My friend Kay Scorah, a past guest on #WhatComesNextLive here, has been known and embraces being called “the witch of noticing”. If someone were to call me a wizard of noticing I’d regard that as high praise indeed. I am insatiably curious about people and about ideas, such that I have built both my life and my work around this. Often this means I am deeply focussed on what I notice at different levels, whether in a meeting with someone or, in this example, when I am exploring London on a bike ride.

So, last Sunday I went for a bike ride, a repeat visit for a great breakfast roll at Maltby Street Market in Bermondsey. The market is down a lane around 250m long under elevated railway lines and is a collection of food stalls of food from many countries. As I looked up from my delectable food, I first observed all of the flags to represent the eclectic and diverse range of food. However, I then noticed something else and smiled that I was being “watched”, as so often seems to be the case as I ride around that particular area of London.

Do you see the “what else do you notice?” that I saw in the photo?

PS the answer is in my post from last week: “I need more time for stillness“.

The post What else do you notice? appeared first on Tom McCallum.

Caymanians are all too familiar with the need to prepare for Hurricanes, with Hurricane Ivan in 2004 being a “200-year storm” event that absolutely devastated Grand Cayman.

Preparation is one thing. You can prepare, as a Hurricane is a finite event that will have foreseeable outcomes depending on intensity levels.

Forecasting, though, is quite another thing. Despite decades and many millions of dollars, the leading forecasters in the world remain the first to acknowledge that forecasting is inexact. Yes, we know what regions of the world hurricanes and typhoons are likely to strike. Yes, we know the probability of them occurring in different parts of those regions at different times of year. Despite that, though, we cannot tell with any exactitude when Hurricanes will occur, where they will strike, how intense they will be.

I use this as a way of looking at Ebbs and Flows in a more general sense. You see, Hurricanes are very closely tied to weather cycles and, as the forecasters call them “super-cycles”. We know about annual seasonal influences that generate and strengthen hurricanes, we know about highly short term cycles of such things as current air pressure. In addition to that, though, there are multiple “super-cycles” that each occur over multi-year periods, some over fifty years in duration for each cycle.

All of these factors, all of these cycles, ebb and flow and have an influence on the weather at any given moment. The interaction between these many cycles are a key reason why Hurricane forecasting is so difficult.

My mind then turns to Covid. We are now over 18 months into the pandemic and, in the developed world (as it is those countries who have kept almost all vaccines to themselves, an issue of leadership to discuss another day!), we are approaching a year since the first age groups were vaccinated. We therefore now have new issues impacting the case, hospitalisation and death numbers in each country, one such one being the fading (over time) of efficacy of vaccinations in preventing people from contracting Covid. This impacted Israel a few months ago and now appears to be impacting the UK, as the lack of mask-wearing (yes, it has dropped right off) is not the only factor influence case rates that are far higher than the rest of Western Europe. If we look at cycles, though, we can predict that once the UK gets booster shots out, they will again be a few months ahead of other countries (as one must wait six months from dual vaccination for a third shot) just as their first vaccinations start to wane and cases rise. Let’s also throw in seasonal impacts (being indoors more and more) as another cycle, then we can look at the impacts of school terms and holidays as one more, then look at vaccination rates among teenagers (who are just now starting to be vaccinated in most countries). Many cycles, each of which will ebb and flow.

Now, why, on a blog that is generally about #OpenLeadership, a seemingly random post about forecasting, cycles, ebbs and flows? Well, I sat down to write this intending to simply observe that, in over four years of writing this daily blog, my writing has ebbed and flowed. Sometimes I get onto a leadership theme and write longer posts and several of them around that theme. Other times I can go through a period where nothing new and fresh is coming forwards, so I have learned to simply wait through that “ebb” in the writing cycle and so my daily posts can be short, simple, or simply (like this one, eclectic). Anyway, I sat down to write and, as often happens, when thinking of a story to start the post, my thoughts developed as I typed and things went in a different direction. Like weather, writing can be unpredictable 😉

The post Ebbs and Flows appeared first on Tom McCallum.

What is in your Zoom background?

This week I just received in the post the first painting I have bought from the polymath that is Mike Donald, an Isle of Lewis native who has recently started creating artworks. As he says, they are: “Early interpretations and reactions to the land and seascapes of the Scottish Outer Hebrides.” The image above does not bring to life the colours and textures of the original, which takes me right back to the Isle of Lewis. I love it, and now it sits behind me in my office.

This also, for fun, has me feel to share today some of the other items behind me in my zoom background, some clearer than others. They are a mix of whimsy and of thoughts and items that have meaning to me.

