RFU Leaked report. Who benefits??

You have to wonder who benefits from a leaked report.
The players!! No its bad news for them.
The coaches! no!
The RFU management, yes. The leaked report firmly blames the players and coaches for the lack of success.
The leak really helps Rob Andrew out as many people been asking what he does! Why isn't he to blame.
What did Rob Andrew ever achieve as the Newcastle manager. Not a lot!!

Players will always negotiate about pay. We haven't heard both sides of the story and unlikely to now.
Yes I am sure some players are at fault but this leak doesn't help.
Will the players want to take part in a review again and give honest feedback. NO not if the RFU management use it shift the blame.

The England team and the RFU is suppose to the pinnacle of English rugby. Where as the premiership clubs are professional organisation the RFU is still run by amateurs. This does make sense. RFU management wouldn't last 5 minutes in a premiership club or any big company.

Time for a change within the very structure of the RFU. I would like the premiership clubs to create a new RFU and England team even if meant a few years of being out in the wilderness. It would long term be better for the game as the RFU is a shambles.

Hay fever strategy

At some point in my earlier thirties I developed hay fever. I suffered from itchy eyes, runny nose, sneezing and struggled to breath properly.

I treated this with the normal hay fever antihistamine tablets without much effect. Every year I will struggle from June till early August, classic grass hay fever season. The tablets had some affect but didn't completely take away the symptoms. Each year I tried all the different tablets as it seemed the ones that worked the year before didn't work the next year. However, I realised this wasn't the case. Eventually I would try a new tablet by which time I my body had adapted to the grass pollen, which was usually August time. I also realised the tablets where having an effect as when stopped would be even worse.

What I realised was I had to understand what Hay fever was and why I suddenly became affected.

Hay fever is a allergic reaction to the pollen. Your body believes its under attack from the pollen and tries to repel it. Why after 30 years would I suddenly have an issue, I don't fully understand. I believe it is due to the fact I work in an air conditioned office all day from the age of 23 onwards. About 10 years of working in a sterile environment meant my body was no longer use to the grass pollen. What triggered the hay fever was when next doors lawn got very long and seeded, plus I had only recently moved to a move rural location. I had become sensitive to grass pollen from the lack of contact and this sudden influx created the allergic reaction.

Like most hay fever suffers I have tried everything I could get my hands to try and live a normal life. Eventually I found a solution. First it is import to understand the journey and all the failed attempts.

1) Just tablets including Priton 4 times a day - Worked the first 2 years then stopped working. Made me very sleepily and had to counter act with lots of coffee.

2) Chinese herb medicine - tasted disgusting and I developed a chest infection.

3) Other hay fever tablets - occasionally worked had more effect later on in the season

4) Honey or honey bee tablets - had some effect dependent on the amount taken. about 20% effective reduction in symptoms.

5) Hay band - acupuncture band - surprisingly worked quite well. reduce effects by about 20-30% works really quickly. Only down side is in the Sun with short sleeved t-shirt and band around your elbow. People keep asking whats that?

6) Realised the itchy eyes was down to dryness caused by the hay fever and rubbing of the eyes. Put on moisture over my eyes too soak through during the day as and when felt needed. It seems to soak through the skin and keeps the eyes well moisturised and less itchy. Also seems to create barrier against the pollen. I used Vaseline. Works incredible well. I also rubbed a small amount into the inside of my nose to give the same effect.

7) Hayfever Eye drops - works great at giving moisture put in to the eyes and clearing out the pollen. This acts as a quick hit to itchy eyes where as apply moisturiser is a longer term solution.

8) Nasal spray - works well now my hay fever has lessen. When hay fever really bad this just seemed to irate my nose more.

9) Desensitisation kit - Homoeopathic treatment to get you use to the grass pollen taken over 2 years. This has worked brilliantly and has lessen my reaction to hay fever.  I haven't taken this year and the symptoms have come back again.

10) Vitamin C is a natural antihistamine. Vitamin c tablets help a bit.

11) Plenty of water to stay hydrated

In the end no one thing worked it had to a combination of solutions. Some aimed at prevention and others at reducing the symptoms.

12) Change of diet. Although wet this year and pollen lower than normal I still have bad days, or bad morning. I have discovered this is down to diet. Certain foods inflame your system and certain foods are anti-inflammatory.

Foods and drinks to avoid.
http://theconsciouslife.com/top-10-inflammatory-foods-to-avoid.htm
Alcohol (red wine is especially bad. I have been told to try organic red wine as it doesn't contain sulphates)
Diary

Good foods
http://nutrition.about.com/od/dietsformedicaldisorders/a/antiinflamfood.htm
Turmeric
Flax seeds

Prevention

Desensitisation kit has work well for me.

Honey worked okay.
Desensitisation kit was good as it has grass extract, but I looks like I need to take every year.

Reducing symptoms:
What to do.

 Easiest steps are:-


The change in diet.
 Drink plenty of water.
 Mositurise eye lids and inside nostrils

Then work out what treatments may work
Pills, sprays, eye drops.
Hayband
Desensitisation kit
Pollen tablets
 

If I review this in terms of classic strategy it has all the right points.

1) know your enemy - research and investigate

2) Try to prevent your enemies attacking capabilities. Cut supply lines. limit movement. from allies (Prevention of hay fever)

3) defend against attack. Damage limitation. Treating the symptoms of the attack.

