My talk at YESx 2011 (recorded and edited by Red Carpet Video):
Yes x – Andrew Horder- The Busy Fool from Brian Abram on Vimeo.
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Choose your Focus
Posted Feb 2nd, 2012 By Andrew Horder in Audio and Video, Clarity & Focus With | No Comments -
It Pays To Niche!
Posted Dec 11th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus With | No CommentsNiching works. In the last couple of years, I’ve spent over £1000 with a businessman I’d never dealt with before. Why? Because he’d positioned himself as an expert: “J.W. Rawlinson, Automobile Technician – Jaguar specialist” it said on the card his marketers stuck under my wiper.
Normally, I just throw that sort of thing away, but this one I kept – as a Jaguar driver, it spoke directly to me. And when I remembered shortly afterwards that I needed to renew the MOT roadworthiness test on my Jaguar, guess who I called? And he did my brakes the following week, and all my servicing from then on. And I refer other Jaguar owners to him, as well.
If that card had just said “Automobile Technician”, it’s very doubtful I’d have called him. After all, why would I trust my pride and joy to just any mechanic? Knowing that he specialises (niches) in Jags, I’m comfortable that my motor will get the attention it deserves, so now James gets all my servicing business.
All because he niched.
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At-Tr-Action in your business
Posted Oct 21st, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Audio and Video, Clarity & Focus With | No CommentsActivity is important in business – without it nothing happens. No products get made – no products even get designed. No sales get made either – in fact no marketing campaigns are run. No staff are trained – they’re not even hired. And yet, activity can be very dangerous for a business too. If it’s not appropriate activity, it can quickly become activity for its own sake, not Action that is purposeful.
Action – Activity Creating Tangible Identified Outcomes, Now! When activity is focussed on creating a particular outcome, it can contribute to the success or the enterprise, it can get you where you want to go. But even Action has its drawbacks. The trouble with action comes when the outcomes (even if they’re intended) don’t gel together to create Traction.Traction – TR-action: Targetted Relevant Action. When all the actions a business takes are all headed in the same direction, and all contribrute to a particular larger goal, you start to get traction, real progress. And with that progress comes Attraction.
Attraction – AT-traction: Alignment Towards Traction. We’re not talking woo-woo, Law of Attraction, sit-and-dream-and-it-will-fall-in-your-lap attraction here. We’re talking, when all your activity is aligned, when it is all relevant, when it is all targetted on creating something real, something that you can identify as a concrete outcome, then you will attract the resourtces and support you need. Because people will see that you are an achiever, someone who makes things happen.
As Emerson said: “The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going”.
So that’s it: Action – Traction – Attraction.
Alignment Towards Targetted Relevant Activity Creating Tangible Identified Outcomes Now!
See more in this video:
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Now … a message from the Fire-pit!
Posted Oct 8th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Motivation & Management With | No CommentsThose who’ve been reading the “Messages from the Mountains” series of blogs about my 3 Peaks experience may have got the idea that I’m up for challenging myself lately. Anything that requires me to use focus to do something I’d previously seen as impossible for me. The reason for all this is that I realised late last year that I nearly lost my right leg nearly 33 years ago (see my blog about that here), and I’d been using my ‘bad’ leg as an excuse not to do stuff.
© Blaze Firewalking
So you won’t be surprised to hear that when a friend asked me, a week ago, if I fancied ‘making up the numbers’ for a charity firewalk, I leapt at the chance. It’s something I’d never done before, and always wanted to. So that’s how I found myself at Atkins Global (who were hosting the event, for TheStudio ADHD Centre) in Epsom on Friday night, sitting down to Blaze Firewalking‘s delightfully-named “Learn or Burn” training session for the volunteer firewalkers.
Most of the volunteers had had plenty of notice, and plenty of time to get sponsorship – as I’d only heard about it about a week before, mine so far consisted of myself and my long-suffering wife. (It’s not too late to sponsor me though, and it is a good cause: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/AndrewHorder ) All apart from the one very brave lady who was persuaded to do it on the night – I hope her friends honour her courage and spontaneity with plenty of sponsorship! And as well as not having had time to do much in the way of sponsorship, I also hadn’t had time to do much in the way of research either. Or getting nervous. Several people commented on how calm I seemed; I wasn’t calm, just ill-informed.
So it came as a bit of a surprise when “Fire-Master” Tony’s training included the bit about “there’s no tricks, the core of the fire you’ll be walking over really is 1236 degrees Fahrenheit (to put that in perspective, aluminium is a liquid at about 1100F!)”. And the bit where he said “no, there’s no nice cool layer of ash over the top, that’s just burning embers you’ll be trotting across”. And when he said “even after we’ve poured buckets and buckets of water over it after your walk, the fire bed’s going to take ages to cool down”. Yikes! This is real fire-walking then!
