Who am I and what do I want?

Kaye introduced me to a very interesting exercise this morning, based on finding out exactly who I am and what I want. 

On the surface, this would appear to be an easy enough task. I am Elaine Gunn, I want many things, career success, personal fulfilment, glossy hair and clear skin, a recurring role with BBC Wales as Doctor Who’s new assistant - subject of course to the lovely David Tennant regenerating as himself following his altercation with that Dalek last week…  

So, pretty simple - right? 

I was astonished to find that I was completely stumped, and really struggled to come up with the answers I was looking for. 

First Kaye asked me a simple question; ‘What do you do?’ 

It took me a while to get my head round the context - i.e. what do I do in my job, what does a normal day in the office contain? I was able (eventually) to answer that I manage projects for systems development, I write for the company, I drive communications and contribute to marketing, and finally that I feel I am the company’s problem solver. 

I then had to imagine that somebody else swooped in from nowhere and took ownership of all my responsibilities in the company, all the projects were managed, all the writing was done, the communications and marketing were completely under control, and there were no problems left to solve. What would I do then? 

My first instinct was to worry about the imaginary ‘swooper’ in case they didn’t do everything properly, but on getting my head round the concept of not having to do anything I started to think about what I might like to do. 

Oddly enough, I was able to answer this relatively easily. Last Thursday, for the first time in many months I got to the end of my to-do list for that day. I sat and thought about getting a head start on the next day’s tasks, but on reflection decided that since I had no looming deadlines, I would like to do some branding - this is when we change the look and feel of our gift voucher system to match a client’s website - it’s a bit geeky, but fun and extremely satisfying when you get it right! 

Kaye then asked me to describe my feelings in relation to nailing a piece of branding and (again, very geekily - please forgive…) I came out with “triumphant”, “satisfied” and “like I wanted to laugh out loud or cheer” - all very nice feelings! I found those feelings very easy to connect to how I feel when I crack a piece of problem-solving code for some database or other, or how I get all excited when I find a better way of doing something that’s currently rubbish.   

Moving on, Kaye asked me to describe what I had enjoyed most about previous jobs, and this (predictably by now) all fell into the same pattern. I’ve always enjoyed being the person that people would go to if they had a problem to solve, and I get massive kicks out of looking at a great big mess and coming up with creative or technical ways of making it better. 

Therefore, it transpires that I’m a ‘solver’ - which makes perfect sense now that I think about it! 

So, having identified who I am, it was time to find out what I want. 

This involved me taking 5 minutes with a pen and a piece of paper, brainstorming (or thought-showering if we want to be all PC about it…) things that I want. This wasn’t terribly difficult, and I came up with a chunky list of things, ranging from children to a fabulous career, to being all I can be, and getting on better with my brother rather than just pretending to for the sake of the rest of my family. Ultimately I had 10 items on my list, which I then had to fine down to the three I truly thought were the most important, the ones I really want the most. 

This is the part of the process where I shocked myself a bit. I went through my list, comparing items with each other in pairs, and asking myself which of each pair I wanted more. I whittled my list until I was down to three, and shared these with Kaye; 

1. I want to start a family.

2. I want people to think I’m smart/successful/inspirational.

3. I want to overcome my crazy attitude to food and be able to accept any implications that might have, weight-wise.  

Not outrageous at first glance, however when Kaye asked me to explain why I had picked those three out of the list of 10, I realised that instead of picking the things I truly wanted the most, I had picked the three I wanted the most out of the ones I thought I might be able to achieve!  

I had, without realising what I was doing, shortened my list before I even started the conscious elimination process, simply because I thought several of them were “just not going to happen”. I wasn’t allowing myself to want these things, because I was scared of being disappointed when (not if!) they didn’t happen. And who says they’re not going to happen? 

Well I do, of course - by not believing they’re possible! And how sad is that…? 

Therefore, I have a new list of three things that I truly want; 

1. I want to be all I can be.
2. I want to stay happy and keep getting happier all the time.
3. I want to truly accept myself as I am, without trying to pretend I’m perfect.  

And I tell you what - I’m a lot happier with this list than I was with the first one! It’s a bit less shallow for a start, and I’ve also realised that these three basic ‘wants’ are a high-level umbrella under which each of my other, more specific wants fit. In my first list, I wanted to start a family - well that fits neatly under ‘being all I can be’. And overcoming my crazy attitude to food? That’s part and parcel of truly accepting who I am. 

