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“Legacy – What the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life” by James Kerr

Edmond Chan · Aug 11, 2019 · 1 Comment

The All Blacks are probably the most consistently successful team in history, having dominated Rugby Union for decades, perhaps almost a century. In the professional era, they have a win rate of 86%. James Kerr is an author who was embedded with the All Blacks for 5 weeks. It’s written so lyrically and with such pathos, that it’s almost like poetry. He weaves powerful Maori proverbs into All Black sayings and shows how these teachings can enrich and guide us in life.

Maori believe that the haka draws up tipuna, our ancestors, from the earth to the soul. It summons them to aid us in our struggle here on earth with the sound of ngunguru, the low rumble of an earthquake: Tis death! Tis death! I may die! I may die! Tis life! Tis Life! I might live! I might live!

Chapter 1 – Character

Waibo ma te tangata e mihi = Let someone else praise your virtues

SWEEP THE SHEDS – Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done

The chapter opens with an inside view of a match against Wales where the All Blacks win 42-7. After the press has left the locker room, the players and coaches debrief and take turns to say what could have gone better. After this, two senior players stand up and get two brooms and started sweeping up the sheds.

They brush the mud and the gauze into piles in the corner. While the country is still watching replays and schoolkids in bed dreaming of All Black glory, the All Blacks themselves are tidying up after themselves. Sweeping the shed. Doing it properly. so no one else has to. Because no one looks after the All Blacks. The All Blacks look after themselves.

Andrew Mehrtens calls this an ‘example of personal discipline.’ and ‘if you have personal discipline in your life, then you are going to be more disciplined on the field.’

Vince Lombardi based his success on what he called ‘The Lombardi Model’ which began with a statement:

‘Only by knowing yourself can you become an effective leader.’

From self-knowledge, Lombardi believed, we develop character and integrity, and from character and integrity comes leadership’

An incredible quote from Buckminster Fuller, who when ‘depressed and considering suicide asked himself some questions that revolutionised his life’:

What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?

“Humility is seen as a vital part of a well-adjusted character. It is essential to mana, the Maori and Polynesian word that captures so many qualities; authority, status, personal power, bearing, charisma, and great personal prestige and character….for Maori, mana is perhaps the ultimate accolade, the underlying spiritual goal of human existence.”

SWEEP THE SHEDS – Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done

Chapter 2 – Adapt

Maui – the discoverer of the secret of fire – was spearing birds with his brothers one day. But as his spear had no barbs, the prey escaped them. Maui’s mother told him to use sticks to create barbs for his weapon – which he did. They feasted on kereru (pigeon) that night.

GO FOR THE GAP – When you’re on top of your game, change your game.

Will Hogg believes that effective organisational requires four key stages. The absence of any one factor will inhibit culture change and often make it impossible: A Case for Change A Compelling Picture of the Future A Sustained Capability to Change A Credible Plan to Execute

Chapter 3 – Purpose

The person with a narrow vision sees a narrow horizon; the person with a wide vision sees a wide horizon.

PLAY WITH PURPOSE – Ask ‘Why?’

After defeat against South Africa in 2004, the coaching staff sat down for what Graham Henry described as the most important conversation of his All Black career. “It would result in the most complete overhaul of the most successful sporting culture in human history.”

Brian Lochore came up with the six words:

Better People Make Better All Blacks

So by giving the players the tools to mature and contribute off the pitch, they would also be helping the players to contribute more effectively on the pitch.

What are you playing for?

Daniel Pink: “Humans by their nature seek purpose – a cause greater and more enduring than themselves”, pointing out that we leave well-paying jobs for purpose-driven ones, that we volunteer, and that we have children.

Maslow: we all move towards a state of self-actualisation – a psychological state of presence, flow, self-respect, self-expression and authenticity.

Victor Frankl: From research at Johns Hopkins University, “asked what they considered ‘very important’ to them now, 16% checked ‘making a lot of money’; 78% said their first goal was ‘finding a meaning and a purpose to my life’. “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task”.

Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How”

So what was the Why for the All Blacks?

It was: “To Add To The Legacy”

“Seek the treasure you value most dearly; if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.”

Chapter 4 – Responsibility

Be a leader, not a follower.

Pass the Ball. Leaders create Leaders.

General David Petraeus: “Instill in your teams members a sense of great self-worth – hat each, at any given time, can be the most important on the battlefield.”

Henry formed a Leadership group made up of senior players, to which responsibility was devolved to.

Henry was an ‘autocrat’ so this was hard for him to do, but in doing so, he displayed what Jim Collins calls Level 5 leadership: “a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will”.

This culture change results in things like Stephen Donald, the 4th choice fly-half kicking the winning points in a tight World Cup Final.

Chapter 5 – Learn

Gather the good food, cast away the rubbish.

Daniel Pink in Drive: The 3 factors that he believes creates motivation in a human being: mastery, autonomy and purpose.

“How do leaders create an environment that delivers the opportunity for personal growth and professional development?”

Sean Fitzpatrick, All Black legend:

“Be the best that you can possibly be”

“Success is modest improvement, consistently done.”

“The best sports people in the world practice more than they play”

“Business people should practice too. They should go home at night and analyse their day’s performance. They don’t and they need to. To be good at something takes practice and lots of it.”

Tom Peters: Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence, only in constant improvement and constant change.

Leaders are Teachers.

Leaders are Learners.

Doing 100 things 1% better. Marginal Gains. Inches.

Kaizen.

W. Clement Stone: “You are a product of your envirnment so choose the environment that will best develop you towards your objective. Analyse your life in terms of your environment. Are the things around you helping you towards success – or are they holding you back?”

Guy Davis to Sean Fitzpatrick: “The only thing I want you to be is the best that you can possibly be.”

Pericles: “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.”

“Your legacy is that which you teach”

Chapter 6 – Whanau

Hold on to the spearhead formation of the kawau.

NO DICKHEADS. Follow the spearhead.

Whanua means to be born or give birth. For Maori, it means extended family. Our family of friends, our mates, our tribe, our team.

Kipling: “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack”

Arab proverb: “It’s better to have a thousand enemies outside the tent than one inside the tent”

Maori proverb: “A little water seeping through a small hole may swamp a canoe”

No dickheads.

“Let us be united, not pulling against one another”

Chapter 7 – Expectations

My language is my awakening, my language is the window to my soul

EMBRACE EXPECTATIONS

Aim for the highest cloud.

Ira Glass: Great stories come to those that tell them.

Fitzpatrick: Don’t be a good All Black. Be a great All Black.

What would a great All Black do?

In The Songlines, the Koori believe that when young men go walkabout, the words they chant ‘sing their world into existence’.

“Chatwin also reminds us that the Ancient Egyptians believed that the seat of the soul is our tongue. Using it as our rudder, and words as our oar, we steer our way across the waters to our destiny.”

Fitzpatrick: “Judge yourself against the world’s best”

Chapter 8 – Preparation

The way the sapling is shaped determines how the tree grows

TRAIN TO WIN

Practise under pressure

Don Bradman practiced as a boy by throwing a golf ball off a corrugated wall and hitting it back with a cricket stump. “He made practice his test.”

“Practise with intensity to develop the mindset to win” Train to Win.

“Like physical fitness, mental toughness is the result of a long-term conditioning programme”

By adding progressively more pressure, “our brains acclimatize to the pressure. We develop clarity, more accurate, automatic execution and situational awareness.”

A person who is taught at home will stand with confidence in the community

Chapter 9 – Pressure

The first stage of learning is silence, the second stage is listening.

KEEP A BLUE HEAD

Control your attention

Red Head: Tight, inhibited, results-orientated, anxious, aggressive, over-compensating, desperate.

Blue Head: Loose, expressive, in the moment, calm, clear, accurate, on task.

How do we avoid Red Head and stay in Blue Head?

First, put yourself in a calm, positive and clear state.

