To push away those January blues, the girls at Rambutan are undertaking a fresh challenge in February – and raising money in the process!

With varying levels of fitness between us (my once-a-week zumba class does little to combat my eating habits!), the girls have entered to take part in the Belvoir Challenge on Saturday 25 February, raising money for the Alzheimer’s Society – a charity of personal interest.

Alzheimer’s – the facts:

• Alzheimer’s Society research shows that 750,000 people in the UK have a form of dementia, more than half have Alzheimer’s disease. In just 15 years nearly a million people will be living with dementia. This will soar to 1.7 million people by 2051
• Alzheimer’s Society champions the rights of people living with dementia and the millions of people who care for them
• Alzheimer’s Society works in England,Wales and Northern Ireland

The Belvoir Challenge

The annual Belvoir Challenge was set up in 1990 to raise money for Harby Primary School. The event is organised by the ‘Friends of Harby School’.  The routes (either 26 or 16 miles) follow footpaths, byways, tracks, and minor roads, and with the kind permission of the Duke of Rutland, goes through the Belvoir Estate.

Luckily for us, the Belvoir Challenge is well known for the homemade cakes provided, and is one of the few events where you can actually put on weight! We’ll just have to walk/run even harder to burn them off!

If you’d like to sponsor the Rambutan girls on their challenge, please visit their JustGiving page: http://www.justgiving.com/NickiEmery today and give as much as you can. All monies go directly to the charity and will be put to great use.

‘We are delighted that Rambutan are giving their time to support Alzheimer’s Society. One in three people over 65 will die with dementia. It is more than just memory loss; it robs people of their lives and has a devastating impact on families and loved ones. 

‘As a charity, we rely on the generosity of individuals like you to help us continue our vital work. Please back the Rambutan girls in their fundraising efforts so that the Alzheimer’s Society can continue leading the fight against dementia.’

Jeremy Hughes, Chief Executive at Alzheimer’s Society

For more information, please visit the Alzheimer’s Society website: http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/

Posted by Fiona, organised by Nicki.

The happiest person I have ever met was penny-less.  She had enough to eat and a roof over her head but very few of what she called ‘luxuries’.  At the time it seemed everyone around her was buying (and sometimes parading) expensive garments and gadgetry, yet this didn’t seem to interest her.  Had she not been my mother I would have called her a fool.

Back at school, all (and this really did mean all) of my friends had the latest trainers and designer jackets and I felt I needed these to be happy.  Over the years I have met many many unhappy people who (according to what I believed back in school) had loads of reasons to be happy – cars, watches, exotic holidays, designer clothes, designer clothes for their pets(!).  I have come to realise I had in fact got the whole thing inside out.

There are obviously significant things which can make people unhappy and come from outside us (grief, illness etc.) but in the main I have found happiness comes from within even for people without.  I urge everyone I coach to start on the inside and let the rest take care of itself.

Ask yourself ‘am I happy on the inside or am I chasing round the world for external things to make me happy?’

This is not a question aimed at getting us to throw away all our worldly goods.  I LOVE my iPod and have a child like excitement about skiing and holidays in general but they don’t make me happy.  I already am.  It’s just the way I choose to be… on the inside.

Are you one of the many people, like me, who makes lists?  It’s certainly a great way to remember stuff that would otherwise likely be forgotten.

When I looked at my most recent list of things I wanted to achieve, I realised it was unrealistic and lengthy; it felt quite a daunting prospect even starting it!  So I set myself the task of taking action, beginning with shortening my list to include what really should be on there!

The crucial thing for me was making a commitment of time to take action; no more procrastination and confusing myself with over-analysing the ’what if’s.  Instead, I chose to focus on how I could achieve something, with a more relaxed state of mind and support from other people, the task of conquering my ‘to do’ list didn’t feel quite so daunting.  If you find yourself in a similar position, give these tips a go as you never know, they may work for you too!

In Tom Rath’s book, Strengths Finder 2.0, he quotes some research on the chances of employees being actively disengaged based on their managers’ focus.  I found it startling and obvious at the same time.  Where a manager’s primary focus is on weaknesses this leads to a 22% chance that his/her employees will be actively disengaged.  Ignoring employees altogether leads to a 40% chance which makes sense when you consider the basic human need for attention (anyone with children will be nodding at this point).

BUT (I hope that you noticed how big that but was) when the manager’s focus is primarily on his/her team’s strengths the figure drops to a mere 1%.

At Rambutan, we have helped lots of companies improve their employee engagement but we have never considered that it could be as simple as getting managers to go round noticing and commenting on what people are good at.  I had better stop now before I put us out of business!  On a serious note I would thoroughly recommend Tom’s book.  It includes a unique code that you use to fill in a web based questionnaire that generates a personalised strengths report that I found very insightful.  In case you’re wondering I am not on commission but, as the research states, I did find the experience of someone (or more specifically something) commenting on my strengths very engaging.

The Rambutan office will be closing at 4pm on Friday 23 December 2011, reopening at 9am on Tuesday 3 January 2012.  If something urgent comes up, feel free to call the office and leave a message or send us an email.  Our details can be located in the get in touch section.  We’ll try and respond as quickly as possible, but hopefully you’ll appreciate us taking a well earned rest… it’s been quite a year!

