Brighton (after meeting a supplier) and 9 hours later I found myself on a train platform in East Croydon, smelling of sambuca
- When I started spread-betting (at the desk) on the Ashes on the first day of that really busy period in 2005

.. Ok maybe it's nearer 98% of the time I get it right.

Anyway, there I am on my XX birthday last week. I'm looking at my finances and everything's screaming bankruptcy:

Massive mortgage
Spiralling childcare costs
Enormous debt repayments

.. And I'm thinking to myself "XXXX, you're in the stickiest situation since XXXX bought a new dress and asked if it suited her.." There's no easy way out. Except maybe, just maybe there is. What's the one thing that might overshadow your financial meltdown? What's the one thing that doesn't cost much, is stress-free and doesn't have any long-term consequences…?

A wedding.

You beauty - a wedding. Of course. Hell they don't cost much, there's no stress and you can forget about it the day after.

So last week I proposed to XXXX and she said yes.

And in one swoop, all my problems were solved.

It's a beautiful thing.

Direct marketing vs. community fundraising

Chocolate.

The oldest trick in the book.

There were thirty people in each session, and it worked each time.

“Under six chairs, there are plates with big bars of chocolate on,” I began.

“Could those six people please unwrap the bars and pass the plate to their neighbour.”

Pupils began to dilate as the fresh aroma of quality fairtrade cocoa burst out.

“Could the next person break the bar in half, and half again, and pass the plate on,” I continued.

Pulses quickened as everyone saw and handled the rich texture.

I repeated my commands until each plate was heaped with broken pieces of chocolate.

Breathing was slightly quicker as I made my final request, saying, “now would the last person please pass the plates to me.”

Slowly, to emphasise the decadence that was heaped before me, I emptied each plate to form a single mound of chocolate. The scene must have resembled an ancient fertility rite.

Silence.

I looked up.

“Thanks very much,” I said, picked up a handful of chunks and stuffed them into my mouth. I chewed, and shovelled more chunks down the hatch.

Colour drained from faces. Small gasps escaped tightening lips. And something akin to the Rage virus from 28 Days Later flashed into hard, betrayed eyes.

I swallowed.

Deathly silence.

But my smile brought warmth back into the room, and people laughed, more because of the relief in realising that they had been tricked, than at any humour.

“Feels awful, huh?” I said. “You do all the work and then I get all the fruits of your labour.”

And in one fell swoop, I acknowledged their feelings, and showed that I understood their frustration.

My conference session on ‘direct marketing and the regional fundraising teams’ was off to a good start. I handed the plate round for a well-earned cocoa fix.

Integration! Inte-what?
ChildLine, not unlike many charities around the world, faced a dilemma. Fundraising had grown from a regional, community fundraising model, and eventually incorporated a centralised, direct marketing function.

I was head of the latter and was, therefore, evil personified.

‘Silo culture’ is a term that pretty well sums up the mess we were in. The regional teams mistrusted the head office teams, and vice versa.

After all, it was the regional (and by ‘regional’ I mean ‘regional and national’, for readers in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) teams who worked at the coalface. They worked evenings and weekends, organised events and built relationships with supporters … only for DM (read ‘unnecessary evil’) to send out a mailing to the furthest reaches of the land, and bleed all the money back to the centre.

It made you sick just thinking about them, in their swanky London office, with their ‘segmentation’ and ‘marketing agency’ talk.

And it was in these stark tones that I painted a picture of how dysfunctional our interdepartmental relationships were.

Satiated, but slightly uneasy, silence.

Someone licked the crumbs from a plate in the back row.

Distrust
With blood sugar rising, however, I knew I had them on side, and I began to tackle some more tricky issues. Like the fact that many of them held their own databases of supporters, and even mailed their own appeals in an attempt to boost local income.

The problems we faced can be summarised as follows:

• Community Fundraising mistrusted Direct Marketing because they refused to allow them access to their database, refused to discuss collaboration and sent appeals into their regions with no consultation on timing.
• Direct Marketing mistrusted Community Fundraising because they just wanted access to the database, tried to fill donor communications with news of local events and sent their own mailings to separately held but poorly managed databases of supporters.

If the regions vs. head office dynamic was bad, the community fundraising vs. direct marketing effect was terrible.

I illustrated this dynamic with the following diagram:



Does this resonate with your own experience?

Do add a comment if it does.

The thing I firmly believed, and still do, is that it does not have to be this way.

