Networking my way through the NHS LDNTech Talk

Last week, we had our first of many LDNTech Talks. The topic more specifically: navigating the NHS landscape and developing key relationships. Being a student from America on a study abroad program, I had all kinds of feelings and nerves rushing through my body beforehand. Do I know enough about the NHS? How do I start a good conversation with someone I don’t know? Do I do this? Do I do that?

Long story short, the night was a huge success. We had three inspiring and knowledgeable event panelists who were able to share their journey with the rest of us; Michael Seres, Mike Buck and Sarah Haywood. We were fortunate enough to have Sarah and Mike with us in person, while Michael was video chatted into the conversation. It’s amazing how far technology has taken us in this day and age. Thank you, Skype!

Here’s a bit of insight on how our three speakers got involved with the NHS. After a struggle with Crohns’s Disease, Michael created sensor technology for ostomy patients. He is now trying to get it into the UK health system. Mike oversees BJSS engagements on behalf of the central government of the NHS. He is experienced in all kinds of IT functions and development. Last, but certainly not least, Sarah Haywood. Sarah is chief operating officer of MedCity who had an endless amount of experience and brought with her helpful insight to all guests. I can speak for everyone when I say the three panelists did an incredible job!

After hearing a few inspiring stories and a good question and answer period, it was time to network. I managed to talk with a few very interesting people and get an insight on the system as a whole, as well as personal thoughts and opinions. One thing I picked up on quite quickly – The key to success is creating and developing successful business relationships. It’s all about networking!

In regards to my previously asked questions, I’ve answered them for myself. Just go with the flow. Networking isn’t about going into an event or conversation with every word of every sentence planned out. Rather, it’s about jumping into a conversation with an open mind, letting things flow naturally.

“In today’s world, you have to interact. You can’t be some difficult, shy person who is not able to look someone in the face; you have to present yourself. You have to know how to talk about your vision, your focus, and what you believe in.” Anna Wintour

We hope to see you all at our next LDNTech Talk!

Tori Langhams

@Tlanghans

Do you get what you want?

Do you get what you want? This is possibly a very basic question and if you answer it with a yes, is that a good thing? Should we always get what we want? If the answer to that is yes, the next question should be, how do you get what you want?

A lot of people struggle with identifying what it is they want and that can be a long hard journey. Others know what they want and go out to get it. I wonder if whether you singlemindely know what you want, early on on life means you are more likely to get it. As a child, if you have a dream that you spend your early life chasing, does it make you happy, once you achieve it. As a child, do you fully understand what it means to have the high powered job: Leading great people; Great job title; good salary; All the usual benefits.

I have read quite a few articles recently where that role is actually: not impactful;  too many hours; too much stress; no time for the important things. This means that many people get stuck working through their own challenges and getting more and more involved in trying to climb out from under the pile of tasks. This prevents them from looking up and out and focussing on what is important.

Have you ever found that by talking through a particular challenge with someone you know, they provide you with a solution? We are so good at offering advice to others, but not so good at seeing where we should take it ourselves. Have you ever got yourself tied in knots over a particular challenge, only to speak to someone who solves it in 5 minutes because they have expertise in that area? Hours of pain for you, off the cuff remark for them!

Many people believe that to get what they want, they need to ignore what others want and that by ‘winning’ someone else must lose. Others think that they must help others at the expemse of themes, eves and hope that they are looked after by those they assist. Soemwhere in the middle?

You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar

If you help others achieve what the want, do you think what you want would change?

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

What do you do?

As someone who helps people to network, this question fills me with dread. People ‘do’ a lot of things. You can’t distil it down to a simple 30 second elevator pitch. So what do you say? You give a job title. Nowadays, job titles tell the questioner even less, but still they nod in recognition. Even worse, what if you don’t have a job title?

Shouldn’t the question be ‘Who are you?’

Most people answer with their name. The joy of this question is that you can ask it again with a different emphasis and they understand that you want more from them than just their name.

In my opinion this question works well because you want to find out more meaningful information about someone than what is on their business card or in their LinkedIn profile.

Being able to answer this question is also hugely powerful when meeting someone for the 1st time. As we have said before with networking, you need to put a piece of you out there and be yourself for it to enjoyable. You are essentially making friends; Some may last the conversation, others, if you are fortunate, a lot longer than that.

Making friends works best when they know you, not the job you ‘do’. This means sharing who you are. I find this part difficult. I am learning to be ‘me’. I have spent much of my career compartmentalising my ‘job self’ with my ‘personal self’, often as a protection mechanism. It has been a way to keep people at arm’s length and not allowing myself the opportunity to meet people that will challenge my views, show me new ways of doing things or allow me to learn more about the world around me (and potentially myself).