What’s in your own Zoom background?

So, first, you can see my old Cayman Islands licence plate, the word INSPIRE. It is my aspiration to inspire, and so to be inspired. In my old office in Cayman I also had a limited edition print from Hugh McLeod which expressed this “virtuous circle” of aspiration:

Next, just visible and sitting behind that licence plate is a “talking stick”, a piece of dried out cactus I picked up from the beach at El Pescadero in Baja, Mexico. The image below shows the original meeting space at Modern Elder Academy on that beach, where on the table you can see the larger talking stick they have used since the start of Modern Elder Academy for “Circle”. I visited MEA in both April 2018 and February 2019 and those visits brought and still carry great meaning to me.

Below the licence plate is another Gaping Void print, one that expresses both my natural energy and my passion for #MakingPotentialPossible for others and the broader community.

Now, look up to the top of the bookcase and you will see a larger framed print. This is a commission that Hugh McLeod did for me around 2012, inspired by my Intent statement of #MakingPotentialPossible. The words were chosen by Hugh without my input, simply inspired by my hashtagged Intent statement and a few words I sent to him along with that. When I received the commission the words he wrote truly hit home. It is both brave and an act of love to become the person you need to be.

To the side of that large commission is a smaller framed image, from MeOnTheMap, showing the borough of Croydon in London and highlighting the area I live in now, Coulsdon, which is right at the edge of this great city.

There is one more photo there, of my three sons, but for their privacy you don’t get the close up shot 😉

Finally, one last image, the whimsy that is a “Lost Cat” poster from Steve Chapman. For more on that story and the sister of that poster that is now on display in a café in Cayman, as well as others all around the world, see this post from Steve Chapman. Also, below that Lost cat poster is my limited edition print of Steve Chapman’s 10-year plan idea that I wrote about here.

Oh, and this is all behind me as I sit at my desk. What do I see ahead of me and beyond my screen when I am on Zoom?

The post What is in your Zoom background? appeared first on Tom McCallum.

“I need more time for stillness” were the words from a client this week after we had sat out in the Autumn sun in a small park for an hour or so, talking little and with much silence in between any words spoken.

I’d gone up to the City of London for a regular meeting with the client in their office. Unusually, they seemed “stuck” about what to focus on. Rather than force it, instinctively I suggested we go out for a walk. A few minutes later, coffee in hand, we sat on a park bench in the sun watching the world go by. When we did talk, it was not about the business, and what we talked of was simply a flow from my client on whatever came to their mind.

After one last silence, they said, in deep knowing, “I need more time for stillness”. After that, in the next few minutes two powerful and strategic thoughts came to them, each of which could make a massive positive impact for them, their business, and beyond.

Sometimes we all need more time for stillness.

Oh, and that image above? As I walked back across London Bridge from my meeting, I looked up at The Shard (the tallest building in London) and saw that the sun was directly behind the top of the building. After the meeting, rather than pacing along to catch the first train I could, I was feeling both calm and also highly attuned to my surroundings. With that stillness in myself I looked up and saw that, with some composition of the image, I could take a photo that would bring life to the joke that Lord of the Ring fans have about the pointed top of The Shard, ie that it looks like Sauron’s tower, Barad-Dûr, only without the “all-seeing eye” at the top. Well, here it is, complete with that all-seeing eye.

It can be amazing, what is possible when we find stillness.

The post I need more time for stillness appeared first on Tom McCallum.

I am passionate about understanding what makes the difference between Good, Great and Elite, about what makes someone truly world-class in their field. I’ve spent years studying this in fields as varied as competitive swimming, professional cycling, military doctrines (theory and application), spirituality, literature and more.

I am also passionate about business and, more specifically, about business as a force for good.

I’m excited, therefore, to share with you the updated wording on my site homepage. This represents some small and subtle tweaks in wording through working with the expert team at Brand Oxygen. My aspiration is that these small polishes take the accuracy of representing who I work with and what I do from good to great and perhaps beyond in terms of brand work.

In brief, I work at any time with only a small and select group of leaders who identify strongly with the three statements on the home page. I’ll share the other two now, and if this is you, or if this sounds like someone you know who may be ready for the journey from good to great to elite, I’d love to talk.

The post Elite Mindset – the Journey from Good to Great to Elite appeared first on Tom McCallum.

