Normal?

My normal isn’t your normal - yours isn’t mine.

It isn’t today, never was, and will never be.

What was my normal has changed, will change again, and again over coming weeks and months. Yours too.

Someone’s normal may be increased energy and enthusiasm.

Another’s normal may struggle to get the basics and essentials done.

Today’s normal may be lots of free time, or no time at all.

Tomorrow’s normal may be creative and inspired or a mind stuck in Groundhog Day.

No right.

No wrong.

Just what is.

An emerging raveling and unraveling of old, not so old and new and yet to be discovered habits.

A tightrope of known and unknown, of certain and uncertain.

Each of us trying to make sense of the unprecedented, and getting a different answer.

And yet it’s an answer that gives us faith, hope and strength.

If I try to pull your rug from under your feet about the certainty of your answer I apologise, as I hope you will me.

My normal isn’t your normal - yours isn’t mine.

It isn’t today, never was, and will never be.


You'll find a little more about these words on this vlog

Targets of perfection

At 88, my dad worries about his mental capacity, and uses the Telegraph's cryptic crossword as a means of checking this. On our weekly call he will often say "I didn't do very well this week" and the niggle at the back of my mind would wonder whether decline was imminent.

Until that is I asked " how many did you struggle with dad".

His answer was "oh about 3 this week".

"3 whole crosswords?" I asked.

"No 3 clues". Let's put this into perspective, there's approximately 25 clues a day, and 7 crosswords a week, and my dad was worried that he was failing to answer less than 2% of the clues. Interestingly, I'm happy if I manage one clue, and therefore have a much lower success target of about 4% to my dads 100%. It just shows how easy it can be to set such high standards, and start to catastrophise a little too quickly.

Values and Beliefs

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Are Procurement asking the right questions

When determining criteria to select suppliers it would seem Procurement need to think outside the box.

Nothing new there - but bare with me.

Today's news that care agencies broke the law not paying care workers for their travelling time between clients had me thinking (yes I know it doesn't take much).

Just to summarise - a care worker may have 10 clients to visit in a day. Some of those visits may last no more than 15 minutes, and could then involve 30 minutes to travel to the next client. Which means if someone only gets paid for the time in front of a client they're actually working for less than the minimum wage. (I won't muddy the water and include the 'waiting' time between some clients - ie the next visit isn't scheduled till 11.00 and you finished the last client at 10.20 and it's only 10 minutes to get there).

The key for me is that this has been going on for years - so how did the care agencies get away with it for so long? 

I can understand how it happened for those care agencies working for private clients. After all the client just pays £x for the hours worked. If the care agency can convince the care worker they just get paid for hours worked they can get away with it. 

The worry I have is many care agencies work for local councils. How did the fact that these care agencies were breaking the law get passed the supplier selection process?

It's simple - procurement didn't think outside the box and just asked too simplistic questions.

The answer "Yes" to "Do you pay minimum wage" was taken at face value without asking further qualifying questions about payment for travelling and waiting time. 

If nothing else this reminds councils to reassess their procurement, supplier selection, assessment and auditing processes. To do what I hate to do (because I like to trust everyone) and assume suppliers are hiding unacceptable, and in this case unlawful, practices behind their woolly answers.

Of course that begs the question about other goods and services procurement buy. After all we don't have to go too far back for other fiascos that highlight inadequate auditing - Horsemeat gate being a good example.

What questions do your procurement team need to be adding to their tender, supplier assessment and auditing to ensure they get through the fog suppliers may wish to hide unacceptable, and in this instance unlawful, practices behind.

What questions do you need to ask your suppliers this week? 

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out - when what you're doing isn't working 

Although I also realise some of this was allowed to happen due to heads buried in the sand and voices not raised by everyone concerned. However you're hardly likely to blow the whistle if walking out of your job due to this abuse means not even the Government will give you income support. After all many of these jobs were supplied by local Job Centres - but that's another subject all together.

Judgements are simply assumptions

Judgements are simply assumptions and as the saying goes assumptions make an ass (out of) u (and) me.

Of course we make judgements based on evidence but that doesn't mean that we're right, and that anyone with an alternate view is wrong. Yet that's often what we think, what we react to and act upon.

First let's think about all the different things we can make a judgement on other people about:

• cleanliness, style, time keeping, expertise, technical skills, interpersonal skills, confidence, respect, honesty, trustworthiness and so on. 

