Please put your phone, your Blackberry, your i-Pad, your laptop into this bag.  We’ll give it you back in 24 hours, now off you go…..

Is your heart racing at the prospect of not being able to be connected to the matrix or are you relishing a break from tech?  It kind of happened to me over the last couple of days, when my Blackberry decided to give up unexpectedly.  This meant no work e-mail on the move and no phone calls or texts, out or in.  To top it off couldn’t get my laptop to connect to the hotel network either.  I was in a digital ghetto.

It felt strange.  Walking along the street with nothing to read, no one to call and no buzzing or red lights flashing at me.  It also made me realise just how many people walk down the street with their eyes fixed on a screen as they go about their day.  Random walking I call it as you invariably have to sidestep them.

First thing I did this morning?  Out of the hotel, straight to Starbucks, log on, sync up and plug back in.   And breathe……  It’s amazing that in the last five years or so how life has changed.  It’s a far cry from my calling back to the office for my messages from a phone box (that was only in 1995),  just as carphones started taking off.  Look how far (or not) we’ve all come.

Good or bad, It’s where we are.  I guess the lesson here is about whether you are a slave to the network or a master of it. Most would probably say we’re slaves to it now, it certainly feels like that.  I think doing without the e-mail was doable, being without a mobile phone was by far the more uncomfortable of the sensations.

Think forward twenty years.  What’s the world going to look like then?   Superfast networks, augmented reality, real time everthing.  Hyperspeed awaits.  Access will be like Oxygen to Generation Y and Z, being plugged in will be the default state to keep up.   Information will be even more bite size, Twitter 2 will probably come out with a 70 character limit and every second of downtime will be squeezed, optimised and maximised. 

So, whose for chucking all those things in the bag for a couple of days and going cold turkey with your tech?  Go on, I dare you….

I’m not trying to get down with the kids (innit), I’m describing an approach to problems.  Some people call them challenges, whatever you call them, we all have them.  Solving them can sometimes be technically challenging, fun or stressful.

Working within a Japanese business for over 15 years, I never cease to be impressed by the way they approach problems.  Everything is always de-constructed, rigorously reviewed, all potential outcomes are scrutinised and the best possible solution applied.  You could call it an art or a science, either way, it’s impressive to see.  The core element is that the problem is always broken down into constituent parts such as what elements are in their control or outside of their control, problem analysis is used to identify the best approach, problem by problem.

Which approach you use depends on the complexity of your problem plus the speed and resources required, potential impact on your business model amongst many things.  Over the years, I’ve witnessed BIG problems get solved by creativity, logic or just sheer effort.  The main thing is not to be daunted by problems.  If you’re not being presented with problems regularly, you may not be trying hard enough.  You might not be pushing your barriers as far as they could go.  Your potential may not be fully realised.  Growing businesses embrace problems, tackle them, solve them and move on.

Will you be my facebook friend, Facebook friend, Facebook friend? You know the type, the digital equivalent of someone that whistles around networking events collecting cards with a ruthless intensity, discarding people like sweet wrappers as they surge towards their KPI of how many they can collect in an evening.  I know they exist, I’ve met enough of them.  That’s why I don’t connect with everyone on Linkedin, I prefer to connect with people that I’ve met in person to keep touch of someone where I have a common interest or business opportunity.

What is nice however is when you do get to meet people as a result of social media.  When something comes off.  When an on-line interaction goes off-line, then gains further traction.  Social media then turbo boosts that relationship, making it more relevant and allowing you to develop your relationship further.  It isn’t the silver bullet as everyone would have you believe, it’s just another tool in the box, albeit a bit like a Swiss Army knife, multi-purpose in its action.

