​This weekend I went on a four-hour advanced defensive driving course. I have been driving for a long time, but I still learnt new things that I hope will improve my driving, especially about looking ahead and anticipating situations, using road signs, street lights and even marks on a wall where somebody had hit it, to predict and avoid problems.
 
Also this weekend one of the greatest tennis players I have ever seen, Roger Federer, won his twentieth grand slam title in Melbourne, Australia at the age of 36. Frighteningly for his rivals he still seems to be improving his tennis and has, for example, developed an even stronger backhand.
 
It is this continuous development attitude and approach that I suggest should be one of the cornerstones of professional practice. We are never too old or too experienced or too knowledgeable not to improve. Somebody once said that a true expert is a person who understands how little they truly know and how there is always more to find out.
 
As Winston Churchill said: To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
 
In addition to having an attitude that welcomes and embraces personal professional development, it is also something that can be consciously promoted. Here, for example, is a paper from the State University of New Jersey which suggests that Information and communication technology, together with globalization, have made it more possible than ever to choose from a wide array of learning resources. While increased choice is welcome, it is also problematic in that it makes it harder to select the most appropriate options. Taking a systematic approach, such as designing a personal professional development plan, offers a solution to the dilemma.
 
This blog from Harvard University says in the context of PR professionals (not a profession you normally associate with earning CPD points) that Communications professions are more dynamic today than they have ever been. And with the shifting media landscape, the plethora of channels and digital tools, and the influence of audience preferences and expectations, public relations practitioners in the field must continuously evolve or face antiquation.
 
I personally continue to try to learn more, not only about the law as my professional field, but its practical application in activities such as negotiation. By way of example, I have become more and more aware over the last few years of the benefits of trying to create a consensual approach, where even fundamental differences can be discussed by the parties without causing a potentially damaging breakdown in the discussions.
 
And whilst we cannot all aspire to win the Australian Open tennis tournament, there is much we can strive to do to continually get better at our work – and it’s much more exciting than assuming we already know everything. As Mark Twain suggests Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

The Byrds, described as one of the most influential bands of the 1960’s, sang that “There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven”.
 
Timing is everything. I play tennis to a reasonable club level, but I know that the real difference between this standard and county or national standard is the timing of the way players hit the ball. Listen to professionals practicing at the ATP annual end of year tournament at the O2 Arena in London (where you can stand right by the practice court) and you can hear virtually every shot going off the middle of the racquet.
 
The same is true in business. In contract or settlement negotiations there is a right time to come out with your final position on any given issue in the context of the overall strategy that is being adopted. Here is a really interesting article from the University of Colorado which postulates that: The timing of negotiations is often critical to their success. Conflict scholars and negotiators often use the concept of "ripeness," comparing negotiation to fruit. If a fruit is picked too early, it will not be ready for eating; however, if it is picked to late, it will be inedible as well. There are also some good links to illustrative examples.
 
If in negotiating you make your final offer (after which your client will withdraw from the discussions) too early you may never find out what the other side would move too. If made too late it can railroad both sides into failure. Here is a Yale University video on the Ultimatum Game which deals with the consequences of making offers and the use of power in negotiations. It ultimately suggests that making an ultimatum can be counterproductive and lead to no deal.
 
This blog from the Said Business School at the University of Oxford suggests that Many of us tried to “anchor” a negotiation around an inflated price or controversial issue at the very beginning of a negotiation. If the price stated was too high or the issue too incendiary, then, this often had the effect of unbalancing the difficult dance between trust and its opposite that runs through any negotiation like a lubricant.
 
And just broadening this idea from negotiations I have also come to realise that there is generally a right time to do things in a professional career. A right time to move jobs or change the way you practice. A right time to seek an internal promotion or career change. If you try at the right time things seem to work out, like pushing at an open door.
 
At the wrong time then it just doesn’t seem to work out. Winston Churchill struggled to reach the top of the political tree, was virtually ostracised in what were chronicled in an ITV series as the Wilderness Years in the 1930’s, only to become prime minister and a great war leader when circumstance required it for the first time at the age of 65 on Friday 10 May 1940.
 
There also seems little point in denying the opportunities and indeed pressures of the right timing – as Henry Kissinger once said There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
 

Making New Year’s resolutions is easy. Keeping them is more challenging. After a grinding and grey January even remembering what your aspirations for the year ahead are can be hard. So, if you have perhaps already forgotten or abandoned all of your good intentions for 2018, here is an idea for one that may help throughout the year.
 
I was reading an article in the sports pages of the Times about an English cricketer who was suffering a lack of form. It sagely said that part of his problem was in the mind and that “Thinking there is a problem creates one, or intensifies it”.
 
This is as true in the professional and business world as in sport. Of course, we all have problems in our working lives and failing to recognise and understand them is a recipe for disaster. But if you continually look for difficulties you will for sure find them and they will get worse.
 
The art is in the management of the problem and instead of concentrating on the issue, focusing on the solution. The American contemporary writer Terry Goodkind sums it up well: “...think of the solution, not the problem. If your mind was filled only with thoughts of why you were going to lose, then you couldn't think of how to win.”
 
This article on Problem vs. Solution Focused Thinking has some ideas about how to look at the way to solve the problem rather than on the difficulty itself. And it all starts with approach. If to quote the old adage you find yourself in a hole the worst thing you can do is to keep digging deeper. Instead look for a way of climbing out. Here’s another interesting article (one of three) with some practical ideas on problem solving.
 
If you want a bit more of an academic approach to problem solving read this Stanford Business School article on A Toolkit for Solving Problems.
 
As Albert Einstein said: We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
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It is always a challenging experience to step into a transaction at the last minute because you know little about the deal or the issues or personalities involved – I had to complete a major PFI deal once whilst a colleague went skiing - which meant for an extremely interesting week. They had to buy me a very expensive lunch!
 
A few years ago, I stepped in for a more junior colleague on a complex IT transaction whilst they were away on leave. I was concerned I would not help the IT contract negotiation because of my lack of familiarity. In fact, at the end of my two-week involvement I was thanked for my contribution and a commercial colleague said that what everybody (including the other side) really appreciated was that I didn’t rush and, by comparison to my colleague, explained complex issues more slowly and carefully.
 
This was not particularly conscious behaviour, but I have begun to realise more and more how important taking your time is and not hurrying. On a call about some critical matter with a very senior manager recently I recall being impressed by how they were very careful to make everybody slow down and get to the basics about all of the issues.  They would have been the busiest and most responsible person on the call with limited time available, but they seemed able to forget about all other matters and just to concentrate on the problem at hand. There was no sense of being rushed, just to understand and draw the correct conclusions.
 
And the more pressing and difficult the problem is the more important this approach becomes. There are some excellent training videos featuring John Cleese including Meetings Bloody Meetings which focus on the importance of time management in this context. But I think it is more than being prepared and organised. It really is about taking the necessary time to make the correct decision.
 
And the reverse – always rushing has been described by some as “hurry sickness” defined as a "harrying sense of time urgency" – see this article – which is not good for business or for your health. Have a look at this material produced by London Business School where Professor Richard Jolly found that 95 per cent of the executives he has interviewed suffer from what he calls 'hurry sickness'.
 
So, when things do get rushed and stressed, it is a real skill to be able to recognise that is the very time when it is critical to slow down and get things right.
 
As Robert Louis Stevenson said He who sows hurry reaps indigestion.
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