Hi everyone
It’s Harriet here, and I’m delighted to share with you my next newsletter. Thank you so much for all the positive feedback last month, I’m so glad you found the round-up useful and I’ve incorporated many of your suggestions and input in this second edition.
“When you can’t control what’s happening, challenge yourself to control the way you are responding to what’s happening. That’s where the power is.”
This powerful quote by Brene Brown inspired so many of us and, with the vortex of change ever-present, the theme of this month’s newsletter is the ‘power of you’.
The power of you, and all of us, is a critical mindset message that I have been sharing in my talks for Teens in AI and King’s Business School. (You can watch the recordings, here).
We cannot control everything right now, but we can control our attitude, responses, and our confidence, being resilient across three important areas of our lives: physicality, creativity, and purpose to improve our overall wellbeing.
You can find many resources and ideas on these key areas on my new website! Launched earlier this week, https://harrietgreen.com includes the top content I publish on social media, plus video content from talks, and much more – all curated into a central resource hub full of information and ideas for you. It’s been such a labour of love, and something I am quite proud of as I share my learning to love living life approaches with your all.
A massive thank you for masterminding this work, and leading the production team, goes to Luan Wise who has recently taken on the role of working with me as my right-hand-superstar for all things marketing, event liaison and, I’m sure you agree, a truly excellent social media content producer.
WITH PURPOSE…
As certainty, security, and our ability to plan even small activities is further eroded in this pre-Covid Vaccine state, personal resilience becomes core to surviving stress.
I found this Harvard Business Review article, 5 ways to boost your resilience at work, very interesting as I personally focus on the following main areas of this critical toolkit.
1. Cultivate more compassion
Firstly for ourselves and then for others! According to research, expressed and demonstrated compassion increases positive emotions, creates positive work relationships, and increases cooperation and collaboration.
2. Compartmentalise your cognitive load
Apparently, we receive 11 million bits of information every second, but our brain can effectively process only 40 bits! So, if we can’t reduce the amount of information we receive, we must compartmentalise doing certain tasks only at certain times, as we might with exercise – a sort of monotasking!
3. Exercise more mindfulness & get trained.
Social psychologists are finding that mindfulness predicts judgment accuracy and insight-related problem solving and the available online training can be fun and fulfilling!
The opportunity to review various projects from my career whilst putting together the website has been such fun, in particular, the talk from June 2018, introducing IBM’s Power in Progress: Advancing Women’s Leadership session in Bengaluru, India, which brought together a diverse group of inspiring women & male leaders to generate meaningful dialogue and formulate a way forward.
I remain committed to my 30-year pledge that inclusion and diversity are centrally and foundational important, and that a brighter future is based on fundamental equality.
I agree totally with Michelle Peluso, now IBM’s CMO who sponsored this fine event, ‘the combination of grace and grit defines great inclusion leadership’ and Sheryl Sandberg that ‘in the future, there will be no female leaders, there will just be leaders’. I also profoundly believe that carefully constructed algorithms can engineer bias out and future-proof the world’s software.
We all have a role to play, so I ask, how are you taking personal responsibility to support diversity and inclusion in more workforces and teams.
As lockdown rules are changing, I shared some much needed positive vibes and another recommended article from Harvard Business Review: 6 ways a crisis can help you cultivate a growth mindset
As the article summarises, there are positives to be found in any crisis, particularly when you adopt a growth mindset.
Keep asking ‘what more can I learn’, find new ways of team working and to problem solve and you will find new opportunities, I’m certain.
I am hearing so many wonderful stories of new initiatives that would not have happened if it were not for lockdown, Teens in AI – a virtual community of inspired, talented, and creative people from diverse backgrounds and countries working to change the course of this critical situation with good tech and AI is just one example.
So I encourage you to embrace the advice to be as patient as you can be, reset expectations, and revisit established practices that work to keep you focused.