I’ve lost count of the people that I’ve now met on social media that have turned into really solid contacts and friendships.  Without social media we would have never met.  It brings together communities and common interests, like a laser beam on the world, picking people out that might have a propensity to collaborate with you, help you or do business with you.  This is the bit that many businesses still don’t get. They still think it’s about Facebook friends, endless hours of wasted time posting irrelevant status updates and non-profit generating activity.  Deployed badly, it can be.   Deployed correctly, it’s quite the opposite.  If your business thinks that a physical networking event is a good idea, then you need to also look on-line too.  Networking events can be hard work sometimes, you don’t always get quality, you might get quantity.  Take it online and you might increase your propensity to speak to your target audience.

A compliment goes such a long way.  It’s better when it’s spontaneous, authentic and real.  When’s the last time you really appreciated someone?  Taken time to describe why, what they do, how they do it, what impact it has?

In a world moving at one hundred miles an hour, it’s easy to e-mail, text or send someone a Tweet with a quick word of thanks.  Taking time out costs time, however if there were an ROI for a kind word it would be better than any bank return or investment you could make. 

People remember kindness and appreciation.  It sticks with them, long after you have forgotten what you may have said.  Don’t expect anything back, give generously.  You’re time will come.

“Now everybody, before you enjoy your desert, let me show you a short film which shows you the surgical procedure I used to insert the implant into the eye”. Not many people can stomach the sight of surgery at the best of times, but between your dinner courses, that’s a new one on me.  However, that’s what happened to me on Monday night at a dinner hosted by leading Consultant Opthalmologist Paulo Stanga, to showcase the pioneering surgery being carried out at Manchester Eye Hospital (you can read a bit more about the procedure by clicking on the link).

Giving someone back their sight is a pretty special thing.  This new technology – developed by California based medical company – Second Sight – aims to do that.  Imagine a pair of dark glasses with a small sixty pixel camera hidden within the frame, attached to a transmitter. The transmitter sends the images to a small receiver implanted within the eye and attached to the retina.  As the camera transmits the images, the electrical signals are then passed up the fibre optic nerve to the brain, where they are decoded.  Clever stuff.  In reality, this low resolution image would allow someone one stage away from total blindness, with only recognition of light, to see shape outlines or follow  a white line on the floor.  Mr Stanga showed us the full video of the procedure and results on some of his pilot cases at the eye hospital.

What fascinated me was the technology behind it. Why only 60 pixels for example?  Answer – This is the limit of the actual transmitter size and the actual number of electrodes you can safely fit onto it without incurring additional heat within the eye.  Could the retina or fibre optic nerve carry higher resolutions if the technology were improved? – of course.  Tonnes of questions were coming to my mind.

One thing that I did think of was this. If this camera device is transmitting electrical signals to the brain to decode, why couldn’t this technology be used to input other information into the brain?  Let me explain.  In a world where geotagging is now the norm, where google are mapping the world in photo form or 3d flyrounds is considered part of everyday life, why not use augmented reality to input both sets of data to the brain to process?  This would potentially give a blind person a blended image, of real time and virtual time.  With the virtual information being taken from a small geotagged wireless processor attached to the subject somewhere.  It sounds  a bit crazy,  however seeing this effective “input device” to the brain just made me think that all the location based technology that exists, might have uses in the medical sector, such as this.  In my mind, it was almost like the human equivalent of a USB port.

Bearing in mind that this is first generation technology, you have to say that it is a breakthrough.  If it can be commercialised after trials, it will impact many thousands of blind people across the globe.  As the processors are improved and more electrodes added, image resolution can improve and vision along with it.  What made me really excited is that this is being pioneered in Manchester, by Mr Stanga.  For the region to truly be considered a technology hotbed, we need more innovation like this.  Whilst the core technology is from the states, the surgical procedure is being further developed and refined in the eye hospital under his watchful eye.   It was well worth sitting through dinner (including the gorey bit) to hear this story,  I’m always in awe of people like Mr Stanga who devote their lives to medical science, putting patients first and driving for new answers.  A very genuine and clever man.

