Category Archives: Purpose

2020 – The fork in the road: make it count

In 2004 actor Ewen McGregor and TV presenter Charlie Boorman created a tv series called Long Way Round, where they rode motorbikes from London to New York, covering more than 31,000 kilometres in the process.

Half-way through the trip, they were in Mongolia. Riding conditions had become extremely difficult and one of their support vehicles was involved in a serious crash where, thankfully, the crew only sustained minor injuries. They had a decision to make. Do we turn left and escape Mongolia for better roads in Russia, or do we proceed as planned? They literally faced a fork in the road and made a decision that would change Ewen McGregor’s life, forever.

Continue reading 2020 – The fork in the road: make it count

Purpose and School Financial Viability

The recent spate of independent school closures and/or going into voluntary administration concerns me. It concerns me that these schools have managed their way into such a financial mess, but I am even more concerned about the knee-jerk reaction that may be caused by such poor administration.

Schools are not and never will be businesses. I’ll say that again. Schools are not and never will be businesses. The purpose of a business is to serve its clients and stakeholders and to make a profit. The purpose of a school is to educate and to provide a sense of community and belonging and while doing so, be financially astute and responsible.

There is a huge difference between running a school so that it fulfills its purpose to educate, than to run a school for the purpose of being financially viable or profitable. 

One of my Executive Coaching clients is a school principal who has been doing a magnificent job in taking his school from being good to outstanding. His school’s recent review, coupled with a standing ovation that he received at a speech he gave to 200 of his peers as he spoke from the heart about his journey over the past 2 1/2 years at a recent conference, are indicators of the success of his journey.

He is absolutely passionate that the school he serves exists for the education of its students. The school does not exist to make money. Yet he uses business and financial management principles as tools to help him deliver on the purpose of his school – to educate its students and to provide them with a sense of community and belonging.

His understanding of how the system within which he operates from a financial perspective works is second to none. He uses that knowledge to ensure that the financial management of the school serves the purpose of the school.

In this context, understanding why the school exists is paramount to ensuring that financial management practices serve the purpose of the school, and ensure that the cart doesn’t come before the horse. Schools do not exist to make money. This doesn’t mean that they can’t make money, but if making money becomes the purpose for the school, then education will suffer. Purpose is really that powerful.

The recent school closures are indicators that something has gone terribly wrong. School leaders need to have a strong understanding of finance and need to use that understanding for the benefit of schools. A closed school doesn’t serve any purpose.

In closing I encourage better fiscal management of schools. But I urge those of influence to ensure that the school’s finances don’t become the focus and the reason the school exists, else our children will ultimately suffer.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

The Challenge of Multiple Purposes For Management Team Members

Recently, when talking with a client it became evident that when in Management Team meetings he was first a representative of his department, rather than first seeing himself as a leader of the whole organisation. Below is the dialogue from that conversation.

GR: “How do you believe the other members of the Management Team view their roles?”

Client: “Based on their behaviour, I’m one hundred percent confident that they would have the same perspective as me. None of them would see themselves as leaders of the company first.”

GR: “When there is a problem that exists within the business, how is that problem approached from a Management Team perspective?”.

Client: “Well if there was a problem with my area, for example, I would be asked what I was doing about fixing the problem.”

GR: “What if you didn’t know what to do?”

Client: “I’d have to work it out, or at least that would be the perspective that I would take.”

GR: “Being brutally honest, if your colleagues continued to question you about the problem but you didn’t have an answer, what would happen to your level of defensiveness?”

Client: “Oh, that’s easy. It would go through the roof!”

Gary Ryan, Organisations That Matter, Yes For Success, leaders, leadershipThis conversation highlights a dynamic that exists in far too many Management Teams. The team members see themselves and their colleagues as representatives of departments, not as leaders of the whole organisation first.

Such a view can lead to the following behaviours that can hinder an organisation from achieving high performance:

  • When problems arise they are to be solved from within the area from within which the problem arose
  • Team members wait for their turn to speak to the issues that relate to their department
  • Team members do not actively participate in attempting to solve problems that arise from departments that are external to their own
  • Avoidance of discussing issues that might reflect negatively on the performance of the managers themselves

Senior Managers need to be able to work from the perspective of dual purposes at the same time. While they are responsible for their department they are also responsible for the whole of the organisation as well, including the departments of which they are not directly responsible.