Nonetheless, two hours later, there I was with the rest of the team, as Tony took us close to the fire to feel the heat radiating from it – just so that we’d always know that this was real, there was genuine heat coming off that fiery track we’d soon be walking. We lined up, ready and raring to go – like the rest I couldn’t wait to singe my hairy feet on the 20ft runway of red-hot glowing embers. Summer from Blaze showed us the way, quickly followed by one after another of the volunteers, striding across the heat to the uproarious encouragement of the supporters and onlookers.
And suddenly it was my turn. “Are you ready?” Fire-Master Tony shouted. “Oooh, yessss!” I affirmed, as I stepped confidently forward into the darkness, the only light being the fire at my feet stretching out in front of me. If I’m honest, about 2/3 of the way across I got a distinct feeling of something more than warmth underfoot, and I picked up the pace somewhat (not that I was dawdling in the first place, you understand!). And before I knew it, I was off the other end, my feet enjoying the cool dampness of the grass as I punched the air in triumph.
So, what did I learn from this new experience? Well, not that I can do the impossible – I already knew I could do this, never doubted it for a moment (ill-informed, over-confident? … who knows). I’ve known for ages that I can do pretty much anything if I focus enough on it. And do it. I said at the beginning, I’ve wanted to do a fire-walk for ages. So why hadn’t I? Inertia, mainly. Both this and the Three Peaks had been reactive – the opportunity had presented itself, and I’d taken it. I could say my learning was “Carpe Diem”, seize the day – but that’s not it.
Despite being with a bunch of people I mainly didn’t know, I really enjoyed my fire-walk, so much so that I thought to myself as I drove out of the car-park afterwards: “That was great! Why didn’t I do this ages ago?” And that was my lesson: make your own opportunities – focus on finding ways to do the things I want to achieve, don’t wait for them to land in my lap!
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Messages from the Mountains (10)
Posted Oct 8th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Decision Making With | No CommentsTwo weekends ago, I attempted the 3 Peaks Challenge* – ascending Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. During the trip, and while pushing myself to get up (and down), I learned some things about myself, and the world. These I’ve been sharing here in a series of blogs over the course of this week.
Day Two finale: turning back on Snowdon. So there we were, about half-way up the Pyg Track, pitch dark, pelting rain, tired after the two previous mountains, and we got hit with a gale-force gust that literally stopped up in our tracks. I was the first over the little pass, after Pere – when the wind hit, it ripped my hood off and I stopped, head down, body angled into the wind, feet planted firmly to hold my ground, clutching my hiking poles for dear life. As the wind abated slightly, we retreated into the lee of the rocks to consider our next move.
I know Pere was desperate for us to make it to the top – he’d already completed the challenge 3 times, and Kate had done it once. But Ben, Rajan, Maike and I hadn’t, so he was reluctant to call it off. He calmly gave us the facts – including the one that we were only about half-way there. And we had our final lesson, probably the big one, Lesson Ten: Discretion really is the better part of valour!
We could go on, and we’d probably make it – but in those conditions, maybe we wouldn’t? And maybe we’d end up calling out the Mountain Rescue teams, putting their lives in jeopardy too. We knew that if we’d asked for advice before setting out onto the mountain, we’d have got an unequivocal “don’t even think about it!”, and did we really want to go down as the sort of people who let a challenge blind them to common sense? So, disappointing though it was, we called it a day, and started the still-arduous trek back down fearsome Yr Wyddfa. Don’t ever let anyone tell you Snowdon’s an easy mountain!
Back at the car park, we headed for the toilets to strip off our wet gear. And most of us found that our wet-weather preparations in the cramped back of the minibus hadn’t been as thorough as they could have been! I stripped off my waterproof over-trousers and was pleasantly surprised at how dry my legs were. Then my jacket, again a nice surprise that my shoulders and chest were pretty dry – so how come I felt so flipping wet? Grabbing the bottom of my fleece, all became clear – I’d left it sticking out below my jacket, over the top of my over-trousers, and it had neatly wicked all the rain running down my jacket straight to my midriff!
Others (apart, I think, from Rajan with his full Goretex kit-out) suffered similar fates, and we were very grateful that the ever-resourceful Ben managed to persuade the manager of the Hostel over the road to let us use their games lounge to change into some dry clothes.
Nonetheless, we were still a pretty soggy bunch as we headed through the night back to London, driven by the indefatigable Kate and Pere. My thanks go to both of them for their fantastic support and hard work over the whole weekend.
