Carl Fitzsimons’ Story

As the fifth in our series of clients’ stories, we asked another of our long standing clients, Carl Fitzsimons, to share his journey and experiences with Evolution – which started 16 years ago!

I first met Evolution and Martin in 2000 when I was running Nicholls Foods Vimto Academy – we were helping other Food and Drink Companies to improve their performance in all areas and Martin ran a Business Practitioner course for us and some of our clients.

I had a background in not-for profit and business support sectors and this was my first time in a large Corporate environment. Whilst having previously been a young and brash MD in my last small business, I quickly realised I had a lot to learn in terms of how to best influence in this new environment and the NLP course I undertook with Martin then was the most important development I ever undertook.

Whilst I have always had a positive intent and been mindful of my impact, the course increased my self-awareness dramatically. It helped me to contain my ego and stop fighting every battle but focus on the war.

The tools and techniques I learned then have stayed with me in my future roles and I have used them in many ways consciously and unconsciously.

I moved from Nicholls to PZ Cussons where I was an HR Executive and Group lead for Learning and Development. I soon realised that what I had learned worked across all cultures and environments.

The same applied in my role with PepsiCo and when I became Head of Learning and Development at BAE Systems with a huge budget to manage L&D across a wide range of activities, helped me to have an impact and we won several awards.

In my current role as Group HR Director for Thai Union Europe (a $1 billion company that owns a wide range of food related businesses including John West in the UK) I continue to draw on the skills and knowledge from the initial course, and subsequent interactions with Martin and still find them invaluable.

I have connected with Evolution many times over the last 16 years and they have trained a number of people who have worked for me. I look forward to working with them in the future as my career continues to develop and I continue to help the people around me develop.

Angela Young’s Journey with Evolution

Angela Young’s journey with Evolution started over 10 years ago and, like with many of our colleagues/clients, we are happy to say the relationship is still ongoing today.

My first contact with Evolution was around 10 years ago when I was introduced to Martin through the Walsingham Clinic, a natural health centre and one of several businesses I run. We were developing a range of self-help gift products for high street retailers and I needed an experienced hypnotherapist to write and record the content for a pack to help with sleep disorders. Martin delivered the brief brilliantly and I know people who still use the hypnotherapy sessions we recorded to help them sleep.

Since those early days I’ve received coaching from Fiona and attended an immensely helpful confidence and assertiveness course she ran, both of which supported me as I was made Managing Director of a major company for the first time while simultaneously navigating post-divorce single parenthood. I have also had extensive business NLP training with Martin, and recently worked alongside him on a number of projects, seeing him apply the techniques he teaches first hand.

Not long after I started coaching with Fiona we both realised Cornwall lacked a focused and confidential networking for business leaders like us, so we formed a new networking group together, Cornwall Director Forum. It brought local business leaders and entrepreneurs together in a collaborative and supportive environment, somewhere where we could confidentially discuss the highs and lows of running a business in Cornwall. The group was immensely useful and introduced me to some people who I now consider my closest friends and favourite people, and for whom I have epic amounts of respect both personally and professionally. Martin took Fiona’s place in the group after a couple of years and some of us went on to form a company together, just for the pleasure of coming up with new business ideas and seeing where they led. It’s been fascinating and fun to work alongside Martin and see how he applies the methods he teaches in the real world. We haven’t quite invented the next must-have tech gadget but we certainly thought outside the box (outside the planet on some occasions) and I still think the world is waiting for a specially-designed pasty holder…

While I was in the throes of the NLP Business Coaching course I took with Martin a few years ago I met a man at a party, and in my slightly inebriated state thought it would be a good time to try out some of the techniques I had been set for that week’s homework. I clearly remember the course session immediately after James and I met, recounting the story to my fellow attendees of how I had “NLP’d the sh*t” out of this poor bloke, not fully appreciating just how significant that first encounter would become! The techniques I unleashed on him that day meant we had a really significant connection, despite not being the kind of people who would otherwise have spent much time talking – our communication styles remain very different to this day, but thanks to Martin I understand why and how we can still properly ‘click’. 7 years later we’ve got a 5yo daughter and run two businesses together…