When Senior Managers are able to do this then they are able to genuinely inquire into and offer suggestions for problems that arise from departments outside of their own. In fact, they wouldn’t even see the problem as being, “…out of their area”. Rather, they would understand that due to the interactions and interdependence between departments that they would have an equal level of responsibility with their Management Team colleagues to solve these types of problems together.

This is not to say that Senior Management should abdicate responsibility for the problems within their own departments. Of course they need to be doing everything they can to solve them. At times, however, the problems will be of a type that require the assistance of their fellow Senior Team members if the problems are to be solved and/or effectively managed.

As Russell Ackoff used to say, it is not the efficiencies of the parts of a system that lead to high performance, rather it is the quality of the interactions between the parts of the system that matter the most. At a Management Team level this means that problems need to be addressed by the team as a whole, rather than being pushed back to being solved at the department level from which the problem was believed to have originated. The issue with the second approach is that just beacause a problem appears to have originated from a particular department, doesn’t mean that it actually originated from that department.

What capability does your Manatement Team have to manage the challenge of multiple purposes?

Are problems at the Management Team level in your business addressed as team problems, or are they addressed as problems for the respective departmental managers to solve?

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to Move Beyond Being Good.
View a TedX Talk by Gary here.

Making a difference – Four extraordinary women and the power of purpose

What’s the acronym for ‘make a difference’?

M.A.D.

That’s exactly what scores of people said to Michelle, Nicky, Maureen and Jan when they told people they were going to do the 100km Oxfam Trailwalker event in Melbourne, Australia to raise much needed funds for the important work that Oxfam does around the globe.

At the time of posting this article Team Make a Difference (M.A.D.)  had raised over $11,000 – a remarkable effort in a time when raising money has become very difficult due to challenging economic circumstances for many people.

It is important to recognise differencemakers because they set the example for how ‘ordinary’ can become ‘extraordinary’. In this case I think it is fair to say that our four differencemakers above were already extraordinary before the event, but having finished the walk they are even more extraordinary than ever.

When I talk about extraordinary let’s look at some highlights from each of our differencemakers.

Michelle, my wife is the mother of five children ranging from 12 years old to 20 months old. Need I say more!

Nicky is equally as extraordinary being a mother of three young boys ranging from seven through to 23 months old.

Jan is a mother of a five year old and someone who has saved countless wildlife from death in her role as a wildlife volunteer, personally caring for injured and sick wildlife until they recover and are able to be returned to their habitats.

Maureen is the veteran of the group being 60 years old and this year completed her third Oxfam Trailwalker – completing one is an extraordinary effort let alone having now completed three!

What is also wonderful about this story is that Michelle, Jan, Maureen and Nicky are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to extra-ordinary people. The sea of support led by Harry Lowe was something to behold.  Each person volunteered one of the greatest gifts that anyone can give another person, cause or both: their time!

In this context I believe that it is important to recognise each person because, quite simply, Team Make a Difference could not have raised their funds nor finished the walk without the support of their team.

I understand that you see lists of names all the time. However I urge you to look at each name and recognise that there is a human being behind that name – a human being that subscribed to a purpose bigger than themselves and in the small and large ways contributed to making a positive difference.

From left: Jan, Nicky, Maureen and Michelle

Team Make a Difference support crew
Harry Lowe, Christine Sellar, Loreto Ryan, Heather Cecil, Mark Cecil, Merrell Harris, Julie Davenport, Liam Ryan, Sienna Ryan, Callum Ryan, Aiden Ryan, Darcy Ryan, Jonathan McKeown, Anthony McKeown, Hugh Mckeown, James McKeown, Karen Lowe, Lehela Manoel, Mark Mattrow, Gemma Mattrow, Evelyn Devitt, Rosey Cullinan, Geri Burns and Mark Burns.

Support crew celebrate finishing the event with the girls!

In addition to these special people recognition must also go to everyone who donated to Oxfam, attended the fundraising event and/or simply spread the word about what was happening.