So it’s been an excellent lesson, and has made me realise that although I’m a very positive person in a task-orientated context, perhaps I need to be aware of a bit of negativity creeping in where strategy is concerned. I always thought I believed I could achieve anything that I wanted, but have suddenly realised that there’s been a massive ‘as long as I think it’s realistic’ caveat there all along. Oops… 

Therefore (and on a much more frivolous note) keep your eyes peeled for me appearing on a screen near you some Saturday evening soon. Step aside Rose Tyler, The Doctor is mine, and those pesky Daleks won’t know what’s hit them.

Now that’s what I call problem solving!

Red Herrings Apples and Oranges

I’m intrigued as to just what Harriet Harman thinks she’s up to with her new plans on equal pay in the workplace. 

I read this morning about her move to force employers to publish details of their male/female salary discrepancies, and the proposed positive discrimination policies to allow female and ethnic minority candidates to be recruited over equally-qualified white males. 

And I was a bit stumped, to say the least. 

Now obviously I haven’t had a chance to read up much on the finer details of all this, but I’ve seen enough to suspect that it’s a can of worms on an epic scale - something of a wheelie-bin full of worms really. 

Is it just me, or has she missed the point entirely? Firstly, from what I’ve been reading so far, Ms Harman is basing all this on the fact that (outrageously, she would say) part-time women receive an average 40% less pay than their full-time male counterparts. She asks if we think that’s because “…they are 40% less intelligent, less committed, less hard-working, less qualified?”. 

At the risk of seeming obtuse, I’d suggest that the discrepancy has more to do with the fact that the part time women work fewer hours…? 

Now I have no problem with anybody getting ants in their pants from finding out that they’re paid less than a colleague who does the same job. This is something I’ve experienced twice in my career, and no matter which way you look at it, it’s not big, not clever and most definitely not fair. 

However, if you really want to look deep into this, shouldn’t it be important to compare apples with apples, instead of with oranges or a big wheelie-bin full of worms? Show me the research that illustrates that women are paid less than men for the same job on the same working pattern and at the same level - then I’ll accept that we have a problem with discrimination over pay. 

As a woman, it’s the bigger picture that concerns me. Proposing to address the equal pay question by introducing positive discrimination, sounds to me like dressing a wound with a dirty bandage - sure you might stop the bleeding just now, but you’re going to end up with a heck of a nasty infection after a while.

I’m talking about those being discriminated against, the poor old white male. More and more these days, I’m meeting guys who are quite open in stating their opinion that the white male is the most discriminated against party in the UK - in the words of one particular charmer (who shall remain nameless),  ”the pendulum is swinging too far the other way.” 

Of course, having been on the receiving end of true sexual discrimination in the past myself, my sympathies are limited to say the least. As I see it, the white male has had it all his own way for quite a while, and it’s time to start sharing now. However, I also believe that increasing the opportunities for one party, shouldn’t have to be at the expense of another, and if positive discrimination for females is introduced, then we’re going to end up with a lot of unpleasant chips on a lot of male shoulders - and quite understandably so. 

 As I see it, the concept of equal pay for equal work is one of simple mathematics - right and wrong, regardless of the gender or ethnicity of anybody involved. Equality of opportunity however, is far more of a sticky wicket - and that’s where we’re getting ourselves into a pickle. 

Whether or not part-time women get paid the same as full-time men is an enormous red herring - the real question is why there are so many part-time women that the statistics are showing a massive pay gap between the genders. 

I’m going to leave it there - it’s not going to take a rocket scientist to figure out where I’m going next, however if you read my last post Baby Talk, you’ll know what I’m on about…   

Baby Talk

 Ok, so this one is pretty hackneyed. Everybody’s been talking about it for years and years, nobody’s got a clue what’s to be done, and to be quite honest I believe everybody’s a bit sick of the whole issue! 

I’m talking of course about the eternal question of what women are going to do about the fact that they may want to have simultaneous family and career development. 

Also known as “what the frick am I going to do when I want to have kids???“ 

This one is particularly pertinent to SK Chase, as with the exception of Dean and the one fish Marvin that has escaped the SK Chase curse of death to date (see Poor Little Gerald, we’ve been cruelly robbed of another 3 goldfish and an algae-eater since then, pesky white spot…) we’re all girls here at SK Chase. In fact, we’re all women of childbearing age. 

So what’s going to happen? 

In a room-full of intelligent, entrepreneurial women, why is it so difficult to come up with a satisfactory answer to this one? Kaye, Steph and I were sitting round a table a few days ago debating the issue, each of us in turn sharing our sketchy plan for how best to “have it all” when the time comes. 

