Rogue Trading – Careers built on gambling

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There’s a reason why the gaming industry often has contractual terms preventing their staff from holding an account or betting in their own shops. When people work in betting shops, online gambling and tracks , frankly the temptation to bet on anything and everything that pops onto your radar during a working day is too great. So, generally,they go and have a flutter in the betting shop down the road at lunchtime instead. Most of the time, they can’t help it you see.

They love taking risks. They thrive on the thrill of the potential win. The idea of losing pops up of course, but it soon pops off as the unconscious mind tells itself. “It’s only a tenner” , then “it’s only a twenty”. Then there are those who know what they’re doing but can’t stop because they’ve got themselves into so much hot water that they feel they have to keep going because the next bet will get them back on track (excuse the pun).

The Banking industry is not very different. It’s a risk and reward business.   In the gambling industry people setting the odds really know their sport, their news, the probability of anything in fact. The odds reflect the likelihood of an event happening and this changes as events unfold. The value of the odds on offer reflect that. Profit is made by assessing risk and reward in favour of the gambling organisation.

In the banking world, traders effectively influence prices by trading. They are recruited based on their ability to asses risk and reward really fast and well. They aim to buy low and sell high and in making trades daily they influence the market. Specialist traders really do their research. They know their markets and the products they trade in. They understand how currency fluctuations can affect stock minute by second. It goes wrong when they lose their wining streak. When they’ve made a mistake in the likely balance of risk-reward. When, they’ve taken a gamble with the firm’s money. When this happens, the temptation is to find a missing tenner or a twenty ( normally with a few noughts on the end)  The trading world is unforgiving. It has to be, because they’re playing with other people’s money. If you lose your mojo well you will quickly find your no longer drinking mojitos and eating caviar canapes. You’ll be down the dog and duck nursing half a lager with a packet of salted nuts. (no pun intended)

I’ve coached and consulted in both of these sectors, so before you start writing comments about how it’s not really like that, this is a naive representation of how the world works in these areas and the like, read it again. I’ve taken the explanation down to the simplest level deliberately.

Many people in both of these sectors are good at what they do most of the time BECAUSE they’re good at taking risks and they like to see the rewards from those risks in their salary and bonus. If you were the VP in a gambling or banking organisation you would really want these people on your team. You would actively look for the risk-reward psychology.

There is a single but important difference between these two areas of activity. Gambling in the UK is regulated to the hilt both for consumers and for the way the organisations handle their activity in real time. If they get the odds wrong and there’s a run on the betting receipts, the company pays out and investors make a loss. On the other hand, if a UK based bank runs out of money, its investors make a loss and the taxpayer pays up too. Time for a bit of banking reform to separate out retail and investment banking anyone ?

Yes Kweku Adeboli has done a terrible thing.  However, he has gained some sympathy in my book by owning up to his own actions. To me, that’s worth a lot.Being willing to take responsibility for his actions knowing the consequences of owning up holds a modicum of integrity for me.

The sooner we realise that some careers are based on gambling and stop being shocked when a risk taker takes a risk too far and tries to cover it up, the easier it will be to regulate trading.

We need to wake up and grow up.

Marie x

 

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Welsh miners- Some careers are dangerous these days

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I’ve been keeping in touch with the tragedy unfolding in South Wales where three of the four miners have now been reported deceased. An absolute  tragedy for their families and for the community. Mining areas are strong communities and whatever the outcome of all of this, the people will , with support get through it.

I am struck by how we forget so easily that what seem like ordinary jobs are dangerous jobs. When I was growing up in Yorkshire we had lots of mining communities in the county and my uncle was a miner.It’s a  dangerous and sometimes frightening role requiring lots of skill to work several feet underground.It’s dark and wet and there’s a risk of the walls collapsing around you. We used to know it was dangerous, because from time to time there would be a death and it would be reported on the news. I know the legacy that being a miner can have ; my uncle has a myriad of chest complaints and will not go out in the dark. The dark is too reminiscent of being trapped.

Nowadays we don’t hear much about miners and mining. I expect your average 10 year old has no idea what a mine looks like or the dangers of working in one. Wherever there are people doing dangerous jobs , there are often other dangerous jobs to be done around them. So for the last 20 hours or so there have been divers, fire officers and cave rescue workers in South Wales looking to find the four who have been missing. Hero workers who do great work and who,  in my experience, are always hopeful of a miracle. Let’s hope we get one in the next few hours.