And the primary reason it can, and must, work differently is that the donor does not see the internal silos that get in the way of integration and collaboration.

Silos
If you have children, and if you have read the books about farms, you will know that silos are not military bunkers; the word was only used in that context from 1958 in fact. Silos are tall steel containers (originally pits underground) where forage – grass and other plants from fields – is stored as a winter feed for animals.

Over time, forage in a silo slowly ferments and becomes sour.

And doesn’t that depict just what happens when departments stop talking to each other and retreat into their own small world?

For our part, I’m pleased to say that in ChildLine we did break down the silos.

We found ways of working together, and our fundraising grew.

It began with dialogue. Surprising how hard that can be to sit down to talk. But we did, and we agreed to be open.

Two examples of the successes we achieved stick in my mind.

We agreed that the regional teams could send an invitation for local events, e.g. carol concerts, to a selection of the central database from their local area.

Uptake was good, and just being invited seemed to have an impact – analysis showed an uplift in subsequent giving from those who had been invited.

The second example is from the low profile worlds of payroll giving and legacies. The Direct Marketing team worked with the teams in Scotland and Northern Ireland as they used local influence to join consortia of charities that promoted each type of fundraising.

In the old world, this would have been inconceivable, as the question “but where would the money go?” would have torpedoed any attempt even to discuss it.

However, we did reach agreement on how the income would be reported.

And income ballooned.

Pitfalls should not be obstacles
Things can go wrong, when an attempt at integration is made. For example, if access to the database is unrestricted, supporters’ needs are often forgotten. I think of one organisation we work with, who were alerted to a problem when a donor contacted the chief exec to ask why he had received more than 50 pieces of mail and email, without counting telephone calls, just because he was a direct-giving donor, community fundraising volunteer and campaigner.

But the reason for my conviction that this is the way forward is that in my experience, an organisation’s fundraising benefits. At ChildLine, now part of the NSPCC by the way, the income curve became steeper as this collaboration took effect.

What silos do you need to take down? And how can you replicate this integration, so that you too see the following vision that I set out in those conference sessions become reality?

Negative waves

Ever worked with a mood hoover?

Hell, they make life miserable, don't they?

Are you a mood hoover?

If you are, you need to dig into the pit of yourself and find a way to become solution-focused, rather than objection-focused.

If you have serious cause to be angry or miserable, you need to deal with it. You will become the cause of your own downfall if you don't, and you will see yourself managed out of your team or organisation.

No one likes working with a mood hoover, even if they laugh along with their negativity. Generally, people like to be around positive, successful, future-focused people.

And if you manage a mood hoover, you need to be brave and sit down with them to explain the impact they are having ... and set clear boundaries that give them no choice but to change.

Kelly's Heroes - to which I attribute around 65% of my personality, values and character - contains several moments of genius.

But the following scene (up to 4m 25s) is the best snapshot of the importance of positive waves I have ever seen.

Past > Present > Future

What will have the biggest impact on the way you perform today? Your past, your present or your future?

Similarly, what will have the biggest impact on the way your team performs today?

Clue: it is not the past.

If you’ll forgive a generalisation, it is not the trauma in a person’s past, or the emptiness of their present, that makes them decide to jump off a bridge; it is the bleakness of their future.

Psychologists, in their complex and difficult therapy with victims of torture, understand that the most powerful aspect of this abuse is that the person’s future is unpredictable and beyond their control. They do not know what will happen next.

Thankfully, you and your team are not enduring something as horrific as that – however stressful things are – but exactly the same principle applies.

If things are uncertain, especially during times of change – and most especially in this climate of general uncertainty – people experience incredible stress and their performance usually dips. So you need to pay particular attention to their future.

As performance coach Struan Robertson explained to me once, you need to map out where things are going, as far as possible, to minimise the insecurity that comes from not knowing.

But even when you simply do not know or cannot say, you must go out of your way to make even the next few steps as clear as they can be.

Then you and your people will be better able to perform well.

Vision
But to turn this completely on its head, the principle of the future being the most powerful driver for performance can be harnessed positively.

Like the sails of a yacht bulging and creaking as they catch a strong wind, bringing a surge in acceleration as the prow cuts through the waves and the hull leans over under the force, so too the future can be something that adds momentum to your performance.

And it happens when you are clear about your vision and strategy. And when you successfully get all hands on deck, as you excite people into playing a part.

Go on! Lead your teams forward.