The first thing we agreed on was that the phrase “having it all” was actually pretty offensive. It immediately illustrates the inequality of opportunity between men and women - why is having a successful career and family life “having it all” for women, but completely a matter of course for men? The thought that our respective husbands might sit round a table talking seriously with each other about “having it all” had us all chuckling wryly… 

That’s not to say that we’re embittered feminists, whingeing about our lot as mere females, we were thinking about the issue more from a problem-solving perspective - and it really is a problem! 

Firstly, there’s the issue of maternity leave. Imagine if Steph, Kaye and I arrived in to work one morning and announced that we were all expecting; what on earth would we do at the realisation that all three of us were due to take nine months off at the same time? Would we teach the one remaining algae-eater to take strategic decisions, update the websites and answer the phones? What would happen if he too succumbed to the dreaded white spot? 

Then there’s the likelihood that one or more of us might want to reduce our hours in order to spend more time with our new families; does this mean that our respective careers would stagnate and we’d stop developing as businesswomen because it’s not feasible to carry a senior role through into reduced hours without reducing the responsibility accordingly? (Not to mention the salary…but don’t get me started on that!) 

At one point I suggested turning the boardroom into a crèche, with each working mother taking one day out of the business each week to care for all the bambini; great idea until we need the boardroom for a meeting and our guests have to clear baby wipes and rusk crumbs from their seats before getting down to business. Mmmmm - professionalism! 

As completely launched as this idea may sound, I suspect that the answer we eventually come up with will sound similarly barking. This is not a new problem, if the answer was easy then somebody would have thought of it by now. There are universally embedded cultural barriers to what we’re contemplating, and these won’t be done away with in a moment. 

Maybe there will come a day when it’s in no way inappropriate to bring your baby to work, and a generation of career women will strap their young on to their backs and carry on with more or less what they were doing before - with the exception of a play, a feed and a nappy change at regular intervals. 

I can now imagine an army of militant mothers protesting at this, and insisting that no matter how well you prepare for motherhood, you can never assume to go on as if nothing has changed. I fully accept that, and completely agree - children are certainly not a lifestyle accessory that you can pick up and put down as dictated by you career. However, as far as positive role models go, a loving and attentive mother going about her business in business without having to sacrifice time with her child to do so is about as good as it gets in my book.  

Who knows? We’ve already more or less done away with the cultural stereotype that required women to wear funereal black power suits to be deemed credible in business, why not do the same for a shoulder-full of baby spew and a rattle? As Steph said the other day “As soon as you catch yourself saying ‘but that’s the way we’ve always done it’, you know there’s something wrong.” 

And I couldn’t agree more!

Can you hear me?

A few months ago I gave a talk in Glasgow to a group of women who were either thinking about setting up their own business, or who had recently taken the plunge. Directly after my talk, a woman approached me and introduced herself. She told me her name and the name of her business and as I was about to start chatting to her I was asked to go and have my photo taken – so the conversation didn’t go any further.

However we had that sort of eye contact that happens rarely – it was like two souls recognising each other. And she gave off a sense of calm which was very attractive and appealing.

After the event I kept thinking about the brief interaction and was intrigued by the name of her business, which was ‘The Listening Business’ so I decided to get in touch with her to find out more.

June Grindley is a trained ‘Listener’ and when I made contact she immediately invited me through to her home in Glasgow to have a complimentary Listening Session.

On the train on the way over from Edinburgh, I had no idea what to expect, and had no idea what I’d actually want to talk about. At the beginning of our one hour session, June explained how the Listening Session would work; that I was free to talk about anything I wanted, that it would remain confidential, and that at appropriate times during our time together, she would reflect back – and at the end would spend a short period giving me an overall summary of what I’d felt and thought. There was a moment of me feeling slightly uncomfortable but once I got started, there was absolutely no stopping me!

I realised after my first Listening Session with June that the most beneficial thing about having someone really listen to me, in a safe environment, and to reflect back what I’ve said, is that I actually found myself with the space to properly listen to myself. What I mean is that often we have recurring thoughts and a feeling always accompanies them. Whilst we may have a recurring negative thought, rarely do we get to the source and take actions to remedy the feeling that arrives as a consequence.

