There are many traits that combine to determine our effectiveness and one such critical trait is resilience.

When I think of resilience, I think of our capability to bounce back from adversity. I think of an appropriate response to failure, and success. I think of our ability to persist when there are plenty of reasonable excuses to quit.

I used to think that resilience was a function of character. Some people are resilient, others aren’t. But now I’m not so sure. I’ve come to learn that our ability to cope is as much a function of how we design our approach to our work as any other factor.

If we let ourselves get into a situation where proverbially all our eggs are in one basket, then we may have a problem. If we’re over-dependent on winning a single client, or landing a particular job, or being assigned to a certain project, then it will be tough to handle the situation if it doesn’t work out.

The alternative is to distribute our ‘risk’ across multiple opportunities. If the client doesn’t sign up, then we can work with others. If we don’t get this job, then we can look at other options. If we’re not on this project, then we’ll prepare for a better one.

This is very much common sense. But we often lose sight of it. Experts in happiness speak of the importance of having a balanced approach to life. If we have strength in our work, our relationships, our family, our friends, our activities, then difficulties in any one of these at any time can be supported by the others. When people become overly focused in one area, then they are less resilient in times of crisis.

The same principle applies to our work. If we allow ourselves to get into a position of scarcity, where it’s all or nothing, then we’re at risk. Many gurus talk about abundance and the belief that there’s always potentially enough for everyone. And I think they’re right.

We will be more resilient, and likely more successful, if we develop our capability to work with multiple clients, if we grow our skills so that we’re capable of different roles and if we develop the reputation that will have us in demand for many different projects. This is often a conscious choice, a careful design rather than an accidental characteristic.

But, but, but…

It is possible to take this to an extreme. Some are guilty of hiding away from difficult decisions and clear thinking by pursuing so many opportunities that they have the convenient excuse of not having the time to do anything different. Try to avoid having all your eggs in one basket but equally, don’t keep endlessly adding to your collection of baskets.

When it comes to setting goals and objectives and developing a system to help achieve them, it appears that the best advice can be whittled down to a few key points.

• Be clear, specific and tangible in setting the desired outcome
• Ensure your goal has a bit of ‘stretch’ but not too much
• Break the work down into small, achievable steps (not all at once!)
• Work on it and move the thing forward every day
• Build in some accountability by going public or enlisting the support/challenge of others

Is that it? Can it be that simple? If we do all of those things, then can we guarantee success?

I’m not sure you can ever guarantee success (even though many will try to sell you that) but I think following this advice will certainly allow you to make progress.

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(Aside)

I often recoil from the ‘simple’. I tend to equate simple with basic, with common, with mediocre. I tend to think, “well if it was that simple, wouldn’t we all be doing it”. I tend to look for a more elegant, sophisticated solution.

And, you know, a lot of the time, I’m doing the wrong thing. We often over-complicate our lives. There are tons of reasons why we do so. One that recurs for me is to prove that I’m a deep thinker and an innovator by hanging on for the ultimate solution. How can I use basic stuff with all my fancy-shmancy education and my work with famous companies? Of course, this is classic ‘fixed mindset’ thinking, as defined by Carol Dweck. It’s not helping.

There’s a time for simple and a time for complexity. I often get them mixed up. (Seth Godin talks here about simple, complicated and nuance).

You might be surprised to learn that this picture wasn’t taken near the finish-line of the NYC marathon.

It was taken somewhere in Central Park, with still a couple of miles to go. As you can see, some people are struggling to make the finish, others have slowed to a walk. But yet, I’m happy and clenching my fists.

Why? Because I knew at that moment that I was going to finish. I knew I had it in me to travel the remaining distance.

It turns out that I had been hiding my doubts. I wasn’t sure as I headed for the start line on that November morning if I was going to make it to the end. I hadn’t run a marathon before. The farthest I’d ever gone was 21 miles. To a certain extent, this was a leap of faith, even though I had followed my training regime with reasonable discipline.

But something flipped in my brain at that point. The fear, the doubts, the worries, they all disappeared. Maybe it was some form of soothing brain chemical that my exhausted body was generating?! From that point on, I was oozing confidence.

