Ben is really enjoying his new role as Project Manager of the System Rebuild Project. Before he stepped up into this role he thought it was a big scary task, which he didn’t fully understand and felt like a huge responsibility. Now that he is into it he feels it is nowhere near as scary as he first thought and is actually quite a lot of fun. The project is still running smoothly and we’re still really excited about the benefits it will have for our customers.

It is performance review time at SK Chase so everyone is on their best behaviour! Steph has been focussing on preparing and carrying out performance reviews with the red team. She loves sitting down with the team and acknowledging achievements as well as looking forward together to see how the business can support individual growth as well as then looking at the bigger picture from a business growth perspective. She finds it very

Hard Drive!

energising.

Jan has been gaining some knowledge of our IT function this month so that she can begin to support in this area of the business. There is a lot to take in, but who knew that memory and hard drives could be described as tables and filing cabinets to help explain them – but it helped with Jan’s understanding!

Kate is wrapping up the fraud project this month, which is aimed to help SK Chase detect and deal with fraudulent orders more efficiently and has had a lot of key learning’s along the way.

And Dani is focusing on setting up some lovely new clients this month.

And on a personal note;

It is getting closer to Steph’s house move date on 1^st June and is getting the final paperwork in place. She has to start packing this week and is taking a couple of weeks off to get stuck in and look after her 2 ear old daughter at the same time – she loves a challenge!

Kate donated blood for the first time a couple of weeks ago, which is something she had been meaning to do for ages but something always seemed to come up. She said that she didn’t like the actual process and it was a bit sore but she felt good afterwards and wants to make it a regular thing.

Dani is volunteering at a Cuddle Workshop soon and will be holding a Freedo Class for children and adults with her friend at an Indian Festival in Dorset at the end of the month. Freedo is a movement class which is based on spiritual Aikido combined with using the power of symbols to achieve personal freedom.

Kaye is looking forward to driving back to Italy from Edinburgh via Amsterdam on Monday. Although it’s a long way, Kaye always really enjoys the journey and the ferry never ceases to amaze her with its range of entertainment, including bingo!

Jan – Hunter’s Lass 2007

Jan is looking forward to another successful Hunter and Lass Week starting on Saturday. Penicuik Hunter and Lass is an annual weeklong festival that takes place in her home town and has a different event on every night to involve the whole community. As well as a trip down to Wales for a Wedding and short break at the beginning on June.

The Download festival is less than a month away and guess which one of us is going…Ben of course! It will be his last big ‘all guns blazing’ party weekend before his baby is due to arrive and he has to start behaving. He thinks the line up is absolutely superb this year, and if the rain stays away it’s going to be incredible.

And Catharine and Heather are enjoying some lovely well earned time off! Catharine is off on holiday to Bahrain, staying with her Uncle and Aunt for a fun filled 10 days of swimming, sailing and tennis. And Heather is off to enjoy a few days with friends in Spain but is sure she’ll miss her twin girls immensely!

As part of our personal coaching sessions with Kaye which we can schedule in on a regular basis, I received an intent coaching session about 1.5 years ago! Kaye had asked our whole team during 1:1 sessions to let our imagination run wild for us to discover what we would love doing if we could do anything in the world! During our intent session I had shared with Kaye that I’m passionate about working with children and parents so they can both learn to grow up in a peaceful environment where transparent communication is cultivated. I had shared with Kaye that my long term vision is to build a school for children that is alternative in the sense of me offering classes that are geared towards self expression, where children can learn the power of beliefs and thoughts, learn how to connect to their intuition and tap into their inner genius! Kaye wrote down my vision and she replied to me that she feels my intent is “to heal”.

Now time has passed ever since our intent session and for a while I wasn’t quite sure how I could live my intent after all my intent to heal was quite specific and I wasn’t sure how I can heal myself or other people having never done any “healing work”! Kaye had made me aware that healing is not only meant in a literal way ie giving someone a “healing” session but she made me aware that it’s about how I show up on a daily basis that makes a difference and can inspire healing in other people, day to day interactions with clients, friends, people can allow me and other people to heal. That by being me “I make a difference to other people”! I didn’t quite understand what Kaye meant as I was focused on doing, doing, doing and didn’t understand that being me is enough.