When I was learning about public speaking skills I learned that the reason so many people find it so hard to speak ‘naturally’ (like we do when we have a conversation) when speaking to an audience is because we are so used to having people acknowledge what we’re saying (usually before we’ve even completed our sentence). This is why people participating in a conversation often say ‘hmmm’ and ‘uh huh’, to reassure the speaker that they are still listening. This makes the speaker feel that they are ‘in’ a conversation and not just being a fog horn fanny. But often the ‘listener’ isn’t listening at all, they’re simply thinking about the next thing they want to say. Obviously this doesn’t happen when presenting to a room (or auditorium) full of people. And as I discovered on my public speaking learning journey not having reassurance can be quite disconcerting.

On the other hand when you go to a Listening Session, you know beforehand that you are going to be listened to and not enter into a two way conversation. And the other person (the Listener) if they’re good, will be genuinely listening. And this is how it was with my session with June. I could actually feel her listening. And that brought with it a sense of peace. I could hear clarity in my voice and my thoughts that I don’t usually hear or feel.

Listening to yourself; really listening to yourself, doesn’t happen as often as you may imagine.

We think practically all the time. And thoughts lead to both feelings and actions. By having June listen to me, and summarize back to me what I’d said (using the same language that I used) helped me to realise that whilst I’ve had recurring thoughts, I haven’t truly listened to them; i.e. I haven’t chosen to make a positive change to a situation. And the definition of insanity, as Fergus, our new and brilliant Executive Coach from Shirlaws reminded me recently, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

I realised that the real beauty of being listened to, is that it gives you the time and space to listen to yourself. To listen to what’s happening inside. When you make things different on the outside of yourself – this is change. When you make things different on the inside of yourself, this is transformation. I went through a transformation during that first session. I realised that in all cases that rather than being able to change the behaviour of people that bother me, I must change my own behaviour. I must change the perspective with which I view them. I must choose to be accepting – i.e. non-judgemental. I realised that even though I may not say the words that accompanying my thoughts (about other people’s behaviour), that they will be able to feel my judgements and will respond accordingly. By coming from a place of acceptance and love, this opens up the door to real change.

Since that session, Stephanie and I have invited June to come into our business and hold two Listening Workshops. They have transformed the way we think. We are now taking a long hard look at our behaviour and recognising that we can both get much better at truly listening to each other, our team, our customers, our suppliers and, of course, our selves.

The purpose of this blog is to share with you that we are making a commitment to learning how to properly listen; to make sure that we’ve heard people properly; to seek first to understand. We can be so quick in this world to want to get across our point, but to give someone the gift of listening is a rare gift indeed.

If only we could package it up and sell it as a gift voucher

Paradise is a place called Pool House

Seven weeks ago, my lovely boyfriend Angus and I decided that we should get married. A lot of work and excitement later, we tied the knot last Saturday in the Applecross Walled Garden in Wester Ross. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Scotland, Wester Ross is more or less across the water from the Isle of Skye, along the North part of the West coast of the mainland.

 

The wedding was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had in a corset, incorporating outdoor ceilidh dancing, and an impromptu football match (girls against boys, naturally, with the bridesmaids tucking their dresses into their knickers) of which some hilarious photos will be making their way blog-wards shortly I’m sure.

 

The day after the wedding, Angus and I made our newlywed way to Pool House Hotel in Poolewe a little further North from Applecross for our honeymoon, and I’m very much in denial about the sad fact that I wasn’t able to stay there for ever and ever and ever!

 

Pool House is an absolutely breathtaking mix of pure luxury and Victorian and Edwardian kitsch, with each room boasting phenomenal views of Loch Ewe. The hotel is placed about 15 metres from the edge of the Loch, meaning that the view we had from our bedroom Opportune was officially the most fabulous view that I’ve ever seen from a set of patio doors. Apparently on a good fish day you can see seals and porpoises playing in the bay outside the hotel - I spent a lot of time floating blissfully in our chin-depth marble bath gazing out the window and keeping an eye out for them, but must have missed them during one of my regular G&T top-ups. 

 

Now you might be wondering what a rave review of a random hotel is doing in our business blog…

 

The simple answer is that Angus and I had such a fantastic time there, that I just desperately wanted to share the love!

 

I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in a hotel where I felt more at home and welcomed by the staff. In my experience, it’s the little personal touches that turn a good hotel into a great one, and this is something that Pool House evidently understands completely - making them truly exceptional. From the moment Peter (the owner) greeted me by my married name (I made the booking under my maiden name, so this impressed me massively) Angus and I were taken care of as if we were the only couple that had ever gone on honeymoon - there or anywhere else.  