That was easy

So says the Staples strapline.

And it is.

Call the freephone number. Speak to someone lovely. See the stationery arrive.

Would supporters say the same of your charity?

How are they treated if they request information – or make a donation? What is it like to deal with Supporter Services?

I was asked by one of our clients to speak at their recent fundraising conference. At one point I said that to see the supporter at the centre one must see Supporter Services as the bedrock of fundraising.

What struck me was that afterwards one of their team said to me, “thank you for saying that … no one ever mentions Supporter Services”.

Yet in fact, how often do you send thank you letters, handle complaints or update someone’s contact details?

Work hard not to overlook this most valuable of departments. Look back at my post See > Do > Get and do all you can to harness this potential opportunity to make your organisation stand out through great service.

Why fundraising is like making cappuccino

“Grande skinny caramel macchiato, extra hot, with three shots, extra cream, marshmallows, double vanilla and a dash of cinnamon” is heard rather too often for my liking.

This is sacrilege against the art of coffee making.

And I use the word ‘art’ advisedly. The perfect espresso is created only when the following six elements meet in harmony:

• A perfectly maintained and spotlessly clean espresso machine
• A quality blend of perfectly roasted, fresh coffee beans
• A grind that is neither too course nor too fine
• A carefully judged dose of the ground coffee
• A tamping technique that is neither too firm nor too light
• A portafilter tightened just enough to keep the coffee compressed and the steam pressure in

And then to craft a cappuccino, the densely foamed, steamed but not-too-hot milk is added, so that the following rough proportions are achieved:

• A third espresso
• A third milk
• A third foamed milk

The best coffee in Shoreditch, if you find yourself in Bluefrog’s neck of the woods, is to be found at Food Hall, on Old Street.

Each cup is given the attention that a sculptor would give a masterpiece carving. And take-away is as good as drink-in … although a purist would argue that cappuccino cannot properly be drunk from a paper cup.

Am I sounding pretentious yet?

Time to infuse [sorry] fundraising into this.

Raising money
Why compare coffee and fundraising? Well, truth be told, simply because I love coffee. But bear with me and you’ll see that there are some really helpful parallels.

First, the espresso machine. This is your fundraising department and as you know, if that’s not working well, everything else is doomed. The metaphor can be taken further, however.

Espresso machines work under incredible pressure, and in a similar way, fundraising departments work with an ongoing challenge to find budget, high demands from Trustees, and a constant strain to develop the next target-beating campaign.

But the best Gaggia won’t make good coffee if it is neglected. And NCVO’s Third Sector Skills Research published last July was just one report to lament a skills shortage in fundraising. Unless we invest in developing skills, our fundraising will get more and more watered down.

“Credit crunch”, I hear you shout. Indeed, and several major players are certainly feeling more crunch than credit at the start of 2009, but scheme’s like the IoF’s Fundraising Learning Online are to be applauded, in making basic training affordable.

One thing remains unavoidable in a recession: those who continue to invest through the hard times will emerge ahead of the pack.

And so onto the next element: coffee beans. The basic ingredient. In fundraising that’s your strategy. It doesn’t matter what you do with a poor strategy; it is still a poor strategy, and it will only get you so far.

Adrian Sargeant’s regular sessions at IoF and IFC conferences on building a fundraising strategy give the basics. I’d hazard a guess, however, that fewer than half of the top-500 fundraising departments have developed a strategy with even that much thoroughness.

Cranfield School of Management run great courses on strategy development, and they can sometimes work with charities on a consultancy basis.

The grind, number three on the list, is your target audience. Not that I’m suggesting that donors are a grind.

In coffee making, it is important that the ground coffee is neither too course nor too fine. So, too, in defining your various audiences, it is important neither to view them as too homogenous a group, nor to break them into thousands of small segments.

The key, of course, is to understand your audience. To really understand what each set of donors – or prospective donors – is like: what motivates them, how do they give and how can you build relationships with them? There are myriad resources out there to help get into donors’ minds – CharityBloggers, for example.

But the best technique of all – and I aim this comment mainly at direct marketers, who, I’m sorry to say, are generally useless at this – is to speak to donors or read their correspondence.

In a brief spell in commercial brand marketing, before coming to Bluefrog, one of the brands I oversaw was Listen2. Primary audience: 65+. Not only does my iPod now contain some Mantovani and Vera Lynn, I made sure I spent time opening post and in the call centre.