A few months later back in November last year I had another coaching session with Kaye, this time it was about me learning to let go of my old behaviors from moving away to being a workaholic to actually learning how to feel safe without having a structure around me that keeps me safe. When I say structure I  mean a work structure that I had created  for myself that would keep me from spending time with myself to get to know me, what I’m all about, learn about my fears and passions and a structure that kept me from doing things that I’m passionate about and stopped me from connecting with other people. Kaye had shared with me that she can see a world full of magic with endless opportunities if only I would let go of my hamster wheel that I had created for myself. What a coaching session this was, tears were rolling and I had to take a good look at myself.

Now after my conversation with Kaye in November my whole inner world changed, I went on a journey from letting go of the mind to moving into my heart! This was a scary journey as everything I ever knew and held dear fell away and I had to deal with situations that I’ve never experienced before, meeting people that were mirrors of myself to help me heal myself and my judgments! I had met people that thought me how to let go of my attachments to money, my attachments to materialistic things, I’ve learned to acknowledge fear and move through it, I’ve learned how to communicate transparently and share my fears when they came up, I’ve learned to acknowledge my mind and listen to my heart. I went to have Reiki Attunements to become a Reiki Healer, did some Shamanic Healing and also took up a Relax Kids course to learn about various breathing, massage, visualisations and affirmation techniques for children.

Some people that have been with me on my journey to my heart over the past 6 months have thought I went crazy “Acknowledgement to the team “thanks for tolerating me in times of personal conflict with myself”. I had personally changed completely to the point where I’ve even become an alien to myself and learning to be okay with not knowing who I am anymore and being okay not knowing where things are going! I knew that I wanted change to happen but I didn’t know who I was becoming.

Since you can only take people as far as you’ve come, I believe everything happened for a reason and will help me inspire people on their journey into their heart! There is a video I’ve recently come across that talks about the heroes journey and it refers to the story of the Matrix and compares it to the challenges one faces in becoming a hero and stepping into their own truth and power. Take a look here.

I’ve dedicated this e-mail to Kaye & Steph and the team as I would like to acknowledge that not every company and team would encourage their staff to live their truth and not every company is concerned about setting their staff free and supporting their staff in achieving their personal vision! Our culture is not only to set our clients free but our culture is also geared towards setting ourselves free! Kaye said to me in the past that I won’t be able to set our clients free if I’m not free myself!

So after a few months of internal struggle between my mind and heart, I have now set myself free and taken the first steps towards my vision of making a difference to children and parents and reduced my work hours to 4 days to start holding classes for children!

Thank you team and SK Chase for supporting me in my vision – what a wonderful company we have created Together!

I’d like to finish off my blog with following “Panjali” quote “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be”

Our business has recently embarked upon a system rebuild project which involves making significant improvements to our current system (software as a service), adding new features & functionality as well as introducing a new software product.

Our intention is to get even closer to our clients and keep them abreast of the new features within our system and how these features will assist our clients in increasing their gift voucher sales.

With this in mind we have created two new positions:

Key Account Manager
Client Training Manager  

Both positions, based in and around London, will play a significant role in helping us build our business, working together with our clients and providing a friendly, knowledgeable and professional service.

SK Chase provides excellent career opportunities. We have a culture where people come first and we encourage ourselves, our team and our customers to be true, courageous and fair with themselves and each other. This results in having a happy team, who have clear goals and know how they contribute to the success of our business.

Key Account Manager
London / home
£30 – £40,000 per annum

The Key Account Manager will take care of our most prestigious accounts in the UK.

This role is suited to a marketing and account management driven individual who has a proven track record of creating and building long-lasting business relationships whilst further developing the account.  You will be energised by technology solutions and have a great understanding and awareness of how to use e-commerce, social media technologies and internet marketing to drive a business strategy.

Approximately 3 days a week will be spent visiting clients throughout the UK with 2 days working from home or from a London Hub.

Click here for more information about the Key Account Manager role.

Apply by email with a cover letter, your current salary and CV to Kate Taylor, our HR Manager: kate.taylor@skchase.com

Client Training Manager
3 days per week  London / home
£25 – £30,000 per annum

The Client Training Manager will provide training to our prestigious hotel clients in the UK.

