Control over your life and work starts when you stop saying “I can’t”. Soon you’ll find that can do almost anything, that is, once you recognise and accept the trade-offs.

This is both a daily reminder to myself and one of the core messages I shared with DDB Group Aotearoa NZ team at their offsite last week.

I’d been personally invited by Natalia Spreys, one of DDB’s team leads, to be their guest speaker of the evening in what became a fun, 45-minutes of questions, challenges, and perspective shifts. Best of all, I knew that 75% of the room took something new away from my talk.

How did I know?

Well, I asked them. One-by-one. In front of everyone.

It was a bold move to ask each of my audience members for a no-excuses, no-caveat “Yes or No” answer to whether the session had been a good use of their time. And I’m proud to say that for a few, it wasn’t. After all, I had encouraged a practice of reflecting each day on what they could have done better, and their direct and honest feedback would inform mine.

What ultimately mattered was knowing what ‘good’ would look like for this event, and on that, I delivered. I hope that in the week that followed, they had considered the same.

If you’re a reader of my infrequent posts, you may notice this has been a bit off-centre from my norm, but sometimes it’s helpful to share those little moments worth remembering. I felt incredibly honoured the day that I got the invite, and even more so when their team asked me to stick around.

They had already given me their time, attention, and curiosity, and now they were giving me their food.

As I told this group at the beginning of my talk, we might never get to see the impact we’ve had from the things we do, say, or make. But, if you too believe in the butterfly effect, helping one person feel one percent better off will spread.

There is so much more I could share on the ways I’ve found to turn busy into better, but for those, I guess you’ll have to invite me to your next team hui 😉.