I live on the river Thames. I have a balcony where I work. The view from my balcony informs my perspective on London, the City I see when I am working or thinking.

When I check in for a flight coming into Heathrow airport, I always ask to sit on the left as I enter. This means, weather allowing, that I will have a fleeting view of my flat if we approach the airport from the east (as is most frequently the case). This gives me a completely different view of my flat. A new perspective on where I live and work and on my place within the great City. If I run along the towpath by the river, past my flat, I look up to my home as I pass it from a third point of view. Another very different perspective.

Approaching the stands on the racecourse, accelerating up the home straight, the noise of the commentator and the crowd is very different to the noise one hears standing in the crowd. The noise of thudding hooves is very different. The shouts from jockeys to mounts are more clear and urgent – and personal. The view of my horse’s neck, mane and ears, pumping in front of my still eyes, of other horses, opening and closing gaps and jockeys silks and backsides (unless you are on the winner) is unimaginable to most spectators. The smell is of grass and horses and rushing air and of being alive. It is different to the smell of alcohol and burgers that one gets in the stands and balconies.

The actor’s view in an intimate conversation that we witness on screen is of a camera lens, a crew behind and of coffee cups and another set behind that again. We accept our view as being directly through the eyes of the listener: intimate, detailed, emotional.

When we approach the front of the room to present, the room alters before our eyes. The view is different. The sensation of having eyes upon us rather than being behind one of those pairs of eyes is different, our thoughts and our physiology alter merely in response to the shift in perspective.

The view I have of you when we meet is different to the view you have of yourself as you look out from behind your eyes at me. The point of view that I have of a person causing me pain and distress is different to the view they have of me, of the world and their place within it and my place within all of that, the history and experiences and expectations that they are acting from when they forget the now and forget that they can choose love. I suffer identical myopia when I am causing that pain myself.

Seeking to experience, physically and so mentally, new perspectives, creates growth and develops empathy. They can intimidate initially and this scares most of us off, but this is natural and surmountable.

Seeking to understand perspectives we cannot physically or mentally experience: through our imagination, our understanding of what it is to be human, our careful questions and our listening creates growth, develops sympathy.

Contemplating perspectives opens us up, makes us vulnerable and demonstrates the limitations of our limited view of the surroundings, the situation, the problem. It facilitates emotional intelligence, creativity, understanding. It creates humility and wonder and possiblity.

We cannot be right. We cannot be perfect. We can seek to grow, to love, and to be aware, accept and laugh at our short sightedness.

Or maybe that’s just my perspective?

Over to you.

Jim.

It was the Stoic philosopher Epictetus who said that “people are disturbed not by the things that happen but by the views which they take of those things”

Now let’s try it by an American, Franklin D. Roosevelt, delivering his first inaugural address in 1933 against the backdrop of a nation wracked by the Great Depression: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance”. A great definition of what is no longer nameless: the Tiger.

Our tendency to fear fear; our mysterious mental process of being disturbed by the view that we take of things; our need to defeat the collective Tigers – these are the reasons why we urgently need our politicians to stop spreading messages of doom. The medicine of the budget has been delivered, so there is no more need to set expectations in order to make it palatable. The election campaign is over, the opposition has become the Government and their rhetoric needs to evolve to meet that responsibility. The only people they can defeat with repeated “historic economic crisis” statements are the people of Britain.

Now we need politicians brave enough to follow FDR’s example instead of continuing to follow the media’s lead in using fear as the primary tool for survival. We need our leaders to be brave enough to speak of a bright future, if we all work for it, and to inspire the nation to strive to deliver that future. There is a risk inherent in speaking of a vision. The risk is that people desert you if you fail to create it. Community and business leaders face that risk daily. The Government’s servants and Northern Rock and RBS face that risk daily. It is now time for our politicians to be brave enough to face that risk also. It is now time for all politicians to put the risk of further harming the country above the risk of losing the next election.

It is now time for our politicians to demonstrate a selfless and courageous commitment to the nation’s future.

I disagree.

Let’s be honest. There are only I’s in team. It’s a group of unique people, isn’t it?

The 21st Century corporate concept of a team of people working together to create something profitable has not managed to do what it may take committed yogis several incarnations to achieve – the defeat of the ego.

Once we’re honest about this, we can get to work on creating a brilliant and cohesive group, committed to success and to each other. And I can get to work on bringing the best “I” that I can into the group. Whether that group is family, work, community or sports based.

Let’s respect the “I”s and their different personalities and personal agendas, let’s let the “I”s discover and create very good reasons to bring their whole selves to the group, let’s involve the “I”s so that they are a part of shaping the group and its aims and the way it works and the plan of action to achieve success – let’s let the “I”s co-own it.

If we fail to do that, we may find that there really are no “I”s in our team –and then there can be no “we” in there either.

Over to you…

Jim.

OK, so you’re sitting in front of the doctor. He has a grave face. He tells you the news – good and bad. The bad news is very bad. The good news is that if you change some part of your lifestyle today – you’ll be fine!

So you change it. Today. Easy! What a lucky escape. You’re very grateful to the universe for that one. The change is easy.