 

Over the course of our two night stay, we got to know Peter a bit and had a lot of interesting chats about the hotel’s history, the history of the surrounding area (Poolewe was big during the Second World War as an extreme environment used to toughen up young officers) and the personal branding of celebrity chefs. Peter’s truly a fountain of fascinating facts, and when my title progressed from Madam to M’Love with him I was awfully chuffed! He was even nice enough not to mock my appalling lack of skill at snooker, which I displayed shamelessly on his billiards table in the gorgeous Rowallan Room.

 

Working in (or at least alongside) the hospitality industry, I often find it difficult to leave my work at home when I stay in a new hotel - I’m always hyper aware of the service levels, the environment, the facilities - everything! All of my usual over-thinking simply disappeared the minute I stepped through the door of Pool House, the place is magical, romantic, exotic and utterly luxurious, and I will never forget the two nights I spent there on my wonderful honeymoon.  

 

So let’s hear it for Pool House Hotel, flying the flag high for first-rate luxury hotels in the West of Scotland. I fully intend to start a specific savings fund so I can go back as soon as possible, as often as possible, for as long as possible. 

The Kiss Chase Sandbox Suckfest

 I’ve been doing a lot of research recently on the mythical beast that is the Google Sandbox Effect. This Loch Ness Monster of the technical age is a phenomenon I had until recently been unaware of, yet in just 6 short months I have learned to shudder at its name. 

For those uninitiated in the intricacies of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Sandboxing is reputed to be a process by which Google “quarantines” new websites - particularly those on newly-registered URLs, or those competing for popular keywords - preventing them from achieving any significant ranking in their search listings. Thus, the new website receives little organic search engine traffic, rendering it (and its unhappy proprietor) lonely, impotent and useless. The idea is to let the baby website play safely in its sandbox, until the mighty Google considers it mature enough to join the bigger kids in the global marketplace.   

Lest I should sound overly bitter without cause, I ought to explain that our new baby Kiss Chase (www.kisschasegifts.com) has been languishing in said sandbox since its launch last November. Any hopes we had of emerging after 6 months were dashed on the 11^th April by the feeble number of visits we achieved - down two thirds on our previous year consumer site traffic. 

In mild panic, I’ve been trawling the internet for information on what we might do to extricate ourselves from this predicament. Sadly, beyond building quality links with reputable existing websites, there seems to be very little we can do except wait - with the obvious exception of travelling back in time to November 2007 and actually listening to our SEO friends at Occupancy Marketing when they advised us not to change our site domain name! 

So in true SK Chase fashion, I’m busy looking for the positives in our sorry situation. Okay, so Kiss Chase probably sees about as many visitors as Victoria Beckham sees fish suppers, but at least we’re getting time to add and grow the content of the site and make tweaks, nips and tucks to improve usability and develop our brand personality. And in the spirit of learning from our mistakes, we’re listening very closely to the experts at Occupancy Marketing as we come to refresh our business to business website www.skchase.com this month. 

Incidentally, I feel it’s important to mention that Google has officially and repeatedly denied the existence of their sandbox. Sandbox theory has been developed by SEO experts through analysis of the performance of new websites since 2004/2005, so nobody really knows for sure if it actually exists, or if there’s something else going on.

Myself, I prefer to remain a believer - our Kiss Chase sandbox suckfest at least allows us some level of influence over its outcome. The alternative is probably best described as “fate” for the internet - and that’s an e-commercial can of worms that we can do very well without, thank you very much.  

So it’s not all bad, even if the tedious process of updating a website that nobody ever sees is starting to chip away at little pieces of my soul! I just keep myself busy, imagining the wonderful day that we’ll finally toss aside the bucket and spade, as Google beckons us out of our sandbox to bask in the warm rays of their glorious page rankings.

Lovely London

I’ve just been reading Elaine’s blog on business travel and it got me thinking…. Unlike Elaine, I do spend quite a bit of time travelling around – lots of London meetings means frequent flying in my case… but just like Elaine, I don’t ‘work’ en-route… Instead I escape into a world of Conde Nast ‘Traveller’, ‘Grazia’ or my latest ‘self-help’ book (I’m addicted… a strong passion to constantly improve myself renders me completely willing to buy the first book that Amazon recommends promising that I can create the life I truly want…).