Opening myself up to all of these new opportunities is extremely enjoyable. People are amazing. When you hear their stories, you see the real person shining through, you get swept up in their enthusiasm. They are allowed to sparkle. I am not sure I have seen that when you ask people ‘What they do’. No job title is that exciting.

So now, when I am approached and someone asks me what I do, I am going to turn it around and say, don’t you want to ask who I am.

“I am Ghilaine, and I am interested in people and fascinated by why they do what they do. I am terrible at small talk so like to get into the difficult and messy conversations about, beliefs, religion and politics.”

It is easy to shoe horn that answer in to the question ‘What do you do?’ because I can answer the what I do question with that answer and it almost makes sense…..

So, who are you?

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Motivation vs Habits

As you may know from previous blogs, I like to read about how others make themselves better and get on with the important things in life. I have taken this on by pushing myself to write a blog every morning. Good or bad, every morning…..

Today, I really did not want to sit down and write. Not because the writing doesn’t tend to flow, but I didn’t feel that I had anything to write about. Because of that, I didn’t feel like I could be bothered to think about something to write about, so I thought, I would leave it for today.

What happens if I do that again tomorrow and the next day? Soon I won’t have a habit of writing every day, so writing every day will be harder and harder to motivate myself to do it. Normally, I try and write about someone and that is always easy. The people I meet are so amazing and have done so many things, it is easy to motivate myself to research and write about them. Today, I wanted to write a more thoughtful piece.

http://thisisindexed.com/2015/02/miles-miles-small-steps/

Then TaDa! I thought that writing about motivation would be a good subject. So here it is!

If you haven’t heard about or read Scott Adam’s book How to fail at everything and still win big, I would recommend that you give it a go. He is the man behind Dilbert. It talks about motivation in a way many self-help/business gurus/coaches don’t talk about. It talks about making habits and ticking things off every day. Scott himself talks about how that has made him great at what he does and he talks about how Jerry Seinfeld hones his craft in a similar way. Quick wins and being a success overnight are not the norm for most successful people. They have worked hard at their craft, learned many lessons along the way. Just because you haven’t seen them do it and they jump out in the media all a sudden doesn’t mean they haven’t spent years getting to that point.

You can read the “top 10 what successful people do in the morning”, “6 things successful people never do”, “How Mark Zuckerberg has his breakfast so that he can make millions, so you can too” articles all you like. But if you are not putting the work in, doing all that reading isn’t going to help you. What is going to motivate you to get to where you want to be. Scott Adams recommends, not goals, but plans. I have been working with that concept now for about 2.5 years and I like the way it works. I am one of those that likes to tick things of a list. Marking off the days of a calendar also works for me. I know when I missed and I know that I am not going to beat myself up if I do. But equally, each day, I get better with the habits I am creating. I have a ‘point’ I can focus on. This is my motivation. So today, when I didn’t really want to write anything, forcing myself to just get on with it, so I didn’t miss a day, caused me to write this!

I hope you find something helpful to take away to determine what habits you want to build into your life today.

Hope it is a great one!

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Dreams and Fantasies

Are you one of those people who think that fulfilling a dream is a fantasy and that you have to put your feet firmly in the real world. What is a dream? It is a goal without a time frame. Obviously the unicorn as a pet is out of the question, but all those dreams that are based around the life lived should be possible.

They are not going to magically appear, it takes time. Time to plan the way, learn the right skills and to spend meeting the right (and wrong) people alongside a lot of other things. Successful people don’t get that way overnight, whatever X-Factor may have implied. Successful people don’t get that way alone, they find the right support team and advisors.

Pip Thomas is a support team and advisor rolled into one. She works alongside people to help them find the tools they already possess to achieve their goals, freedom and sense of empowerment. This, with the commercial experience of someone who set up 3 companies, sold 2 (1 of which she runs as MD) and is on the boards of others. Currently she is busy being the MD of N-Vest and accredited NLP trainer at Edge NLP

Kate Warr, KEW Marketing, says it brilliantly:

“Pip is one of those people that seems to have super powers but doesn’t brag about it! I did a course with Pip last year and not only did she provide us with knowledge and information, she was inspiring, positive and created a great atmosphere in the room. I then found out that her training company was just one of the things she did, plus a lot more. It made me realise that if you put your mind to something, you can achieve anything. She’s an inspiration to everyone :-).”