This role is suited to someone with a proven track record of creating and delivering engaging, interactive and professional training sessions to a variety of individuals, from reception teams to directors.  This person is energised and driven by technology solutions and has an understanding and awareness of both e-commerce and the hospitality sector.   Client training sessions are both web-based and in-person (travel to our clients based throughout the UK is required).

This role is 3 days per week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) with time split between delivering training and working from home or a London Hub.

Click here for more information about the Client Training Manager role.

Apply by email with a cover letter, your current salary and CV to Kate Taylor, our HR Manager: kate.taylor@skchase.com

With Steph handing the Project Manager reigns to Ben she has been set free to focus more energy on the Risk Management and Capacity Projects she has been working on.

Some great news for any future customers is that Dani is working on an easier set up process. Her vision is for new customers to be able to follow easy step by step instructions online, via a hidden link on the SK Chase website where they can also see our guidelines, templates and best practice recommendations.

Kate is working her way through a fraud project, which is aimed to help SK Chase detect and deal with fraudulent orders more efficiently. She has also just started an HR project paper in her role as HR manager with the aim to revive our staff handbook with the support of Jan after they both attended an employment law and health & safety at work seminar.

Catharine and Heather both received coaching on six steps (a sales framework) from Kaye and are looking forward to their first session to put it into practice.

And some very exciting news is that SK Chase has plans to grow. Kaye is focussing on recruiting two new people to fill the roles of Client Services Manager and Training Manager to be based in London.

And on a personal note;

Catharine has booked flights to Bahrain to stay with her Uncle and Aunt for a fun filled 10 days of swimming, sailing and tennis.

Kaye loves reading novels and has discovered a wonderful new author called Sarah Addison Allen whose books are gentle stories with a dusting of magic.

Kate spent good Friday cycling round the whole island of Cumbrae, an island just off Largs, which was 10 miles in total.

Dani  has created a Facebook page called ‘New Earth Explorers’ to keep her motivated towards her vision of creating a platform with inspirational speakers and teachers that can teach the new earth classes to children and parents

Jan spent a relaxing week in Dinan, France and is now ready for her Maid of Honour duties on Friday at her best friend’s Wedding.

Dinan, France

Ben and his wife Marie-Claire celebrated their 10^th Wedding Anniversary with a quiet weekend in a lovely loch side cottage in Selkirk.

And Steph has signed up for a 5K Race for Life run on 6^th May in Edinburgh. Please encourage Steph and support a great charity, Cancer Research UK, by sponsoring here.  Hope the training has started…

As Denis Waitley said: “There are two primary choices in life; to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”

In life there are people who buy and sell and those who are bought and sold. I don’t mean this in the literal sense, but rather that some people decide to make informed choices and forge their own road; others follow the well trodden path. This might be their choice, they might enjoy working for somebody, following a script and not challenging or changing things, sticking to what they know. But it is my guess that they aren’t happy and feel trapped and would in fact rather be in control, carving out their own existence.

One could say it is easier to follow the mapped out route, rather than straying off piste. And who, in this day and age, does hard when you can do easy? Off piste is the unknown; with it come uncertainty, risk and fear. But let’s turn this on its head. Risk also brings opportunity. Opportunity to do a bad job, then fix it, and do a good job. Opportunity brings excitement and growth. “The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.” (George Eliot).

You are the fellow that has to decide
Whether you’ll do it or toss it aside.
You are the fellow who makes up your mind
Whether you’ll lead or will linger behind
Whether you’ll try for the goal that’s afar
Or just be contented to stay where you are.
Take it or leave it. Here’s something to do!
Just think it over — It’s all up to you! (Edgar Guest)

What I’m trying to say here is that our lives take the road we build for them and we can alter the course of that route should we so wish. So next time you or I are having an off day, feeling like our luck has run out, that we’ve been dealt a pretty rubbish hand, stop, think and choose. Make a conscious effort to think about the end result of those choices, not the ease with which they may be executed, to reach the best possible outcome.

“What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.” (Leo Buscaglia).

Get out there, go mad, make things happen. Stop worrying about the risk. “If you worried about falling off the bike, you’d never get on.” (Lance Armstrong).  Be different. Be innovative. Create. Make choices. Love life. LIVE.

