Sit up and pay attention

Cicero Speaks

Sit up and pay attention

Greetings.

It is good to see that some of you are now using the comment functionality to send paeans of praise to Cicero for his enlightening and entertaining dribbles. It is good to know that there are others out there reading these fine words and not afraid to write words of their own. All feedback and all ideas of future dribbles are most welcome. Use it or lose it.

I have also been asked for a lift update. Well there is good news and bad news. The lift that has been out of order for most of this year has been fixed and continues to work well and seemingly without incident. The bad news is that one of the other two lifts is now out of order and has been for a few weeks now with no date known when it will be able to go up and down again, a key requirement for any lift in any organisation. I know this has been keeping you awake at night.

It is not the lift that is important but the symbolism that broken lifts communicate to all those working in my state bunker and to visitors. It communicates an organisation that does not really care and where an ability to move fast to resolve issues is not a capability that is highly prized. It is a primary rule of Cicero that everything communicates and what does a chronically broken lift communicate?

Now I want you to sit up straight and pay attention. And yes that does mean you. I want you to pay attention.

You will recall that last week I talked about interferences and how they got in the way of potential being realised. If you don’t remember then read my column on the left ‘You do the maths’.

And you might even recall that a few weeks back I talked about my running technique and how I managed to blot out the pain, the breathlessness, the distance to go and all the other interferences that got in the way of me running to my full athletic potential which in truth is not very great. Now let me pull all these threads together and give you my secret to minimising interferences. And to do that you must pay attention.

Let me tell you a story. A friend of mine went to a coach for a golf lesson. The coach was not a golf coach and knew little about the technical aspects of golf but he knew about coaching, he knew how to stop the interferences. My friend on the other hand had been playing golf for many years, had loads of thoughts on what to do when he stood over the ball but despite this wealth of knowledge and understanding, could never get the ball to go in the direction he wanted.

The coach could not and did not try to add to the technical clutter and noise in my friend’s head. He told him not to worry about the goal but to pay attention to what was happening. He just kept asking what he was noticing when he hit the ball and asked him to be as precise as possible with his descriptions. What did he mean when he noticed his hips were moving?....that there was jerkiness in the swing?......where did it feel jerky?......and many more similar questions And lo and behold and without a word of technical instruction the ball started to go straighter and straighter.

It may sound like magic but it is not. Remember fear and doubt are two of the biggest interferences we face in our sporting, personal and professional lives. The job of the coach, and anyone in a leadership role is a coach whether they like or not, is to help identify and eliminate interferences. By encouraging our people to pay attention to what is going on, awareness builds and crowds out their natural instinct to generate interferences. With their thinking powers distracted and by noticing and focusing on what is going on rather than trying to process the data as per normal, the natural process of learning will kick in.

Believe me this works. Maybe you are trying to improve someone’s golf handicap, their ability to present well or to influence others. If so get them to pay attention, encourage them not to think, and watch the interferences diminish. I know, I was that golfer.

Is it only me?

I bring you more true tales from the Royal Institute for Incredibly Stupid People, a society dedicated to make Britain a safer place for the incredibly stupid. And once again if you work in the health and safety industry, I almost called it a profession, you might like to look away now and skip to the last few words of my weekly dribble.

I bring you news of a farmer who has been successfully prosecuted by a happy wanderer with knapsack on back for failing to teach health safety to his livestock. I kid you not. It seems a rambler wandered into a field of cows and was injured when the cows decided to fight back. Seemingly the farmer had not taught the cows how to behave when happy day glow cagoule wearing wanderers invaded their home. Or had done more to keep them under control.

Now it might only be me who thinks like this, though I doubt it, but cows are not meant to be kept on a leash. Cows are meant to graze freely. And while cows may not be the most intelligent of creatures, I would ask you to consider what you would do if a happy camper wearing a bright day glow cagoule wandered through your home while you sat down to eat your dinner. I may be wrong but I am pretty sure you would not be best pleased.

In my book if you enter a field already occupied by any other animal, the onus is on you to take care and pay due attention. It is not the responsibility of the cows, sheep or pigs to take due care. And so yet another victory for the incredibly stupid. Another defeat for common sense.

Have a great week.

Sit felix. Et sit fortanuus.