Category Archives: Scott Gemmill

February 2, 2019

Expertise

By sdgemmill

I attended an awards event last night.  At my table was a collection of highly accomplished coaches and a who’s who of sporting super heroes.  The table was packed with Olympians, multi-time national champions and world record holders.  I am none of the aforementioned so I tried to look nonchalant while quietly thanking the seating chart gods for the gift.

One of our many conversations covered the desire to give back to the sports that had taken these coaches and athletes around the world.  None of this was driven by sponsor commitments or federation mandates, it was purely about doing the right thing.

I asked what this giving back might look like.  With no hesitation the table agreed that working with junior athletes was the way forward.  Plenty of reasons were given as to why this approach was something that resonated with my table of high achievers.

Caught up in the moment I asked about working with masters athletes and if that might also be a way to give back.  Well, that’s when things went a little sideways.  It was made very clear that the willingness to listen and learn was a perishable skill and at times non-existent within the age bracket I presently occupy.

I had inadvertently opened Pandora’s box.  Thankfully I was rescued by a well timed dessert course, but the conversation is not something I am going to park.

I was left wondering about the interactions that caused this collection of rock stars to form such an opinion.  I thought about my own behaviors and if I could be one of those bad apples.  Of course I don’t think it’s a problem for me, but maybe that’s the problem.  I really don’t know, but it’s something that is now on my radar.

Mostly I am wondering about the cost of feigning omniscience?

 

 

 

 

 

1 Comment | posted in Alter Ego Group, Capability, Growth, Scott Gemmill

January 1, 2018

01.01

By sdgemmill

Hello 2018.  Thus far it’s been great so thanks for that.

The guy that came before you over-delivered in many areas.  Admittedly there were also some things that didn’t play out as planned and just so you know,  we all have big expectations on you.  Globally there is work to do.  Between us, I am concerned about the world my children will inherit.  I presume you have some robust deliverables to fix all of this…?

On your to-do list can you add something about accountability?  It seems like a lot of people can do and say whatever they want with what appears to be no consequences.  That just isn’t right.  I can send examples if needed.

The whole diversity thing is another must-have for your agenda.  Not enough sugar (or glitter) to coat this one.  Clearly the same opportunities are not available to everyone.  Lots of excuses and promises of change, yet here we are.

Closely linked to diversity is tolerance so chuck that on your list as well.  Social stigma is a wedge.  It is okay that someone has different values from my own.  Different is good, as is respect.

A few things to work on.  You got this 2018.  We are here to help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment | posted in Alter Ego Group, Growth, Scott Gemmill

November 15, 2017

Two Views

By sdgemmill

Two retailers.

Retailer number one has the “build it and they will come” approach to business.  A conversation with the owner features a lot of reasons why things will not work and why customers are just “takers” out for the best possible price.  Retailer number one is very reluctant to connect with anyone.  Build it and they will come.

Retailer number two has the most expensive prices in town and rarely discounts.  The owner has created a community through a few simple outreach efforts.  All stuff that has been seen countless times, across dozens of industries,  but it’s still outreach.

Stop by retailer number one during the week and you’ll have the place to yourself.  Apparently the “build it and they will come” approach from a decade ago does not seem to connect with many customers anymore.

Over at retailer number two, it is absolutely buzzing.  Customers pay a premium to be part of the scene.  It is the place to meet, the launching point.  It may have been luck or maybe absolute genius, but the result is the same.

Build a community, connect and create something sustainable.  Fail to connect and you some problems.

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment | posted in Alter Ego Group, Capability, Growth, Learning, Scott Gemmill

October 9, 2016

Things I Learned Today

By sdgemmill

I live close to one of the world’s top indoor velodromes.  The people I ride with have become extended family.  All of them capable on the bike for sure, but extraordinary off the bike and that’s the bit that matters most to me.

Sometimes schedules don’t align and I find myself training with new people.  This can be challenging from a physical standpoint as we have some great riders around here though sadly I am not one of them.  I don’t mind getting schooled at the track.  It makes me work harder.  Okay, it bothers me.

This morning sheets of rain were falling with such intensity that riding outside would have been dangerous.  I chose track over trainer and headed out the door.  This particular session at the track featured some unfamiliar faces.  Unfamiliar faces can equate to unfamiliar riding styles.  On a track with steeply banked corners and bikes with no brakes, unfamiliar isn’t always a positive thing.