Marie x

 

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Embrace your Inner Geek

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I had a moment of enlightenment when I was mentoring at my old Alma mater in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago. I realised I am a geek. Keep reading-This is an unusually self promoting, self interested post from me….. Keep reading..

I’m not a technical geek but a mind geek……”How do you  know?” I hear you ask and “Where’s your evidence smart butt?”

Well, truth is, I  make sense of information and ideas really fast. (I apparently have an unusually  high verbal reasoning ability). I think and process ideas and thoughts so quickly sometimes I forget I even had the thought at all. My head often sorts things like Harry Potter’s sorting hat with a turbo engine.I literally sort information through a filter that says “useful-keep it, not useful-get rid of it”. I do this in a nanosecond sometimes. When I am working with teams, I will distill something  and reflect it back so fast sometimes that they think I have had access to some internal document beforehand when I haven’t. ( I like to keep them on their toes otherwise what’s the point of being there?)

My entry GMAT ( the reasoning tests you take for the MBA) score for verbal reasoning was off scale apparentl. Particularly  for someone who had never seen a practice paper or been to the 6-week course on passing the exam.( How and why on earth do thousands of people do that? You either can do reasoning or you can’t-right? I know you can improve your score on  a psychometric,  but honestly- why? If you have to cram for an exam then life will be difficult on the masters will it not?)

Don’t ask about my numerical reasoning- it doesn’t add up for someone who studied at Cambridge University. Great at mental maths but ask me to reason with mathematical formulae or mathematical sequence and you might as well be speaking Ancient Greek to this Geek.

 I don’t know about you, but I love being around people with disproportionately genius brains . I love the energy, the ideas, the passion and the sometimes the ridiculousness of the thoughts and beliefs that come out of the head of a logical brain box. I like coaching geeks for that reason too. I’ve seen more than one techno geek look at me like I am Medusa and make a sort of scooby doo sound when they think beyond their logical heads and discover their beliefs of limitation about themselves. Rather like Edison discovering he could actually make a  light bulb and it would in fact, glow in the dark.

I once coached a 28 year old guy who had had just one girlfriend and lacked confidence because he was geeky and believed all geeks were ugly. He looked like Matt Damon. Who knew? He didn’t ! He didn’t even know who Matt Damon was! He had spent most of his adult life in a library or a lab and felt women didn’t like him because more often than not the girls looked away when he looked at them. Doh! Girls all around the LSE must have been hanging out waiting for him to notice them and blushing in corners. I’m pleased to report he is happily ensconced with a woman who is a delightful geek too.They have even produced a little geekette.  

I really enjoy listening to people who talk about things I know nothing about.I enjoy asking really obvious questions that get them thinking about how to explain their ideas in words that the average mortal like me can understand. (Black holes, Astrophysics, quantum theory, volcano logy, semiconductors, chips, cell lines and the like). I like geek talk.

 In embracing my inner geek, I did what any right thinking,  woo woo  geek would do, checked the definitions. I fit most of the definitions for Geek such as..

 A person obsessed with intellectual pursuits for their own sake. I am. I can get obsessed by an idea, a piece of art or a book. I will debate an idea with someone for no reason at all except to have the discussion and really enjoy it if the discussion interests me enough. Intellectual tennis without purpose-yes I understand that.   

A person who is interested in technology (IT and new media). I am. Even if I don’t understand it, I want to keep up with understanding what technology can do and what lies ahead of us.I mentor a group of tech geeks every year for a week at Cambridge, in part so that I can keep up with what might emerge in the world in 1-5 years time.

 A person who relates academic subjects to the real world outside of academic studies. I like academic research that is applicable in the real world in which people operate.I don’t understand academics who don’t care if their work is appreciated or not outside of the confines of academia- I just don’t get it.Why bother if it  useful?

A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who passionately pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance. Interesting one as I tend to think that I am quite conventional and mainstream but apparently not according to friends-I‘m down right quirky and pleasantly weird.I do passionately pursue aspects of understanding people and consciousness. I do this in an episodic manner rather than consistently.I’m not overly worried about social acceptance of my ideas and imagination.

