Teamwork!

Swimming is a individual game; well unless you are into synchronised swimming. For most of us,  once you have dived in you are on your own. People gather by the pool edge to chat, but it stops when they start to swim. then its just you and what ever goals you are chasing.

This morning at the local swimming pool there was an older couple moving in close formation, literally, she was swimming over his legs. In fact he had a float between his legs to stop him kicking. He was doing front craw with his arms, she was alternating holding onto him with the breaststroke. And they were fast.

I don’t know why they did it; was it quicker that way, was she steering him or did they just like one another’s company? Either way it was beautifully coordinated, and it was fast!!

Lunch with Linvoy

His first team debut at Charlton was televised and he won the “Man of the Match” award; 6 games later he was dropped. It was a tough introduction to football at the top level, over 500 young footballers a year are let go. Linvoy described how he worked on, driven in large part by anger and desire to prove the Charlton manager wrong!!

Linvoy Primus, the Premiership footballer, who played for Charlton, Barnet, Reading and Portsmouth, gave a riveting talk at the Woking Business matters lunch. He related how his Christian faith helped him to let go of that anger and start to play for God. A turning point was the arrival of Harry Redknap. During their first conversation Harry told him he was going to sell Linvoy; not a great start. But the Chaplain told Linvoy not to worry, if God wants you here, you’ll be staying, just play for God. And so it was, Linvoy was still in the first team when Harry left.

After he retired, Linvoy teamed up with Darren Moore and Mick Mellows to form Faith in Football - as Christians they wanted to serve their local communities by helping young people and their families, be positive role models and help make a real difference!

From that simple beginning, Faith & Football has grown so that it now provides a range of community, educational and overseas programmes using football as a platform for relationship building. They mobilise the Church to meet and serve people where they are on life’s journey and to make Jesus’ message of hope known to all. We wish Linvoy all the best with this great work.  http://www.linvoyprimus.com/

Lunch with Linvoy!! - Tuesday 25th March

I would like to invite you to our next Woking Business Matters lunch; our speaker will be Linvoy Primus

 Linvoy Primus was a professional footballer for over 20 years. He began his career at Charlton Athletic and after a period with Barnet and three successful seasons with Reading, he transferred to Portsmouth. During his time there, Linvoy worked under three different managers: Harry Redknapp, Velimir Zajec and Alain Perrin. The Milton End stand at Fratton Park was renamed the 'Linvoy Primus Community Stand' because of his outstanding services to the club.

“Linvoy Primus, a man with a big smile, big personality and an exciting testimony who communicates very well”

This promises to be an excellent event and a great opportunity for meeting other people working in Woking, so why not treat yourself and come along.

The event will be on Tuesday 25^th March; 12.40 for 1.00pm till 1.50pm at Charlie Choy's Restaurant and Bar, Units 12 -14, The Centrium, Victoria Road, Woking, Surrey, GU22 7PB. We do not charge, but we invite a contribution of £10/head to cover costs; a pan Asian buffet lunch will be provided.

To help us get the catering right, please would you book by emailing me or calling me on 07795 973814.

I would also be grateful if you passed the invite onto anyone else you think might be interested in the topic

Woking Business Matters are a group of Christians, from a wide range of churches, who work in and around Woking and we hope these events will help build up relationships between people who work in the town. You can find out more through the Woking Business Matters groups on  and

I look forward to meeting up again on Tuesday 25^th March

“DUH when did dishonesty ever become thinkable?”

 

Thus wrote Bromley Boy – aka Simon Jones, In a recent blog

 Well I agree it shouldn’t be acceptable and yet in my personal experience it has always been thinkable to some people. What about you? My current employer is very good about openness and integrity; but in the past I have worked with organisations that took a pragmatic approach to the truth, - am I likely to get caught? If not well then…….. And this attitude is not just confined to the commercial sector – just look at the recent accusations of hospitals and the police falsifying various statistics to “enhance” their performance.

 

Issues of integrity and truth telling are often pinch points for Christians in employment – how to deal with it you might ask? One sales colleague I worked with would announce, typically at the start of meetings with other departments, that he wouldn’t tell a lie (There was an assumption that because we were in sales we would be willing to be dis-honest) – sort of heading them off at the pass. In the Bible, when Daniel was told to do something that compromised his principles, he asked permission to be excused.

 

The Banking sector is big into programmes for reforming cultures and behaviours right now. James Featherby wrote a fascinating article on this in Faith in Business Quarterly magazine. All sorts of approaches are being tried

·         Offering financial incentives for good behaviour

·         Emphasising professional standards

·         Enhancing personal integrity

·         A great deal of focus on accountability through ever more rigorous controls and monitoring

These all have their place, but James argues that they also need to

set these in the context of some greater purpose. In the case of the City, the aim is to connect savers and borrowers and to do this in a way that benefits all the parties, rather than seeking to serve only themselves and their shareholders.

 
This is a paraphrase of his wider argument, but one worth keeping up your sleeve if you think truth telling may become an issue. How will this fib advance our excellent reputation for customer service sort of thing.