Don’t ever give up…

We hope that you all had a lovely Mother’s Day and if you got a gift voucher, we hope you enjoy using it! And even before we have a chance to think about Easter of Father’s Day, Christmas is on the cards already! Well, for one member of staff so far…

The lead up to Christmas is our busiest time of year and Catharine is starting a Christmas reflection paper which will help her improve things for this year as part of her stock project. Organising our customers gift voucher stock in advance of Christmas is a big task, we need to ensure we have enough in stock so we are able to fulfil all of the extra Christmas orders.

We have all been working on the visions for the functions we manage over the past couple of months. Kate had a coaching session with Steph on her vision for Finance and felt really energised by it and now has a clear picture of what she wants Finance to look like moving forward. She now has time scheduled to put together a vision statement and then can start working towards reaching this. And Ben is looking forward to spending time with Kaye and Steph looking at the future of Service Delivery and IT.

We decided it is about time we took true ownership of our legal function and increase legal knowledge within SK Chase. Kaye and Jan are now working on this, with Kaye sharing her knowledge with Jan. They are starting with reviewing the client contracts, which is so far proving very interesting.

We are also preparing for an increase of Royal Mail postage and packaging prices due in April. Ben is strangely quite excited about this as it gives him a great opportunity to practice the new Excel things he learned at our recent excel course.

Heather has been working on new About Us pages for our website, which are now live. Visit our website to read over them. Each of the photos of the team represent them living their intent – the why we do what we do.

We have also now switched to using Facebook Timeline. Take a look at our new look page, we love the new layout and features.

And Steph is feeling really excited about our new risk management focus.  It’s all a bit mysterious at the moment I’m afraid – watch this space…

And on a personal note;

Ben and his wife Marie-Claire have announced they have a baby on the way, due in August, which is fantastic news! Ben shared that they have been purchasing baby items this month; a pram, clothes and Ben had loads of fun putting a breast pump together! He is also trying to enjoy the last few months of freedom and will be attending the annual Dead by Dawn 4 horror film marathon at the end of March.

Steph has recently selected all of the flooring, kitchen, bathrooms etc. for her new house which she is still hoping to move into at the end of May.  It’s so nice to pick everything from scratch and really excited to see the house coming together.

Kate and her fiancé Kevin have now booked their honeymoon. They are heading to Mauritius for 2 weeks on the 3rd December to an all inclusive resort, which they are very excited about that.

Broccoli Bread Rolls

Heather’s broccoli bread turned out really well and this month she is strengthening her mind by reading Jane Eyre.

Dani  is attending a ‘Relax Kids Teacher’ workshop at the end of March. It is designed to help children relax, improve sleep, increase learning, boost exam results, decrease stress and anxiety and improve children’s self esteem. Dani wants to ultimately play a part in changing the main stream school education and for kids to use their emotional intelligence plus intellectual intelligence at school to bring more balance into their lives. So this Relax Kids teacher course is the first step towards my vision!

Catharine competed in the Mighty Deerstalker 10 mile night time trail race on Saturday. She thought it was amazing and did so well. She was the 30th female out of 506 and 299th overall out of 1620 finishers with a time of 2 hours and 2 minutes.

Super Bunny Cupcake

The hen do Jan was planning for her best friend went very well at the start of March, the cupcake decorating lesson went down a treat, they looked amazing!

And Kaye is enjoying a skiing holiday as I type!

This comment, written on my school report from 1986, has somehow been forever etched into my brain.  I don’t particularly remember why I locked onto this specific piece of criticism more than anything else – positive or negative – that was said about me at school.  Perhaps the fact that I can’t remember is really just further proof of the exceptional level of absent mindedness I was able to deliver at such a young age!

Whatever the reason, I definitely can’t argue with the statement itself.  I was always a natural day dreamer at school.  Sit me by a window and you could guarantee nothing of genuine value would pass through my brain all day – which may now be worrying Steph and Kaye a little as that is precisely where I now sit in the SK Chase office!

However, by the time I entered the world of work I no longer had time for day dreaming and so my distractibility had to evolve in new directions.  Working front of house in hotels, where my focus could be broken at any time by guest requests or general emergencies, provided a perfect environment for me to do this.  For the first time ever, being at ease with being distracted became a distinct advantage and I was seen as adaptable and quick thinking, as opposed to absent minded.  And when I did inevitably forget things, I could always point at the general chaos of an exceptionally busy day to explain it away.