And I still have some of that ‘learned’ confidence in my system. First-time marathoners often say it, you do feel like you’re capable of more when you achieve something as ridiculous as running 26.2 miles. Now, if I’m facing into commitments or projects that require a certain level of endurance, my confidence is high. I know I can do it. I know I can last the pace.

So, it’s important that we seek out the kind of experiences that give us a shot of that confidence. Paradoxically, it requires us to go where we aren’t confident, to where we might feel a little vulnerable, even exposed.

I finished the 2011 New York City Marathon.

I’m quite proud of that feat. I didn’t win the race, nor did I push myself to the point of hospitalisation but I trained long, and occasionally hard, and finished the marathon with a smile on my face.

The entire process has taught me a lot about myself. And I’ve learned a bunch of unexpected lessons about life and about work. When you are out on the road for several hours every week, I guess you have time to reflect and put all of that learning into context!

Here’s one lesson that stands out: the enjoyment of the process of training is as (if not more) important as the accomplishment of finishing.

I often hear people talk about ‘hanging in there’ until the big launch or the next promotion or the ideal client. This is normally coupled with some form of the “It’ll be great once we get there” delusion. It seems it’s ok to suffer now as long as we reach the target.

I would have agreed with that before the marathon process began. I fully believed that it was ok, even preferable, to feel pain and to be stressed along the way to achieving something big. Now, I see it differently. It’s not that you can avoid sacrifice or discomfort or risk. That’s unrealistic. What’s critical though is that you enjoy the process. This absolutely impacts the end result.

Don’t get me wrong. I found the training really, really hard. Sometimes I was so exhausted I was good for nothing else. But, I found that I enjoyed it. I looked forward to the long runs at the weekend, to exploring new tracks and running through places I hadn’t been before.

And that, ultimately, is my lesson for my work. Now I know I need to enjoy, as much as possible, my work. It’s no longer good enough to defer my sense of pleasure, enjoyment or gratification to when I have achieved something big. In cliched terms, I must enjoy the journey as well as the destination.

And when that’s the case, even greater achievements are possible. So, this is not about avoiding discomfort or lowering our ambitions. This is about ensuring that the path to achieving our goals is one on which we enjoy running.

We all have to make choices.

And I’m talking about choices that are bigger than choosing between having a tea or a coffee, between strawberry and vanilla or between low-fat and regular.

We have significant choices to make on a regular basis about the work that we do. Sometimes those choices seem quite straight-forward but often, they can be challenging.

When making those choices, it really helps if you’re clear on what’s important to you. When you know this, it’s almost like signposts will appear that will point in you in the right direction. If you’re not clear on this, then you’ll be crawling along in the fog, not able to see those signs.

Here’s the thing though. What is important to us tends to change. For some, it’s constantly changing and is a sign of progress. For others, it changes less often but requires regular review nonetheless.

Are you clear on what is important to you? Have you reflected on this recently? Maybe it has changed without your conscious acknowledgement.

To help you with this, here’s a list of four things that are important for me, at this moment in time.

1. Growing a delighted client base.
Peter Drucker maintained that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. No business can survive without an engaged client base. My focus is on steadily developing the scale and breadth of that client base, in a way that ensures that all active clients are delighted with the offerings.

Inevitably, some clients will move on. Some will do so because their needs have been met and they will turn to something else. Others will find that the offerings will evolve in a different direction to where they’re going. This is all healthy and natural.

2. Increasing the financial return of the business
If an established business isn’t profitable, then the end is in sight. My philosophy is simple here: create more value than we extract. When clients invest in Smarter Egg programmes, their return on that investment needs to be significant. As long as this is true, the profitability of the business is well-earned.

I’m not doing this kind of work to ‘make a buck’. There are easier ways to get rich, trust me. But it’s important that the business provides a living for my family as well as the families of those who work for the business.

3. Developing long-term sustainability
It’s easy to be drawn into activity that appears to be exciting or rewarding but ultimately, it may not be contributing to the sustainability of the business. Being unsustainable means that certain activities can only be pursued in the short-term, that certain behaviours can’t be maintained.