I LOVE my trips to London. I find the city so glamorous these days. I lived in the big smoke for seven years, and loved it then, too, but for totally different reasons. This was at a time when I assumed that cuppa soups, veggie sausage toasties smothered in tomato ketchup, and silk cult accompanied by white wine was a reasonable diet. This was long before the realisation set in that healthy eating equalled healthy being.

London for me then, was all about working hard, partying hard and living in near squalor (one house-share saw me cohabiting with drug addicts, cats and where my bedroom was quite literally an extension of Queenstown Road platform 2… those city workers and the regular beep, beep beeping of the train-doors closing were familiar and somehow reassuring sights and sounds to me). Not to mention my always complicated love-life. Sadly, by the time I left London, I had grown to hate it – all the things that had made it special for me became nuisances and I was glad to go.

But recently I’ve been introduced to a whole new wonderful world – restaurants, hotels and shops that I didn’t realise existed back then. Steph and I ended up on Charlotte Street the other evening and ended up eating in a quirky Turkish restaurant which served fantastic vegetarian food. Later that week I read (in Grazia, of course) that Brad and Angelina had frequented the very same restaurant only that week! We didn’t even realise we were in a fashionable part of town.

And Carloline Pile (who runs Piledrivers with her sister Sue and who helps us build the Kiss Chase brand) took us to Sketch on Conduit Street – just a visit to their website is a gripping experience, let alone the real thing. I don’t want to say anything apart from you MUST go there the next time you’re in London. It’s surreal. Particularly when you venture to the loo…

But I have found my idea of pure heaven… VitaOrganic – a raw food, vegan restaurant on Wardour Street. Not everyone’s idea of a jolly night out (no alcohol served on the premises, but you can bring your own). The food is divine; not only is it all organic, full of nutrition and fresh, it’s also cooked at a low temperature so that it doesn’t ‘kill’ nature’s vitality… Perfect!

I’ve also found a set of business women in London, in the form of a rather selective business club, who are completely on my wave-length. I’ve joined Sister Snog – I cannot recommend it highly enough. All the women I’ve met so far at the lunches I’ve attended are smart, warm, successful, witty and honest. Run by Annie Brooks and Hela Wozniak-Kay, aka Violet and Lilac, (who at times are quite nutty, but lovely and extremely passionate about connecting people and ‘keeping it real’) it has enabled me to create a network of really valuable London contacts.

But more than that, I’m making new friends, and it feels great. I read recently (yes, in a self-help book) ‘where ever you are, there you are’ and I realised that what you feel inside is what is reflected on the outside. So now, London has come back to life for me again and the love I had for it has returned, just in a different form.

Poor Little Gerald!

It was my intention last week to write a post introducing the newest addition to our little family here at SK Chase. Gerald joined us on Saturday 21^st March and was much pampered and petted by the girls here, until sadly we lost him suddenly to a nasty fungal infection.

 

Gerald was our first office pet - a beautiful silver sand coloured, fan-tailed goldfish with a bright orange forehead. We took a team expedition a few Saturdays ago and brought him home to his new tank which is now sitting at the end of my desk.

 

A couple of weeks ago, one of our directors, Steph, read a great little book called Fish! which she passed around the rest of the team as an example of the kind of working environment we’d like to create here at SK Chase.

 

I read and enjoyed the book, and think that it might well prove useful as our guide to a great atmosphere at work. Centred around four basic principles, Fish! is a mini training course in storybook format. It comes up with great ideas on how you can personally make a difference to your working day, have fun at work and make your customers feel fantastic. Give or take a bit of Americanised psycho-babble I thought it was well worth a read, and has certainly made me think about how I can do my bit to make SK Chase a great place. (hey, that rhymes…)

 

The thinking behind the pet fish was to have four in total - one for each principle in the book. That way, every time any of us got stressed after a ropey phone call, we could head over to the tank and gaze at the little fishies, both to relax us, and to remind us that we have a choice over how positively or negatively we react to things that happen to us at work.

 

So we made a trip to the Aquatic Rooms on Leith Walk (and then to the pub - but that’s another story altogether) and invested in a 35 litre tank, a filter, some fish food, and most importantly our new fish - whom I named Gerald.

 

The following Monday I was the first to arrive at work, and naturally went straight over to Gerald’s tank to check that he’d made it through his first weekend in his new home. I was most perturbed to see him lying prone and motionless on top of the filter, his fluffy fishy fins swaying gently. I instantly assumed the worst and sent a few upset text messages to the other girls to break the bad news.