Creativity.  Leadership. Innovation and Knowledge (CLIK).  That’s how I described the key things that I think are important to running a successful business at the Shared Services Forum annual conference in Manchester today.  Leading a breakout group focusing on leadership, I shared the key things that I’ve picked up over the years from books, experience and working directly with business psychologists.  It was tremendously enjoyable to talk about and – with around an hour to fill – good to go a  bit deeper than the normal 25 minute keynote.

My key point was that being an effective leader is more about knowing yourself, in order to understand others (EQ or Emotional Intelligence). Deeper understanding of “self” allows you to really unlock what makes you tick in order that you can improve.  It’s a continum of up days and down days,  highs and lows, sometimes reverting to type, other times not.  It’s a bit of a journey too, there’s no magic switch, everyone is different, no magic formula, it’s about finding what works for you (just be prepared to be out of your comfort zone at times).  Managing people can be more complicated than rocket science and the root cause of most cultural chaos can generally be breadcrumb traced back to the leader(s) in the business.

Passing on my top 10 Leadership Lessons with practical examples, I supplemented them with a further five things I’ve been thinking about recently: -

1. Sleep more (give yourself an extra hour at night to allow your brain to make all the right connections whilst you sleep).
2. Exercise more (to relieve the build up of stress).
3. Pursue happiness (the happier you are, the easier this all becomes).
4. Forgive yourself (when you make mistakes, don’t beat yourself up, admit them early and forgive yourself for them).
5. Work at being the real YOU (that is the person that you are at home, in the workplace.  If you are two people, home you and office you, then you’re not being authentic.  Life is easier and far more enjoyable when you can just be you, with everyone, regardless).

Best book I’ve ever read if you fancy going on a bit of a journey yourself is The Human Element, by Will Schutz, it’s a book I read every year without fail to remind myself of what makes me tick and lots of practical, implementable things you can do, which is why I think it’s so good.  It’s surprising how much I’ve changed over the years, I’m not the finished article by any means, however I am sure that lifelong learning of “self” puts you in the best possible position to excel at leading your team.

I love my job.  One advantage of running a large business with a big external sales force is that you are always looking for inspiring people to tell their story as a way to motivate others.   As someone with a big passion for cycling, I’m always intrigued by what motivates top-flight sportspeople and what lessons can be learned for business. 

Last week, we heard from Scottish cycling legend Graeme Obree at a customer event about overcoming adversity, breaking rules and achieving the impossible (see blogpost here).  I thought that was an inspiring story to fit in with a new campaign we’re running which talks about ambition and giving 141%.

Today,  I invited former British Champion track racer - Denise Hampson - to address my sales team about transferable lessons from sport to business.  She drew some great parallels between her experience as a top flight cyclist who rode for team GB.  I’ve added my comments to these in bold.

• “It’s easy when the coach is there, real commitment is the things that you do when no-one is watching” <–This is about self-motivation to get on with the job.
• “Assumptions are deadly”. <–Great point, always check.
• “You don’t learn if you get beaten or win all of the time”. <–Agree, this isn’t the ideal way to learn.
• “You don’t have to have every skill to be successful”. <–A strong team counts.
• “Constant positive feedback is not helpful as you cannot clearly identify the bad days” <–So true, feedback must be constructive.
• “If you have success, celebrate it” <–In a busy world, important to stop for a moment.
• “Belief is important, but not everything”. <–Ability also counts.

With a warm, human delivery, Denise won our bunch over really quickly.  It takes a lot to impress a sales force, however there is so much to be learnt from people who have pushed themselves beyond the limits that many of us dare to.  I’ll put a few more of the cycling bits on my road cycling blog which you can read here.

Denise now runs a successful business.  She has re-invented herself and is on her fifth career at a sprightly 32 years old, by her own choice.  That in itself is pretty awesome and speaks volumes about her ability to set and pursue goals.  A delightful person who gaves us real inspiration today.