I have been involved in the Oxfam Trailwalker event before, but this time was extra special. Without a doubt the bigger picture that Team Make a Difference was striving to support was truly engaged by all team members and their support crew. While simple in words the purpose of making a positive difference for the less fortunate in the world through participating in the Oxfam Trailwalker event proved itself to be extaordinarily powerful.

And shared purpose is extremely powerful.

Originally the team had aimed to raise $5,000 but this total was surpassed by a single fundraising event that itself raised $6,300.

Jan, Maureen, Nicky and Michelle thank you for being extraordinary and in being so enabled so many more of us to be extraordinary too.

Donations are still open so please feel free to donate to Oxfam here.

Gary Ryan helps Senior and Developing Leaders achieve high performance through enabling their people to shine.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Being told “You’re crazy!” is a good thing!

Have you ever been told that you are crazy for doing what you are doing?

I have. Plenty of times. In fact I’ve had it said to me so many times now I see it as a good thing!

I recall when I first decided to enrol in a post-graduate university program as a part time student, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

When I decided to become the senior coach of a local football team, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

When I decided to study part time at the masters level at university, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

When I decided to form my own business with my business partner, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

When I decided to run my first marathon, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

When I decided to write my first book, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

When I decided to write an ebook and give it away for free, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

When Michelle and I announced that we had our fifth child on the way, people said, “You’re definitely crazy!!”.

When I decided to run a marathon four weeks after having had my appendix removed, yes, you got it, people said, “You’re crazy!”.

This list could go on and on. But it wouldn’t be fair to keep going because I think you understand the message.

I don’t know why people say that you are crazy when you tell them that you are doing something that they can’t see themselves doing, even if they really wanted to do it.

I do know that I have enough evidence to see that statement as a positive. In fact, if people weren’t telling me that I’m crazy then I suspect that I wouldn’t be striving hard enough to create the life that I desire.

You see the only reason that I have done all of the things listed above is that each of those little achievements contribute to me living the life that I desire.

As a simple example the reason why I run marathons is so that I can be healthy and fit for my family. Also I am so busy that if I did not have something as big as a marathon to train for, I might not do any training. It is the very fact that a marathon is what it is that makes me prioritise the time to train. But again my real reason is even bigger than that. I want to be an example of health and fitness for my children, so that I can physically do whatever I want to do with and/or for them.

My eldest son plays both Under 10 and Under 11 Australian Rules Football for our local club. Recently the umpire did not arrive for the start of the U11 game. Fathers were approached to pick up the whistle. They declined. “I can’t do it, I’m not fit enough.” is what I heard them say. I even overheard one father say, “Someone else will do it”.

I raised my hand. “I’ll do it.”

The simple mathematics of the situation was that if someone did not step up to umpire, the game would not happen and the children, including my son, would miss out on a game of football. That’s not an outcome that I want.

I knew that I was fit enough to do it and I also felt confident enough that I knew enough rules to do a reasonable job.

After the game my son thanked me as did many of the other children and their parents. Again, many of them said, “Thankfully you raised your hand because I could never have done that. I’m not fit enough.”

For me, for as much as I can control I never want the statement, “I couldn’t do that because I ‘m not fit enough” to come out of my mouth and stop me from helping out my children. Michelle and I also talk a lot with our children about the importance of showing initiative. Well, I can’t just talk about it, I have to show it too!

I never got up that morning expecting to umpire a game of football. Wearing a shirt, jumper and jeans I was clearly not dressed to umpire. But I didn’t let that stop me either. Who cares if people laughed at how I was dressed or looked or if they thought I was crazy! The important thing was that I was out there having a crack and helping the boys have a game of football.

I can’t even begin to tell you the benefits of having completed each of my post-graduate degrees. Once again  the important outcome has been that I have been able to live more of the life that I (and my family) desire.

I’m not sharing this story because I want accolades. Rather I am sharing it because it is an example of the benefit of taking the time to work on my health and fitness. You never know when opportunities like the one I have described above can pop up, and personally I want to be able to seize them. It is part of the future that I desire and an example of living out my purpose for being healthy and fit.

So, what are your examples of when people have told you that you are crazy?