The dose comes next and in my mind this equates to the offer or proposition. Clearly, this comes after understanding your audience, but it is nearly as important.

I’ve seen ads bomb for lack of attention to what the audience will be likely to do (e.g. direct debit ask when a cash ask would have been better).

Successful trust fundraisers will tell you that unless you really understand what the Trust is looking to support – and precisely which aspect of your work will push their buttons – no amount of hard work on the application will get a result.

Corporate partners, similarly, are usually looking for the right type of charity partnership.

And what you tell donors their money can achieve is equally critical.

The Prostate Cancer Charity’s Research Action Fund that Bluefrog created, works very well as a high value donor recruitment tool. And this is mainly because it maps precisely onto the sort of work the prospective donors want to support.

It is perhaps a stretch to see how tamping – the next element – equates to creative. But that’s possibly because not many people have used an espresso machine.

The skilled use of a tamper, to compress the ground coffee into the filter, needs something of a creative flair to get just right. I hope the next time you buy a coffee you get to see this in action.

In fundraising, whether it is community fundraisers sending invitations to a carol concert, major donor key workers chatting to someone at an event or the acquisition team in direct marketing developing a new DRTV ad, the message must be put across effectively.

Marie Curie’s Great Daffodil Appeal is an interesting example. For such a well-loved brand, warmly embodied in yellows and blues, opting for black as the primary colour for this annual appeal was a brave move. Blacks and greys evoke death, which for a cancer care charity is upfront but also seems a little risky.

It looked very nice on big cross-track posters in the Tube. But one can’t help wondering what the community fundraising volunteers, like those in the pictures, prefer wearing – black or blue. And what do individual donors think?

Finally, timing – when to tighten and stop tightening the filter holder. Often fixed, e.g. around Christmas, timing is rarely given enough thought. There is a tendency – if one thinks about timing at all – to try to out-do the competition and move an appeal a bit earlier.

Christmas card catalogues in August? Of course. And if you don’t get yours out in August too, you’ll lose sales. How long before someone tries July or even June?

Admittedly, you only have limited scope on testing timing, as your hand will often be forced by what other departments or competitors are doing.

Email is one area where testing is both possible and worthwhile – assuming you have sufficient volumes of responsive data. A few years ago, I heard a consensus emerging that Tuesday morning or Thursday lunchtime were the best times to send an email. But that has now changed, and the clear advice from digital experts is to do your own testing.

As I said elsewhere, from a stewardship point of view, the timing of feedback and thank you messages will be very important as the recession deepens. Specifically, I recommend now!

Frothy coffee
Cappuccino is anathema to true espresso lovers. Some argue that once milk – or even hot water – enters the dark nectar, it is ruined.

Others, however, enjoy delving into the velvety softness, allowing the warmth and strength to be drawn through.

In a similar – but less suggestive – way, a contrast can be drawn between fundraisers who see themselves as solitary espresso and those who strive to achieve a cappuccino-like mix. The former keep their head down and concentrate on the task in hand. Sometimes brilliant, often a little weak or bitter.

I would argue that the latter group, however, are more consistent.

They turn espresso into something greater, by mixing one third themselves, one third creative agencies and consultancies, and one third peer networks and industry bodies like the Institute. Not that I would suggest that the IoF is frothy and full of hot air.

Although they risk becoming a little bland, fundraisers who seek input from others and build upon the experience of peers and the industry stand a much better chance of being successful.

Donor needs
But going back to the “grande skinny caramel macchiato, extra hot, etc…”, maybe Starbucks and their 20,000 variations on a cup of coffee are right on the money. What they do is to recognise that customers have needs, and the most important of all is to be treated as an individual – to be given what you want in return for your money.

And anyone who’s read Mark Phillips’ post on donor needs will immediately see the parallel.

As Mark says, donors want to know what a charity has done with their money, rather than read about what the charity does (or what a corporate partner has given, or what policy statement they’re issuing); it's a very subtle difference, but a very important one.

But how do you implement that in practice?

At the risk of being clichéd, I shall draw this post to a close with a reference to Barack Obama’s astounding fundraising success.

As Nick Burne comments in PF, Obama succeeded because he, ‘made the campaign about me’.

Nick observes: ‘A statement on the front and top of Obama's website read: “I'm asking you to believe. Not just about my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I'm asking you to believe in yours." And it wasn't just a statement. He backed it up by giving me ways to get involved online. I could be a hero – part of the change. It was about me, my friends and family, and who I could influence.’