Hope to see you in 2012 – and let it be another year of good times, busy calendars and furry fruits!

What’s your opinion of suppliers?  I think businesses should consider them amongst their favourite people; an individual or company which aids your ambition to meet deadlines, reach creative potential and be a guiding force through your ideas until completion.  However, as the days on your advent calendar drop away, just sending out Christmas cards to any old printing firm or local designer isn’t going to make an impression.  Instead, by establishing a relationship with a supplier – a task so simply instigated by inviting them for a meeting (or something less formal if you prefer) will improve the chance of greater understanding of your business needs & what they can offer you. Deals will be done and new relationships will be made. All pretty harmless really!

Because, and to use the old adage, a supplier is not just for Christmas… a supplier will help you through every season, by updating your webpage or printing your marketing materials.  If you call on them quite randomly, chances are they will discard you (and your Christmas card) without a second thought.  But who can dismiss the offer of a homemade mince pie and lovely cup of tea in the comfort of your office? [Other snacks are available for non-mince pie fans!]

Rambutan pride themselves on working with locally based companies, who posess a wealth of talents which make us shine even brighter, and we hope they utilise us as much as we utilise them.

We had an interesting session on the subject of common sense at the Growing for Gold event in York.  In the leadership workshop, we were discussing why some managers find it hard to trust and to delegate to the people who work for them. There were many reasons that the group came up with. Some of them valid and some of them not but all, we agreed, related to the belief that managers had about the people they needed to delegate to. If I was to summarise this belief in one sentence it would be, ‘I would delegate more but my team don’t have enough common sense and they might make a mistake.’  Ok, this was not said word for word but it sums up the direction of the conversation.

So, how do you build common sense? Ironically the answer we came up with was to allow people to make mistakes and [most importantly] to learn from them. After all how do we learn? How many children learned to ride a bike by reading the book of theory?! I guess the answer is ‘not many!’. Most children learn by figuring out that staying on hurts less than falling off. Most children learn to fill up a cup by overfilling it and then re-calibrating next time… they build their common sense from mistakes and, if they have really smart parents, also learn from other people’s mistakes.

In business there would clearly be some mistakes that you would not be wise to invest in but as a leader are you and your people clear about the mistakes that people are allowed to make and what the process is for learning from them? Do you also encourage people to learn from each other’s mistakes? A simple ‘likes’ and ‘prefers’ session at the end of a day/week/project can be enough as long as you go into it with a belief that mistakes are a great way to build up common sense.

A prize for the first leader who genuinely believes (and says to me): I need to trust my people to make more mistakes this year!

I was running a presentation past the bunch recently to get their feedback. The presentation was to be used to demonstrate why we’re quite unique in what we do. At the end, the most valuable feedback was, “It still doesn’t actually tell me what Rambutan does.”

It was a fair point but one I struggled with. We do so many different things, by nature of the fact that we design and deliver bespoke solutions, so trying to single out what we specifically do was incredibly difficult. However, without this information, my presentation wasn’t doing what it needed to.

Being able to articulate what we do is very important. “So, what do you do?” is the regular conversation starter. What is required is a short, snappy answer, not 20 minutes of information download about all the great stuff we’ve done for people.

I gave some thought to the areas we find ourselves working in most often: the way that people think, lead and communicate. OK, it’s a start, but what do we do for those people and what are we trying to achieve?

Then I turned to our mission and there it was… ‘Rambutan creates engaging work experiences so that people can fulfil their potential’. There’s so much more behind that but there it is in a nutshell and also now in my presentation. Do get in touch if you’d like the 20 minute version, which we’d love to share.

How often do you make assumptions based on size? For example do you see a big person and assume they eat a lot? Likewise if you saw a thin person and assume they must exercise loads?

Size plays a big part (excuse the pun) in our business lives every day. How often have you thought about speaking with someone senior to you, or a new client from a company larger than yours, and thought ‘oh I can’t chat to them, they’re too senior or too big for us as a company’?

If this has happened to you, what is the mindset you are choosing? What you think about yourself or your company will impact on who you dare to talk to and how you talk to them. How much do you believe in yourself or your company?

If you have eight people in your company would you dare win a contract with an international business? If not, why not? Size doesn’t determine success, professionalism or expertise.

Challenge yourself and think like Yoda, from Star Wars: he asked Luke Skywalker, ‘Judge me by my size do you?’ just as he raised the X wing fighter from the swamp, after the much larger Skywalker had failed.  And the reason he failed? He didn’t believe in himself and  his ability!

If you are my boss and you want me to do something new then consider this. You’ll get a better response if you can tell me ‘what’ you want me to do as opposed to what’ you want me to do and ‘how’ you want me to do it. Why? Well because if you leave me to figure the second part out I’ll be more engaged with the task. I might not get it right first time or do it the way that you would but I’ll grow as a result and like you more. Sometimes managing people can feel a bit like herding jellyfish (difficult to get everyone moving in the same direction and it can sting quite a bit) and this can cause managers to over-manage (or tell people ‘what’ and ‘how’) to get things done. Be warned…resist the temptation…you may be surprised how well engaged jellyfish*¹ perform.

 *¹ this is probably overuse of a fishy metaphor which you should never^*2 do   

^*2 unless of course you are Pike Place market in Seattle in which case ‘fill your boots’