Does your business match up to the preparation, organisation and implementation of an Everest Mountain Expedition?

 The Situation

In 2001, an accomplished mountain climber set out to achieve his life-long dream of conquering the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest.  In addition to the treacherous terrain and unforgiving climate, this climber also faced a unique challenge: he was completely blind.

He organized a team of 19 world-class climbers to help him achieve his objective. Along with all of their expertise, however, each individual brought into the expedition his own strong will and “big ego”. Transforming this group of highly skilled individuals into a cohesive, functional team seemed nearly as challenging as reaching the 29,035 ft. summit of the mountain.

Finally the climb was happening in an era in which many teams had attempted and failed to reach the summit, due to the fact that they didn’t have a plan and many went their own ways once the going got tough. Recently many climbers had died in the process of going it alone.

Our Work

One of the technical climbing experts was also a Best Year Yet Program Leader so the group participated in a review and planning workshop while at base camp. The process provided them with a strategy for the journey ahead and they formulated three basic guidelines:

   Trust one another’s skills and knowledge

   Ask for our needs—eliminate fear!

   Develop our plan and stick to it!

Furthermore, they determined their major focus for this expedition would be “team mate”, and they decided that their top goals, in addition to reaching the top and coming back alive, would include supporting one another both physically and emotionally. Before they set out from base camp, the group had a clearly defined objective and a mutual plan in place to ensure they achieved it.

The Results

After three months of extreme conditions and arduous physical exertion, the group achieved the culmination of all their goals and made history in the process. This expedition not only included the first blind climber, but also a climber, who at 64 years old, was the oldest man to ever reach the summit of Everest.  Incredibly, all 19 members of the team made it to the top, making this expedition the most successful trek of Everest yet.

Perhaps the most remarkable accomplishment, however, was the culture of partnership that was created at base camp and carried with them throughout the mission. Members reported that they “built an inspiring level of trust and confidence in one another despite not knowing each other well before they started” and attributed this success to the Best Year Yet system.

Although they faced life-and-death situations every step of the way, and were often under the most stressful conditions imaginable, they maintained a superior level of cooperation and communication, without even a single argument among members of the team! 

ENGAGEMENT, MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION - Why do your employees work for you?

It’s Not the Money

At the request of The Federal Reserve Bank, MIT was asked to conduct a research project into the degree to which money is the key factor in the engagement, performance and results of people in the work place. It seems a no-brainer of a question. The conventional wisdom is clear. It’s why we pay bonuses.

But the findings of the research, which was repeated in colleges across the US, produced something really surprising. Although money worked as a motivator in simple functions (how fast can you move a stack of bricks) whenever cognitive or collaboration skills we needed money had a detrimental effect on performance.

Thinking, perhaps, that the sums involved were not enough to inspire American college kids, the same incentive exercise was repeated in India where the “bonuses” represented several months’ income – and the results were the same.

The higher the financial incentive, the worse the performance;

Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc and see for yourself.

So this begets the question what does what does engage, motivate and inspire people to ever-higher levels of performance? The answer is surprisingly elegant.

So What Is It?

It seems there are three key factors and you only need to examine your own experience to check their validity.

1. Autonomy – I want to have some say in what we do and how we do it. I am not a machine that simply follows instructions. Ask me what I think I should be doing and the best way to go about it and the chances are that I will come up with something as smart or even smarter than you. If I don’t then I’m sure you’ll let me know, but why not give me the opportunity. Any solution or plan that I create is far more likely to be successful than one that is imposed upon me. Let me contribute more than just my labour and see what happens.

2. Purpose – It’s good to know that what I do makes a difference and serves a higher purpose than just doing stuff. I don’t need to save the world, but it’s good to know that what I do is important to the wellbeing of my company, clients and colleagues. It’s good to know that my contribution is appreciated, acknowledged and valued. I will always do more when I know my contribution means something.

3. Improvement – I do not get up in the morning thinking how I can do worse today than I did yesterday. I don’t want to be a worse driver, parent, friend or colleague. Give me the opportunity to get better and I will be grateful. Appreciate that if I do mess up I did not do it on purpose and if it proves to be an opportunity to learn, then so much the better.

This has been tested many, many times. It has been tested by psychologists, sociologists and economists and it has proven to be true time and time again.

Give people autonomy, purpose and the chance to better themselves and you will get the best of them.

The 7^th Bounce, along with Best Year Yet can give you the methodologies, the skills and the tools to create a level of engagement, motivation and inspiration that will get the magical performance and results from your greatest resource – your people.

To find out more contact us for a free diagnostic…….

How To Create a Team That's Gold Standard

The business world is driven by motivation and opportunity, of which there could be no more dramatic illustration than the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In those few amazing weeks we saw what motivation is all about. Although some of those Olympic stars will become rich on the back of their achievements, they were not motivated primarily by money. They were determined to make the best of the talent they have. 

So how can we transfer the lessons from the 2012 Games to the business world? 

Let’s tackle motivation first. Why do people go to work? Some do it to put bread on the table, others have more complicated aspirations, but almost all require some kind of job satisfaction. What that is, depends on the person but everyone wants to feel valued.

This is where managers come in. People join organisations but they almost invariably leave bosses. If you report to someone who acknowledges and rewards your successes, you will not only want to stay, but will be encouraged to perform better.

Good managers, like Olympic coaches have the vital quality of empathy. They understand that for the majority, the strongest motivation is to be recognized for the work you do. That’s not so different from Olympic athletes. If you witnessed the way in which these men and women congratulated each other at the end of a race, you will have understood that what matters most is the endorsement of the crowd and their fellow-competitors.

To find out more visit www.7thbounce.co.uk and explore how to be a success – just like our amazing Olympians.

The Real Reasons Why Businesses Fail

The fact is that businesses do not fail. The failure lies in those who lead and work in the business.

No-one wakes up in the morning with a plan to do harm, do the wrong thing, upset customers, miss opportunities, take the wrong path, waste resources, miscalculate the market, over-estimate capacity, lose the support of staff and all the myriad of other reasons that business goes wrong.

These things happen and they happen because all of us are, at some level, unconsciously incompetent. There are simply too many things that we don’t know we don’t know and as a consequence we make the decisions that lead us into trouble. None of us does this on purpose. It just happens.

In his fabulous book “Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow” the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahnemen states it bluntly when he says, “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation – our almost unlimited ability to ignore our own ignorance.”

However

A recent survey in Entrepreneur Magazine in the USA revealed that the majority of its readership “failed” at least four times before they finally succeeded in establishing a robust and thriving business.

The most common stated reason that they simply had to learn things they didn’t know they didn’t know when they set off on their journey.

This challenge is compounded by the fact that being an entrepreneur or business leader can be a lonely path. We are constrained by what we already know and understand. We are also constrained by our ignorance of those things we do not know we are ignorant of.

The aim of 7^th Bounce is to help you shine a light into those areas, to have the opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of others and contribute learning from your own experience.

We are all capable of repeating the same mistakes until we eventually learn our lesson. Yet there is so much we can learn from others if only we can find the right environment and the right people.

That is the opportunity and the power that 7^th Bounce provides. 

To find out more visit www.7thbounce.co.uk and explore how to be a success, not a statistic