 

However, returning after 10 minutes with my rubber gloves, ready to fish him out and flush him off to white china oblivion, I got a bit of a fright when he came suddenly to life, wriggled off the top of the filter and swam casually to the other side of the tank.

 

Clearly Gerald was a bit of a joker!

 

The upshot of this was that I discovered that the filter was creating too much of a current for poor little Gerald, and he had more than likely been pinned to the top of it for most of his first weekend. I sorted the direction of the filter, apologised profusely to His Fishiness and hoped that he would escape unscathed from his experience.

 

All seemed well for the first few days, Gerald was eating well and seemed to be quite at home - particularly so when we gave him some pebbles and another plant to brighten up his tank.

 

Then, without warning, disaster struck! Natasha (Tash) was the first to discover that he was sporting a new and interesting jacket of white spots, swiftly diagnosed as Ichthyophthirius Multifiliis - or “Ich” to those of us who can’t get our heads round the full Latin version.

 

Ich is a particularly nasty parasitic fungal infection specific to fish, sometimes caused by stress, and shortly after his diagnosis I discovered poor little Gerald floating limply in a cloud of stinky white fuzz. Clearly those pesky parasites had been having a field day with our boy! This time there was no question of my being mistaken (note to self - once we get more fish, must stop arriving first in the mornings) and the wee man had definitely been summoned to the big shiny fishbowl in the sky. 

 

We’re now busy treating the tank and changing the water in preparation for his replacement - hopefully we’ll have better luck next time. The theory’s still there anyway, and at least we’ll be able to turn to the Fish! book for some handy hints on how to react positively to our swift bereavement - oh the irony! 

 

So that was Poor Little Gerald. His time on this earth was short, but we were very fond of him while he lasted.

 

Gerald SKChase Esq

21/03/08 - 31/03/08

 

 

 

 

 

Bored and lonely in a sea of pinstripe…

  It’s been a while since I travelled to London on business, so I’d forgotten what a surreal experience sitting in the departure lounge in London City airport was.After the usual trip through security, with the obligatory worry that I’d set the beepers off, then disgrace myself by giggling when frisked (it tickles!), I planted myself beside Gate 1 and wondered how long my flight would be delayed for.

I don’t think it had ever really occurred to me before just how many people travel up and down the country every day on business - no wonder the government’s worried about our carbon footprint. I think I’ll start taking the train from now on - both in the interests of the environment and to keep me away from that departure lounge.

In my experience, the London City lounge is an odd parallel universe where otherwise intelligent and confident women (i.e. me) find themselves wandering aimlessly through shops, boredom-buying peach lip gloss.

Departure lounges, particularly during business travel, seem to encourage me to behave in ways I would usually find unacceptable in everyday life. For example, having had breakfast at home, and knowing I’ll get a second breakfast on the plane I am quite comfortable buying a sandwich to have in the departure lounge before I board. My literary tastes take a spectacular nose-dive and I buy trashy novels to read on the plane, that then have to sit uncomfortably on my bookshelves at home between Jane Austen and E.M. Forster.

It makes me wonder if the myriad of high-powered businesspeople I see around me are similarly affected. Looking to my left and right I can see rows and rows of suited and booted gentlemen poring over their laptops - is there a sneaky Danielle Steel novel hidden behind one or two of the screens? One of them gets up and walks to the bathroom, I wonder if he too bought an unnecessary peach lip gloss and just can’t wait to try it out…

I suspect not.

The thought crosses my mind that I might be irretrievably frivolous, undisciplined and immature. Does this mean that unsuited as I am to the tedium of business travel, I‘m no good for business in general either?

It’s odd that a simple change in environment can precipitate such a drop in confidence levels. I suppose I’m so used to working in a small team where everybody’s ready at a moment’s notice to have a giggle or a gossip, that I forget what the real world of business can be like, and how different from that stereotype I’ve become since I started working here.  

In any event, I don’t suppose I’m going to change my ways now. It’s been a few years since I started with the business travel malarkey and I’ve not been able to find a way of making myself appear more credible while I’m doing it to date!

So I’ve just resigned myself to the likelihood of remaining the bored (but immaculately lip-glossed) woman in a bright coloured jacket, sheepishly trying to concentrate on her chick-lit while a multitude of proper businesspeople tap away on their blackberries and laptops.

I daresay if I throw a glass of wine into the mix now and then, I might even stop worrying about it too.

Does (pond) size really matter?

  Until quite recently I was a very small fish in the great big career pond that is a major UK bank. Then, suddenly in September 2007 I was netted and whisked into (comparatively speaking) a puddle when I joined SK Chase as their Marketing Manager.