 

Finally back to Simon Jones; he takes truth telling off in a completely different direction, seeing truth telling as part of mission “Mission is defending the truth that the stranger should be welcomed, the weak should be supported, the poor should be defended. These no-brainer, biblical statements are not self-evident to so many of our neighbours.” It’s worth reading his full blog, let me know what you think.

Bromley Boy's Blog

 

Faith and Technology

I recently traded my HTC smart phone in for a shiny new Galaxy SII. For years I had been satisfied with a Sony Ericsson phone, it was neat, small, had all the contacts I needed in it and worked well as a phone. But sadly the day came when some of the keys started to falter and the screen was so scratched it was barely legible.

I decided to try a smart phone and settled on the HTC Wildfire, more compact than an Iphone but it opened Pandora’s box for me. Suddenly I could email and tweet and Facebook whenever I wanted. It even had Google maps on it and I “found” myself in London and Brum several times. I became a big fan of the Smart thing. The one thing it didn’t do well was act as a phone. I hardly ever managed to answer a call at the first attempt.

So when my contract period was up, I was ready to go for something a little bigger and better hence the SII. But it also reminded me of this article about Shane Hipps and the Iphone 5 launched last year

Shane Hipps and the Iphone 5

One of his key arguments is that one effect of social media is to water down the quality of communication. Facebook, twitter etc are very low cost easy ways to communicate with a lot of people, which is good. But the communication is quite thin. It’s like a guitar with one string versus a 12 string guitar effect you get when meeting with a group of people.

He argues you can’t really be an online disciple because love, compassion etc don’t transmit well via social media. If the medium is the message, then you meet God through the local church, which i suspect is a challenging thought for quite a few of us. Give it a read, and see what you think

Steve Jobs – Are you an Acolyte or a Rejecter?

It is over a year now since Steve Jobs died, and his biography by Walter Isaacson continues to be a best seller. Many business people have read it seeking inspiration and guidance and views

The web article below looks at different people’s take aways from Job’s and his approach; you can even take a test to see if you are an acolyte or a rejecter.

Personally, I wouldn’t want my life to be covered so fully in a book (Well people would find it tedious any way) but I suppose if you are as famous as Steve Jobs, you know it’s going to happen anyway. Nevertheless, I think it is admirable that he was willing to be so open. Interestingly, Jobs was a very spiritual person and did see his work from that perspective, seeing his work as “making a dent in the universe”.

What can we take from his example? His clarity of vision and single minded focus is very impressive. I think it is a trait of most successful people and undoubtedly most of us could benefit from a bit more focus. His sense of taste and design is also impressive, I’ve got an Ipod Nano and it is a beautiful piece of kit and the whole Itunes thing works so well. But I think this is probably something you are essentially born with. No doubt I could improve my aesthetic side but .......

His brash aggressive personal style comes in for a lot of comment. As a business coach, I spend a lot of time trying to persuade managers that staff will respond better (generally) to praise and encouragement than criticism, so I did find his approach difficult to take on board. That said, Steve Jobs was undeniably successful and many of his staff loved him, so I guess that gives me some food for thought!! I have been working with a number of businesses in the fashion sector (Many people who know me will be reading this with mounting disbelief!!) One key issue in that field is learning to take criticism about one’s design work without taking it personally. How do you learn to take a deep breathe and then try to respond positively to the comments. So I think Job’s style was particularly well suited to the high design element field? I wonder how it would have translated onto a building site or factory floor?

Finally, I wonder if it’s right to come at this as an acolyte or rejecter. Job’s biography is a good read and I recommend it. I think there are some interesting aspects to his personal style that are worth thinking about. But at the end of the day, we are all unique, so thine own self be true. I don’t think taking on another persons’ leadership style is going to be any substitute to being the best version of you as possible, and actually I think Jobs would agree, well if I was brave enough to ask him that is

So what do you think?

http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_stevejobs/

Five Steps to Heaven

Rick Warren has just finished a series on “Doing Business with God”, which is all about faith at work. Rick wrote “The purpose Driven Life” second fastest selling book in the world, second only to the Bible! Saddleback church, set up by Rick in 1980, has 8 campuses plus an Internet church and weekly attendances are around 20,000 a week. This makes it the 7^th largest in the US. Despite this he is a very humble and down to earth chap.

There are 5 talks in all, covering such topics as the Purpose of Work, Making Wise Business Decisions and Standing Out at Work. They are quite long, several are an hour and ten minutes; I have listened to three now and well worth a listen.

Rick has a very clear presentation style, he lays out the 6 purposes of work and the 8 principles of decision making and so on. Some may find it a little too cut and dried, but personally I think he sets out some great frameworks to apply to our personal circumstances. The Decision Making talk (a mere 45 minutes) contains some fascinating insights into the decision making process Rick applied when he was setting up Saddleback church. Alternatively is you are considering making a career choice, the session on “The Work God Shaped you to do” would be an excellent start point

You can listen to them at this link. http://www.saddleback.com/mc/archives/ and there are also one page summaries of each talk that you can download.

Let me know what you think.