Working, leading, managing and living by seasons
We reflect a lot in our business; it's critical. Critical because it develops our skills, competencies, failings, perspectives, and opportunities and identifies growth areas. Most importantly, reflection allows us to challenge and question how we add value.
We live and work by seasonal thinking and making decisions by our values.
This seasonal reflection creates change, iterations, tweaks, adjustments a steady evolution. It can positively affect your business, leadership style, success, and outcomes.
Our core product, the 24-month Framework, has evolved naturally from this thinking and action.
We reflect to see what we did well and what we didn’t. This can be labelled strategy, plan, system, process, project or whatever; however you choose to review your business, our explanation is through business seasons. The first learning linked to seasonal leading and working.
Have a plan and do the plan.
Just like nature does and then flux, ebb, flow, amend, and adapt through excellent communication. Yet we experience that most business plans and strategies are stuck. Never get looked at and then deviate to bias, personal opinion, one voice, misinterpretation, purely reactive and not a hybrid of proactivity and reactivity, a necessity in any business for sure.
Seasonal working allows us to be a hybrid version of ourselves, adapting to the instant needs and then ensuring the things that work become the actions that grow sustainably and the way we want to be.
Right now, it’s our seasonal cycle of preparing, hibernating, protecting (the review actions), and fuelling ourselves for the subsequent cycles; we wanted to share how this could be an exciting concept for your own business.
The True Power of Autumn.
Picture the scene, leaves falling, birds leaving or emigrating to another part of the world, and farmers preparing the conditions for their livestock through the winter months. Every year nature shows us one of life's greatest secrets. Autumn is the season for preparation, and winter is the time to do less, do it well and allow actions to form and take shape.
Think about it for a second. In the Northern Hemisphere, autumn coincides with darker days and less sunlight and in the middle of the autumn season, somewhere between November and January, we all become consumed with the New year, which in turn comes with its limitations and cliché. When you get to this point, you have missed the seasonal opportunity completely.
Autumn provides a moment to stop and reflect, think, and prepare.
Here is a simple way 'how to do it. Think forward
The next time you see a leaf falling from a tree, a change in the weather, or some 'autumnal' feature, we invite you to see it as an opportunity to 'think forward’. Thinking forward is imagining the next two quarters ahead of you or two seasons if you like. It requires you to take a moment, stop, and see yourself succeeding, being better at whatever it is you want to be better at, doing things that you always think about doing and feeling in the way you wish you could.
Literally, see, hear, and feel the things that are always on your mind, always on your goal sheet- see them now, today. Start seeing the beginning of the year; for us, this is not the standardised January; it's March, the arrival of spring. Here are three reliable truisms.
Truism One: We have all the resources we need already to succeed.
Whether you are a student of Einstein's theory of relativity, believe wholeheartedly that all things happen simultaneously. Or you accept that you are a fraction of your future potential. But, if we grab a harness in our internal world, heads, and minds and make better choices, things get better.
Truism two: Developing the richness of thought and then taking action leads to things happening.
Here we are talking about the richness of thought. Spending time, preparing, in good thoughts about your future. We are simply acknowledging their effect on the action and then the results. Think about all the things you use in technology, in the office or the house, that someone thought about before it existed.
Truism Three: You are what you repeatedly think.
Our thoughts define us. For thousands of years, great minds have been aware of the power of our thoughts and how they affect our entire being.
What does this all mean: the next time you see a leaf falling from a tree, a change in the weather, or any 'autumnal' feature, we would like to invite you to see it as an opportunity to 'think forward’.
Stop and use the autumnal thing as a prompt, a queue for you to imagine a better tomorrow for you, filled with hope and an improved you.
Repeat this pattern whenever an autumnal thing appears in your day
Get ready to do less this winter, do what you are doing better and plan for a vibrant spring
Think about the next two years in your life, the things you would like to see yourself doing more of, and spend this autumn imagining what it will be like.
What would happen if you stopped the crazy new year commitments and goals, strategising by reaction or creating plans that you don't achieve or quit too soon? Instead, use the winter season to be ready for a vibrant spring (March) where you like nature, burst into life with zest and drive to be your best because you have spent time in your thoughts before getting there, preparing the way mentally. In an uncertain world, this way of thinking and working creates stability and clarity as it supports longer-term success.
Just how much more productive could you be?
