Why the All Blacks are the best in the world

Because they are the best-trained. Forget Beauden Barrett, the key guy is Steve Hansen (and before him Graham Henry). Since they’ve been involved, All Black coaching teams have taught their teams how to train (learn).

If you want to perform better, train your managers in learning how to learn, and learning how to teach.

Read More
Priority order

I was having a conversation with a Breakthrough member and another guy at our Challenger workshop the other day. The member was talking about how valuable the Breakthrough programme has been in terms of business growth (oh alright, I prompted him). But then he spontaneously said, “Actually the most valuable part has been the effect on my relationship with my wife.”

Read More
The zone of sensible excitement

A couple of weeks ago I ran into a client from my time as a partner in a large business consulting firm. Rieny Marck and I worked together 20 years ago, and he was reminiscing about the Lumley Insurance journey.

I did some work with them over the space of about a year, starting with a vision and strategy session and then working through a detailed opportunity assessment and priority process. He still recalled the methodology I used, and my reference to something I called the “zone of sensible excitement”.

Read More
My GP’s theory

My GP is a fascinating man. He knows all these obscure things and treatments. He always likes to see me because I have exotic symptoms that he regards as a test of his trivia trove (and they are trivial). One of his trivia titbits is that there is a part of the brain called the locus coeruleus which is responsible for filtering out unwanted sounds.

Read More
When coaching, practice is perfect

My youngest son is a wonderful musician, already better than I will ever be. He was born with musical talent (he owes me for that), but he learned to be a musician, and he owes a great teacher and a determined mother for that.

Mrs T said he had to practice for 30 minutes a day and every night his mother made him practice for at least that (sometimes with a timer and often with a lot of resistance).

Read More
The missing piece of the puzzle

After 15 years I’ve worked out what we do here and why it works so well.

I’ve always practiced “outside in” – bringing the world to my inbox via subscriptions to bloggers, periodicals, newspapers and book reviews.  This has its downside as a couple of them are American magazines (The Atlantic and New Yorker) and I can lose up to 20 minutes a day Trumping.

Read More
When it happens (as it does)

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sh*t happens. Often. All the time, to varying degrees.  We’re rolling along happily, and then avvompha! We get knocked off our stride.

Last year we were working on a big initiative. Great opportunity, wonderful relationship yadda yadda yadda. The great opportunity got smaller and smaller until it was whatever the opposite of opportunity is.

Read More
Your best intentions will fail unless you do this

Good intentions, we all have them. We begin the new year full of vim and vigour and a whole lot of resolutions to do things better, differently and with more conviction. But it is normally a matter of weeks (if not days) and we are right back to our habits of 2017.

We’re working too many hours, feeling stressed, eating the wrong things, skipping workouts, missing time with the kids, cancelling date nights, and so the cycle continues.

Read More
Make it work

It’s all very well to set Most Important Goals. They establish what we rationally consider to be our priorities. They represent our beliefs about what’s important – they're our convictions.

But priorities are only meaningful if they involve choice and sacrifice. In those moments when honouring the priority involves inconvenience, disruption, additional effort on the part of yourself or others, then your commitment to priority is tested.

Read More