I’ve worked hard this year on designing the business to be more sustainable, to grow and evolve with the needs of the clients. Yes, this is a design challenge but it is also a mindset and a philosophy. Being sustainable doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll always be operating within capacity, doing more or less the same things. But it does mean that we will take a long-term view when making commitments.

4. My Mojo
Why do you work? Is it to make money? Is it to keep yourself occupied? Whatever your reason, the reality is that you have a choice about the kind of work that you do. No matter how tough the economic conditions, you can decide to change your job, or your profession.

I’ve made a number of changes in direction in my career and in doing so have realised how essential it is that I both enjoy and find meaning in the work. This is what Mojo is. It’s not about Austin Powers but is a concept introduced by Marshall Goldsmith. The two key elements are happiness and meaning. Without these, our Mojo will suffer. (We use Marshall’s books in Smarter Egg programmes, and I do recommend them).

Those four things guide me. Your list will be different. What’s important to you?

It seems that the most common food currency of business meetings is the cookie. No matter where you go, from hotel conference rooms to boardrooms, where teas and coffees are served, a plate of cookies is rarely far behind.

I see this first hand in our Smarter Egg groups. Our Leadership Circles take us into the boardrooms of large companies, where plates of tasty confectionery tend to be provided, most often from a sub-contracted caterer who also runs the internal cafeteria. Aside from cookies and other pastries, scones are very popular in Irish boardrooms often accompanied by lots of butter and a range of tasty jams. (This blog post may make you drool).

What’s fascinating about this is that I often hear people make a comment along the lines of “Oh, I shouldn’t really be eating these but I’ll have just the one.” People are apparently aware of the health impact of a diet with too many ‘sweet’ things and will talk about their weight and certain foods not being good for them. But, they rarely consider the impact of what they eat on the quality of their work.

Inspired in part by Tony Schwartz & The Energy Project, whose material we use in some of our Work Smarter circles, we’ve decided to initiate some changes around the refreshments we use for our sessions, where possible. We’re looking to work with hotel venues and internal caterers to provide smarter refreshment options for our learning groups. We’ve teamed up with Lucy Hyland from Food For Living, who is giving us some expert guidance on where to start.

Lucy creates tailored food solutions that enable people to change their habits and adapt their lifestyles to eating patterns that promote wellness. She also works with the food sector, developing new products and designing recipes and menus, to improve people’s health and vitality.

Here are five really useful tips from Lucy for smarter eating:

How you eat over the course of the day will have a direct impact on your ability to focus, concentrate, think clearly and maintain motivation. If you want to get the best out of yourself and your ability to learn, choose a brain friendly eating pattern that will sustain thought and productivity.

1. Your brain needs a constant supply of energy to work intelligently. Supply your brain with a constant supply of energy throughout the day by eating every 2-3 hours. Your choice of foods are critical – choose whole foods that take a long time to break down, releasing sugar slowly into the system, for example whole grains such as brown breads, whole wheat scones, beans and pulses, nuts and seeds and fibre rich fruits and vegetables.

Tip: Replace shop made processed breakfast cereals which are high in refined sugars with slow release porridge, granola or muesli to keep you thinking all morning.

2. Reduce your intake of sugar and highly processed foods, such as white toast, muffins, biscuits, cakes, white scones etc. Despite giving your brain a quick boost of energy, these will peter out in about 20-40 minutes, leaving your brain starving for more energy and you yawning in a meeting.

Tip: Replace your afternoon snack of chocolate or crisps with wholegrain crackers or fruit and dips.

3. The brain is about 60% fat and needs constant replenishing. However, your choice of oils and fats is the most important element of this. Choose good quality oils and fats to improve brain function such as oily fish, nuts and seeds, eggs and extra virgin oils. Lack of fat in the diet has been linked to fatigue, learning difficulties and depression.

Tip: Replace a few servings of red meat a week with an oily fish such as salmon, mackerel or sardines or tuna.

4. Protect your brain from damaged fats by reducing your intake of fried food, processed food and saturated fat from meat and increasing your antioxidants (in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables) that protect your brain cells.

Tip: Replace your morning snack of biscuits and cakes (which are often made with poor quality vegetable oil) with a small handful of nuts or seeds and fresh fruit.

