Category: Leadership Insights

Negative splits

You’ll find an article on stuff.co.nz that talks about the differences between men and women in marathon running. There’s discussion about negative splits which if you’re a runner you’ll know is when you complete the second half of a race quicker than the first. The other day I was updating my LinkedIn and, yes I should have known better, but I stuffed up some minor descriptions and before I knew it several people had asked me about my new job! I don’t have one, but what I noticed was that I have been at AUT Centre for Innovative Leadership for 2 years 3 months. Time flies!

I’ve been working on my running the last few weeks doing interval training early one morning a week. It’s hard, my speed training pace is what good marathoners do the whole thing at, but I feel I’ve turned the corner on consistency. Last week’s effort was more consistent and my last interval was faster than my first. You might say a negative split.

Aside from my running there’s been a couple of things I’ve been struggling at for a while, but today, they both turned the corner for different reasons. One was a step change where I brought in someone special to deliver a workshop to a group I had been working with. She made a great success of it. The other resolved itself thanks to outside forces. So for both of these, I feel I’m on my way onto the next stage in much better shape. It’ll be a negative split for sure!

Make sure your next move gives you a negative split. Whatever the leadership issue you’re dealing with today, a team cohesion issue, a difficult conversation or innovation challenge, make sure it’s a negative split, second time around. Doing the hard graft, like in running, build up the resilience, treat the challenging experiences as part of a build up and step out for the next go. And make it negative, a negative split for a positive outcome!

Stephen

Not our fault

A teenager died in the weekend after attending the King’s College Winter Ball. Much has and will be said about this tragedy, but three things said by leaders from King’s caught my eye: We can’t babysit the students 24 hours a day. True. We don’t need an inquiry to see how the Balls are run. Mmmm. They weren’t drunk and there were no drugs. Right.

A letter to the editor in one of the Sunday newspapers caught my eye too. The writer, a mother from Masterton, said that she didn’t try to be friends with her children when they were growing up, that she saw her parenting role to role-model behaviours that she wanted to instil into her children. Continue reading “Not our fault” →

Special matters

Two new elements, named 114 and 116 joined the periodic table this week. I didn’t see that on the television news, which isn’t surprising as I’m such a rare watcher of television. This evening I was home and watched though, as there was a plane emergency that I’d heard about on the radio while driving. Then there was $1 ski passes, an IT hiccup in the police communications system that didn’t create any problems other than greater use of pen and paper and, before I started drifting off, some redundancies and the OCR announcement today.

The president of the International Criminal Court says he might have evidence of institutionalised rape in Libya i.e. soldiers are being supplied with sexual performance enhancing drugs (I should have just said Viagra, now I have) – but it’s not funny at all, in fact if it’s true is appalling – to facilitate mass rape of women and children. Their own people.

In my observation, somewhere from the centre to the margins of any institution that purports to own morals are things that truly moral people find repugnant. For example, fundamentalists of any description have moral rules about stealing, murder, rape etc which we can all relate to, in fact we don’t need them as “rules” as we’re moral. But go out a little and you’ll likely find that it becomes immoral to, for example, divorce or work on certain days. None of these things are morals, they’re rules. Or is it circular? They might think that they are morals if you view the deemed inappropriate behaviour as immoral. But why do you view it as immoral? Dig a little deeper and you’ll find the rule that sits behind the so-called (and I’d say fake) moral.

Which of course begs the question about how we get morals. And do they change? There’s greater minds than mine alive today who can argue that morals are part of us, and part of us that grows as we evolve and develop greater insights into our own happiness. We’ve been finding new elements on average every two and a half years for the last 250 years. If we looked back 250 years we’d find some pretty strange things called morals. Strange for many of us, but not so strange for some people, still stuck in the rule book.

So does all this matter? Yes. It matters greatly if a government assaults its citizens. It’s an outrage and the work of evil people. Or an organisation spreads lies about the preventative impacts of condoms, to conform to its “rules”. Even as we evolve and grow, parts of our species stagnates, goes backwards, but I hope, will again lurch forward again one day.

A lot of variations in perceptions of right and wrong – morals – have surfaced in this information age. At the same time our understanding of our environment marches on, and new elements are discovered and put on the school science tables.

These elements are special matters in our world. Science quietly advances and challenges our thinking of what we assume is static and settled. No chance. Morals are like science too, which we’ll keep growing and evolving. I hope we will look back and wonder how primitive we were.

Morals are special matters too, that deserve our special attention to ensure we are all happy. That’s the core of what a moral is about. Whether in Tripoli or Takapuna.

Stephen

Get what’s coming to you

I called around to see my friend Adam today and had a cup of tea. The cup had the cover of the Graham Greene thriller Brighton Rock on it. It was timely, as this evening I saw the movie of the same name.

I won’t ruin the story, though you might know it. The film is set in 1964 with beautifully crafted scenes, raw violence, Helen Mirren at her best, John Hurt – well what more needs to be said! – I loved it.  Pinkie, the young gang leader has great edge. I’d be scared of him. He’s dangerous and real. And there’s a naive girl who gets caught up in it all.

Up in California a dangerous old man by the name of Harold Camping convinced a large number of people to spend their life savings promoting the end of the world yesterday. This was all based on detailed calculations he had done from the bible, written as we know between about 4000 BCE and 300 CE. Seems like a long time ago I guess and it is on human terms but on earth terms, when the planet is about 4,500,000,000 years old it’s nothing.  Camping is dangerous because of the impact he can and did have on unsuspecting and naive followers. It’s disturbing leadership at its worst.

Come on out Camping and show your face. No weasel words about getting it wrong – you made it plain that there was no doubt that the end of the world was nigh. What’s coming to you is ridicule and mockery and it’s well deserved. As I said in my blog on Sunday, it’s all luck, and your’s just ran out. You might like to use all your wealth from pumping out the rubbish you do on your “Family Radio” to pay back those that spent all their money on billboards and the like around the world on your scam.

Cult leadership is despicable. Admiration turns to followship which the leader uses for his or her ends, to satisfy ego, control and their own insecurity. If luck goes your way, they’ll get what’s coming to them. Like Harold Camping. I don’t enjoy another’s pain – for a cult leader it’s what they need though to shake their community out of the tragic trap they are in.

Stephen

The Christian Brothers Carpet Cleaning Cult!