As well as the communication (or as James might claim – chat up) techniques I picked up, a life-changing aspect of Evolution’s role in my life has been the process of effective goal-setting. During the first course I attended with Fiona I was recently divorced and having to rebuild most of my social life from scratch, so I set myself the goal of finding more female friends. The course itself provided several instantly – friends I have kept and maintain now, but also gave me a clear path forward to establishing and maintaining significant relationships. I now have far more friendships, both close and occasional, than I ever did, and far surpassed my original goal. I’ve been goal-setting, and goal-achieving, ever since and the techniques I learnt have taken me from forming new start-ups, dealing with difficult employees, to launching my own large 3-day music festival. I met Bob Geldof, someone I’d always admired, and managed to ‘NLP the sh*t’ out of his manager enough that I landed the job as his booking agent for certain territories not long after. The methods I have learnt thanks to Martin and Fiona mean that I rarely feel overwhelmed by the huge number of plates I spend my days spinning, and ensure that I’m always pretty clear about where I’m heading.

Evolution and the two wonderful people that lead it have been a significant contributor in my own growth as a businesswoman, entrepreneur, partner and mother, and I’m grateful and proud to be part of their story.

Nik Green’s Story

We’d like to share the journey of another one of our long standing clients with you – Nik Green. We first started working with Nik over ten years ago, and this working relationship evolved and developed into a friendship. Nik spoke about his experience of using NLP in an Outdoor Education setting at our NLP conference a few years ago – you can see this video on our Youtube Channel.
Read on to hear, in Nik’s words, about his personal evolution.

My Journey with Evolution by Nik Green

I was working as the Learning & Development Specialist for the Global Mining Company Imerys in Cornwall when I first encountered Evolution.
Not long before my arrival at Imerys, Evolution had been recruited to deliver a small part of a training course that was aimed at raising the awareness of Operational Supervisors in their roles and responsibilities. The course was mainly delivered by internal staff who did a reasonable job of covering their respective areas. The section of the course that Evolution delivered was of an exceptional quality and it became clear that they could assist me in delivering on my organisational objectives.
The provision of training was fairly fragmented at Imerys with individual Business Units and Departments organizing their own interventions for staff without taking the bigger picture view of the companies organisational needs. I began working with Martin on the development of an ‘Introduction to Management’ Program for those in managerial positions without formal training and for those aspiring to such a position. The course consisted of five workshops over five months with a consolidation period of one to one coaching over the next six months. The one-year program met exactly with my belief that to achieve long lasting positive change in behaviour then a longer duration of training program is required. The course was a success and received excellent feedback and achieved demonstrable improvements in the performance of the attendee’s.
Evolution went on to become the preferred provider for all Leadership, Management and professional staff training at Imerys designing and delivering a range of exemplary workshops that contributed to the achievement of organisational goals.
During this period Martin also became my business coach and became invaluable in enabling me to improve my performance at work. We also discussed my longer term development needs and my career aspirations. Martin led me through the NLP process of ‘Well Formed Outcomes’. Martin facilitated the process that allowed me to explore what I wanted from my work but also from my life more generally. The proposed outcomes of this coaching process included a move to self-employment dividing my time between work as a management consultant, picking back up on my previous career in adventure education and spending more time working with my parents on our family business the Raleigh Estate in Devon.
I have always had a low boredom threshold and in my past had changed jobs & careers often normally lasting around four years in each role and then moving onto a new challenge. The coaching that Martin provided reassured me that perhaps three different roles can co-exist at the same time.
It was not long after setting my life goals with Martin that the opportunity to start the change occurred with a voluntary redundancy process occurring.
Fast forward ten years and I’m sat writing this article having achieved almost exactly what I set out on that day with Martin to achieve. I am a freelance Outdoor Activity Instructor, part time Management Consultant and taking an active role in the Management of our family business. I’m also four months away from completing a BA Honours in Leadership & Management through the Open University.
What can I say about Martin and Fiona? They not only have a huge range of tools in their developmental tool kits, they have the uncanny knack of knowing which tool is right for the job and the personal qualities to deploy each tool to best affect. They are two of the best communicators I have ever met and on top of that are thoroughly pleasant people. I cannot thank them enough for their support, guidance, challenge, friendship that has enabled me to achieve a balance and continuity that I didn’t even know I needed.

The ‘Well formed outcomes’ process that Nik mentions is one of the key NLP techniques covered in the Practitioner Course. We’ve just started a new course in the North West and will be starting one here in St Agnes next month. You can find out more here.

NLP Practitioner word cloud — wordcloud created from feedback from delegates

Every Cloud has a Silver Lining

Looking for the silver lining

I’ve been thinking about some of these old sayings recently and how they apply in business, and in life generally.

You know the sort of things – ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ and ‘every cloud has a silver lining’.