As the above list progresses the criteria we're using is going to get more and more personal. That is expertise is easier to judge than honesty and also going to be easier to get agreement with others on too. Honesty and trustworthiness are in the eye of the beholder and yet are often judged very quickly.

Let's take honesty. Think for a moment how your judgement that someone is dishonest impacts how you relate to them.

• You might ignore them
• You might gossip about them
• You might not tell them the truth
• You might not provide them with the support they need
• You might be wary around them
• You might talk to them with a certain tonality
• You might not give them overtime or specific responsibilities
• And so on

All these just because you judged them to be dishonest!

Do you think these behaviours all support your ability to effectively communicate with and influence that person? Ok if you don't need to but a spanner in the works if you do.

Think for a moment though how do you define dishonesty?  In fact why not jot a list down of what behaviours mean someone is dishonest.

I do think jotting the list down would be a good idea because it will help me make my point :-).

Go on - it won't take long.

I'm not going anywhere.

Just a couple of criteria - dishonesty looks like this, or sounds like this.

Just for me :-)

Pretty please. 

Ok if you're not going to write a list here's an imaginary one (just don't judge me when you start disagreeing with it ;-)).

Dishonesty is demonstrated when someone:

• Says one thing to me, and the opposite to someone else
• Says something, and then later changes their mind to suit the situation, ignoring the earlier statement
• Compliments me with a certain tonality (when it feels like it's just on their list of things to do)
• Says they'll do something by a certain date and then doesn't do it

Would your list have been different?

 

That's the point really how I judge honesty and how you judge it aren't likely to match.

Continuing with dishonesty, and that list of dishonest behaviours you wrote down. 

• Do other people agree with you? 
• Could there be other reasons for those behaviours?
• Does that behaviour always mean someone is dishonest? a 100 % of the time ? always? for everyone? 
• Have you ever demonstrated that behaviour and it mean something else? 
• Have other people demonstrated that behaviour and you still consider them to be honest? 
• How might that behaviour actually mean they are being honest?

The level of emotion you have around this, and rigour with which you hold on to your criteria, will also depend on how much you value honesty. Discussing the criteria for 'respect' or 'fairness' might provide for more or less emotion for you? (See this blog post on values to explore that more.) 

The aim here is to loosen your judgement that x behaviour means y intent. To take the level of emotion out of a situation so that you can observe a behaviour and understand that your judgement of it might not be correct. Once that's possible then influencing and communication becomes a whole lot easier because your judgement isn't getting in the way, and is no longer causing that list of behaviours I wrote at the start of this post.

Alison Smith
Inspiring change inside and out - when what you're doing isn't working

I've written a couple of blog post previously on honesty - one is more of a theoretical exploration and the other is a short story entitled 'iPhone iPhone in my hand' (I know a story isn't everyone's cup of tea - but isn't that what this series of blogs is all about - realising how we learn, communicate, judge, react and the like are unique and personal to each of us. The challenge is ensuring any communication, influencing strategy or change programme takes account of peoples unique preferences and provides options to keep everyone covered).

As I've been writing this series of blogs on influencing, change management and communication I've ended up writing a number of blogs I hadn't originally planned because they were needed to support the blogs I had written.

• The need to calibrate an individual was one.
• Not treating others as we would wish to be treated was another.
• Influencing not being about manipulation
• And Judgement today

They're underlying principles that support the process of influencing. I wonder where this exploration will take me next week - any suggestions most welcome.

Acceptance not Comparison

As soon as the Paralympics opening ceremony started so did the comparisons with the Olympics - on social media anyway - better or worse, liked or disliked, more or less:

sound

sights

words

storyline

special effects

fireworks

goosebumps

tears

talents

presenters

adverts (or not)

I got caught up with it myself on whether I wanted the adverts in the opening ceremony - but then realised that may be - just maybe - I was being drawn into the illusion we all have about the validity of the comparisons we make. Isn't there a mirror here for what the athletes, and those they physically represent, face every day.

and so began my journey of enlightenment (the Paralympics opening ceremony theme) - not making comparisons but just accepting the difference of where people (and opening ceremonies) are at - what ever their history - and being inspired by their story, determination, success, failures and achievements to go tell my story and make a difference in the world. Just, and I mean just, like the Olympic Athletes and their opening ceremony the other week.

So that's where I'm at on what the #Paralympics has taught me so far - what about you - and more importantly what action will that inspire?

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Sowing the seeds for effective purchasing

Lends me your eyes picture source: hannasroom.com via Alison on Pinterest