Second, anchor this state through physical actions like scrunching your toes or clenching your fists and reopening them. Repeat until automatic.

Third, use these anchors when you feel pressure.

Chapter 10 – Authenticity

Cluster the branches of the manuka, so that they will not break.

KNOW THYSELF

Keep it real

Gilbert Enoka: “We always talk about the ‘real self’ rather than the ‘fake self’. If you come into the All Blacks and you succumb to peer pressure, and you do things because others want you to, if you’re not grounded, then you get found out” “He uses the analogy of a bridge that is secure because it is made of several different planks: personal skills, friends, family, being an All Black. ‘If the only plank you’ve got is the rugby one, then you’ll always come unstuck'”.

Better People Make better All Blacks

Know thyself

Enoka: “Development of the authentic self is hugely powerful to performance”

Bill George: “the essence of a great leader is about ‘being genuine, real and true to who you are’.”

Authenticity starts with honesty and integrity.

Honesty: the ability to deliver honest feedback

Integrity: The ‘ethical accuracy of our actions. It’s about getting stuff done. “Though the end result is trust, belief and respect, these are merely the by-products of the fact that when we say something will happen, it actually does happen. This means that others can count on us to deliver. And most importantly, that we can count on ourselves.”

“There’s an old story about J.P. Morgan who was shown an envelope contain a ‘guaranteed formula for success’. He agreed that if he liked the advice written inside he would pay USD 25,000 for its contents. Morgan opened the envelope, nodded and paid. The advice: 1. Every morning write a list of the things that need to be done that day. 2. Do them.”

“If we speak with integrity our word becomes our world; a commitment, a declaration of intent, a generative force.”

A person who can be taken at his word.

Chapter 11 – Sacrifice

Stand fearless.

CHAMPIONS DO EXTRA

Find something you would die for and give your life to it.

“First to arrive at the gym, and the last to leave – an extra rep, an extra ten minutes, an extra set, an extra circuit.” Who wants it more?

Don’t die like an octopus, die like a hammerhead shark.

Chapter 12 – Language

LANGUAGE

Let your ears listen

INVENT YOUR OWN LANGUAGE

Sing your world into existence

In 1999, John Kirwan and Sean Fitzpatrick wrote The Black Book, which became the All Blacks’ team bible:

  • No one is bigger than the team
  • Leave the jersey in a better place
  • Live for the jersey. Die for the jersey
  • It’s not enough to be good. It’s about being great.
  • Leave it all out on the field
  • It’s not the jersey. It’s the man in the jersey
  • Once an All Black, always an All Black
  • Work harder than an ex-All Black
  • In the belly – not the back
  • It’s an honour, not a job
  • Bleed for the jersey
  • Front up – or fuck off

Kevin Roberts: Revolutions start with language

A branding exercise to define the All Blacks’ brand values: New Zealand, Winning, Power, Masculinity, Commitment, Teamwork, Tradition and Inspirational and:

  • Humility
  • Excellence
  • Respect

Or the USMC:

  • Honour – Integrity, Responsibility, Accountability
  • Courage – Do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason
  • Commitment – Devotion to the Corps and my fellow Marines

Words start revolutions

“Within the Al Blacks, as within other high-performing environments like the Marines, the Red Arrows and Apple, there is a similar obsession with the formative power of language:

  • ‘Outstanding’
  • ‘Accuracy’
  • ‘Clarity’
  • ‘World class’
  • ‘Red hot, we were red hot today’

“Mottos and mantras are a key part of the road-map to the All Blacks’ mindset. These linguistic heuristics go straight to the heart of the belief system, becoming shorthand for the standards and behaviour that is expected.”

Mottos and mantras “capture character in a sentence, change minds with a turn of phrase, and distil essence into a few words. The best teams – the All Blacks, Apple, the Marines, Nike, Honda, Adidas harness the power of these mottos and mantras to reflect, remind, reinforce and reinvigorate their ethos every day.”

What is the food of a leader? It is knowledge. It is communication.