So, while I no longer had any time for day dreaming, my brain became conditioned to never be completely focused on anything, constantly on the lookout for something going on, and immediately latching onto it – for at least as long as it took for something else to come bouncing along and divert my attention away from the initial distraction etc.  It became so deeply ingrained that even now I’ve been out of hotels for 2 years I still find it difficult to stop myself to be drawn into situations that arise around me, whether or not they are my responsibility to deal with, or can wait until a more appropriate time when I’m not trying to focus on something else.

At SK Chase we describe this as reacting rather than responding.  Reacting is a knee jerk quick fix which only looks at solving (or getting rid of) the immediate problem in front of us, and is almost always a negative action – with emotional baggage attached – whereas responding requires space to think, remove any initial negative emotions around the situation, before taking positive action at an appropriate time.

I’ve recently been reading, ‘The Unfettered Mind,’ which is a short series of letters written in the 17th Century, from an Zen buddhist master to a Samurai master, in which the author draws parallels between his spirituality and mindfulness, and the art of combat.

I thought it would be an interesting companion to several practical taekwondo books I’m reading, by providing me with an insight to the philosophical side of martial arts and the history and culture that inspired them.  I hadn’t expected it to be of any real use to my life today, but almost immediately I felt like the first letter could had been written directly to me as it resonates so clearly with my tendency to react instead of respond.

The Zen master writes about a man attacked by ten sword-wielding opponents, suggesting that if the mind is ‘detained’ by any one of these assailants, the lone samurai will lose his flow and be cut down by the other 9.  However, if he goes into battle with a mind that sees all but is not distracted by any one thing, his action will flow allowing him to defeat each opponent after the other.

In my role in hotels, when ‘attacked’ by ten guests at the same time, I got away with allowing myself to be detained by each of them, and usually came out on top. (I often thought a sword would have been a useful tool to keep about me in these instances though)  And most of the time they were quite content to wait at least a little while for my attention so I could finish with the previous guest – which despite what choreographed Hollywood fights look like, doesn’t often happen in genuine combat.  The reason this approach worked then was because I never really needed to think any further ahead than what’s happening at that moment, and I just kept going until either I’d sorted them all out, or someone else came on shift to take it off me.

In my role at SK Chase this is a luxury I no longer have, and I do need to focus most of my time on specific tasks which contribute to achieving my vision for my functions, as well as the overall vision for the business.  Unfortunately, I haven’t yet managed to consistently expand my mindset beyond the here and now and all too often I find myself reacting immediately to what’s happening around me rather than maintaining my focus and then responding (if it even needs a response) at a more appropriate time.

The Zen master describes the same idea from a slightly different angle. “when facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others. When the eye is not set on any one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit. But if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.”

By reacting to everything happening around me, I don’t give myself the opportunity to see the bigger picture, which means that too often I find myself working very hard without seeing any real achievement.

While I understand this in a thinking space, changing this behaviour isn’t something I find as easy because it requires a conscious decision to intervene before I react – and often my conscious mind is several steps behind my subconscious and so doesn’t kick in until after I’ve finished reacting in the first place.  What is most frustrating is that the more my awareness around this increases, the more often I notice that I’ve make the wrong choice. So being more aware can make it feel like the situation is actually getting worse!

This connects with something I have noticed in my taekwondo, where I often feel that every step forward is preceeded by three of four steps backwards.

Helpfully, our Zen master also talks about this, reasoning that the beginner student of martial arts knows nothing about body posture, sword handling or technique, and as such he defends and attacks far more naturally – as his mind is not detained trying to maintain the correct stance or performing a set move, and therefore he meets a challenge with nothing in mind.

As the student progresses and becomes aware of the importance of stances, correct technique, breathing etc. his mind is naturally ‘detained’ by all of them and the act of defending or attacking becomes more uncomfortable and awkward, until they are expert enough to do them without thinking.  At this stage his mind ‘simply becomes as it was in the beginning when he knew nothing and had yet to be taught anything at all.’

