In line with the interesting discussions we had about the brain, I came across the following which really amazed me:

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R3AD 7H15.

I don’t think we give our brains enough credit, nor do we give them the respect that they deserve, so be kind to your brain today – eat a carrot, go for a run and get a good night’s sleep.

Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habits. Watch your habits, they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

– Frank Outlaw

After taking some time this morning to connect with a friend in order to listen to what is happening in my soul, I can truly say that I feel I am listening to my body, mind and spirit properly for the first time in a few weeks.

What I’m getting at, is that if you feel like something is lacking and you don’t seem to have the drive that you once had, spend some time to ask yourself if you are looking after the interests of all three, body, mind and soul.

Why would I say that?

It turns out that in the last decade, money has been flowing from poor countries to rich countries as opposed to the other way around due to the poorer countries having actually saved money while the rich were spending and spending, which meant they were borrowing and borrowing (by 2007, China’s gross national savings were 53% of their GDP). I then found out that emerging economies have to deal with a “Cobra Effect” which basically creates higher highs and lower lows in economic cycles due to money moving from safe, developed markets to exciting emerging markets when things are good. Conversely, when things are bad the money gets ripped from our grasps and taken back to the safe boring markets when the world markets get the jitters. This means that we have really good times followed by really bad times as opposed to a smoother ride – not cool!

Having effectively baked their cake and eaten it, the developed markets don’t want to share any cake and are having second thoughts about the value of globalisation. Some of the reasons for their fears are that we don’t know what the effect of the massive growth being seen in emerging markets (think India, China etc.) will be on global natural resources or the environment; international competition is creating exposure to jobs being outsourced to the cheapest supplied (read: emerging economy), and other implications of heavily populated, low income economies.

What comes next?

The question I now find myself asking is whether the emerging markets will get to experience the great joys that come with free trade and globalisation, or will we have rules imposed on us by those that have already had these joys and are now jealous of our gains and worried about how it will affect them?

Soli Deo Gloria

1. What do you aspire to be?
2. How do you get there?

The MBA journey that I have only recently undertaken has made me think about these 2 questions in great detail and it has already given me a lot of clarity in waters which until recently were rather murky.

What do I aspire to be?

I’ve thought about many different things that I aspire, or at one stage aspired to be, from a pilot (as you can tell, I love travelling), to someone involved in sports or more generally, a head of marketing for a large company. That was not enough, I went deeper and engaged with work colleagues, friends and family (my wife in particular), in terms of what I wanted to be one day. The way I ended up seeing it was not about what job I want to have, but rather what life I want to end up with. I won’t bore you with the details of what my conclusion to that is, but the first big thing I have learnt is that the question is not what I aspire to be, but rather how do I aspire to live.

How do I get there?

This is where the MBA comes in. If I want to get to the places I want to be in order to live the life I want to live, then I need not only to attain the credentials that one gets from an MBA, but I need to grow into a better person. Better not only in terms of how I work, but also in terms of who I am and how I treat others. The orientation week of our MBA has already started this work in me. Thus far we have done physical activities as well as group activities that were based on thoughts and processes required in order to complete the task. I have not worked this closely with a team outside of a sporting arena, and I have loved it. Yes, frustrations creep in, and I doubt I am the easiest person to be in a team with, but I have already learnt more about how to engage with people and take their feelings into account that I have in my whole life. I am typically the kind of person who in the past would have said that that is all non-sense, just get the job done, but the light bulb has been switched on and is slowly getting brighter. As far as I am aware, this is the start of the journey of me getting to the place where I want to be in life. Yes, the subjects course work is going to be important and hopefully enjoyable, but for me this is where the real difference will be made to my life.

My MBA Group for 2012

Will I get there?

Only time will tell if I will get to the places I want to be in life in order to live the life that  I want to live. For now, it’s going to be about keeping my head in the books for the next 2 years (okay, the books, laptop and iPad), reflecting on my learnings and ensuring that I don’t jeopardise the relationships that I hold dear along the way.

Soli Deo Gloria

Boot Camp Explained

The reason for the name boot camp, is that in order to get to know how our groups that we are going to be in for the next year operate, we were put through a series of challenges. These challenges were both physically and mentally challenging.

Some of the activities were abseiling, building a raft and getting to the other side of a pool, building a tower out of dry spaghetti and marshmellows, a quiz about African countries, a puzzle, obstacle course, and more (there were 11 activities in total plus one pit stop.

What did I learn

I thought that this would be about which team was the most competitive. I am competitive, so yes, that was part of it (we came 4th out of 22 ), but there was so much that I learnt about the group that I am going to be working with for the next year.

Some of the things that I realised are:

1. Always start with a strategy
2. The person who is the expert in that field (if there is one) needs to take the lead – ego’s must not take over
3. Everyone must play a part, even if it’s the admin stuff that is not very fun
4. You have to trust your team if you want to deliver great results

That was just the start, so let’s see if I agree with those thoughts in a couple of weeks time, hopefully I will.

Soli Deo Gloria

In my last 3 weeks leading up to the start of the first year of my 2 year MBA journey, I have found that I have learnt so much more about not only the content covered, but about my true self as well.

The main things I have learnt revolve around the revision that I have done, the discipline in doing it and the stretching that I have done.

