Wise Wednesdays

What do you do when you get bored? This question often comes up in a client’s coaching journey. It’s sometimes because they start to slow down the pace of life and prioritise what’s truly important, cutting out noise, distractions, dead end projects and energy drains. While a part of you enjoys the spaciousness and relaxation, another part of you gets anxious about what it means and whether you’re giving up on life. As one of my coaches says:  focusing on just one thing is the hardest challenge. I would add that, as a recovering overachiever, having nothing to focus on is harder.  As a recovering overachiever, I know the discomfort “boredom” can bring up. And as Olympic athlete-turned-business woman Goldie Sayers reminded us on last week’s webinar, identifying and going for your next challenge is the raison d'être of the high achiever. But what happens if you’re in between challenges and you’re not sure what your next challenge is? Or if the challenge is ...

I visited a drone factory last week. The UK’s top Unmanned Air Vehicle manufacturer gave us a highly informative tour. The day before, I heard a Formula 1 executive talk about the automotive performance culture: it’s designed with aerospace aviation levels of safety. I was a little sad to see that safety standards in this industry were higher than in the healthcare system… Sure, the healthcare industry has made efforts to learn and has taken a leaf out of the aviation industry’s checklist approach to safety championed by the likes of Atul Gawande under Barack Obama. But the pressures are unrealistic. And it’s not just a matter of efficiency improvements. Business and entrepreneurialism at their best, especially in tech, have levels of efficiency, precision and passion that bureaucracies and public services come up short on. But is that a bad thing? It depends…on the context. THE C WORD In a conversation with a leader in finance who’d spent his life running and...