Our business coach Fergus talks about conscious and unconscious competency.  Before I recognised my reactivity as an issue, I was ‘unconsciously incompetent‘ – i.e. I was in blissful ignorance that there was even a problem at all, and in fact in hotels it was something of an advantage.  Once I had recognised it was causing a problem, I then became consciously incompetent.  This is the worst stage to be at, as I would be uncomfortably aware of every time I’d fallen into my old traps.

Given time and practice (and I give myself plenty of opportunities for that!), I am becoming consciously competent – i.e. I have sufficient awareness to stop myself reacting, but its still a conscious decision I have to make.  Ultimately, once I’ve stuck with it for long enough I can become unconsciously competent – where I don’t have to think about it at all, I’m just able to do the right thing automatically.

The thing I need most to allow this shift to occur, is to give myself the space to encourage my mind to respond rather than react.  The more I react, the less space I give myself to think which if left unchecked spirals out of control as I work less effectively and so more issues arise which I now have even less space to respond to.

So I realise that, much like the expert martial artist returning to the mindset of the beginner, I need to look back and become a little more like the 6-year old me.  Gazing out of the window all day long won’t support me to achieve my vision, but allowing myself to have space when I need it most certainly will.

In February:

No one received any flowers to the office this Valentine’s Day. But if you were given a gift voucher from one of our lovely customers, we hope you have a brilliant time when you use it!

February also means that our first quarter’s management accounts are due, so Kate has been working on these. She has now been preparing the quarterly accounts for a year and has had many key learning’s from this.

Progress is being made on our system rebuild project and Kaye is very excited as she has seen the wire-frames (visuals) for one of our first releases and knows how much of a difference it will make to our clients look to buy ratio.

The red team, the business support side of the business, had a workshop and agreed on and subscribed to a new commercial context of ‘efficient’. We are now thinking about what areas of our functions can be more efficient. One project that is an outcome of this is a stock control project, where Catharine would like to review our current procedures and make them easier and more efficient.

Dani is currently working on our training project, with a vision to further develop the way we provide our training sessions, catering to the training needs of our customers. She is now at the external and internal research phase, so you may receive a call from her soon so we can learn more about your needs.

Steph has started to attend ‘Mindfulness at Lunchtime’ which takes place almost next door to the SK Chase office. The purpose of the session is to help you to be fully in the present and calm the mind, which fits in perfectly with her current personal context of ‘space’. The rest of the team might be joining her!

And Heather and Jan are heading down to Google HQ at the end of the month to have a look at the latest trends and opportunities to help a business succeed online.

And on a personal note;

Catharine has achieved her first New Year’s resolution by moving into the Green Group (the top group) at British Military Fitness

Steph has paid a deposit on a lovely new build home in Kirkliston, so will be donning her ‘interior designer’ hat soon to select carpets, kitchen, flooring etc, with a move in date of May or June.

Kate will be picking up her wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses next week and is spending a lot of her spare time wedding planning, although she is hoping to take a step back and enjoy it all.

Heather is trying to make broccoli bread!

Dani will be hosting her first workshop on Sunday called Conscious Connections where the ingredients of healthy relationships and what desperation looks like will be explored, conscious connection games will be played and some love poems will be read.

Kaye and Steph travelled to Glasgow for the Strictly Come Dancing Tour. They thought it was A-MAZ-ING and thought the chemistry between Mark Foster and Natalie Lowe was electrifying!

Ben is on holiday, back home to Sheffield.

And Jan has been planning her best friend’s Hen Do. As it’s a surprise for the Bride to be all she can say is; Mary Berry meets Sydney Bristow…

One of the measurements was to read a book on personal or professional growth per year and share our learnings with the team. One of our other measurements is to find different and better ways of doing things in the functions we manage, so I chose a book by Seth Godin, called ‘Poke the Box’. The reason for this is that it’s about starting ‘stuff’, doing things differently and ultimately ‘poking the box’ to see what happens if a change is made.

I feel very inspired after reading ‘Poke the Box’. The blurb describes it as a ‘manifesto about producing something that’s scarce, and thus valuable. It demands that you stop waiting for a roadmap and start one instead…’. It is basically saying; stop waiting for tasks or things to do and start ‘stuff’ yourself.

Key Learning
My key learning from ‘Poke the Box’ is that ‘initiative is scarce and therefore valuable’.