Chapter 13 – Ritual

RITUALISE TO ACTUALISE

Create a culture

In 2005, the All Blacks unveiled a new haka, one that they built from the ground up in order to reflect the diverse makeup of the team.

Ritualise to actualise

The are hundreds of tiny rituals that are part of being an All Black:

  • The initiation ritual
  • Flags on the walll
  • Your place on the bus
  • Anthems and caps etc

“Rituals act as a psychological process – a transition from one state into another. They take us into a new place of being.”

“By creating their own equivalent of the haka, leaders can attach a sense of personal meaning and belonging to the organisation’s overall purpose.”

It’s our time! It’s our moment!

Chapter 14 – Whakapapa

You are but a speck in the moment of time situated between two eternities, the past and the future.

BE A GOOD ANCESTOR

Plant trees you’ll never see.

Whakapapa is the distillation of “the ancestral soul of the team, connecting past, present and future, and stretches from the very beginning to the very end of time.” It “literally means to pile rocks in layers, one upon the other, so that they reach from the earth to the heavens.”

Sean Fitzpatrick: “The reason your children turn out right is because their parents are right…what you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others”

Ubuntu

“In the All Blacks, in parenthood, in business, in life, it’s about leaving the jersey in a better place. And it takes character.”

Jim Traue’s essay on whakapapa from a Caucasian perspective:

https://publicaddress.net/great-new-zealand-argument/ancestors-of-the-mind-a-pakeha-whakapapa/

“Whakapapa delivers mana.”

Albert Schweitzer: “Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing”

Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never see”

John Wooden: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

“Leadership is surely the example we set. The way we lead our own life is what makes us a leader. It is what gives us mana.”

Grow and branch forth for the days of your world

Chapter 15 – Legacy

At the same time as the spiral is going forward, it is also returning.

WRITE YOUR LEGACY

This is your time

“When a player makes the All Blacks, they’re given a book. It’s a small black book, bound in fine leather, and beautiful to hold.” The pages start at the beginning of the Whakapapa, from the 1905 Originals that started the Whakapapa, and continues all the way through to the present day. “The rest of the pages are blank. Waiting to be filled. It’s time to make your mark, they say. Your contribution. It’s time to leave a legacy. Your legacy. It’s your time.”

Legacy is in the same league as Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. (Read my review of Shoe Dog here)

Buy a copy of Legacy – What the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life here.

4 speeches to put fire in your belly and put hairs on your chest

Edmond Chan · Jul 2, 2019 · Leave a Comment

These speeches will make you stand a little taller, with your chin held up, with your chest puffed that bit further out. And put fire in your belly and hairs on your chest.

I watch these whenever I need inspiration and some courage. Hopefully, they give you some too!

Al Pacino’s speech in Scent of a Woman (1992)

If you haven’t seen this film yet, then watch it before this humdinger of an ending speech.

For a very useful transcipt of the Pacino’s barnstorming speech, see this link from American Rhetoric.

Arnie’s 6 Rules of Success

Arnie is the man. Plain and simple. Champion bodybuilder, self-made millionaire businessman, blockbuster A-list acting legend, Governor of California, all-round great guy. Listen to this.

Rocky’s speech to his son in Rocky Balboa (2006)

Every Rocky film (except Rocky V of course) has made me cry. Floods of tears. The final struggle of the training sessions. The punishment Rocky inevitably takes in the ring. And then the beyond-rousing comeback of pure heart that is Rocky. I’m left a sobbing mess of heaving tears.

This scene always gets me.

Here’s a useful transcript of the speech.

Al Pacino’s Game of Inches speech in Any Given Sunday (1999)

For raw aggression, and channelling that aggression into a common goal of victory, this speech has no rivals:

Here’s a very useful transcript of the speech as well.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Let me know what your favourite movie speeches are in the comments below!

What’s really holding you back? Truly?

Edmond Chan · Oct 7, 2018 · Leave a Comment

If we start from the position that we all have potential, then why is there a gap between where your potential self is and where you are at the moment?