We rode around for a while as a semi-fractured group.  When riders struggle to form a group at the track it is often a sign that all is not going to work out.  The pace surged and ebbed and surged again.  This is yet another sign of trouble ahead. Cycling tracks have three painted lines that are used for racing, almost like the lanes on a motorway.  In training it doesn’t really matter so much which line you choose, but you do need to choose.  Waffling on the line you choose at the track is akin to waffling in your lane choice while driving.  This is the biggest indicator of a sketchy group.

After a few minutes of warming up I knew this crew wasn’t for me.  I moved up the track and did my own thing.  I rode a little faster until I got tired and then I rode a little slower until I could ride a little faster again.  So far so good…  While I enjoyed the solitude (and the associated safety) of my ride, the highlight was absolutely in the life lessons I gleaned from the other riders.

In no particular order:

  • Yelling at your wife/ partner/ significant other to either speed up or get the “F” out of the way is never going to end in a positive exchange.  I don’t need to talk about the lessons learned on this one.  Maybe we just say his approach was not best practice.
  • Same guy as above when riding with his aforementioned partner and a few of her girlfriends, drops the hammer and rides off with the intensity of an Olympic final.  Upon re-joining his group, he mentions how much faster he is relative to their girlie pace. The line between demonstrating one’s total awesomeness and standing with both feet in the complete arse zone is a line best not crossed.
  • The post ride debrief with the guys and rolling out crotch chaffing as your excuse for poor performance on the bike.  I believe the learning here was that talk of any friction is best left for close friends and talk of friction involving the crotch may be one of those things to keep a secret.  An ancillary learning is that mediocrity, regardless of the reason, is not an accepted excuse.
  • At the track was a stocky guy, clad in a generously undersized aerodynamic speed suit.  His bike was built to slice through the wind and it stuck to the track with a carbon disc rear wheel and five spoke front.  It was super bike.  To be fair, Mr Super Bike was a good rider.  He carried the swagger of someone that knew it. Most of his session was spent talking at the other riders, but when he did ride, he did so at pace.  Enter the teen girl who was riding at the track for the first time after passing her accreditation (like a drivers license for track riders).  Mr Super Bike shot around the girl with a point to prove.  It was impressive, albeit short lived.  The teen, with little respect for carbon, aero or ill-fitting speed suits stuck to the back of Capt Fantastic.  Rattled, he lifted the pace.  The teen on a loaner bike from the velodrome was glued to aero-man.  A lap into it and he swung up the track to let the girl through.  He dropped back down the track to tuck into the teen’s draft.  She must have thought the race was on because she unleashed a legendary acceleration.  Mr Super Bike was done.  Humility is the lesson here.  In life there is always someone faster, always someone better.  The second we forget that and become complacent is the same second we get smacked.

Lessons everywhere so long as we are ready to learn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment | posted in Capability, Growth, Learning, Scott Gemmill

January 19, 2016

The Realtionship

By sdgemmill

A few months ago I was listening to The Tim Ferris Show.  If you are not familiar with Tim’s podcast, I encourage you to check it out. On this particular day Tim’s guest was Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL, author and in every sense, a guy that gets stuff done.

On the podcast Jocko spoke about the book that he had co-authored with Leif Babin.  Extreme Ownership is a great read.  The book holds a lofty position on the New York Times bestseller list so I am not alone in my opinion on this one.  There are plenty of ah-ha moments in the book, but it’s how the information is conveyed that sets it apart.  No waffle, just straight up and at times confronting.

Jocko recently launched his own podcast.  He is five episodes into it so I am late to the party.  This morning I listened to Episode One of “Jocko Podcast”.  The guy is a powerful story teller.  The content was all real world stuff and much of it quite emotive.

In the podcast Jocko spoke about his SEAL Team and the relationships they had built.  His team would do anything he asked of them.  Anything.  Jocko felt this was not because of the directions he had issued as their commander, but because of the strength of the relationships they had forged.  In return he would do anything for them.  Jocko feels none of this happened because of orders, it was all by choice, to support one another.  The power of the relationship.

Hold that thought and consider our environments at work.  Do we have those sorts of relationships with our teams and the individuals within them?  Would they do whatever it took to acheive an outcome?  By choice or through compliance?  What would we do for them?

We spent a lot of time and energy looking out the window at our customers, external stakeholders, investors, etc.  Maybe we need to invest more in our own house.

Combat, service, life and death will build bonds that we will likely never replicate at the office, but that is not an excuse to let it go.  We don’t need to talk about it, consult and over plan.  We just need to get after it.  Make it a priority to demonstrate our commitment to our people through our attitudes and actions and I suspect many of those metrics we like to track will head in the right direction.  As Jocko says, outcomes require action.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment | posted in Alter Ego Group, Growth, Scott Gemmill

June 18, 2015

Wanted: High Performing Team

By sdgemmill

In business the opportunities to improve efficiencies come and go through a slow revolving door.  It seems that not many new opportunities come into the revolving door.  They may go through a make-over and have a slightly different appearance, but the old favorites remain.  Sometimes we can grab these opportunities and do something special and other times they sail by only to be recycled again another time.