Revision

Reading through the economics and accounting subject 6 years after having started working, I have found that I am looking at the world with different eyes. I went through 1 year of economics and 3 years of accounting in varsity, but this weekend was the first time that I picked up a newspaper and was truly interested in what the financial statement of the company results for ACSA were. What were they doing with their assets? How have they used their cash reserves? These are the types of questions that I had never asked myself when in university.

I also started questioning some business decisions that had been made by certain companies since it is being drummed in that the true cause and effect should be looked at before implementing a strategy.

These new perspectives are making me think very hard about my 4 years I spent in varsity.

Discipline

Another thing that seems to have happened is that I have somehow attained the discipline to sit down and study on a daily basis, although I have decided to take Fridays off to recover.

With the studying discipline has come a new found respect for that ever elusive work/life balance. My big learning however, is that I need to spend a bit less time in the gym and rather spend that extra time on personal relationships, be they with my wife, friends or church community.

Pushing my Boundaries

The last thing I wanted to mention is how I am being stretched even before we have officially started. As mentioned, this includes the discipline that I am finding I never had in terms of studying (I have always had discipline in terms of exercise and diet, but never studying). This points to the discovery of self that is occurring, especially the parts of my life that I would rather gloss over and not think about, but am now being forced to face.

The biggest push I will receive before we start is an interview that I need to conduct with someone who is senior in our organisation to discuss high performance work cultures. I decided to shoot high and asked the CEO if she would meet with me for 10 minutes to discuss this. She agreed, but instead of 10 minutes I got half an hour, so I am going to need to do a bit more prep in case we move onto other topics that she might bring into the discussion, especially in terms of our internal drive to create a high performance work culture.

Looking back at my personal growth over the past 3 weeks, I can only hope that this continues for the next 2 years and that I can keep up with the stresses that are going to be coming my way once fully under way.

Soli Deo Gloria

What Happened

Being a good nerd, I was doing my pre-course preparation, and was about to get up to go to church, and wham, there it was at the bottom of the subject pre-course materials page, the scary note reminding us not to forget about the assignment which is due sooner than I could fathom any assignment needed to be in (we only start lectures in 2 weeks).

Well, I managed to get it done in a couple of hours after church, but it’s one of the other subjects which I wrote about last week which helped me stay calm. The blessed professional development article that I was reading mentioned how you need to be able to take an external look at yourself and the situation and sum it up. Luckily that was fresh in my mind, so instead of thinking this was the end of the world, not going to church and being grumpy until I had completed the assignment, I decided that there is still plenty of time to do the assignment even after church.

In Summary

Firstly, I decided to check all of the other sets of course notes that we were given to ensure that there are no more A-bombs to trip me up. But more importantly, I learnt to do one of the things I had read about. Amazing, the course has not even started and I have not only learnt new things, but put them into practice. This is going to be an interesting 2 years.

Soli Deo Gloria

What did I learn yesterday?

One of the interesting subjects that is going to be part of the coursework is Professional Development, and yesterday I found out that a whole bunch of people have researched and documented the best way to reflect, who would have thought?

So after an interesting day at work today, I did some reflection on 2 specific incidents. The best thing I learnt was one model saying that the first thing to ask yourself is: “Is this worth reflecting on?” For the first incident I came up with a big fat no. That was easy, off to a good start. As for the second incident, I guess I am doing it right because being honest with yourself is hard, especially when you decide that you could have done things better and acted differently. I think I might find out over the next 2 years of reflection that I am a bit of an arse, let’s see how this journey plays itself out.

Soli Deo Gloria

The main similarity of great companies that Collins identifies in this book are “10X Leaders”, and the traits that they consistently portray. Some of the traits that he identifies which I found most interesting are:

• 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to
• In an uncertain and unforgiving environment, following the madness of crowds is a good way for a company to get killed
• They don’t favour analysis over action, they favour empiricism as the foundation for decisive action
• These leaders consistently consider the possibility that events could turn against them at any moment
• They are incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the company and for the work, not for themselves
• 10X’ers consistently do a 20 Mile March (see below) in order to stay on course
• They always test new ideas by “firing bullets” (doing tests) before “firing canon balls” (taking a big bet on something new), allowing them to know when a need idea will be more likely to succeed
• These leaders prepare ahead of time for what they cannot predict, and build up reserves that act as a buffer
• They have the ability to “zoom out” and take a look at the whole issue and the macro environments that affect their world, before “zooming in” and addressing the problem at hand

The 20 Mile March

The 20 Mile March that Collins talks about is essentially about setting targets for yourself (or your business) to reach, and they must be reached in both good times and bad times. This means that if times are great, that you don’t over deliver, which could be setting your business up for failure in the years to come as you have set an unsustainable precedent. And in tough years, it is important to have a target that is obtainable, yet will still challenge your business to grown and be stretched.

Collins uses the example of Roald Amundsen who led the first team to the South Pole and his insistence to cover 20 miles and no more when there was good weather, and try to get as close to 20 miles covered on days of back weather as well.

A Good Easy Read

Although it is not the only characteristic that he identifies, for me, the 20 Mile March was the most important aspect that Collins identifies in the book. It is an easy read, so give it a go and see which aspects you find to be the most important.