So, that was my 3 Peaks weekend – ten great lessons for life and for business, and three days of great companionship. Would I do it again? In all honesty, probably not (though Pere’s taking a team on Eric Edmeade’s Kilimanjaro challenge next year). Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely!
* Lite version, over 2 days.
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Messages from the Mountains (9)
Posted Oct 7th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Motivation & Management With | No CommentsLast weekend, I attempted the 3 Peaks Challenge* – ascending Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. During the trip, and while pushing myself to get up (and down), I learned some things about myself, and the world. These I’ll be sharing here in a series of blogs over the course of this week.
Day Two reprise: climbing Snowdon. As we started off up Snowdon, the darkness fell and the rain continued, so we each had to take responsibility for maintaining connection with the person behind us – it was no longer viable for Pere to keep checking to the back of the group.
It didn't look this inviting for us!
As we crossed over to the exposed side of the slope, we felt the full force of the wind for the first time – gusts that felt like gale force, and horizontal rain beating our faces. With the poor visibility, we had to keep stopping while Pere scouted ahead to make sure we were on the right track – the Pyg Track’s quite clear in decent visibility, but there are points where it climbs up rocky areas and in the dark and wind and rain it’s easy to go off track.
It quickly became clear that I was falling a bit behind – not miles behind, but enough to be noticeable. So very early on Pere called me up to the middle of the group, so that we wouldn’t get too strung out. A big lesson there, Lesson Nine: You’re only as strong as your weakest link, so look after it. If I’d faltered, the whole team would have had to turn back, as only Pere really knew the way up or down in the dark, so it was in everyone’s interests to keep me going – which they did very well, especially Pere and Kate (who had decided to join us for this last mountain, having completed the challenge in May). Up until that message from the Gods, anyway!
I learned something for myself too, a sort of Lesson 9a: it’s OK to be the weakest link, so long as you don’t actually break!
And there’s one final lesson to come, possibly the biggest of the lot …
* Lite version, over 2 days.
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Messages from the Mountains (8)
Posted Oct 7th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Decision Making With | No CommentsLast weekend, I attempted the 3 Peaks Challenge* – ascending Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. During the trip, and while pushing myself to get up (and down), I learned some things about myself, and the world. These I’ll be sharing here in a series of blogs over the course of this week.
Day Two, Part Two: arrival at Snowdon. After successfully completing Ben Nevis on Day One, and Scafell Pike on the morning of Day Two, despite delays on both, we headed off to Wales for our final challenge, Snowdon. We knew we’d be finishing it in the dark, so we needed to make back as much time as we could – which Kate duly obliged with. We made a brief (though not brief enough, according to Pere) stop at Chester services, where it was agreed that Hugh and Valerie wouldn’t be making the attempt on Snowdon – given the lateness of the hour (the group Pere led the previous week had been starting Snowdon at 5:30, we were going to be lucky to start at 6:30), we needed to make good time on the ascent.
It didn't look this inviting for us!
As we turned off the main road and headed into deepest, darkest North Wales, the first spots of rain appeared on the windscreen. By the time we were approaching Betws-y-Coed it was full-on rain; and by the time we pulled into the car-park at the bottom of the Pyg Track, it was blustery too. Looking around the minibus, the faces said it all – the darkness was closing in early, it was chucking it down, and the van was getting buffeted by strong gusts of wind. But we’d come this far, and after what seemed like an age of ‘will-we-won’t-we’, we decided to go for it.
In the end, we had to abandon the attempt – about half-way, in the pitch darkness and pouring rain, we were hit by a gust so strong that I could barely keep my feet. We were only about half-way up, and it had taken us over an hour and a half to get there, because our head-torches didn’t reach far at all through the darkness and rain. Pere looked around the group, and asked “Do we call this a noble effort, or do we go on?” I have to confess, I was the first to say we should go back, I really didn’t fancy facing that kind of gust once we got to the ridge – and the decision was to go back down. The general conclusion was that the Gods had just told us to get off their mountain – so we took heed!
Although the energy was a bit flat when we reached the bottom, there was nonetheless a feeling of having faced the elements and come through. And that was Lesson Eight: Better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. If we hadn’t set out, we’d forever have wondered what it would really have been like – but now we know: bloody ‘orrible!
For me, there was a secondary lesson too, that it’s possible to manifest your fears by focusing on them – as I got increasingly nervous of repeating the morning’s slip on the wet rocks, my footing got less certain, and a fall became more likely – to the point that at a couple of points I slid down on my bum rather than risk it! What was probably ‘false expectations appearing real’ actually became real because of my focus.
