Many people realize the value of travel as a self-development tool. I couldn’t agree more. Visiting a different country, especially one where the norms, culture, food and language are very different can really open one’s eyes and that encourages a respect for diversity. Visiting America, India, Tanzania, Lesotho and Namibia certainly left me with new perspectives.
With COVID and lockdown reducing our ability to travel many individuals have been eagerly awaiting news of a return of international travel. Their need for their travel-fix has been building for the last few months and the call of the exotic is becoming stronger by the day.
At the beginning of Lockdown I wrote a blog called “Dear Manager this is not remote work this is work from home” which led to me being interviewed for a LinkedIn Live show called Virtual Coffee with Francois. I had just completed two on-demand courses about setting up remote workers and managing remote workers and the topic was red hot at the time.
Now I find the conversation becoming relevant again. Firstly as lockdown has eased up some of the challenges faced by employees, and by extension businesses as well, are easing up. An example of this is children returning to school so parents do not need to split their time between work and homeschooling. So the viability of remote working is improving and companies are weighing up the positives and negatives of making this a permanent change.
Would you ever buy a thoroughbred and expect no return on your investment? What would be the logic of spending time looking for the best breed, with the best breeding lines, the best muscle tone, and the best character and then putting it in a field where it does not have place to run? Surely at the cost of buying the most capable animal you can find there is a sense that this is a resource that can be utilized to make money?
In a recent conversation with Junita van der Colff, who specializes in Risk Management, she mentioned that risk is only one side of the coin – the flip side is opportunity. Hence the analogy of the horse. Why take on the risk of owning the animal if you don’t make use of the opportunities created by the ownership.
This week my guest at the Performance Cafe is Employee Experience Specialist Andy Golding. During our chat, Andy mentioned the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, and a principle he shares around Motion vs Action. The concept is that while the two words are sometimes used interchangeably they indicate two very different activities. Motion is about the start of something, for example when we plan, strategize or learn about something. An example from the book is talking to a personal trainer about an exercise regime. Action, in contrast, is about executing those plans. To carry the example above, actually signing up and starting training is then the Action. Clear goes on to say that Motion by itself does not produce an Action but that it is needed in order to create the basis for Action. However only Action can create an outcome.