5. Hydration – cognitive function has been linked directly to dehydration so keep your fluid intake to 1.5 litres a day and keeping caffeinated drinks such as tea, green tea and coffees to 2-3 a day.

Tip: Replace your soft drinks or caffeinated drinks with herbal teas and water

Eating in a smarter way results in improved energy levels, improved concentration levels and improved learning ability.

We’re not proud of everything we have done in our lives. Sometimes we make mistakes or behave in a way that isn’t a fair reflection of our true selves.

I remember attending a business meeting a couple of years ago where the hosts were enthusiastic about my work and were interested in seeing how I could help them. We explored different scenarios and then something unusual happened. I began to ‘wing it’. I started to promise things that I really had no idea about my capability to deliver. I started to talk about things I had done before which were similar, when in reality the work hadn’t really been done and was merely a series of ideas and ambitions. As I left the meeting, I found myself asking “What the hell happened there?”. Why did I click into a different mode and start to promise the world?

I’ve seen this bad habit in other people in recent times. Interestingly, some of you will actually say that in business it’s ok to wing it. In fact, a bit of puffery is exactly what you need when you’re trying to sell. Give people what they want to hear and then when you have the deal, figure out how you’re going to do it.

I’m not so sure about that.

I wouldn’t dream of doing this now. And in fact, I’ve changed a lot of the different aspects of my business in the past year to make sure that I’m totally aligned to the reality of what I can do, rather than some notional ‘potential’. But the question that most interests me is where did this habit come from?

One of the more unpleasant aspects of school was the pressure you felt when you had to recite a piece of poetry that you were expected to know ‘by heart’. The pressure went up a level or two when it was in a language other than English. The problem with this kind of learning is that you are programmed to equate knowing the answer with being a good person, and not knowing the answer with being a bad person, someone who needs to be censured and punished.  Not knowing the answer was a sign of failure. A sign of weakness. Even a sign of disrespect.

Is it any surprise that people are afraid to say ‘I don’t know’?

But here’s the reality: sometimes ‘I don’t know’ is the only honest answer. But yet, many organisations have a culture that rejects the ‘I don’t know’ answer. You’re expected to have ‘the answer’, whatever that is. I have seen it myself first hand in apparently sophisticated organisations where experienced executives scurry around like schoolchildren trying to get ‘the answers’ ahead of a pressure-filled meeting with their boss.

That, I believe, is where the impulse to wing it comes from. The fear of censure when you admit that you don’t know. And that fear has, unfortunately, been beaten into many of us from an early age.

So, how do you unlearn that bad habit? How can you get comfortable with admitting that you don’t know the answer to that question? Is it a matter of practice? Or of trying to answer the question in different ways?

Changing that culture within an organisation has to be driven by the leadership and set by example. But every individual can make a difference too by reflecting on bad habits they might have and committing to eliminating them.

My take away: so many of our ‘automatic’ behaviours and habits have been developed in a different time and environment and some of these may be entirely inappropriate for where we are now. Anything that raises our awareness of those automatic behaviours should be embraced as something worth doing.

What bad habits do you need to unlearn?

“Do you remember that 12-step plan we did this time last year?”, she started. I certainly did remember. The plan was the output of one of the challenges posed in our Break From The Pack programme and was an idea based on Oren Harari’s ’12-step recovery programme’ for leaders who are unwilling to admit that their careers have become commoditised. The idea is a little tongue-in-cheek but asks some tough questions about how one can re-invent with purpose.

“So, I found the plan the other day”, she continued,”and was amazed to find that almost all of the ideas and targets within it had been implemented”. This was great news as that plan wasn’t a conventional to-do list with easily achievable goals. It was unusual, ambitious and challenging. It involved taking difficult decisions to reduce priorities, to become a more visible leader and to embrace some edgy ideas that would bring benefit to the business.

In this story of success, I see some familiar elements. The actions and changes wouldn’t have happened without that clear thinking. And the thinking would not have been as clear without the structured space of the programme itself.

For most of us, taking decisive steps forward can be a frustratingly elusive ambition. It’s not that our passion or willingness or character is at question. It just seems like it’s too uncertain, too foggy and not obvious what we should do next. We need to create the space for thinking and then challenge ourselves to find clarity of thought.

