We have all used them on occasion to embellish a text or other message.

The smiley face as we know it today was created in 1963 (long before mobile phones) by Harvey Ross an American graphic artist employed by State Mutual Life Assurance Company. He was asked to create a happy face to raise the morale of employees.

It's actually a really good idea. I was talking to a colleague some time ago about a difficult and demotivating position they found themselves in at work. They were really entitled to be fed up and depressed.

However instead of looking upset and concerned they said what they did was to adopt a cheerful attitude and get on with things as if nothing mattered and life could not be better! It seemed to work and to influence others in very positive way.

In another context I was recently given some wise advice. If you are developing a business and marketing your services it pays not to appear negative and desperate for work (sad face). Your potential clients can sense this.

So whatever the problem instead of being downtrodden adopting a cheerful approach as symbolised by the smiley face can turn a negative into a positive and even help generate new business.

"Therefore a victorious army first wins and then seeks battle: a defeated army first battles and then seeks victory" Sun Tzu Chinese general.

As in a battle a negotiation should  be planned and set up so that victory is assured. Too often the "team" arrives an hour before the meeting and meets  in a local coffeeshop and then expects to function cohesively in the negotiation to come.

I recall working with a team leader who insisted on meeting the day before any serious negotiation session with the whole team to work out strategy and tactics and how to win. We used flip charts stuck all around the walls to set out our strategy and how we would react to any given turn of events.

On one occasion we had to persuade the other side to come upon with the answer to a particular problem. Otherwise they would not accept it. We succeeded late at night and had to feign reluctance when the opposition suggested a way forward which was what we wanted all along.

This sort of careful preparation can also fail if one person doesn't toe the line. We once agreed a tactical walk out, but one of our colleagues, an engineer, did not realise what was happening and stayed in his seat. We had to almost drag him out of the room.

Cooperation and commitment and planning by the whole team allows the negotiation "battle" to effectively be won before the engagement even starts.

In sport it has long been recognised that in order to improve an exercise that is really enjoyed by players and coaches alike is cross training. This is where if say you play football then at a training session organise a touch rugby game.

Or set up a net and play volleyball perhaps permitting headers. More extreme and challenging could be doing balletic exercises! Some martial arts deliberately train in another style to build up overall strength and ability

Wikipedia describes cross training well as follows

Cross-training refers to an athlete training in sports other than the one that the athlete competes in, with a goal of improving overall performance. It takes advantage of the particular effectiveness of each training method, while at the same time attempting to negate the shortcomings of that method by combining it with other methods that address its weaknesses.


What is perhaps less well appreciated is that there is an analogy with the working professional world. In its narrowest sense if you work in one form of practice such as an in house lawyer then it pays to find a forum where you can meet and exchange with lawyers from private practice in law firms or in a barristers chambers.


If you specialise in one subject such as IT law then expand your horizons to look at the many parallels in the construction industry. I reviewed an article for a magazine recently written by an academic who dealt with the theory behind a particular copyright subject and frankly verged on the philosophical. Yet because of this it made me think and introduced me to a different way of considering intellectual property law.


Within a business some element of cross training can also be beneficial so that for example a lawyer understands basic finance issues and a technical architect appreciates that what he or she articulates may become part of a contract and have certain legal consequences.


Once again sport provides a lead industry can follow.

Most lawyers and indeed any other professional people are not born to sell or to market. One of the reasons we go into profession be it accountancy, law or medicine is because we tend to enjoy numbers or have a sense  of justice or want to heal patients.

This means learning a very complex set of professional skills over a long period of training in academic institutions and as a junior lawyer or doctor.

Then as you get to associate level and are doing well a partner takes you aside one day and says you have the raw material to join the partnership and be an owner of the business BUT you must learn to develop and keep and bring in clients. Nobody told you about this before and you immediately think about how to change from practicing the professional skill you spent so long learning to becoming a super salesman and a rainmaker over night.

In fact as I learnt at the partners conference of a large US law firm in Las Vegas a few years ago sales and marketing (two very different topics) do not need a professional to change his or her character. Instead work out a way clients will recognise and respect you for what you are - be authentic.

And yes that might be exploiting all those great contacts you have at the golf or tennis or other club and taking client out to lavish dinners and all the things you imaging a successful salesman does. But that does not suit or work for everyone. It could equally be demonstrating that you consistently provide the best quality advice or have in depth knowledge of a specialist subject. Some of the top law firms in the world did not market at all at least until relatively recently, but relied on their impeccable reputation for great and innovative legal advice.

We can all I learnt find our own way to market and to sell our services without detracting from our sense of professionalism. The best way is to literally "be yourself" and find a way to sell your skills to clients who will recognise you for what you are and respect that authenticity.

A new expression has rightly come into the business world: "whiteboarding".

For the uninitiated this has nothing to do with skiing and snowboarders. And its meaning is a bit confused. If you google the term the answer is "the placement of shared files on an on-screen shared notebook or whiteboard."

You need a white boarding session to understand that. In real life it is a much simpler and yet powerful activity. 

Gather a group with a problem to solve or a task to achieve together in a room with a flip chart or whiteboard, ban them from using laptops or iPads or phones, and then write the task down in big capital letters on the board and invite discussion.

As the meeting progresses capture ideas in words or pictures or diagrams on the white board and invite everybody to hold the pen and do the same. The content on some more sophisticated whiteboards can be printed so the session can be captured. Otherwise take a picture of the results on a phone and circulate it to everyone.

More often that not these sorts of white boarding sessions work exceptionally well to resolve really difficult and apparently intractable problems.