And in September 2008 alone he raised a record-breaking $150m, largely from ordinary Americans, primarily because he understood their needs.

Interference

Performance = Potential – internal interference – external interference

…or so the management theory goes.

This one works well if you’re mind-gyming yourself, i.e. when you’re talking yourself through a challenging situation, such as working to a deadline or when you’re working through conflict.

Mental self-control is critical if you’re aiming to perform to a high standard. And when you train yourself, you begin to notice the external interference, e.g. the negativity of others or the unexpected meeting that puts you under more pressure.

You also learn to notice the internal interference, such as your own doubts, tiredness or stress. And that’s the very moment in which you need to draw on your strength to put that interference aside.

Listen, you’re good. You know you can get through whatever situation you’re facing. Left to get on with it, you’ll ace it.

Understanding interference is also helpful when your team fades on you occasionally.

Building on see > do > get, if you discipline yourself to see that each individual has high potential, you can end up wondering why they under perform sometimes – which, let’s be honest, no amount of positive thinking can conceal.

So what are you to do? Well, given that we’ve seen how coaching yourself through challenges can help, it is nearly as simple as applying it to the people you’re leading.

But only ‘nearly’ as simple. You’re not a rugby coach, and your team may react unfavourably to a pep talk. Rather, you can employ one of a range of techniques that help them to mind-gym themselves.

First, listen, and make sure you understand what’s interfering with their potential – is it internal or external? Chances are, it’s some internal interference, fuelled by external interference such as change, job insecurity or poor management in your organisation. Tell them how you see the situation, or how you dealt with something similar. In time, you can even talk them through the concept of the mind gym.

Finally, get involved and be seen to be working as hard they are, conveying a drive towards a common purpose, and leading your whole team towards high performance and strong motivation.

See > Do > Get

It is hard to work with dimwits.

It is hard to lead idiots.

It is hard to manage incompetents.

Especially when you're angry with them.

Especially when one or two of them really should go, for the greater good.

But is is essential that you do. Otherwise your feelings spill out and seed discontent, which in turn can seed mutiny.

Sounds extreme but I've seen it time and again.

Happily, there is a solution.

SEE > DO > GET

This is another of those annoying rules of management that sound silly but are remarkably true. My thanks again to performance coach Struan Robertson for helping me improve my management with this.

If you allow yourself to see your staff as incompetent idiots (SEE), you begin treating them as such and expecting nothing more than that from them (DO). And it is therefore no surprise if that's all you get from them (GET).

If, however, you discipline yourself to see each of them as potentially high-achieving members of your dream team, you will begin to talk to them and treat them as such. And it will probably surprise you when they perform well.

In fact, in time they'll excel.

Sounds too simplistic to be true doesn't it?

You will certainly still need to deal with one or two people whose performance or negativity has the potential to drag everyone else down, but I promise that you'll be happy you adopted this mantra.

And your people will appreciate it too.

Clearly, it begins with the decision to see them differently, and when you take this step, another hidden benefit emerges. The mantra could be expanded as follows...

SEE > FEEL > DO > GET

...you start to feel better about working with them.

Developing mental self control like this is what I like to call 'mind-gyming'. (Wish I'd registered mindgym!)

When you mind-gym yourself, coaching yourself through challenges, you take your performance to a different level. And this is never more valuable than when you're managing people. How you are on the inside affects how you are on the outside. And people notice it.

So start 2009 with a new resolve to SEE everyone differently, measured by their potential not by their shortcomings.

Keep the change

Managing change well can result in stronger, better teams. Managing it badly just produces a box of bad or bitter apples, with many good apples falling out along the way.

Leading people through change is always tricky. Whilst there will usually be around ten percent who are positive, there will always be another ten percent who are negative.

This latter group – the ‘mood hoovers’ – need skilful handling, including the judgement on when not to waste any more time on them. This is especially true when one of the aims of the process of change might be to shed this ten percent.

But it is the remaining 80% who need most careful handling.

When it’s all over, you need them to hit the track sprinting.

My thanks to performance coach Struan Robertson for what follows. I was lucky enough to be coached by Struan for a couple of years.

To emerge from change with your 80% intact, you need to start with a plan.

And your plan needs to fill in some blanks. It needs to fill in the blanks in people’s heads.

When change begins, everyone has questions. But the answers are blank – unless you are ready to fill them in for them.

If you don’t, the mood hoovers will be only too pleased to help.