Not everyone can afford the time and energy to get involved in development programmes where thinking space is carefully constructed. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. All of us need time for reflection, for taking an honest and calm look at what we do and for examining what might be. It can be done alone but is generally more effective when supported by others, whether it is another individual or a group.

We can unleash unexpected levels of energy when our thoughts and ideas are clarified. Too often, we carry them around without thinking through what it is we really want, what our desired outcomes are, and most especially what to do next. Clarity is typically found through a questioning process that challenges us and forces us to look at our situations through a different lens.

If you find yourself feeling that you need to make changes, do better work or find a different way of doing what you do, give yourself a chance. Make the space for thinking and reflection and hold yourself there until you have clarity. And don’t be afraid to ask for help.

As the Smarter Egg Global HQ is on the move to more impressive offices, a lot of ‘stuff’ has to be processed.

I recently ploughed through hundreds of business cards collected over the past couple of years out and about at events and meetings. I’m not really sure why I’ve collected them in the manner I have. I know I’ve tended to bin more and more in recent times. In any event, more than 90% of them are now heading for the trash.

Some observations on the cards:

• So many of them look similar. Even for different industries & professions. Not sure if this is conservatism on behalf of the card owners or the printers/designers. Or maybe they’re following a ‘winning’ formula?
• Only a handful made me look twice. Some made me laugh. One or two were held to show to other people. This is where you want to be.
• It was quite sobering to see how many businesses no longer exist. And that some people had changed jobs or businesses multiple times. Impressive re-invention & ‘bouncebackability’ or just a bunch of messers?
• Some of the people have died.
• Some of the cards scream “Confused, desperate & aimless”. Others emit a feeling of reliability and ‘coolness’.

In this era of online social networking and apps like Bump, which allow you to exchange details as easily as just shaking hands, have business cards become obsolete?

I would suggest that bland, “me too” cards have probably lost most of their utility. It is useful to be able to hand something to someone who asks you “Do you have a card?”, but why not make that card something memorable that will inspire, entertain and encourage someone to tell a story about you to someone else?

How much longer before “Let’s Bump!” becomes more commonplace than “Do you have a card?”

If you’re happy with 90+% of your business cards ending up in someone else’s trash, then drive on as you are. If not, think about how you might reinvent how people remember you.

I saw a tweet today that got me thinking about the benefits of reading. But, especially, of doing a lot of reading.

The tweet referenced this blog post, which talks about completing a book every fortnight and thus, over a calendar year, completing 26 books. The article also links to a piece by Julien Smith which celebrates his reading of over 52 books in a year.

How far can we take this? Two books a week? Three? How about one every day? Is reading the next extreme sport? Can nerds eventually be part of the X Games?

Most people would flinch at the prospect of completing a book every fortnight, let alone every week. “Where would I get the time?!” is likely to be a common thought. Of course, it’s a matter of making the time, re-prioritising etc. All around me, I see an increase in consumption of media. But books don’t seem to be as compelling to the general public as TV, radio or even social media updates.

In business, most people will admit that they should be reading more. That’s not to say that would like to read more or are missing out on the pleasure of it but simply that they should. They feel they are somehow ‘behind’, not ‘up to speed’ on different trends, thoughts and philosophies. Some take refuge in book summaries or even in concepts like Bookbuzz, where excerpts from books are explored. (I’m not much of a fan of summaries but do like the Bookbuzz idea).

So, if most recognise the need for some reading, what’s the right amount? What’s the right level of investment of time and energy into this pursuit when there are so many worthy alternatives competing for that same, limited time? Of course, there is no ‘right’ answer here. One size definitely does not fit all and your mileage will vary etc. But this is a good question for each of us to consider: how much time do I need to be spending on the kind of reading that will stimulate and inspire what I do?

If I could get away with it, I would read every day. My capability to read books varies with the demands of family & business life but I did get through over 30 books last year and dipped into as many more. The nature of the work in the Smarter Egg realm does require me to explore the emerging literature on an ongoing basis. And I often wonder, am I reading too much? Or is it still too little?

So, what do you think? Are you reading too much or too little? And what’s your answer to this question: how much time do I need to be spending on the kind of reading that will stimulate and inspire what I do?