A person with a devotion to something in a way that places him or her outside the mainstream. I am devoted to understanding how we create things for ourselves and how we can follow inner wisdom for our better good.I sense things and pick up energies . I am committed to a life of inner wisdom and consciousness and I guess in the eyes of many, that places me outside the mainstream.

 So, where has my inner geek been hiding?

If I was looking for someone to blame for encouraging me to hide my inner geek it would be my dear teachers Mr. Fisher and Sister Paul who at school aged 10/11 used to tell me not to look “too” clever as it might make me unpopular. They also told me to lie when we did the practice exam for the 11 plus . I had been off of school for 5 weeks beforehand and hadn’t completed the practice papers. Mum was in a panic, dad was pretending not to notice just in case I didn’t get into grammar school.He was already practicing the “oh it doesn’t matter as long as you are happy” speech when the envelope dropped onto the doormat. 

So, in the week before the exam, I stayed behind after school for half an hour each night to do a paper under exam conditions. After the second practice paper I was off and flying and Sister Paul told me not to tell the other children because “some of them had been working very hard and still will not pass, so don’t say anything.”  I had been working hard too all year except for those 5 weeks ! Interesting how sometimes if you are bright , you are encouraged to hide it .People confuse being clever intellectually with being “clever” in an arrogant way I think. Some of you reading this are by now, thinking “wow she is sooo arrogant- aren’t you?Be honest with yourself That IS the thought running through your head isn’t it?  ( No  need to be honest with me- I’m a geek and I don’t care).

 So, I have decided that having resisted it for many years, I am embracing my inner geek. I will love and nuture the geek and will not hide it anymore under the invisibility cloak of mediocre thinking . Incidentally, I don’t really blame my teachers –that would be waste of time wouldn’t it. Blame is always an excuse to be lame in my book.

 There’s lots of  I, I, I in this posting isn’t there? Ooh yes that’ll be because it’s all about me me me (This time anyway:)

 So come on- what are you hiding what is your I I I me me me  ???

 Are you a secret geek too?

 Marie the Geek  xxxxx

 

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Are you surrounded by love?

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I’ve been thinking about love a lot lately. About how we express it and experience it.

As a young child, I don’t recall ever feeling that I wasn’t loved.

I thought I was adopted once and searched avidly for my true birth certificate because there was no way, on that particular day that I could possibly belong to my family. On another occasion, I ran away with my little vanity case (with matching umbrella) age 5 after a disagreement with my teenage sister about a board game. I had lost and she normally would have just allowed me to win. I sat in the wardrobe for at whole 20 minutes (timed precisely on my plastic watch) before I emerged and stomped downstairs declaring that I had been missing, had packed a bag and left home. That clearly “no one cared as no –one had even called the police or came looking for me or anything!” My mother, as quick as a flash scooped me up and said “ oh I am so sorry lovey, we thought you were in the wardrobe sulking about the game. If we had known you had left home, we would have had the whole street, the police, the army, the air force and the queen’s guard out looking until we found you. Thank goodness you are safe and decided to come back to us. We love you too much to let you go a wandering with your vanity. Would you like a chocolate biscuit love?”

Now, my family weren’t big on saying the words “I love you” and yet, we always knew we loved each other. I knew that I was much loved because of how my parents and other family members behaved towards each other . It was in the actions. In the demonstrations of love. that I learned to recognise love.

I grew up in Yorkshire, where ”love” was used to describe everyone all of the time , “yes love”, ” when is the next bus love?”, “ how are you love?” , “do you want to get your homework done love?”, “ have you got the time love?” The use of “love” was an expression at the level of identity (you are love).

So, I grew up believing “I am love. My name is Marie and I am love”.

These days I say it more explicitly to family members and friends. I haven’t lived in Yorkshire for years so the language habit has gone. Frankly, if I were to say “yes love” and “hello love” in London there are many who would think I had changed my profession and now worked nights in darkened doorways. And, in part, I make a point of telling them,  because……. I just do.

So…………..how about you and yours?

Have you told them lately that you love them?

 If you need a little encouragement, this lovely James taylor song will help -just click the link  Shower them with love

Marie x

 

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Clint Eastwood is my cousin

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I’m enjoying a bit of a film revival and I recently watched Bridge Over Madison County. It’s a beautiful film.