4) The best strategy is always a multi strategy. So many different strategies used to from an over arcing strategy.

It goes to prove that good strategy theory has many applications.

Update on creating actions and following through

An update on my personal actions and creating a value tree.

Seems to be working well so far created a few events of true value through my own actions that have lead to new actions.

An advert I placed has worked and seem to have got a booking. This alone would pay for the advert so any more bookings is a bonus. Just have to work out if I would have got them anyway.

Weight loss/fitness training going well. Have introduced HIIT training (High Intensity Interval Training), lost some weight straight away then seem to put some back on. I have been told by a personal trainer this will be due to the body retaining water and glucagon following such a session and will take a few days for it to even out and drop this excess. Apparently this is your body's way of protecting itself following intense physical activity, incase it has to do it again.

Realised that some of my web sites didn't appear on the Bing or yahoo business directory's following a search on another subject. This was an accidental piece of value added from another action, but nevertheless still a valid point, I have added my web sites to both now and this may increase the chances of visitors and business. This was an easy action free of cost just time and it will hopefully bring money in. As Bing is getting more popular it is essential to make sure this search engine is also covered.

Another one of my actions was to create adapted CVs and covering letters per job I applied to in the future. This seem to be real working as had 3 interviews in the last 4 months in the previous 4 months zero interviews. I realised I would go to great lengths to sell business cases and justification in my job to my superiors, but wouldn't do the same when applying for a new job. I would just send a generic CV and cover letter in the hope they could some how pick out the potential and the good bits. As said previously thisnew adpated CV and cover letter has already lead my to a new job. Plus I had an interview last week for an even better job that was closer to home. The interview went well I did very well on the behaviour and competency questions as you image for someone into NLP. I was a bit rusty on the technical side, but tried to employ as much objection handling as possible. We shall see what happens next.

A few of my actions have lead to immediate dead ends. This isn't an issue in some cases they were just one off actions. In others they were investigation that hit a blank or no result which is good as recorded and I now know I can't create any value from these activites.

I shall carry on to see what happens next. I hope to see actions create actiosn creating value and more actions etc.

Turnaround

Some great news for me today. I recently changed jobs at the end of December and took over two teams.

The teams where failing against their SLA and KPI targets. The latest stats through show both teams now in SLA.

1 team was only 10% off and the other about 25% off target before I took them on.

Managed to turn it around by doing the simple things, getting the basics right.

1) Set a clear remit of the team and the boundaries of interactions with other teams.

2) Defined the processes of team

3) Defined the daily tasks to ensure the work got done.

4) Set reports in motion to find root cause of the issues and trend analysis. This showed us where the issues lied in the team and how to address it. Could measure the success and un wrap the layers of problems one at a time to gain constant improvements.

5) Begin to gain trust by following through on the actions and feedback.

Have turned around the teams in 3 months. I have learnt what I could have done better. Next time it will only take 2 months!!!

My lessons are chase the i.t. quicker as a full month before I had any reports which is the foundations of measuring success and finding failure.

Listen more, people had raised issues that I didn't act upon as quickly as I could have, probably lost a couple of weeks.

Integrate quicker with peer managers.

Met team quicker. Unfortunately with it being late December and the snow this one was out of my control.

Overall happy.

Lots of other improvements still in the pipeline I wonder what the next 3 months will bring.

I am BACK

I am back. I haven't posted for a long time, but have decided recently to start again.

 

What am I up to.

I have always been good at work in keeping alist of actions and ideas and following them up. I have drivena lot of benefit and value be simply following through and actioning these ideas.

 

However, I never do this in my outside work interests. I have decided to start an extra list around these outside work interests. As part of new lists I am tracking the value it creates and what it leads to. I had this idea of a tree type diagram showing how one idea creates another how the pathways of value are created. I am going to call it the "tree of value" or the "path of value". I will keep the blog update with how it works.

 

 

marmite fridge

The other day I was having some toast with marmite. I was on the way
back to put it in the cupboard when my wife happen to say the word
,"Fridge", as part of our conversation.

I walked straight past the cupboard and went to stick it into the
fridge. As I started to open the fridge I realised I was putting it in
the the wrong place.

I realised what my wife had said and the effect it had on me.

I guess it worked as a pattern interrupt as it stopped my train of
thought and put in its place the message fridge which directed my
towards the fridge.

Is this how weird things end up in your fridge and in the wrong places
in your house because through a separate train of thought or a
conversation running at the same time mis directs you to the wrong
place?

Genuine Understanding only comes from Experience

Received a great picture message this morning of my daughter building
a couple of lego towers.
Why is that great you are probably thinking? and what does it have to
do with NLP.

last weekend she wasn't really doing much with the lego, but this
weekend I spent a lot of time with her building lego towers. Mostly me
building and her adding in the odd piece. It seems to have made an
impression as today she is building her own lego towers without any
help. Why NLP? Well made me think of the NLP presupposition.

"Genuine Understanding only comes from Experience or learning is in the act"
You can read all you like, and talk to as many other people as you
like, and you can watch other people doing something on video, DVD or
film - but you don't really understand something until you personally
have done it."

This was definitely the case. The learning came from the experience of
building the towers with me.