How big is that gap? What is your true potential? It might be that your true potential is way more than you think it is. In which case, the gap is even bigger than you know.

Step one is where you are now.

Step two is looking at where you think your potential is. So this might be being a writer or being an artist.

Step three is discovering where your true potential might be (and you would need help from outside to discover this). This might be being a rocket scientist, climbing the world’s highest and most difficult mountains.

Step four is addressing how to bridge that gap and narrow it as much as possible.

Do you think that you can achieve step two and step three?

If you don’t think you can, then something is holding you back.

It’s a mindset thing for sure.

A great example of opening up your mindset and horizons is what learning how to swim has done for me. Even after my first lesson, when I couldn’t really even finish a length of the pool, I was looking up scuba diving holidays. Now after three lessons, I’m thinking about taking up wild swimming in rivers and taking up surfing. This is all stuff that I’ve dreamed about doing but thought it was pure fantasy. Those are the sort of things that I come up with when asking myself “What’s on my bucket list? What would I love to do?” And now it’s all possible. My horizons and possibilities with regards to swimming and watersports have expanded.

Now if I asked myself about step 3 (discovering where your true potential might be), what’s possible with my swimming? What couldn’t I even contemplate or imagine before that first swimming lesson? Swimming the Channel or swimming the Hellespont? I wouldn’t have dared dream about that a month ago. Now it’s possible. Maybe not likely, but possible. Hold on, why isn’t that likely? Maybe I’ll think differently after I master the freestyle stroke. Imagine once I get to 1,000m without stopping, maybe my horizons with regards to swimming will be so far from what I can imagine now? Maybe swimming the length of the Thames? Who knows!

So what was holding me back?

Why has it taken me until I’m 39 to finally address my terrible swimming and do something about it? In my head, I told myself that it was because of my eyes that I couldn’t swim because of my poor eyesight. I’m a minus 4.0 in my left eye and a minus 0.75 in my right eye. This means that I can’t really see anything without contact lenses or glasses. And glasses or contacts don’t work in the pool. That’s what I told myself and that’s why I couldn’t go swimming to learn in the past 10, 15 or 20 years.

This was probably bullshit. Stuff I told myself so that I wouldn’t have to do it. Now that I’m 39 and thinking about having kids soon, I think it’s really important that I learn to swim. Just in case I ever need to and to teach my kids and just for the sheer joy of being good at a fundamental human skill.

The solution was ridiculously easy. I just googled ‘prescription goggles’ and it was SO cheap and easy. £15 for prescription goggles. Now swimming is something that I look forward to.

How easy was that?

What’s something that you want to do and what’s holding you back?

How can you break through? Maybe it’s that you want to be a singer. So how about taking a singing lesson. £100 for 5 lessons from a professional singing teacher. Or maybe you want to be an artist. Go on a short course at a decent art school. I did one for about £350 for 10 x 2 hour lessons at Chelsea School of Art. At the very least, it’s fun and you’ll find out whether it’s something you want to pursue. Let me know what you want to do in the comments below!

Slow the fuck down. How taking your time a bit more will help you enjoy your day.

Edmond Chan · Oct 5, 2018 · Leave a Comment

I’m generally rushing and multitasking most of the time. I want to squeeze in a podcast in the shower, watch self-improvement videos on YouTube, read business books on the bus to work. I cook quickly, wolf it down and wash up like a dervish.

Two things I’ve read recently have made me question this mode of doing stuff.

Firstly, I read a great article on Medium by Aytekin Tank (which I haven’t fully digested yet). It’s called: Why reading 100 books a year won’t make you successful. In it he says reading as many books as possible in the shortest amount of time won’t make you successful, and that actually it harms the very reasons why we should read in the first place:

(1) it destroys reading for pleasure. The best books I’ve ever read are probably the classics such as War and Peace, The Odyssey, and The Iliad. There’s no way I read these speed reading. I read them for pure pleasure. Not at a lazy speed, but just at the speed where I got huge pleasure from reading. (If you haven’t read them yet, please do yourself a favour and do so! You won’t regret it!)