I realised when watching it that Clint Eastwood looks like an older version of my cousin, Kevin. I haven’t told him because he might get big headed and start joining lookilikee conventions. To be honest, it’s unlikely.He is one of the least ego centric people I have ever met. He is just too nice to worry about the possibility of missing his chances as a body double. He has a very sucessful career in public service and he’s going to get a decent pension someday. ( I thought I would get that public service pension dig in for those of you bemoaning paying your taxes to support the great and the humble in their dotage).

Anyhow. Isn’t it strange how people remind us of others? I’ve been mistaken for Cherie Blair and Holly Aird in the past. I don’t think I look like either but it’s happened more than once . They’re both succesful, feisty gals so I don’t mind.     

I wonder if all of the people who look like each other across the world are genetically connected across the eons of generations? Are we all like some kind of sliding doors lookalike groupies destined only to meet or recognise each other if one of us becomes famous?

Maybe human cloning has already started and someone forgot to tell us.  

Maybe  Clint Eastwood is really a distant cousin. I think I’ll give him a call and see if he wants to write and direct me in “My life as not the PM’s wife”

If you could choose your mistaken double, who would it be?

Marie x  

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Do you plan life with a “just in case” in mind?

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Do you always need a plan B?

This came up for me recently when working with a coaching client who is planing to leave a relationship. Her leaving , is dependant on her ability to generate enough income to purchase a house  and walk away from her husband completely.

She is telling herself a story that she doesn’t need a plan B. Only plan A will do. Yet, by creating the dependency on the money, she is creating a plan B. Can you see that. havng a single plan woud be “I am leaving the relationship next week” Placing a condition around it creates plan B. “I am going when…” So, if when never comes, she is by default, staying.

As  Mike Dooley would say she is creating the cursed how’s. And, an overload of, or indeed a mere suggestion of the hows can block our success.

Some people spend their lives never even defining plan A let alone B, C or D. Instead, they drift along clinging to the life raft of seeming control because they think they have their ducks in a row (presumably the ducks are paddling along just fine behind the life  raft). In fact, they’re navigating through life in trance. They’re entranced by their life so much that they’ve all but stopped thinking about it at all. They’re sailing along. 

Now, I have some coaching friends who love to consider the nature of thought and it’s relationship to consciousness. I get it, I really do. I often delve into no mind and consciousness clarity for long periods myself. And, to function in the world, I need a bit of a plan and the plan needs some thought to create some intention. Sometimes, I have only one and I don’t do what ifs or consider alternative scenarios. My plan might be as simple as- ” get 2 new corporate clients in the next 3 months and 3 new indivdual clients in the next 4 months” I don’t do, if not that, this , if not this, blah blah. By placing my focus on the “want” I normally get the want.

I think it’s because I don’t create a  lot of potential scenarios. I used to do that a lot in corporate life. I would spend days, weeks even, planning out strategies , incorporating risks, considering potential side swipes that could throw us off course. For what? Mostly to be able to say we’d done it and were in control, but we never are really in control are we?

 Too much scenario thinking can make us lack a sense of  adventure. In that state, we can miss opportunity, because we’re too busy anticipating. We’re waiting at the bus stop for the potential disasters to show up and splash rainwater on our nice shiny shoes.

So- what’s your plan B? Do you need it? What would happen if you allowed yorself to live in the world of only one plan for a month, afortnight, a week, a day even?

Try it- you might just get what you want.

Marie x 

           

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Re-lighting my fire with my alma mater

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I’m visiting my old stomping ground in Cambridge this week at the University Business School. I come every year for a whole week to mentor existing and aspiring business owners during the Ignite programme. Every year, I am astounded by the potential science and technology that will radically change life as we know it once some of these innovations get into the market place.

I am amazed every year at the potential of business owners to start a new venture again in a completely different area of business that they have “always wanted to try” either because it is their true and enduring passion or because they believe they can do it better and cheaper than the existing players.

The geeks who want to turn their great research and proto types into a product sometimes leave me speechless at the prospect of seeing and experiencing their technology in the coming years. Those of you reading this who know me, know how hard this is; I usually have something to say about everything. Helping them shape their ideas and prototype products into worked through business pitches for potential investors is truly a privilege.

