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So what’s the antidote? The antidote is simple to describe, but not easy to do. What is imperative is to first carve out time to mindfully consider what we really want. Many protest that they can’t afford the time.

Telling fish about water Since before we can even remember, beginning with our first staggering attempts to crawl or walk, we are surrounded by evaluation of our performance. Estimates suggest that students have undertaken more than 2,500 tests or exams by the time they complete secondary education. And domestically, we all get plenty of (often unsolicited!) assessment from many quarters at home. Opinion polls, player rankings, league tables, grid position, or the national happiness index are all mechanisms to assess performance. I am currently working with five clients from five different industries – drinks, retail, investment banking, gaming and software – totally diverse sectors all with one common singular aim: How do we drive performance? Performance, it appears, is the wallpaper of life. The challenge of managing organisational performance dates back as far as the enactment of the first US corporate statute in 1811, but it is currently in a state of chassis. The old rules are no longer valid for the new economy. A state of chassis It is not without good reason that companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Motorola and Accenture are choosing to abandon traditional performance management methods. Managers have traditionally relied on the crutch of the traditional performance management system with its accompanying calibration ranking as a means of driving performance, but as one senior HR executive at Microsoft recently observed: the system simply results in “capricious rankings, power struggles among managers, and unhealthy competition amongst colleagues”. Good employees are on the move as a result of some current management practises According to a recent Bersin survey, 58% of organisations believe the annual appraisal is a waste of time yet, up until recently, 100% of companies insisted on doing it. In the same survey of 2,500 companies across 90 countries, a meagre 8% believed their performance management process drove high levels of value. Adobe calculated that annual reviews required 80,000 hours of time from their 2,000 managers each year - the equivalent of 40 full-time employees. After all that effort, internal surveys revealed that employees felt less inspired and motivated afterwards—and the departure of good people actually increased. Unfit for purpose UCLA’s Sam Culbert went so far as to say recently that if the performance review was a drug, it would not be approved today by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). The reason for its dramatic fall from grace is that the context for work has evolved far beyond what the existing system of performance management was initially designed for. The current creaky system has its roots deep in an Industrial Age characterised by stability, predictability and slow change. A time when Henry Ford once declared: “How come when I ask for a pair of hands around here it comes with a brain attached?” Back then the mostly manufacturing-based workers simply needed to follow direction and performance could easily be calculated in measureable outputs like widgets and hours. Today, by contrast, 70% of the labour-force works in service or knowledge related roles where performance is centred…

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Today is my son’s ninth birthday. I mention that although, curiously, we are the only mammal on the planet that either counts or cares for time. Even the teddy bears chose a picnic, not a birthday party. I don’t remember much about being nine but I do remember two things clearly – The Minstrel winning the Derby under Lester Piggott; and a strange fascination about why some adults were more happy, kind and "successful" than others. Anyway, what did success really mean? (as plenty of rich people seemed pretty miserable to me). Fast-forward forty-one years and I’m now about to turn fifty (in February). In the intervening years, I’ve had the good fortune to translate those childhood preoccupations into two compelling parallel careers – writing for the Sunday Independent on horse racing for 20 years whilst growing a company (Flow Group) specialising in people and organisational development, also for 20 years. happy, kind and "successful" Why are some adults more happy, kind and "successful" than others? Many have asked how I intend to celebrate the half-century – big extravaganza? Dip into the bucket list? Instead I’ve decided to indulge in the reflection time necessary to record my life-to-date reflections and insights on the key to turning this game of Life into a game worth playing. And life has all the hallmarks of a game – defined physical boundaries; many levels (physical; psychological; emotional; spiritual); a starting point (lottery of birth); and a time limit (although sneakily we never know how long). The trouble is we are born without the manual of how to be successful or happy and, therefore, are left to figure it out usually on a trial-and-error basis for those with a mind to do so. As mentioned, I’ve had that mind for as long as I can remember and have wrestled with making sense of it all through a combination of mindful personal experience, working professionally with over 20,000 leaders in over 300 organisations internationally, whilst growing a business and helping raise a family. bucket list "Many have asked how I intend to celebrate the half-century – big extravaganza? Dip into the bucket list?" So whether this is a vanity project or an invaluable service to mankind (did I mention humour is a valuable de-toxifier?), the plan is to serialise 50 life lessons distilled through 50 years over the next 12 months through posts and podcasts although – may I add – the standard health and wealth warnings apply. Without giving the game away, every insight into what makes us happier or more successful in our brief encounter with humanity is ultimately rooted in just two elements: how we think how we interact Finally, I was once working with an Italian client and arrived at Milan’s Linate airport during a taxi strike. Eventually, finding a thronged bus to transport me to the client’s office in the centre, I was steadily approached by Salvatore, a manager who was part of the leadership team I had worked with some…

Ok so its the first day of 2018 - and if you need some help with those resolutions already, Ian McClean is all over it. White Rabbits aside, humans (curiously) are the only mammal on the planet to worry about time. We alone created the calendar. In this regard January is a peculiarly unique time of year: characterised by the two faces of Janus simultaneously looking both backwards and forward. Curiously, Christmas and New Year break is the only time of year when work stops for almost all of us simultaneously. With the finger removed from the dam and the cadence of life’s relentless unconscious sub-routines broken, for once only in the year there is proper time for reflection and self-evaluation. January, surely, is the cruelest month but by now at its end, we have some idea how well those New Year Resolutions are faring. New Year Resolution If the University of Scranton’s research is accurate then 92% will fail at accomplishing our choice of weight loss; kicking the habit; eating healthier; exercising more or improving our significant relationships – the five most common resolutions. There is plenty of data out there on why people fail and what the 8% do that succeed. After all, as one prominent psychologist put it "how many times do 50% of the population undertake a behaviour change programme all starting on the same day?" Most interesting is that there is no correlation in those that succeed between success and the choice of resolution - it is just as likely to be reducing body fat as it is improving relations with the mother-in-law. Contemplation Vs Commitment New Year Resolutions are like a global movement involving nearly half of the population, so for many their motivation is more to follow the crowd than to seriously entertain personal change. Resolutions become an act of compliance, rather than commitment. Most people never actually stray outside the realm of contemplation. Unsurprisingly, those who write down their commitment are ten times more likely to succeed than those who don’t. Common to all who succeed is a bias for action over intention. Resolution Dilution? Here's What to Do… Resolving Symptoms or Causes? A further complication around why many efforts at healthy eating fail for example, is that much unhealthy eating has a much greater personal malaise at its core (anything from poor self-image to being bullied or harassed) so that even if you succeed in dealing with the symptoms in the short-term, it will never sustain if the root cause is not addressed in conjunction. Will Power We all understand that will power is critical to sustaining any change but with latest research suggesting it takes on average 66 repetitions to either make or break a habit we might underestimate quite how much will power is actually involved. It used to be believed that will power is like a muscle that got stronger each time you used it. However, more recently research concludes (for now!) that will-power simply amounts to the…