The topic of high performing teams has been popular of late.  Firms and their managers have taken two distinct paths in the latest move to build cohesive, highly functional groups.  Path one is about the doing.  Path one involves collaboration, honesty and intent.  This way requires consistent effort and a strong sense of purpose.

However, the key here is ownership.  Without someone driving this change it all goes back into the revolving door.  The elements that allowed a team to slip from the high performing zone did not form overnight.  Fixing things wont happen overnight either.  They wont happen at all if we stand at the revolving grasping at anything we can get.  Flopping around like a freshly caught fish is not the foundation for excellence in anything (unless you strive to be a flopping fish).

Path two in the journey of high performing teams is about hope.  If we talk about it, we hope it might happen.  We have a lot on so we can’t really invest much in this high performing stuff right now, but we agree this is where we want to be.  Path two has nothing to do with negativity.  Companies are resource constrained and who can step away from the headwind of “to-do” long enough to make change stick?

With the best of intentions we hope teams will ascend to the summit of high performance through sheer will.  After all, that’s how Hillary made it up Everest so we know it can be done.  We want to make the climb, but what path should we follow?  It is a big mountain and it’s easy to get lost.

You immediately see the problem with the path of hope is that no one is driving it.  We still have our commitment and we still want something better as individuals and as a team.  Many of us work to the task we see in front of us.  We may not be thinking about the big picture all the time.

If we could fix this ourselves we would have. We really need a leader to move us from hoping to doing.  We need someone to remind us that today’s endeavors are in service of a larger goal.

Leave a comment | posted in Alter Ego Group, Capability, Scott Gemmill

April 27, 2014

So what’s in the box?

By sdgemmill

Despite my protests, the last few long weekends have brought many DIY projects.   Things were cleaned, rooms have been painted, windows repaired, trees were cut down and others planted.  When all of this started a few weeks ago the list was fairly long.  As I have worked through my projects the list has remained daunting with new tasks added at about the same pace that I cross off the others.  The DIY treadmill?

I know I am not alone in my toil.  Familiar faces bond at the local DIY store were we seek advice, supplies and tools we will probably only use once.  We all have our DIY loyalty cards, but we openly weep when we overhear someone quote the trade price.  Regardless of what we buy, our cars are always slightly too small.  You can spot us DIY guys on Saturday mornings, seat wedged ridiculously close to the steering wheel, our peripheral vision impossibly obscured by fence posts, bags of cement and a forest of bargain-bin plants.  The pièce de résistance in all of this must be the box of 250 screws sitting on the front seat when just one will get the job done.  Of course it is not impossible to buy just one screw.

Over hundreds of weekends and an equal number of trips to the DIY store I have amassed a treasure trove of nails, brackets, handles, fasteners and miscellaneous bits of timber, adhesives and putties (the list goes on).  Every project yields extra parts.  Predictably though still mysteriously, even those projects that had no parts to begin with seem to produce left over stuff.  All these extra parts need to live somewhere and so is born the DIYer’s collection.

It was after regular store hours when I found myself lacking one stainless steel screw to repair a gate that was apparently damaged by the Easter Bunny (or so In was told).  In my panic I looked for a DIY store open late.  Who doesn’t fix a gate at 9.45pm on Sunday (Easter Sunday at that)?  None of the DIY stores complied and I sat down to contemplate some other solutions.  I was desperate, really desperate.

As I sunk to the depths of despair over another incomplete project, I was struck with an epiphany.  Could my DIY graveyard yield the missing piece of hardware?  The giant metal bin was bulging with a lifetime of project castoffs.  With the use of a well placed skateboard I was able to position the bin just so.  Calling on what was surely super human strength, I upended the great DIY bin.

It was like Christmas.  Yes I found the stainless steel screw and I fixed the gate.  More importantly I found reminders of the many MacGyver inspired solutions I had come up with over the years.  Experience is a great teacher.  Of course attaching this piece to that would not stand the test of time.  I know that now, but didn’t when I tried it the first time.

What can we learn by revisiting those long forgotten projects?  Are we really learning or are we moving from one project to the next, relying on the same insights and capabilities, but expecting bigger and bigger outcomes?

SDG

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment | posted in Alter Ego Group, Capability, Growth, Learning, Scott Gemmill

December 11, 2013

A Guy Named Tom

By sdgemmill

Tom passed away last week.  Cancer.

