Category: change management

5 Ways to Maximise Your Happiness

If you’re happy/satisfied/fulfilled, you’ll do your best work. So, if you want to improve your performance, work out how to increase your happiness.

This article pulls together a series of posts that provide simple ways to do that:

  1. My favourite is inspired by JK Rowling and her Harry Potter books: they have lots of powerful images of ways to develop a powerful Patronus to thwart your own Dementors: Magical Ways to Maximise Happiness.
  2. Children are the experts at happiness (before they are conditioned to worry and fear failure). As the famous philosopher said, “A person’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play”: Childish Ways to Maximise Happiness.
  3. Music is one of the most powerful influences on our emotions, and a good song is my quickest route to happiness: Musical Ways to Maximise Happiness.
  4. Sport provides us with a rich source of techniques to improve performance, and so satisfaction: Sporty Ways to Maximise Performance.
  5. And if you are really under pressure, you can use a combination of these ways to reduce your stress: Simple Ways to Minimise Stress.

Celebrating 2 Years in Business

As 2018 comes to an end – my second full year as a self-employed consultant, coach and trainer – I want to thank all of the people and organisations I have worked with.  It’s been a fascinating journey so far.  When I set out in 2016, I was hoping to:

  • Meet new challenges (tick);
  • See new countries (tick);
  • Enjoy the freedom and excitement of running my own business (tick).

My son gave me a map for Christmas where you can scratch off the countries you have visited. Here is the map showing all the fascinating countries I’ve worked in and the projects I’ve done so far.

SamWorldMap_20181228
Map from www.scratchmap.com; Conceived for Luckies by Xavier Unwin ©Luckies of London Ltd. 2013

 

Looking forward to an equally fun and challenging 2019 and to working with such lovely clients and partners as I did in 2017 and 2018.

 

 

 

The Gift to be Simple

The best expression of the key to high performance is – strange to say – in the film Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.  Sam and Donna are in a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea when Donna expresses words that provide the solution to life’s most challenging problems.

We live in a complex world. Much of what we face in our daily lives appears so difficult to understand, so complicated to explain and so hard to achieve. Yet, every day people do amazing things, often incredibly complex things.

I was recently in Morocco admiring the beautiful, exquisitely ornate and symmetrical tiles. The craftsmanship to design and then execute such a complicated pattern is impressive. Outside one palace I saw a chap producing a similar series of tableaux, as intricate as any in the finest palace, as you can see from the photo. Despite the complexity of the design, it was clearly something he found relatively easy. And that got me thinking. There must be a simple process behind the bewilderingly complex design. There must be a way to reduce that complexity to a combination of regular patterns which, once you know them, would allow generations of Moroccan tilers to produce them with ease.

So I set out to establish how the ornate pattern worked, and I broke it down into a series of geometric shapes and angles. Continue reading “The Gift to be Simple”

Launching my new business

I am pleased to announce the launch of my new business.

I provide Change Management, Leadership Training and Executive Coaching to help businesses and individuals find simple ways to maximise their performance.

Change Management is my specialism. I manage complex projects involving new technology, new ways of working or programme launches. I delivered the most ambitious training and piloting plan in BBC News history ensuring over 2,000 staff arrived in its newly redeveloped headquarters on time, on budget and with improved output.

I supply Leadership Training to help you get the best from yourself and your teams so they can thrive in a rapidly changing world.

And I provide Executive Coaching to increase your confidence, adapt your thinking and behaviour to the challenges you face, and improve your effectiveness.

Why work with Sam Whipple?

“Sam is the most reassuring person I have ever worked with.” Louisa Compton, Editor, Victoria Derbyshire Programme.

“Sam made sure the project was so smooth … without him I can confidently say it would not have been possible.” Liz Corbin, BBC Singapore Bureau Chief.

“Thanks to Sam’s utterly meticulous planning … the training and piloting plan was faultless.” Jenny Baxter, BBC Controller of Production 2009-13.

I look forward to working with you.

Sam

Simple ways to minimise stress

Photo by "impure_with_memory" on Morguefile
“Three little birds … singing sweet song” [Photo by “impure_with_memory” on Morguefile]
Every project causes stress. It’s part of the challenge. But it’s easy to become obsessed about the small details, the milestones, the timeline and forget about the people.  If your team is too stressed, they won’t perform at their best, and your project will be at risk.

Need a simple solution?  Try this one, in a message I sent to the Victoria Derbyshire programme launch team on Happiness Day 2015, two weeks before launch, with tension rising …….

20 March 2015

SUBJECT: Happy Happiness Day

I’ve seen a lot of tired faces over the last week, and heard a lot of people saying “I’m really worried about ….”, “….. has been keeping me awake at night”, “I am so stressed about ….”

These last two weeks before launch will be tough and they will be scary because there are a lot of things still to do, and some things will go wrong. And that is exactly what we want because we will be pushing the boundaries because we want to know where the boundaries are.  And this is how every programme that was ever launched has been – the last few weeks are incredibly full-on. Continue reading “Simple ways to minimise stress”