This too shall pass and lets each of us take and make the best of each day – we all have the same 24 hours!
I posted a strategy salute to Michael Porter with whom I was deeply privileged to learn directly from at Harvard Business School in 2006/7. The new CEO program was a brilliant, intensive emersion into global strategy & competition, working with the very best in the world!
Best known for his theories on economics, business strategy, and social causes and now modern government… Porter is credited with creating the five forces analysis, which is instrumental as a driving force in business strategy development today.
Below are his top pieces of advice that have been totally invaluable in my career:
1. If your goal is anything but profitability – if it’s to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader – you’ll hit problems.
2. Companies have to be very schizophrenic. On one hand, maintaining continuity of strategy. But also one must be good at continuously improving.
3. The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do
4. The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.
5. Strategy 101 is about choices: You can’t be all things to all people.
6. The chief strategist of an organization has to be the leader – the CEO.
7. If all you’re trying to do is essentially the same thing as your rivals, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be successful.
I was very moved reading Ta-Nehsi Coates book, The World and Me (you can find my review, here), and his guest editor role for the September issue of Vanity Fair is just incredible.
It’s a blow-your-mind best in the world issue. It’s got punch, gravitas, style, power, and the most beautiful magazine cover ever.
It’s an absolute must-read. Here’s the link: https://lnkd.in/gADQnwQ
PHYSICALITY…
We were deeply privileged to meet Catherine Dixon and Rachael Marsden (Raz and Cat) who are the Guinness Book of Record holders for circumnavigating the globe, smashing the record this year by 18 days and achieving a stunning 263 days and 18,000 miles across our planet, on average 68 miles every day!
As amateur cyclists, clocking up thousands of miles on our own Tandem SSDM (the french manufacturer calls her the SuperSonic Divorce Machine!), we were in awe throughout dinner as we posed questions and listened intently to the answers.
These were our key take aways:
1. These women are world-class cyclists, they were before they made this journey, with precision training plans and preparation
2. They had zero support on the ground, they did everything themselves, the route, cooking, lodgings, communication, daily verification for Guinness, and their own personal medical care and well being.
3. Unbelievable resilience and total determination, they only took 3 days off on the whole trek and had just 2 days out of 263 where they didn’t feel 100%!
I have written and shared photos of my zest for international travel, exploring the world and this does not abate! I can’t wait for example to get back to our home in Thailand, immerse myself in tropical nature, cycle, spend time with my Thai friends, and enjoy the food!
Until then I think we are all more deeply exploring our own countries as tourists and so I share my very British experiences of the love I have of walking in the woods, across moors, by rivers and soaking in the amazing colours of green and brown as the leaves morph before your eyes.
The babbling brooks where we play poo-sticks and I always lose but it never matters!
The driving rain as we hike across the moors and discover a dwelling in a clearing.
The lying down next to the earth and inhaling deeply as we watch the gathering bird activity depending on the Season.
I am fortunate to enjoy these simple pleasures and would love to hear your favourite staycation story of this year.
BEING CREATIVE…
I love to maintain my creativity through reading and writing and I was so delighted to hear that so many of you share my love of The Hobbit and Roald Dahl when we celebrated their key dates in September.
Such a devotee to J.R.R. Tolkien, the smallest room in our home is even dedicated to The Hobbit!
And, as I shared on Roald Dahl Day, I believe I am such an intense reader today because I was introduced to books I loved at a very early age and my imagination and curiosity were totally unleashed thanks in part to this extraordinary man who was a spy, an ace fighter pilot, a chocolate historian, and a medical inventor.
A quote of Mr Dahl’s that really makes me think is “Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.” Although travel is somewhat limited right now, we can all be creative and think about how we can be much more fabulous again for our children et al.
Please, keep sending your insights, ideas, and great commentary. If there are any topics you would like me to cover please feedback below or send me a message.
I hope you are loving living life as much as I am!
Thank you so much, Harriet