There could be many reasons why initiative is scarce. For example; fear,  lack of time or capacity, in general people are happy to let others do the work and if people don’t initiate things then they don’t need to take the blame if it doesn’t work.

It is therefore valuable to be an initiator, but equally it is valuable to be a company that embraces initiation and provides space and resources to enable employees to initiate / do things differently. As proven by some of our value measurements I feel that SK Chase is one of these companies, but is in the minority.

A really interesting example given in the book, was that Starbucks started off as a coffee bean and tea leaves store under the vision of Jerry Baldwin, who believed that the beans were the point and not the coffee. Howard Schultz, however. was obsessed with espresso and took a trip to Italy, which made Starbucks the coffee shop we know today. However if Jerry Baldwin had not started the original store then it wouldn’t have developed. The lesson is, that starting something doesn’t mean it will be right first time and is not a straight line to success, but gives potential to become something great.

This came to light in a project SK Chase are investing time and money into at the moment; our system rebuild project. We had the first few development cycles planned but then our developers advised they had to stop the flow and concentrate on some research, which could potentially change the whole flow of the project and ultimately even the outcome. But without initiating and starting the project, no improvements would be made and the system would just get more and more complex.

It also emphasizes that things will go wrong more often than not when you start things, unless you are super lucky. But not to be afraid of being wrong, you’ll always learn something from it and move on.

Jan the Initiator
‘Poke the Box’ also made me want to be an initiator personally as well as professionally. A few days after reading this book I got a plasterer in to plaster my hallway. I had wanted to decorate it since I moved in a year and a half ago! And I now love my hallway and enjoy welcoming people into my home (see some photos below).

I now say every morning when I wake up – I am an INITIATOR (say in the style of Gerard Butler in 300 – This is SPARTA!)

Ok, maybe that’s a bit too far…but I hope this inspires you to start something too.

In January:

Although Christmas feels like a distant memory now, we have all been reflecting on this time to see if there is anything we can do better.

It’s our busiest time of year (around 30% of our clients’ yearly gift voucher sales are made in December) and so much planning goes into ensuring everything runs smoothly during this peak period.  We’re all over the moon that we enjoyed such successful time – both in a commercial sense, and culturally too – our team enjoying their work over Christmas, not getting stressed out and having fun! If you look back at our facebook page over December, you’ll see we had lots of it!

We hope all our clients enjoyed a successful Christmas too – and that people who gave and received gift vouchers from all the lovely hotels and resorts we work were delighted with their gifts.  And we’re going to make it even easier to buy gift vouchers in the future!

We’ve embarked upon a new System Rebuild Project, which involves making improvements to our gift voucher application, as well as introducing new features and services – over the course of the next 12 months.

This will make our system more intuitive, streamlined and easy to use for our clients and their customers buying gift vouchers.

Steph (MD) has been devoting some time to sharing the Save / Spend framework with the team.  We went into implementation with this as a business at the start of our new financial year (November) and some of us are now taking the learning into a personal space, which is great.  The framework enables us to pro-actively manage our money.

Kate and Jan have been settling into new roles and tasks. Kate as head of Risk & Compliance and Jan had an overview of the Legal Function with one of the founders, Kaye and is looking forward to getting more involved in this function and helping to breathe some new life into it over the next few months.

And on a personal note:

• Kaye had a 10 minute conversation in Italian with a courier company on the phone  – a BIG milestone for someone learning Italian.
• Ben is working his way through a ‘Flexibility for Martial Arts’ book and the idea is to come up with a series of 15 minute stretching workouts.
• Catharine is looking forward to The Mighty Deerstalker (a night time off road adventure race) in March!
• Jen is heading to New York in 6 weeks and is enjoying reading guide books and planning her adventure.
• Kate has been the driving range with her fiancée (part of her personal challenge to learn to play golf). She didn’t have a great success rate at hitting the balls (mostly thin air) but Kevin is actually a good teacher and was very patient.
• Steph has been learning about Chakras and how they affect our mind/body/spirit/emotions and has started to practice Jai breathing which is helping her connect with herself and tune into her intuition.
• Jan’s hallway is now complete – and she loves it - a career in interior design beckons.
• Dani is on holiday…
• And me – I’ve just started a ‘retro’ fitness class which involves exercising with a hula hoop while dancing to Wham! Now where are my legwarmers…?  :-)