The questions people have can be summarised with five Ps:

• Picture
• Purpose
• Process
• Payoff
• Part I play

Picture
Your people – let’s call them changelings – appreciate knowing what’s going on. It is incredibly stressful to be in the midst of something over which you have little control and about which you know nothing. You won’t be able to tell them everything, sure, but you can convey that you are telling them as much as possible.

Changelings need to see where this is going.

Purpose
Why? Why is this happening? Why are things changing?

People are amazing. If they can see why something’s happening, they can adjust much more quickly than you’d imagine.

Changelings need to know.

Process
If you’re restructuring or merging with another organisation – or simply introducing a new procedure – your changelings will react much better if they know roughly what will happen when.

They will also stick with you through the various stages if they know how things fit together.

Payoff
Will it be worth it?

Or if I run with you through this process, if I back you on this, will I regret it?

In many ways, changelings need to answer this for themselves, but you need to give them enough to go on. And it needs to be more than empty reassurance.

Changelings aren’t daft.

Part I play
This is the most important P.

If I can’t see how I might influence the outcome, I will start to switch off.

Changelings need to feel involved, and as with Payoff, they should be able to fill this one in themselves. You have to make it clear that they need to engage.

And this leads nicely onto another dimension of managing change: coaching staff through it. For the mathematically minded, the following equation states an immutable law of change…

EVENT + RESPONSE = OUTCOME

A changeling [often] has no control over the EVENT.

But they have 100% control over their RESPONSE.

A simplistic but insightful analogy is that of the brown bug.

A brown bug lived in a brown field, and everything was familiar. The brown bug was good at being brown – surviving and thriving.



One day the field turned green. Being a brown bug in a green field was not good. Predators were drawn to her and potential mates avoided her.



So the brown bug had a choice: leave and find another brown field or stay and become a green bug.

She decided to stay and embrace the change. And as it turned out, things were much better in the green field. Food was much more plentiful – and happily, potential mates were very fit indeed.



A little trivial for most business changes, but the principle is sound: each person can choose how they respond, and if they respond as ‘change agents’, i.e. actively and positively engaged, you have a great team.

In summary, it really boils down to conveying three things to your teams:

1. that they have been considered
2. that they are appreciated
3. that you want them to be onboard

Go on! Lead people through change.

Moonlighting - sheer betrayal

18 months is a long time to be shackled in charity HR bureaucracy.

Endless 121s, consultation meetings, capability procedures and finally disciplinary procedures. All in an attempt to ascertain why a previously satisfactory, if a little dull, manager had suddenly unplugged from the grid.

Even his team weren't sure what he was doing - working three days from home and only two in the office left plenty of room for speculation.

The best explanation I could come up with was that his wife must have some form of mental illness.

But no amount of guesswork could prepare me for the shocking discovery that he and his not-ill wife had set up an ad agency from home ... highlighting its 'ethical' credentials.

But moonlighting is hard to spot unless you micromanage - especially if, as in this case, the individual does just enough to avoid dismissal. There were so many other competing priorities that I never had long enough to focus on this issue in enough detail. If I had, I might have spotted the inconsistencies, and may have saved his team twelve months of frustration.

Sadly, one thing's now sure. His betrayal of his team means my starting point is "no" if someone asks for flexible working.

Building a team - be ruthless

In the mid 90s I was a member of a five-person team on an expedition to a remote village in the Western Himalayas, Pakistan's Karakoram range, or "Black Wall".

We needed a woman and a man with local language skills, and so it was that we selected a guy who at first glance seemed perfect. Affable, intelligent, and the son of Pakistani parents.

However, something in me was unsure. He seemed ever so slightly arrogant and once or twice failed to deliver on agreed action points on the list of preparations. I was not leading the team, however, and it was not my call.

Fast fwd four months and we were in the village, situated at 6,500ft in the fertile floor of an enormous valley. Hundreds of miles long, the valley wound its way between 24,000ft peaks up to the Chinese boarder. The section where we were was forty miles end-to-end, four miles wide, with peaks down either side and at each end that towered three miles above us.

Three or four weeks into the expedition, we had a day's R&R. This guy in question and I both wanted to revisit a high goat pasture we had seen a week before. Hidden by a giant fold in the rocks and directly beneath an overhanging glacier, the goat herder's stone hut was one of the most serene places I had ever been to.