(2) if the aim is to read as fast as possible, the speed likely hinders the

Secondly, I read a great chapter on Derek Sivers in Tim Ferriss‘s seminal book Tools of Titans where he describes how he does a long bike ride where he pedals hard and strains and sweats and which always takes him 43min to complete. One day, he did the same ride where he decided to take it slow and chilled and has a great time noticing things that he normally doesn’t like the ocean and pelicans. When he finishes the ride, and looks at his watch, he’s shocked to see that the ride took him just 45mins! 2mins longer and he had a much better time doing it.

Mind blown!

Try slowing down now. Some of the benefits are surprising.

Let’s start with reading.

With Ayetkin’s article in mind, today I started reading some of Laszlo Bock’s famous book Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead. I tried to read it slowly and make sure that I wasn’t skimming and speed reading. I waited for my attention to catchup with my eye on the page. I stopped every so often whenever I wanted to and looked up from the book and a few seconds later (again when I wanted to), I started reading again.

5 mins went by. 10 mins went. Then 15 mins and I had to get back to work. But that was a very pleasurable 15 mins of reading. No judgement on myself for how much I read or didn’t read. Just a state of flow.

It’s very hard to make yourself slow down reading but just try and remember to do so. Don’t beat yourself when you forget.

Enjoy it. Slow down.

Discovering Mel Robbins: a summary of her message and her 5 Second Rule

Edmond Chan · Aug 27, 2018 · Leave a Comment

I recently discovered Mel Robbins on Instagram. She puts out great Instagram content such as:

“What would @oprah do?” – That simple question is the key to making better decisions. It’s what I always ask myself when I’m weighing options and have a tough decision to make. By asking “what would @oprah do”, I literally CHANGE the way I think. It’s called the “power of objectivity” and in this video I share this powerful tool with you. – When I consider any problem from Oprah’s perspective, I silence my emotions, think creatively and have the ability be more strategic about the choices in front of me. It works like a charm. – Now it’s your turn. Who do you admire? Tag them. The next time you have a decision to make, stop and ask yourself what would they do.

A post shared by Mel Robbins (@melrobbinslive) on Aug 23, 2018 at 3:10pm PDT

I thought at first that she was Tony Robbins’s wife. But she’s not. Imagine those guys as a motivational power couple!

I’ve watched her great TEDx talk:

and her interview on Lewis Howes’s podcast:

Here is my summary of her message.

  • There is a gap between what you know you should do and actually doing that.
  • Motivation is not enough. Most of the time you won’t feel motivated to do what you don’t want to do.
  • The way around this is to make use of your basal ganglia which manages habit and unconscious action. eg for an example of unconscious action, think about when you put on your trousers in the morning. You just do it and if you thought now about which leg you put in first, you would have no idea!
  • To activate the basal ganglia, don’t let your prefrontal cortex and natural desire for comfort to hijack you. Instead use the 5 second rule.
  • Whenever you are going to procrastinate, you just count backwards from 5 and by 1 you’ve started doing what you’re wanted to do but were too lazy/scared to do. Eg if you want to start getting out of bed, you can’t just say ‘I’m going to start getting out of bed early’, because in all likelihood, if that’s not your habit, then you’re not going to do that. If instead you count down from 5 to 1 as you’re deciding to get out of bed as soon as you first wake up, then you’re more likely to get up.
  • Nobody is coming to save you. Don’t wait for that raise, starting that podcast, starting that business etc. Nobody is going to magically come and do this for you. You need to do this yourself. Help yourself.

External Links

  • https://melrobbins.com
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About This Blog

I write about books I read, finance apps I use, and life experiments I try like veganism and cold showers. I like eating sourdough pizza and dumplings, as well as craft beer and natural wine

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I do write some stuff about financial topics such as cryptocurrency and investing. I am not a financial professional and please don’t rely on what I say to make financial decisions. Please check with your financial adviser before making these decisions.

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