What have been the benefits of not listening to those people?

Please share your examples with us.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Plan for personal success

Do you plan for personal success, or do you make half serious New Year resolutions, only to forget them three weeks into the New Year? This time of the year is always very interesting when speaking with people who have made New Year resolutions. Many have either not taken any action regarding their resolution, or have already started to ‘drop off’ their activity. Does this sound familiar to you?

There are a number of important reasons why New Year resolutions tend not to work.

1. Clarity of purpose for the resolution is missing
2. The timeframe for the resolution is too short
3. There is a disconnection between how a person’s resolution is to be achieved and its impact upon the rest of their life.

Let’s consider a typical New Year resolution. “This year I will get fit!” Gym owners love this resolution because it drives a lot of people through their doors. They sign up, pay their money, come along for the first couple of weeks and then…disappear! Yet they keep paying for their membership!

1. The clarity of purpose of the resolution is missing
My first career involved managing fitness centres so i used to see this example all the time. Getting fit is a terrific goal and I highly recommend and encourage people to become fitter. However, what happens when you ‘get fit’? What then? In other words, what is the purpose of getting fit in the first place? Many people respond to this question by saying, “To lose a few kilos”.

Losing a few kilos is a goal, not a purpose. A purpose is supported by goals. So instead of having a purpose to lose a few kilos, a different purpose may be to increase your health and capacity to be active so that you can physically do whatever you want, both now and into the future. For example, maybe you would really love to be able to go hiking, maybe even on an adventurous hike like the Kokoda Trail one day. Deep down you may really like to be able to achieve such a goal, but then you look in the mirror and say to yourself, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m too unfit and old. It’s beyond me.” How sad! I mean it, statements like this are sad, they really are. Why live a life where there are things that you know that you really would like to achieve, but then not achieve them because of your current situation. So many people do this! They let their current situation stop them from doing what they really want to be doing. Clarify what you want, be honest about your current situation, but then create plans and take action to take you toward what you want. Personal planning for success helps to solve this problem.

Hiking the Kokoda Trail is a Big Goal. Big Goals, when supporting our purpose are fantastic because they usually involve long time frames. It took me two years of training before I ran my first marathon and, at the point in time when I made the decision to run my first one I had never run further than 10 kilometres. For 18 months, each time I went out to run a little voice in my head said, “What are you doing Gary? This is crazy. Your body hurts. Your muscles keep tearing. Your back hurts. You don’t even like running!”

Fortunately I had a greater purpose that kept driving me to go out each time. I wanted to be fit and healthy so that I could be a good example to my children and be able to play games with them. As you can see, having a purpose does not have to be rocket science! But having a purpose is powerful. It is so powerful that before I ran my first marathon, I had already booked in my next marathon. I didn’t want to stop what I was doing just because I had achieved my goal. Goals must support a purpose which therefore means that you must always have a goal that you are trying to achieve, but that goal will always be about ‘serving’ your higher purpose. Personally I have created a structure where I have to identify and book my next marathon no later than the day before the marathon that I am about to run. This ensures that I continue to have a goal to work towards that will enable me to live my purpose.

2. The timeframe for the resolution is too short
Often people don’t realise the real time frame for the achievement of their resolutions. If you haven’t been fit for a long time, getting fit is going to take three to six months. Immediate results will be noticed in the first few weeks of training but depending on your starting point, significant results can take quite a lot of time. When I used to manage fitness centre I used to encourage people not to train every day. Yes that’s right. I used to encourage people not to train! I had noticed people coming in wanting to get fit early in the New Year. They would be on holidays from work and would come every day. It was great. As soon as they went back to work, what do you think happened? They stopped coming in to the gym. All of a sudden they were too tired to come in before or after work everyday. This gym stuff simply had become too hard. But a lot of that had to do with their thinking. They hadn’t realised that they had been setting themselves up to fail by not structuring their training in the context of how they would be able to sustain it when they went back to work. Usually they weren’t clear about their purpose for training either which also made it easier to stop once a ‘roadblock’ got in their way. In this case the ‘roadblock’ was work..