So that was that end of our attempt, but there are still a couple more lessons to be drawn from our experience on Snowdon …
* Lite version, over 2 days.
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Messages from the Mountains (7)
Posted Oct 6th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Motivation & Management With | No CommentsLast weekend, I attempted the 3 Peaks Challenge* – ascending Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. During the trip, and while pushing myself to get up (and down), I learned some things about myself, and the world. These I’ll be sharing here in a series of blogs over the course of this week.
Day Two continues: the descent from Scafell Pike. Just like Ben Nevis, I found the descent at least as hard as the climb. My feet were hurting, my calves were killing me, and I was getting tired. But I was delighted to have got up two bloody great mountains! And now, all I had to do was get down this one and up one more – easy!And then, on a nice easy stretch about half-way down, my feet went out from under me, my poles flew in all directions, and I came crashing down onto the path – elbow first! And, of course, it was just as we passed a load of other people, things like that never happen just in front of your mates do they? As I sat there, nursing my aching elbow (and my bruised pride), I got Lesson Seven: don’t get complacent, stay Focused!
What comes after a success is just as important and is part of the challenge. It’s much easier to push yourself to achieve a ‘big win’ (like summitting a mountain) than it is to do all the stuff that comes next, the implementation and follow-up.
All in all, some good lessons on Scafell Pike, and Snowdon was to prove a better teacher still …
* Lite version, over 2 days.
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Messages from the Mountains (6)
Posted Oct 6th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Motivation & Management With | No CommentsLast weekend, I attempted the 3 Peaks Challenge* – ascending Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. During the trip, and while pushing myself to get up (and down), I learned some things about myself, and the world. These I’ll be sharing here in a series of blogs over the course of this week.
Day Two still, still at the summit of Scafell Pike: So Hugh’s thigh is in full-on cramp, requiring a delay of some 20 minutes to take on water, glucose tablets, salt, and Ben’s magic magnesium cream – I so wish I’d thought to get a video of Hugh applying that to his thigh a few yards down from England’s highest peak 
There’s another quick lesson here: in our rush to get off the mountain, to get out of the cold wind, to stay on schedule, we’d forgotten Lesson Six: More haste, less speed! By pushing Hugh’s body to give more than it was ready for, we inadvertently created a delay much greater than if we’d allowed another 5 minutes’ rest. Because now, having cramped, Hugh had to be careful all the way down too – so as well as the 20 minutes kicking our heels waiting for the cramp to pass, we also had a slower descent. And yes, it was good old Ben who kept the back-markers company again – including me at the end of the descent.
But that’s another story and another lesson …
* Lite version, over 2 days.
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Messages from the Mountains (5)
Posted Oct 5th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in A Better World, Clarity & Focus With | No CommentsLast weekend, I attempted the 3 Peaks Challenge* – ascending Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. During the trip, and while pushing myself to get up (and down), I learned some things about myself, and the world. These I’ll be sharing here in a series of blogs over the course of this week.
Day Two again: Summitting Scafell Pike. We’d maintained a decent pace up the mountain, and Hugh had lagged behind most of the way. He hadn’t completed Ben Nevis the day before (having gone back down with Valerie), so despite in theory having fresher legs, he hadn’t been able to ‘limber up’ like the rest of us (my theory), and the pace had him on the verge of cramp a lot of the way up. So he was really looking forward to a break and a sandwich at the top.Pere and the weather had other ideas – it was damp and cold and very windy at the summit, so no sooner had Hugh arrived than we needed to get going down again. We were also slightly behind schedule, and we wanted to make it up, so we wouldn’t arrive too late at Snowdon. Hugh managed a quick bite sheltering behind the summit cairn, and we were off again – and disaster struck: Hugh’s thigh went into full-blown cramp!
And the lesson here, Lesson Five: keep your promises, especially the ones you make to yourself (and your body). All the way up the last part to the summit, Hugh had been promising himself – and his body – a rest and some sustenance when they got him there. So his body heaved a great sigh of relief on arrival – only to be told, no, there’s no rest for you, we need to get off this mountain. Is it any wonder that it rebelled – effectively said “Sod you then!” – and immobilised him?
It’s similar to lesson four – if something expected doesn’t happen, it’s much worse than if it wasn’t expected in the first place. So if you promise something – even if you don’t promise ‘cross your heart and hope to die’ – if something’s expected of you, make sure it happens.
Two big lessons on the Pike, and we’d only been on it two-and-a-half hours! And there were more lessons to come …
* Lite version, over 2 days.
Opportunity Matrix™ 