I feel like Aristotle listening to someone saying “and in not too many years people will be able to talk to friends and business contacts on a thing called a telephone through a series of cables. Not so very long after that, they will be able to talk on a device to anyone in the world through a similar, smaller, hand held device which connects people primarily through satellites –they will be mobile devices they can use from almost anywhere in the world.

Some of the ideas and applications coming our way are beyond belief. What will be sold and traded in the future and how it will be traded is changing rapidly. I love to see these developments and consider what our day-to-day lives will be like. What our lifestyles will be like in even 5, 10 or 20 years from now. 

What I know for myself is that my passion for business, for business owners and for my own business gets replenished during this week. The participants report that the week out of their business or their normal day to day work provides an opportunity to; take stock, reflect calmly, clarify their business vision and develop a sense of renewed possibility.

So, my question to you is- when was the last time you felt something similar about your work, about your business?

If you haven’t experienced it for some time,  isn’t it time you pulled yourself and your business out of regression and stagnation? What one action could you take this week to make this happen?  

Marie x

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I love the Universe and it loves me

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Last week I met the lovely Michael Neill for lunch and a house visit in LA. We had Sushi- very good sushi. (Doesn’t that sound impressive and flamboyant)? I wasn’t in LA just for luncheon. I was in Santa Monica to catch up with some friends. Michael very kindly invited me to lunch and to attend a two-day session with one of my all time favourite coaches- Robert Holden. Now, this is wonderful and he knows that I think he is wonderful-in the category of genius.

It’s even more wonderful because it gives me evidence yet again, if ever I needed it, that the Universe looks after me when I pay attention. Let me explain…

 This trip was arranged around 3 weeks beforehand. On the Wednesday morning, around 2 hours before I left for the airport, my friend and ex business partner’s husband called me to let me know that Jeni had taken her own life the afternoon before.

Jeni was a lovely human being who created lots of wonderful relationships and experiences in her forty something years. She was a coach- a great coach. Someone who more recently had simply lost her way and had forgotten what a valuable person she was. She became locked inside of a story she was telling herself and at a very simplistic level, just couldn’t find her way back. Her friends and family who loved her dearly could not reach her and in the few small glimpses when we could- we just could not get her to see and experience her resourceful self for long enough.

Now, if you have ever experienced loss you will know that the love of others and the experience of exploring questions such as what is real? What is happiness? What is success? And how do I heal? are uppermost. Even if we don’t articulate them in this way. There are lots of self- reflection questions of course- The what ifs? If onlys? Could have, would have should have questions and self-deprecating self-talk that is frankly a waste of thought energy.

Being around Mr. Happiness and success Robert Holden was the best place for me. The listening ear of Michael Neill and Steve Crabb (my coach who was also there) and of my lovely friends and some new coach friends was where I was meant to be. I truly believe that the Universe knew that and ordered this healing experience for me in advance.   

 I have friends who will be reading this with eyes to heaven saying “She’s off again” and,  I am. I just know that the big U was looking out for me and always does when I am receptive and slow down. It was a decision to slow down and listen that took me to LA. Michael Neill also suggested I might want to visit a healer out there called Satish. He’s busy and yet, he could fit me in and he gave me more time than he needed to. An earth angel if ever there was one. I left Satish feeling as light as air, aligned and with a clarity I haven’t experienced for weeks.

 So, ask yourself, What do you need right now to make you even more resourceful than you are? What do you want to ask the Universe to help you with? What would serve you and your wonderful life?

Just slow down and pay attention.

Marie x

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What is the difference between personal development and self help?

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Someone raised the question of self help on a blog I read.

 Self help, self insight, personal development- all sit on a spectrum of what we are about and what we do don’t they? They’re just labels for tools to help you, me, everyone to gain some insight whether that’s through reading, coaching, training or sitting on a mountain with an image of the Buddha.

We’re all looking for some of the same- peace, freedom, inner quiet, wisdom, mindfulness or mindlessness-whatever it is for us. The route to it is out there somewhere for everyone. There is no one right way. When people talk of the one right and only way , it’s usually organised religion or a cult is it not?

So my question is

What are you seeking? It might be out there. Or, then again- you might want to take a quiet 10 minutes, take a little look inside- you might find the answer there too.

Marie x

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