We set out early and made good progress in the lower part of the climb. Through apricot groves, past white mulberry trees surrounded by huddles of ancient buildings, and up to the mountain track flanked by fragrant wildflowers. The path wound its way between fields, following the lines of irrigation channels that fed the crops with silty water from the river. This river tumbled down from the glacier high above the village, into the mighty river thousands of feet below in the bed of the main valley.

The path led up into a narrow gorge, carved by centuries of glacial run-off, with near-vertical sides that were lined with boulder clay, towering hundreds of feet either side. Boulder clay is a mixture of sand, silt, gravel and boulders, which is created by the seasonal advance and retreat of the glacier, grinding over the rocks high above.

Although we had to rest frequently, as the air became thinner over 10,000ft, we reached the goat herder's hut by lunchtime and sat chatting with him, sharing our food in return for some lussee (cooled goats yoghurt). Lunch over, the two of us took time to wander the vast pasture separately, agreeing to leave in one hour.

Teetering at 13,000 feet at the lip of the gorge we had just climbed, and surrounded on three sides by 10,000ft walls of ice and rock, the scale is impossible to describe. Probably a mile and a half long by a mile wide, the pasture is nearly silent, except for the distant sound of the glacial run-off, some eagle cries and an occasional groan from the glacier, which would send an eerie echo into the cobalt blue sky above.

I got the photos I wanted and returned to the rocks that we had agreed to meet at. Just after 13:00 and plenty of time to descend before the late afternoon light would fade into the evening darkness.

One peculiar aspect of Himalayan valleys is that two or three hours after the sun passes its midday zenith, it sets very quickly, as the 24,000ft mountains on one side cast a shadow onto the slopes of the 24,000ft mountains on the other side. An hour later, you can see the movement of the shadow, as the sun paints the opposite side of the valley with gloom.

So it was that TWO HOURS later, my team mate arrived, and gave an inadequate apology and explanation. There was no time for argument. We decided to return to the village as we were not equipped to spend the night up there in sub-zero temperatures.

We made quick progress, descending a few thousand feet before the light began to fail. We were half way between the pasture and the village - and we realised our mistake. The light faded much quicker once we were down in the gorge and soon the sandy grey boulder clay faded into the gathering dusk.

It became impossible to follow what faint path existed and we soon found ourselves at a dead end. We were probably 300ft below the top of the gorge side and I guess we were 100ft lower than the path. Scrambling had given way to technical climbing without ropes, and our advance was halted by a 50ft lump sticking out from the side of the gorge.

I managed to climb around it and reached a much easier place, where a small stream had carved a natural path. I could see that this ran past the original path lower down, near the place where it began to open out and ease off.

I turned back to help the other guy and was reaching down, ready to help him up. He was just out of reach and was climbing up the side of a tiny channel carved by another stream.

I think we both realised what was happening in the same moment. The TV-sized boulder he was pulling himself up on began to move. Boulder clay is incredibly unstable, and as he froze he understood it was already too late. Sand, stones and boulders began to shift all around him.

He looked up into my face and said, "Matt, I'm not going to make..."

And the sound of the river in the gorge below was drowned by a crashing roar, as chunks of the boulder clay around me fell into the channel after him.

I saw how big the boulders were that tumbled down onto him but I had to retreat as the ground under my feet began to shift too.

I climbed down a little to see if I could see him but the channel was clear, but for the dust that hung in the air. The roaring of the rock avalanche subsided and the sound of the river far below filled the air.

I called his name but there was silence.

My heart pounded even harder as I realised that the whole area around me had been destabilised. I turned and climbed back up, as quickly as I could, even as boulders began to give way beneath my feet.

As my mind raced, thinking about returning next day to find his body, I began the easy descent in the stream bed I had seen earlier.

Then, to my complete amazement, I heard his voice.

He was at least a hundred feet further down the side of the gorge, but I found a vantage point and peered over to see his dusty and disheveled face looking up. I directed him over a ridge above him and up to the stream bed.

He had literally miraculously escaped serious injury and was just bruised and scraped.

We rested for a few minutes and then started the descent once more. We jogged where possible but mostly clambered down the rough slopes in the semi darkness.

It was pitch black by the time we reached the apricot groves, and finally, after several trips and falls, we reached base camp in the village, exhausted and conscious of how close we had come to not making it back at all.

The moral of this long tail?

Trust your instincts when building a team. And be ruthless if you have doubts about someone you interview.

Oh, and never climb to 13,000ft without overnight gear.