Keeping the Spirit Alive

The Olympics finished 2 weeks ago with the whole nation seemingly positive, inspired and at peace with themselves and the rest of the world. Every gold was celebrated, every hurdle overcome applauded and every mistake forgiven. When athletes not achieving gold apologised for letting us down in unison we all shouted from our sofa's "You didn't". If they'd measured our happiness score over those 2 weeks we certainly would have been top of that leader board.

Have you noticed a difference since? Perhaps you've achieved more, worked out more or focused better. Or perhaps you've eaten more healthily, been less critical or looked for the positive. On the other hand perhaps business as usual resumed very quickly with well being going out the window, distractions mounting and back to back meetings taking place with no time to think let alone make changes or stay positive.

We were talking about the impact of "business of usual" last week at a session on implementing a new e-enabled procurement toolkit. We can do everything on the training day to ensure they understand the benefits of the using the new tools, we can get them comfortable with using them, we can even enable them to use them on real examples to embed the learning and to understand the positive difference they can deliver. The challenge is how to ensure using the new tools becomes business as usual once they get back to the office rather than falling back on what they were doing before?

If we are to apply learning from those who have successfully made changes to their lives since watching the London 2012 Olympics I'd suggest the following needs to take place:

1. Desire to change
2. Inspired to change (others can provide this for you)
3. Motivated to change (you can only do this for yourself)
4. Action plan in place (so you know what you're going to be doing)
5. First step in plan to take place within 24 hours (before you have time for other priorities to get in the way)
6. Commitment made to others
7. Being held accountable by others to those commitments
8. Measuring the benefits (to provide more of 3 above so you continue taking action)

If you failed to make the desired changes 2 weeks ago, with the Paralympics upon us, why not get into the spirit over the coming weeks and tap into the inspiration needed in step 2 to provide the motivation to take the necessary action.

Alison Smith
The Purchasing Coach
Sowing the seeds for effective change in your purchasing athletes and team

Source: london2012.com via Alison on Pinterest