3. There is a disconnection between how a person’s resolution is to be achieved and the rest of their life
The gym example above highlights this issue. Training five days a week when you are on holidays is great and achievable. Doing it when you have a very busy job plus family commitments suddenly becomes a lot more difficult. When creating New Year resolutions, many people forget to consider a range of strategies that could enable them to achieve their goal and support their purpose. There are many ways to get fit, to increase your health and to lose a few kilos. Another issue to consider is the goal in the first place. Maybe losing weight is an incorrect goal to have. Maybe establishing a healthy weight (as advised by a doctor) in the context of appropriate lean (muscle) body weight is more appropriate. Many people don’t realise that muscle weighs more (per kilogram) than fat. If you haven’t trained for some time it is possible that your lean body weight is lower than it should be. Exercise may increase your lean body weight, decrease your fat body weight, your measurements (where they matter!) might have significantly improved but you may have gained weight, or not lost very much.

When trying to achieve a healthy weight many people forget to consider how their health and fitness will affect the rest of their life. What are they going to stop doing to make time available to start doing what they should be doing? It could be as simple as “I’m going to stop watching television as much as I do, and I’m going to go to bed one hour earlier so that I can wake up one hour earlier to allow me to go for a walk/run/swim/ride/gym session”, or whatever it is that works for you.

The positive effects of increasing your health can be enormous. Sleep can be improved which then provides more energy for work, family, study etc. Being healthier results in people people having more energy that enhances clarity of thought and performance at work. Who wouldn’t want that? In Australia, increasing your health and fitness will also decrease your risk of heart disease, a condition that kills 128 Australian everyday! Very quickly living the purpose for becoming more healthy and fit can have a positive effect on all other aspects of your life!

Planning for personal success
So how do you ensure that your New Year resolutions are achieved? Planning for personal success is the solution. In its most simple form, planning for personal success requires the following seven elements.

1. Identifying what you want to achieve
What do you want to achieve? Don’t limit yourself to just this year, think of the things that you’d like to achieve at any stage in your life.

2. Understanding vision, strategy, goals and action
As I have outlined above, clarity of purpose is critical for personal success. Purpose is a part of vision which is not only about achieving what you want, but also includes how you behave while you are achieving what you want. Strategies are your high level plans about how you will move from your current reality toward your desired future, and your actions are the things that you actually have to do now in order to successfully achieve your strategies.

3. Identify your vision
This is more than just identifying what you want to achieve. It is about identifying how you want to live while you are travelling your journey toward your vision. It also involves understanding why you want what you want. Often the process of clarifying their vision results in people becoming clearer about what they really want, so much so that they change the achievements they identified in element 1 above. This is a positive aspect of personal planning for success.

4. Assess your current reality
Whenever we wish to go somewhere, we must always clarify our starting position. Being honest about our current reality in the context of our vision is critical if we are to have any chance of establishing effective strategies that will take us from where we are to where we want to be.

5. Develop strategies
Once the structure of your vision and current reality is established, it is amazing how you can begin to see what needs to be done to enable your current reality to move toward your desired future or vision.

6. Clarify your actions
Ultimately taking action is what brings your vision into reality. Strategies have to be broken down into clear time chunks so that your immediate and short term actions are clear. Once identified, place your actions into your calendar and commence doing them!

7. Review
The world is constantly changing. In addition, most people find that once they commence the personal planning journey, their clarity about their vision becomes more and more clear. Don’t be surprised if this happens to you. Reviewing your plan is critical to ensure that you really do create the future that you desire.

A new Planning for Personal Success email program to get you started
In the next few weeks Organisations That Matter will be launching a new seven week program for those of you who would like to complete an Introductory Personal Plan for Success. Each week you will receive an email which explains a key Personal Planning for Success Concept and then sets out a number of activities for you to complete. At the end of the program you will have developed your first Personal Plan for Success. If you are interested in this program and would like to learn more about the details and costs of the program, please express your interest to me via email at Gary.Ryan@orgsthatmatter.com .

Please feel free to ask questions and to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Learn About The Relationship Between Purpose and Goals

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“We have Happy Feet starting this week.”, said my seven year old daughter as we sat down for dinner.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a program at school where we see how many laps of the track around the school that we can complete. It goes for two weeks.”