What unites all of Pip’s business interests is her focus on engendering excellence in others. She uses her ability to understand with her extensive people development experience to help businesses and individuals achieve their goals. I read recently that the best tips she can give to people are

• Live in the moment
• Empower yourself to take control of situations
• If you believe in yourself, you can achieve anything you set out to do
• Work hard on your personal relationships

We are especially taken with the tip to work hard on your personal relationships and cannot agree more that this is important to anyone wanting to reach their goals. You can’t do it alone, find people who you can help and who can help you.

And to top it all off, I think that the live in the moment and believe in yourself tips can be distilled into a practical application that Pip uses here

She has completed a sky dive, not letting fear get in her way, she practices what she preaches!

What are you going to start working towards today?

Have fun!

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

Is collaboration always productive?

I was at a meeting hosted at co-working space where I was suddenly struck by something. For a set fee a month, you get to use the co-working space in an open plan area. Walking around there, I saw a lot of people staring fixedly at their screens with their headphones on. This didn’t strike me as terribly collaborative or productive.

Developers like to tune everyone else out to focus on the problem at hand. You need to see the code, the more spiritual might even say feel the code, though I feel that’s a bit of the usual fluffy claptrap really. It’s about getting into the zone, and making sure you stay there so that you are productive. Being in an open plan office isn’t really conducive to that. You are constantly being bothered by interruptions; by people moving past your eye line, it’s loud. Thus, you see a lot of people with their headphones on trying to concentrate; this does seem to be completely at odds with what’s intended to be a collaborative space. You aren’t collaborating and you’re not as productive as you would be in a dedicated environment.

If you truly expect your team to be productive; then you have to make the office space fit your team; not some idealised vision of what a office should be. While it might look quite cool in pictures, having bean bags in the office is never a good idea. My entire team is distributed so we all work where we need to work, sometimes that’s in the office, most of the time it’s from home and we communicate over IM and VOIP. When we all choose to be in the office, that’s when we collaborate, I don’t try and force collaboration on the team. Even so, the office area is still very sparse; we just have a couple of big whiteboards on the wall. It’s quiet to the point of silence, but we schedule regular breaks where we collectively go for coffee, and this is when we start the collaboration process; sometimes moving back into the office to use the whiteboards.

When you’re building a product, at some point talking about what the product is has to give way to actually building it. An office space that favours interruptions isn’t going to help you do the work. Sometimes being left alone is what’s needed

Here’s to a productive day

Lewin

@quotidianEnnui

Image link: http://twitpic.com/dj27dh

Are you a Role Model?

As a regular reader to our blog, you know that we take diversity and inclusion seriously. Diversity is our strength! Being Inclusive means being open and appreciative of others’ backgrounds, views and beliefs.

In many areas of working life, diversity and inclusion is an afterthought, so much so that in a lot of industries the cultural and gender mix in companies is in decline. We know from many places that diversity in companies helps the bottom line. If you reflect the mix of your customer base, you are more likely to be able to service their needs because you are more likely to know what those needs are!

Seema Bennett is a lady that is helping companies understand how to update their working practices to make them more inclusive. She is the Business Development Director at Everywoman, who champions the advancement of women. They work with companies, large and small, to help them retain and develop their female staff into senior leadership positions. They have an extensive training and development program and network that you can tap into as and when you need it.

Seema is very well placed to take up the baton. She trained as a Molecular Biologist and has spent much of her career working with and managing scientists and engineers. As many can appreciate, that has meant that she has spent much of her career as the only woman in a room full of men. She is a role model that we look to when asking young women to get more involved in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) subjects. And role models are what young women need. They need to see their likeness (whatever they determine that to be) in places that they want to go. If you feel you can be a role model, Everywoman has a program you can become part of, you can become a Modern Muse. Like Seema!

And what a role model she is.

She is a lovely lady who can put you at your ease quickly. She chats easily and has an array of great anecdotes to keep you interested and amused. But behind that friendly face, you know is steely determination. She is certainly someone I would like to have on my side when looking for advice and mentorship. A woman after our hearts at Tech Talkfest, she shares her knowledge freely and is happy to introduce you to others who can help. You can see why we think she’s great!

You will get the opportunity to meet her at the Everywoman’s Advancing in Technology Forum on 17th March.

If you want an icebreaker, you can ask her about her book, Hiking Around Beijing that she wrote with Nicky Mason and Huilin Pinnegar. I haven’t had a chance to ask her about it yet, it is on my list….

Think about what you can do to be the role model you want to be.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine