Winning at work Seminar
I had a great day, took away lots of great ideas and insight of successful people and have some info to share.
The Nandos story
Charles began with the story of how Nandos began. He shifted the idea of takeaway and Portuguese chicken recipe from a coowner called Fernando, from South Africa to the UK market in 1993, to the 160 restaurants in UK it is now whilst learning all the time and adapting in face of adversity. It is great to meet a person who has so much experience and is not phased with minor setbacks, and to perservere and change to suit the situation, e.g. the extractor fan and cooking method, and also door to door marketing! This reminds me of an analogy that Alex Tew told, and it shows a lot about the entrepeneurial style both Alex and Charles have: the shotgun approach is ready, aim fire, whereas the SAM missile is ready, fire and then aim. It symbolises the approach that we should not be too knowledgeable of where we want to go, and just to take action and get started, and then carry on and keep changing direction to meet the target. Too much knowledge makes us less able to take risks, one can take marketing courses and get a degree, but to get into the real world, take the risk and get criticised is better, as long as we are willing to learn from mistakes, and to keep trying regardless. On his strong algebra score, the way he rejected the offer of the scholarship showed his character and belief that he would succeed in what ever he put his mind to. Character is really defined as what a person would do under pressure or under adversity. A lot of key points ran throughout the day, some of the main points I took away were:
Life is difficult.
Don’t feel the need to take credit for everything, don’t let the ego take over or nothing will get done.
There is abundance in the world and plenty of time to grow and learn.
Be persistent, perservere.
Ask not what the world needs, ask what our hearts need to become fully alive.
Be positive and choose your friends wisely because they are the ones who influence you the most.
Do work which you like, you will know when you don’t even count the hours.
Its not what you know, its who you know.
Make a list of values and work on them: health, money, friendship, success, happiness, freedom, integrity, principles.
Live your passion.
The passion inside burns like a fire, but it needs to be contained.
People are the most important asset, learn to integrate and use complementing skills.
Rome was not built in a day. Everything you see which on face of it looks like it is very successful right now is the result of a disproportionately huge amount of hard work, time, perseverance, diligence, a bit of ignorance, and a bit of luck.
Lion story
Charles then said a lion story in the working lunch, which he repeated in a later session. This is a ‘fairly’ accurate recollection of this story:
In this village in South Africa, there was a grandfather who lived at the top of a hill overlooking his village, and he sat with his grandson next to a fireplace. He said, “I see these two lions raging inside of me, one is a bad lion and he tries to take control of the pride and is always taking control of situations and being aggressive and killing zebras, and not a good influence, is very egotistical and destroying the trust of the pride. The other lion is a good lion, it will lead the pride into deeds of good and is not looking for danger, and always stays clear of trouble and is the complete opposite of the bad lion. So these two lions are fighting each other all of the time, and it is a battle that has been going on throughout my life. In fact I can see these two lions fighting inside of you as well.” The grandson asked, “Which one wins?”. The grandfather replied, “In the end, the lion which wins is the one that you feed the most”. Moral: feed the right lion and day by day it will get stronger, your choice which to feed.
Lucy’s story of how she started her own business from stratch was very inspiring, she spoke of how her core passion, beliefs and skills merged and integrated into an opportunity which even though she was risk averse she looked outside of her and took messages from a book which led her to a job which she loves. The messages are never give up, and don’t be afraid of failure, as long as you can learn from it and keep going then that is good.
At the maximising your money session I learnt a bit about managing money, marginal utility which I had also read about in sciam, and about saving and investing, and also basic defintions of assets and liabilities, and to invest in cashflow generating assets. Not very useful since I am a student but maybe it will quote ‘wet my appetite’ later in life to plan and prepare financially.
BurtonMorris seminar, very interesting to know that the major influences in word advertising are prepared by a few people. Presentation slides were very good. Don’t be afraid of doing something new, when they started in the advertising sector they thought they would be questioned and criticised but actually noone did. Also how to see people as people in a large organisation or committee, to get over ego, bureacracy, and to see differently perceptions of people in different positions and cultures.
After the refreshments the final workshop presentation was by Charles again, who went through several exercises to explore ideas such as values, future plans, conflicting personalities, and core contradictions. The conflicting personality are two elements of your personality which create an inside conflict, but actually one can find an optimal state at the juncture of these personalities where one will be in the zone and be most effective. His analogy of the elephant was very informative. He also emphasised that it is unreasonable to place dispositional attributions when people are in certain situations, becuase there are always situations in which the person seems to have completely opposite personality traits. This is simply known as the fundamental attribution error in psychology.
I actually got a lot more from this day then I thought I would, especially the information specifically related to students starting on a career path. Charle’s spoke about life in the workplace after uni, and not being at the top of your field anymore and not being as knowledgeable as you might think. There was a lot of information in the day which one could pick out the most relevant to themselves so the format was good. I would encourage people to attend this event when it arrives on campus, not simply because it is informative, it is also the atmosphere of being around so many positive and successful people so willing to share their advice and getting so many ideas and insights firsthand which is hard to get from static media.
I finish with a semi-related quote which for me had a lot of meaning:
Jason Garfield quote in podcast (50:45 mins into joj8): Just because someone is highly skilled at something doesn’t mean that they’re also highly intellectual. You wouldn’t ask the most amazing circus monkey what you should do with your life. Animals and idiots can be very skilled at some things but that doesn’t mean that they’re smart and are the best people to be listening to about everything. When it comes to each subject how much you value their opinion should not be based upon how many clubs they can juggle or how long they’ve been dancing on a stage in Vegas. They maybe wrong even about the areas that they excel at. (52:22) It doesn’t matter how good you are at anything, that doesn’t give you the right to act like Anthony (Gatto – arguably the greatest juggler in the world) does, that doesn’t give you the right to think, as Anthony said, that we should be lucky that he says our name, and that he should be allowed in anywhere just because of his juggling ability. It doesn’t make you a better human being, it doesn’t make you smarter or anything, all it does is what’s obvious. It gives you the skills that you have, and if people like you for it and look up to you then you should not let that get to your head.
[update - audio available here]