Part of the reason I was so ready to make the move was to see what value my skills actually held for a business. I was quite used to seeing my work disappear off to some distant board somewhere on a report with my boss’s name on it, and had started to wonder if I could personally make a difference to a company’s bottom line.

Apart from anything else, I was craving some autonomy and the opportunity to work for an organisation that would notice me and my work - without having to spend hours investing in (to me) nefarious political self-promotion schemes.

Very quickly after my move I worked out that the main difference between working for a small company and a large one is that everything you do matters more in a small business. Whether your contribution is positive or negative, the impact you’ll have is far greater and will be noticed!

This is great news for talented staff looking to work hard and prove themselves - not so good for anybody used to a free ride in a big comfy company.

If I’m being honest, I wasn’t quite a free-rider in my old job but I certainly wasn’t working to my full potential - not even nearly. A combination of lack of motivation caused by lack of recognition, and my natural sceptical reaction to rules, rules and more rules, meant that I wasn’t quite firing on all four cylinders.

Moving into a business with (then) only four other full-time staff turned out to be just the kick-start I needed to turn me back into the passionate and hard-working businesswoman I believe I truly am.

That’s not to say, however, that I haven’t encountered challenges with my radical change of working environment. Along with increased autonomy and recognition, came increased responsibility for my own workload. Like I said, everything matters more in a small company - so when my personal task prioritisation went spinning slightly out of control a couple of months into my new role, I immediately had to address the gap in my skills and tighten up on my workload - fast!

Without wanting to be overly critical of large organisations, I have definitely noticed that there just isn’t the same capacity (or tolerance if I’m being completely honest…) for underperformance in a small business.

I remember my old frustration with the “all mouth and no trousers” promotions, rife every March and September throughout the bank, for second-rate staff who happened to have the right connections and a nice line in chatting up managers. However, I also learned (the hard way) that to consider yourself “above” working the politics in a large organisation is to smack your career progression very hard on the head, with a bag of anvils.

I guess the main difference (and my favourite so far) between working for SK Chase and a large corporate organisation, is that the traditional female work ethic of “get your head down and do a good job - somebody will notice” actually works here. To date, there’s been no need for me to find sneaky ways of making sure that my boss’s boss sees my achievements (mostly because my bosses don’t have bosses - but you know what I mean…)

All that said, I don’t regret my time with the bank at all. There are some professional skills you just wouldn’t acquire without working for a heavily regulated, complex and diverse organisation with rules for rules, and for every line manager I had who casually took credit for my work, there was always another who encouraged me to develop and made sure that the decision-makers around them were aware of my potential.

At the end of the day, I couldn’t do what I do now without the benefit of the experience I gained in my large pond, which makes me believe that ultimately size does matter - whether it’s good or bad for you just depends on what type of fish you happen to be.

My top tips for small fish in a big pond:

• Make sure your boss’s boss knows who you are and is aware of your achievements.
• Take every development opportunity you’re offered. If you’re not offered, then ask for them - at the very least it’ll be a networking opportunity.
• Take advantage of the flexibility of a large organisation, move around and do different jobs - you’ll expand your network and acquire useful skills.
• Learn the “corporate language” for each area you work in - if you sound like you know what you’re talking about, people will believe you. Bingo - instant credibility!
• Don’t assume that the route to promotion is simply doing a good job. Look at colleagues who are being promoted around you- the personal qualities they have (whether you like them or not) are what you might need to start displaying if you want to get ahead. 
• Remember, the next restructure is probably just round the corner - keep your skills developing and your networks active.
• Watch what you say about colleagues and managers - you never know who you might end up working for after the next restructure…

…and then if you find yourself in a small pond:

• Try to work for someone who believes in you. You won’t have the same opportunity to move about in the organisation, so it’s really important that you feel valued where you are.
• Work hard. Don’t mess about trying to look as if you’re working hard.
• Stick to plain English - that “corporate language” you learned in the big pond is great if you happen to need a bank loan, but otherwise you’re likely to be (a) wasting time, and (b) unintelligible.
• Don’t underestimate the importance of generating income for the business. A sound piece of advice that my boss gave me about prioritising my work was, “do the stuff that makes money first” - after all that’s where your salary will be coming from.
• Be flexible. You can’t afford to hand tasks off to some call centre or other if you don’t fancy doing them - the chances are you are the call centre in one way or another.
• Smile - the whole company will see you and will feel good!