This week’s WhatComesNextLive conversation was with Amber Naslund (@AmberCadabra on Twitter) and was so, so full of lightbulb moments for me around writing that I am sharing now directly after our recording. One quote I wrote down in full was:

“Writing is a behaviour. It is something I do, otherwise the crush of thoughts in my head would have nowhere else to go”

Amber also referenced Joan Didion on writing. I noted the Joan Didion quote she referenced relatively recently, so you can read more on that in the post: “Writing as a way to access one’s own mind“, where I also referenced a post I wrote around a core reason why I write, which is that “I write to discover my thoughts“. One more reference she made to another writer was to “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, and specifically to the practice of Morning Writing and the power that has had for her.

One more key area we discussed in our thirty-minute conversation was the power of writing so support our mental health, and specifically around overthinking and so anxiety. Like Amber, I have found that writing has helped me with that. Her words on our call meant a lot to me and I feel sure will help you if you identify with what she says, including that writing: “brings verbal order to mental chaos” and quiets “the cacophony in my head”.

As I write this post, my own thoughts also form and emerge to be written.

I feel immensely grateful for Amber bringing her generosity of spirit to our conversation. She is as deeply expert as she is passionate about words and language, and she shared wisdom and knowledge abundantly.

I finish here with her closing thoughts from our conversation, I hope some of you reading this (and then listening to the conversation) feel inspired to action by her words.

“If writing is something you want to do, just start”

The post Writing is a Behaviour appeared first on Tom McCallum.

For years, whenever I visited my ancestral home, the Isle of Lewis, I would collect from the river at Dalmore Beach a few polished stones of Lewisian Gneiss, gradually building my own cairn back in Cayman. I sense (and it was my personal experience) that in our 20s and 30s (and 40s?) we are focussed more on what we can take out of the river, then perhaps by our 50s and beyond we flip that?

“Near the end of his life, I asked (Steve Jobs) about the meaning of all this. He said that he’d learned … that life is like a river. At first, you think that if you’re successful, you get to take many things out of the river, products people have made or ideas they’ve come up with. But he said, “Eventually in life, you realize that it’s not what you get to take out of the river, it’s what you get to put into the river.”

 Walter Isaacson on The Knowledge Project podcast by Farnam Street

As I write this, Steve Jobs died at 56. I turned 56 last week. Food for thought before we become food for worms?

The post What are you putting back into the river? appeared first on Tom McCallum.

I passionately adore listening to people, so love this quote from Harriet Lerner, and, as always, the visual from Sketchplanations.

I also choose to be a Sounding Board as my profession, so I get to do what I love every day.

Some thoughts and tips around how to listen (without the intent to reply, as Master Covey taught us) in an earlier post: “Interrupting is simply assaulting someone’s thinking“.

Oh, and each week I have a thirty-minute conversation with a guest, a podcast recorded live. I love these conversations and seek to find a balance where I am listening deeply to the guest while adding my own reflections and thoughts to then bring more of their own thoughts forwards. I’d love for you to listen live or to some of the podcasts (there are more than sixty in the archive), plus do also suggest yourself or others as future guests!

The post Listen with Passion appeared first on Tom McCallum.

What is your Quest?

“To seek the Holy Grail!” was King Arthur’s answer in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

One of mine is to seek the best bacon roll in all the land. Yesterday I had what was the best one so far on this quest. So far, as this is about the journey as much as the destination 😉

On a more serious note, if you don’t know where you are going, all roads will take you there, so, what is your quest?

As you consider this, recognise you can put this in Intent terms (eg Steve Jobs “to make a dent in the universe”, or for a client who has just arrived at theirs, “To Create Magic”), and you may also put this in commercial terms (eg Revenues, Profits, Valuation, Staff numbers etc)

The post What is your Quest? appeared first on Tom McCallum.

This past week, in my conversation with Sam Duong (see here), one of the topics he talked about was his exploration of the idea of “Just Enough”.

As this post goes out (8am UK time Sunday), I will be heading to meet Sam for a bike ride. How long will we ride? Sometimes we ride for two hours, sometimes more like four or five. What I know is that it will be “Just Enough” (and, of course, include coffee and a bacon roll). As the great Eddy Merckx said, “ride as much or as little, or as long or as short as you feel, but ride”.

As we head towards the colder months in the UK, I am reminded of the last time I used this image, at the start of November 2020. At that time we had no idea that the UK would be locked down for almost all of the next six months, so in retrospect, I am so glad that, as I noted in the post “No Bad Weather”, I had gone ahead and ordered more winter outdoor and bike clothing. Over last winter I made full use of all of that, getting myself outside almost every day. Sometimes for hours on end of riding (and more walking as roads got icy), sometimes only for half an hour or so when weather was particularly rainy and bleak. Again, I simply got out there, “Just enough”.

The post Just enough appeared first on Tom McCallum.