“What part of the school day will you get to participate in this program?” I asked.

“It starts this Thursday and we’ll do it at morning playtime.”

“So you don’t have to do it?”

“No, I want to and I’m going to do it every day. I want to run like you. It’s good for my health and fitness.”

This conversation took place the night after I had completed the Melbourne Marathon. I can’t explain how happy I felt to hear my daughter spontaneously start this conversation. In all honesty, a spontaneous conversation like this one makes me feel even happier than when I complete a marathon (and believe me, I usually feel pretty happy when I get to the finish line!).

My life is so busy and hectic that if I didn’t have goals like completing a minimum of two marathons per year, it is quite likely that I might not do any exercise at all. One of my life’s purposes, however, is to set a good example to my four children about health and fitness. Completing two marathons per year is a concrete goal that I set myself that enable me to live that purpose. A conversation like the one described above provides clear evidence to me that my purpose is working. Over time, examples like this provide more and more motivation for me to continue to ‘live my purpose’.

In the Integrated Personal Planning programs that we provide many participants are very good at identifying goals for themselves. However many people are not clear about the higher purpose to which their goals relate. For example, many people may have a health and fitness goal to lose a certain number of kilograms. For this example, let’s say five kilograms. Unless they relate this goal to a higher purpose these people are at considerable risk of achieving their goal, but then slipping back into the bad habits that caused them to be overweight in the first place. The result; within a very short timeframe they put the five kilograms (and often more) back on. This is a familiar story for many, many people.

Clarity about your purpose may mean that more than one goal is created to help you to ‘live’ your purpose. If your goal is to lose five kilograms, maybe your purpose might be to live a healthy and more balanced lifestyle so that you can physically do want you want to do. For example, you may have one goal to lose five kilograms, and another goal to maintain your weight for five years after you have achieved your first goal, and another again to complete one holiday per year that involves some hiking. All these goals would work together to assist you to ‘live’ your purpose.

Linking goals to your purpose reduces the risk of oscillating between success and failure as it relates to your goals. Another function of having a clear purpose is that it enables you to continue to set new goals as you near the achievement of your current ones. For example, I always ensure that I know the next marathon that I will be doing after I complete the current one that I am booked in to run. This ensures that when I finish my current marathon (and achieve a goal) that I don’t fall into the trap of saying to myself, “Oh, I’ll get back into training when I work out what marathon I’ll do next.” Six, twelve, 24 months etc. could easily ‘fly by’ and before I knew it I would have stopped living my purpose and become unhealthy. Maintaining tension with ongoing goals as they relate to your purpose can be very, very powerful!

It is important that I note that I am not advocating that you all go out and start running marathons. That’s just what works for me. In fact health and fitness goals are relative to your current situation, so it may in fact be a bigger achievement for many of you to run/walk five kilometres than it is for me to run 42kms. Maybe swimming is your thing, or maybe it is averaging a certain number of exercise to music classes per week over a 6 month period. Having goals is what is important, and relating them to a higher level reason for doing them (i.e. your purpose) is even more powerful.

Many people also get stuck with regard to working out their purpose as it relates to their goals. Purpose is not unique. Is my purpose to set a good example of being healthy and fit to my four children (as well as being healthy and fit to be able to do whatever it is I physically want to be able to do in my life) particularly unique? No, it isn’t. Is my goal to run a minimum of two marathons per year also unique? No it isn’t. What IS unique is how I bring those goals into reality. The way I train and the marathons in which I choose to compete are unique to me. What is also unique is how living my purpose and achieving my goals contributes to me creating the future that I desire (see The Power of Personal Vision by Andrew O’Brien for more information).

My challenge to you is to identify the goals that you are currently striving to achieve and then articulating to yourself what higher purpose those goals are serving. The following three questions can be helpful in helping you to work out your purpose:

1) Why is this goal important to me?
2) What are the benefits of achieving this goal?
3) How does achieving this goal relate to the future that I want to create for myself?

Please feel free to share your thoughts with our learning community because the more examples that we have that highlight the relationship between purpose and goals, the more other members of our community will be able to work out the relationship between their goals and their purpose for themselves.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com