Digital messaging is the equivalent of a phone-call or voicemail message nowadays.   People are on chasing within minutes or hours if they don’t have an instant response to their SMS or e-mail, expecting your action to be synchronised as the moment they pressed send.  Twitter changed the rules completely as it created a brand new time expectation of “instantaneousness”, an army of smartphone enabled social media evangelists enjoying the new digital fast lane of being completely up to the second with news, learning and opportunity.

This again changes the game in terms of customer expectations when it comes to service.  I previously blogged about a concept called “I-Win” which is an acronym for “I want it now”, perfectly capturing the essence of the new time sensitive buyer.  For those brands that are not totally consumed by their customer experience, they will turn from “hot” to “cold” in an instant as buyers brand switch in transactional marketplaces.

I had personal experience of this during the last few days.  Unbelievably, a major consumer brand – Garmin - with a Twitter account and an e-mail contact form could only deal with me by telephone.  Why?  Because their Twitter account was for broadcasting only, not listening, the only advice they could give was to phone the customer support centre.  Their customer support section was in their words “too busy” to deal with the backlog of e-mails, just keeping up with the phone traffic (I’d e-mailed them twice, with no response).  For me, that’s not progress, they are doing what suits them, preferring to transmit, than receive, a social media own goal.

One thing is for sure, the world is spinning faster.  Those businesses that can keep up and stay relevant will emerge as the forerunners of the market, those asynchoronous businesses will need to rely heavily on their product technology to be good enough at the front end, for customers to put up with anything less at the back end.

At a few talks recently, I’ve found myself using the term “grid” or “matrix” selling more and more.  As organisations become flatter and more democratic rather than autocratic, it isn’t always easy to identify the key decision maker anymore (used to be known as “the man”).  Selling business to business, this means that you have to work harder to cover the bases or influence people who may be involved in the decision making process.

I use the term “matrix” selling to describe the process I feel you need to go through to win business.  That is to always consider colleagues one up, one below and on either side of the person you are trying to influence.  The workplace can be so political, it’s very important that you understand if their is a disturbance in your matrix (nicked that from the very excellent 1999 film of the same title), so to speak.  Of course, this can differ culture by culture, however for a UK audience, this is becoming more and more of a feature of business life. 

When you identify people within the matrix, it’s then critical that you ask the right questions of them, I recently wrote a blogpost on a similar issue here.   The main point is that you are trying to gather as much intelligence about the potential purchase to ensure that you can overcome all potential objections.  This also means you retain the integrity of your matrix and it should hold firm, even if there is one person within it that may not agree with your potential route (although this should have been overcome in the objection handling phase, but not everyone is always won over).

Selling is about people, solutions and business cases.  By covering your bases properly, you should be able to satisfy any buyer that you’ve done your due diligence on their business to make you the only choice for them.

Speaking at an event I did in London yesterday, I was approached by one of the audience members at the coffee break to ask for some tips they could use for an upcoming and important presentation they were doing.  Speaking in public isn’t difficult, it all depends on how much work you put in to make it an enjoyable/stimulating experience for your audience.  Let me share some of the tips with you.

1. Really think of your message and take out, build the entire talk around this.
2. Never read from bullet points.
3. Use images to support your words.
4. Stand still, except when moving to another fixed positon.
5. Speak with your mouth and use your hands to exaggerate.  Vary your voice.
6. You will either gain or lose your audiene in the first minute, think about what you can do/say to really gain their attention.
7. Be yourself.  Authenticity matters.  Share stories that show you are human.
8. Prepare.  Your audience can spot an unprepared speaker from a mile off.
9. Engage with as many people as you can when you talk.  Look for the “nod”.  What this means is, look into a particular audience members eyes and speak at them until they nod at you, then move on to someone else.
10. Be engaging and interesting.  Nearly all subjects – bar the obvious – can be made more interesting if you really think about it.  The more interesting, the more engaged your audience will be.