Patience and the Important Meeting

Last Friday whilst on my farmyard adventure we moved some sheep from one field to another. About half a mile of it was along a country road. Obviously when doing this traffic can be affected - which happened on this occasion. A queue of 3 cars developed in the 5 or so minutes it took to move the sheep. One of the drivers asked how long it would take and when told "5 minutes" promptly turned the car around. This has happened before when one businessman exclaimed "but I have an important meeting" and has been known by the farmer as Important Meeting ever since. In both instances the detour taken would have been over 15 mins vs 5 mins of waiting.

I appreciate the frustration - I've been there and done that. When we're busy it's easy to allow our journey to be the most important journey anyone has ever made. To want everyone else on the road to get out of our way. To make moving the goal - especially not moving slowly or even not stopping the goal. It does however highlight some questionable beliefs:

I am more important than anyone else

Constant moving is more effective than stopping

Moving quickly is more effective than moving slowly

Others on the road don't have a valid reason for being there

and certainly not as important a reason as yours

Next time you start to get impatient just look at the underlying belief that's generating that emotion and ask your self about the validity and truth of your thinking.

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping procurement teams take time to assess the most effective speed of progress

Should you be wearing or wanging your wellies?

On my 4 day adventure on the farm this weekend I wore these wellies for the whole time. In fact I put them on as I got out of the car and took them off again as I got back into it 4 days later (yes I did also remove them when in the farmhouse).

This morning I spied a tweet selling wedge wellies and then another offering wellies for your wedding:

Source: wedgewelly.co.uk via Alison on Pinterest

Source: elliesweddingaccessories.co.uk via Alison on Pinterest

Whilst I love these latter 2 styles they wouldn't have been very useful over the weekend.

Isn't that also true in business. We need to use the right tool for the job - I'd suggest that's as true in sales, HR and Finance as it is in Purchasing and on the farm.

However once we've found a tool that work's we can't keep bringing it out and thinking it will work for every situation and every eventuality. Which I think many businesses do with their external spend. You see everyone thinks they can buy and I suppose that's because they can. The challenge in business is they should be purchasing or procuring ie using an increasing number of specialised tools and techniques to apply to the spend and supplier relationships to unlock the value.

Which means instead of wearing the wellies you might need to wang them instead!

          

Source: ukstudentlife.com via Alison on Pinterest

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping you unlock value in your business by ensuring you're using the right tools when purchasing
alison@alisonsmith.eu 07770 538159

For more on the #digdeep theme applied to business see my pinterest board

Tortoise or the Hare

The tractor I drove this weekend whilst at the farm in Cumbria had some interesting images for the gears. That is the gear I used would allow me to go at Tortoise pace, but had any of us been confident in my driving I could have taken it up to a Hare's pace - although I still think that's quite slow.

I think the images reflect the journey I went on during my 4 day experience on the farm.

Day 1: Gear/Thoughts 16 = Hare - Head full of what I did yesterday, what we're doing today and how far day 4 seems away. In other words head miles away e.g. I moved a sheep using it's lambs as bait (perhaps not quite the right word - carrot might be better) and my head got distracted and I wandered off to the pen we were heading for not realising the sheep had gone in the opposite direction.

Day 2: Gear/Thoughts 13 = Rabbit - head a little less busy and distracted. Perhaps the hardest day as the head started to let go of things but the panic around that set in. When you're used to 16 thoughts running around at the same time it's hard to let them go to concentrate more attentively on one or two.

Day 3: Gear/Thoughts 6 = Turtle - head a little clearer - when we got to the tea breaks I realised I'd not looked at my watch and was surprised it was that time already. When I moved sheep my attention was on the task in hand not thinking about anything else and as a result infinitely more effective.

Day 4: Gear/Thoughts 1 = Tortoise - I woke in the night and instead of automatically reaching for my phone to see what time it was I just thought "the alarm hasn't gone off so not time to get up yet" and went back to sleep.

Some people may go on a meditation weekend to achieve a sense of being. Others get creative and draw, paint or write. Others go for a run. For me it would seem - however odd it may appear - a few days hard work on the farm gets me into a state of being.

What enables you to get out of your head and just be? More importantly when did you last do it and when have you next scheduled to do it?

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping Procurement teams find life balance and well being

When someone says "Chocolate" what do you think of?

I was reminded of an exercise I use with groups when in a session with internal stakeholders of a procurement team last week.

In the exercise I ask everyone to write the first eight words that come to mind when they hear the word “chocolate”. They then spend some time comparing their answers with others in the room. There is a whole range of possible answers, that could include:

Milk, dark, bitter, bake, dog, buttons, sweet, good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, bar, biscuits, strawberries, cocoa, Fairtrade, relaxation, fountain, Labrador, sugar, hot, fattening, present, gift, orange, yucky, yummy.

The one word that seems to come up most often is milk, shared by about three-quarters of the group. The second most common word is usually shared with less than half of the people participating in the exercise. Very soon we’re looking at just a small percentage of people sharing a word. Sometimes someone may not share a single word with anyone in the room. Generally most people will have three or four associated words that are unique to them.

It’s clear that even for a simple word such as chocolate there are different things going on in our minds when we hear it. It’s this meaning to us that will impact our actions, reactions, words and behaviours and yet we often use words assuming a common understanding.

In last week’s meeting I realised every internal stakeholder in the room had a different interpretation for “procurement”. When the stakeholder heard the phrase “best practice procurement” their interpretation of procurement meant they thought they were already doing it. Continuing to use the word wasn’t going to change that so we had to start using new words that expanded their understanding.

New words that enabled them to understand in much more detail what was involved in the Initiate Project, Research & Analyse, Develop Strategy, Implement Strategy and Implement Contract steps.

The next time you’re not getting the response you’re expecting, it might be that they consider what you’re talking about to be yucky, not yummy.

Also blogged on Supply Management. Image from Dogs & Puppies

Are you over extending yourself?

During Personal Training today we did some boxing. During the session I got a few twinges from muscles that I knew I shouldn't be using. On assessing my technique we realised I was over extending myself. If I continued for too long then the twinges would turn into something with longer term damage and impact.

That got me wondering about how we over extend ourselves in life. We try too hard, we push to far, we do too much. In the short term perhaps not a problem at all. But just like in PT today if we continue the strategy of over extending then we can't help but be impacted in the long term.

If I'd got my technique right I'd have been more effective. Which reminds me of a fabby session with Graham Canning of the Kaizen Institute the other week that had me thinking about applying lean principles to every day life not just car manufacturing! Sometimes being effective it's not about doing more but less.