OK, so you’re sitting in front of the mirror thinking about the change that you desperately want to make. Then you write a little plan. Maybe buy a book? Chat it over with friends. How long will the process take? A week? A year? A decade?

Why don’t you just do it?

Creating change for ourselves does not take a long time. What takes a long time is committing. Really taking the decision. That’s one of the things that Rule 1 is there to do – to help us get to the decision buy interrupting the patterns and maybe also bringing other people into the equation.

If you are hungry to make a change that you believe will make you happier, healthier or move you forward. Today is a good day for it. Now do the bold action that you think will take you most directly before the Tiger gets involved again.

Exciting, eh?

Over to you.

Jim.

(Aly Pendlebury, Taming Tigers’ Operations Manager wasn’t sure whether or not she could write a blog. The rest of us reckoned that she certainly could. A quick £1 bet later and she accepted the challenge.
So here’s Aly’s first blog – feel free to leave a message on the blog or on Facebook if you like it.)

When Charles Unwin in the “Manual of Detection” by Jedediah Berry finds himself being pushed into a new job he doesn’t want, he is convinced it is a mistake.

When you consider agreeing to something that you believe to be wrong for you, is it because you are letting other people write your story. Who is holding the pen?  They may think that they know where you want to be and what you want to do – but do they really?  Are they party to your aspirations and the challenges that you want to face? It seems unlikely.

Can you say (unlike Charles) that you are following Rule 3 and “Heading in the direction of where you want to arrive, each day”, or has the steering wheel been taken out of your hands?

Remember – ACT BOLDLY and say STOP when you need to, however SCARY this may seem and however loudly the TIGER roars. Change your RULEBOOK and TAKE CHARGE.

Aly.

Click on the image to view the Rule 7 video

Oh yes they are.

Whether “they” are having a whine at the water cooler, marking time until pay day faithfully comes around again, fiddling their timesheets or working heart and soul to push the cause forward, they are strongly motivated to do it.

The real question is whether or not they are motivated to do what you need them to be doing.

External motivation can only be done by carrot and stick. Carrot and stick – buying and punishing people – is gone now. It hasn’t gone because it isn’t pleasant. It’s gone because it is too complex to do in the 21st Century ideas economy, and too time consuming. “Motivating” people is now all about helping people find their own motivation. Self motivation. And how do we create that alchemy in 5 or 5,000 people? Inspiration.

If you manage people in the 21st Century ideas economy, you are in the inspiration business. That’s the day job. Facilitating the creation of desire in people to want to perform and growing the self-belief and self confidence to think that they can do it successfully.

That’s a legacy. That’s an honour. That’s a craft worthy of study and perfection.

Jim.

Click on the image to view the Rule 4 video.

This is a really fundamental concept. So important that I’ll keep it really short.

We are all motivated either by the desire to get to where we want to be OR by the desire to avoid what we fear.

Now listen up to the important part:

THESE ARE RARELY TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN.

A successful and compulsively creative entrepreneur told me that he got up very early in the morning and worked very hard “not from a desire to get rich, but from a desire not to be poor”. I don’t buy that. He may not have had a desire to get very rich. But if he only had the desire to move away from being poor, he’d have got himself a law degree. His desire to create was greater than his desire to not be poor. He was motivated by moving towards what he wanted, not by moving away from what he feared.

How much of what you have on your agenda today is motivated by avoiding what you are afraid of (the risk of: unpopularity, criticism, failure, conflict,  a “career limiting move”, your spouse grumbling at you) and how much of what you have on your agenda today is motivated by getting to where you want to get to – despite the scary but manageable things that may lie in the way? 

It can take years of practice for most people to develop the self-awareness to differentiate between these two key motivators. Don’t rush it. But don’t stop working on it.

Jim.

Click on the image to view the Rule 3 video

I don’t like everyone. Everyone makes me nervous. I don’t want to get too close to everyone.

So do I. We all do. Partly because they trained us at school/college/university for 12-20 years to get it right or be publically criticised/denied the qualification. Partly because in our early careers we had to deliver exactly what the boss wanted or be publically criticised/denied the promotion. We are taught that getting it wrong has consequences that we should fear and avoid.

Then one day we arrive in a position when we not only have to get it right, we also have to decide what “right” is. IN fact, “right” will only be defined in hindsight! Now it is about setting goals and strategy, choosing how to lead our people, designing a stunning kettle, deciding whether to invest in the shift to shooting in Hi Def or 3D or selling a new drug to a nervous doctor.  this is no longer about repeating what others taught us or about performing a task as specified.

Now the Tiger enters the equation with teeth bared. Some careers stop here. Others start here. The difference is rarely whether they actually “got it right”. The difference is whether they “got it” at all.

Now there is no “right”. There are infinite possible routes and many variables we cannot control. There is emotion, passion, vision, data, advice, criticism and self-doubt but there is no certainty. Eventually we make a decision and act. Or we don’t (putting it to a committee to dilute all passion and share the risk of failure doesn’t count).

When you are ready and have done the best planning you can, move out of research mode and into warrior. Act decisively and intend to win, not to get it right.

Over to you,

Jim

Click on the image to view the Rule 1 video