He worked for one of my clients and by all accounts was a genuine good guy.  Talented, passionate and driven.  People told me stories of Tom’s last few weeks with the company and I was moved by the integrity and grit of the man. 

As Tom’s illness spread he chose to step away from his role.  He felt he could no longer deliver to his own high standards.  On one of Tom’s last days with the company he sent a note to his colleagues, thanking them for all they had done to enrich his life.  People had told me of Tom’s note, but I had not seen it until this morning.

Tom wrote with humor, gratitude and emotion.  He shared stories of his adventures and the things he learned along the way.  Tom loved the culture that had been created by his employer and he was saddened when he had to step away.  This sits in such contrast to the employer bashing that we hear so often.  I have done it so won’t be throwing any stones.

I never met Tom, but I have learned a lot from him.  His 500 word note has challenged my own attitudes and caused me to ask some hard questions of myself.  I will just say I don’t like all of the answers.

I am sorry, but I can’t share Tom’s note, it wouldn’t be right.

SDG

 

 

 

Leave a comment | posted in Growth, Learning, Scott Gemmill

July 31, 2013

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

By sdgemmill

For close to 10 years I have been a member of the local rowing club.  My outrigger canoes, k1s and surfskis have all lived in the historic shed.  I was always the odd ball, the non-rower, but over time I was accepted (ish) into the clan.  I am not on the water much anymore, but I still use the gym and do my best to keep up with the regulars on the erg.

The rowing club is not a fancy place, just enough to get the job done.  Many of New Zealand’s rowing elite have trained at the club and their pictures and stories adorn the walls.  Much of the equipment is rusty and only a fool would go near the place in a white shirt.  The rowing club is a place of serious work.  Rusty, serious work.

Club members are issued a key that is sacred.  The key allows us to keep our own hours which is of course the glorious benefit of membership.  Do what you want, when you want.  The keeper of these keys has little tolerance for any tomfoolery.  Should a club member misplace a key, that member is forever besmirched.  As punishment, lost keys seem to take months to replace, in addition to the $10 replacement fee.  Oh my…

The club is run by a group of veteran rowers.  A rowing mafioso of sorts.  It is unwise to cross the club officials as their power is absolute.  The key guy is part of the mafioso.

In the early hours of this morning I was in the gym, rust covered hands, doing my thing. I was approached by one of the club officials.  I sensed a turning point was looming.  The veteran rowers were soon to depart for the World Masters Games in Italy (of course) and they needed my help.  Feeling that I was about to be invited to join the inner circle, I jumped to my feet.

I was given a special key though it was made clear this was a temporary loan.  I was half expecting a blood oath or secret handshake to follow.  I was told the mafioso would be away for five weeks and in their absence someone had to keep an eye on things.

The instructions were precise.  Every other day I was to use the special key to ensure the supply of toilet paper was at an acceptable level.  The high school rowing programmes would be commencing soon and failure was not an option.

While the responsibility is not trivial, I believe I can exceed expectations and conduct myself with distinction.  My ascension has begun.

 

 

 

1 Comment | posted in Growth, Scott Gemmill

April 24, 2013

Rusty

By sdgemmill

For the past six months I have had some big distractions.  I tried to adapt by focusing on the tasks right in front of me.  Looking back now, I realize I did more harm than good.  I relaxed on some of the things that help me perform at my best and there were flow-on effects from this.

The short version is that I began to settle, things became good enough.  I was content with the effort I was putting in and the outcomes I was achieving.  I am all for contentment, but it has to be real.  If I was doing my absolute best and still mid-pack, then so be it, but I was nowhere near my best.

A few weeks back a friend of mine sent me as note about his partner and their plans over Easter.  It turns out Richard’s partner is one of those people that just does stuff.  She is an MD with interests well outside of her medical practice and a thirst for challenge and action.  Reading Richard’s note, I could sense the anticipation and maybe a little trepidation over his pending adventures. This is what I was missing.  I had become comfortable.

With Richard’s note in the back of my mind and some well timed closure on those distractions, I got into action of my own. I am just a few weeks into the rebuild, but the process is fantastic.  I am rediscovering the rhythm that helps me perform.  I am also rusty and sore.  Many of the things that I let slip over the past six months have to be relearned and this is uncomfortable.

Relearning is great though, a chance to do things a little better the second (or tenth) time through.  The challenge of setting new goals is hugely empowering as is the opportunity to learn from some epic failures (a personal specialty).

Roll on new day…
SDG

Leave a comment | posted in Growth, Learning, Scott Gemmill