August, Zen and the Art of Long Distance Walking

August is the silly season for news and business. 50% of my marketing mailer had out of office replies. 25% had changed jobs and 25% replied. Remarkable result, thank you everyone.

Notwithstanding all the above I am preparing for a series of assignment briefings this week that I am expecting to start in the next week or so.

Marketing results over the past few months have been a bit rollercoaster. A point of view exemplified in a Skillfair Blog I read recently. Many of my contacts, collaborators and colleagues have been going through the same pains. As August and a birthday approached I thought a good idea would be to take a week off and do some walking. I reasoned that this would give me a chance to do some planning and take a fresh look at what I have been doing.

I live within a couple of miles of both the North Downs Way which starts at Farnham and heads East to Canterbury and the South Downs Way, which starts at Winchester and heads sort of South East to Eastbourne.

I thought that Eastbourne looked like a good starting walk and decided on the SDW. I loaded a rucksack with tent, sleeping bag, Camelbak, waterproof and spare clothing, bought a guide book and hit the trail at Queen Elizabeth Country Park.

My pack weighed in at about 20lbs, which I thought would be plenty. I didn’t pack a stove as I was expecting to eat at the pubs, cafes and tea rooms that would be within a few minutes walk of the route. 

I hadn’t realised just how remote these paths are. In the four days I was walking I saw less than half a dozen people each day. Eating at pubs like the Black Horse in Amberley and the post office in Graffam was fine, although I was really missing a decent cup of tea by the end of the week. It rained pretty heavily over the four days and when you’re wet, a short two mile walk to the shop, down a slippery chalk path that thinks it’s a river can be an interesting experience. As the Scandinavians say. “there is no such thing as bad weather, just poor equipment”, so now I’ve now invested in a small stove and a pair of boots that don’t induce blisters. The next trip will be a lot more comfortable.

We live in the middle of a farm estate and get to see plenty of wildlife as a result, nest of slow worms in the compost anyone? But being outside all the time really brought nature up close, Stonechats, Hares, Skylarks and Owls to name a few. Wood Pigeons have a really irritating call first thing in the morning.

Notwithstanding, as this was supposed to be a thinking trip. This is what I decided to do as a result.

1/ Decide what are my main areas of focus?

Consulting
Providing independent external help and support across a range of business issues including business project management, strategy and goal setting and process development.
Business Coaching
Working with managers and leaders as an objective outsider to help craft effective strategies, understand the competition and generate more revenue.
Interim Management
For those longer term assignments where an organisation needs an overqualified resource to run a project or get involved in fixing a specific business issue.

2/ How to reach the businesses most likely to use my skills.

Increase my use of social networking:

Twitter

I signed up for Nikki Pilkington’s TweetMentor, this is an incredibly useful email training program. What to Tweet, when to tweet and how to tweet. Follow me on Twitter.

LinkedIn

I have been using this for a while, but now I have signed up properly and I am following a structured program. Take a look at my profile. This is a far more professionally focussed site than Ecademy and has yielded real results in a very short space of time.

Constant Contact

My office had piles of business cards liberally sprinkled everywhere. The thought of typing all the details into any sort of contact system filled me with dread. Instead I bought a copy of CardIris, which scans the cards on a flatbed scanner and uses OCR to copy the contact details into a spreadsheet.  I signed up for Constant Contact and emailed all of my contacts. This has yielded very encouraging results, and also put me back in touch with some very interesting people. I had a long conversation on Skype with a project leader based in Tunis as a result. While we are sitting in the rain at 17C he was sitting in an office at 41C. If you want to sign up to the new newsletter I am producing, you can do it here.

Choose Appropriate Networking Events

I am now primarily going to attend AMBA, Top Interim and  key county COC events.

So far this seems to be working.

I found being on my own for four days a really enjoyable experience. Walking that sort of distance focussed me on the important things and renewed my energy levels in a way that exercising in the gym doesn’t really manage.

I’m now searching for a lighter tent and sleeping bag, so I can get below 20lbs and let my feet enjoy the experience as much as the rest of me has.

If you have a similar experience I’d love to hear from you.

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