I particularly like the last one.

At the core of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is a belief that your internal emotional and psychological state has a big effect on your performance.

There is also a belief that we are in controlof our minds, and therefore our results. Which makes sense really, because if we aren’t, who is?

With our Interaction Engineering approach to getting the best out of conversations, we use an NLP model called ‘reframing’ which proves that there is nothing new under the sun because it is basically about looking for the silver lining in the cloud. This will affect a state change which will have a knock on effect with our performance.

For example, when we first relocated Evolution to Cornwall in 2000, I was naturally anxious that we could develop a customer base here. I networked, phoned people up and eventually had my first Sales visit.

I was a little anxious about the meeting and was also concerned that I had a presentation to do the following day to a potential client but hadn’t prepared it yet – another late night was beckoning.

It was a long drive to my meeting and I’d just settled down to it when Fiona phoned and said “I’m really sorry, but he’s cancelled the meeting”.

It would be easy, at that point to fall in to a mind set of ‘typical, I knew we would never make a go of it in Cornwall, we might as well give up and go somewhere else, or get a job or something’

Instead, I heard myself say, “that’s great, now I can spend the afternoon on my presentation for tomorrow” and, pleased, I turned the car around and drove back to the office – thinking along the way how I could recover the lost meeting with the potential first client.

He never became a client, but the people I presented to did and we’ve been working successfully in Cornwall for the last 17 years. During this time there have been many times when I’ve had to look for the silver lining, but I always seem to have found it.

If you’d like to know how to reframe, or manage your State to improve your interaction, get in touch and let’s start a conversation. If you’d like to read more about our NLP Practitioner Course and see how we can help you find your silver linings, have a look here.

Rachel Picken’s Journey with Evolution

As the second in our series of stories from our clients, celebrating our twenty years in business, we’d like to share Rachel Picken’s journey with you.
If you feel inspired by what you read, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to learn how we can help you on your journey.

I first met Martin in a previous life – I worked as a newspaper reporter at the West Briton, and was handed responsibility for business news. At the time I was flirting with a local PR consultant, Mark Picken, and he was showering me with freebies in the hope I would write about his clients.

One of the opportunities he offered me was to learn NLP with Martin. I turned my nose up a bit – I have a degree in communication and I’m a trained journalist. What else could I possibly learn? But I did meet with Martin and tried out a few techniques, then wrote about it in my business pages.

I started dating Mark not long after, and we married in 2008. Mark has been on several of Evolution’s NLP courses, and I was curious. By this point, I had been freelancing with Mark’s business MPAD and joined the team permanently just after we got married. So I signed up for a business practitioner course, and little did I know how it would change my life, and that of my fellow students.

During the course, we learned about how different individuals communicate, using metaphors (a technique I still use in presentations today), anchors, but most importantly goal-setting. During the course I set myself three goals – move house, become a company director and start a family. By October 2009, I found myself settling into a new role as director at MPAD, but also trying not to throw up at the smell of kitchen flooring in our new house due to morning sickness. Olivia Grace Picken made an appearance after a 90 hour labour in July 2010.

One of my course-mates also had a baby around the same time – having started a relationship during the course by trying out her NLP skills on an unsuspecting man. I expect there are many Evolution hatches and matches.

Another of my course-mates was a fairly private guy but towards the end of the course he explained how he and his wife were keen to re-explore adopting children, having had a knock back previously. We lost touch but a couple of years later, I saw him from afar at the end of a street, with two gorgeous curly-haired toddlers in tow. It’s a powerful memory for me, and represents the legacy Evolution has created for so many people.

Even now, I find it easier to set goals and chunk them down into manageable steps. Last year, I wanted to take up a new hobby – as soon as I opened up my eyes to that opportunity, I spotted an ad for pole fitness classes on my social feed. I signed up, and I now have a pole in my office. It raises some eyebrows but mostly clients and staff want to give it a go.

Through Martin, I’ve also gotten to know Fiona – whom, safe to say, is one of the most treasured women in our part of Cornwall. She is warm, emotionally intelligent, supportive and brave. I attended one of her two-day courses in 2009 for confidence and assertiveness. Some people around me couldn’t believe I would need such a course, but like so many professional women I struggle to ignore the small but powerful critical voice at the back of my head. Imposter syndrome is very real and I think it’s the reason we still have gender pay gap and poor representation amongst women at board level.

I’m proud to be part of Evolution’s story, and so very glad Martin and his team are part of mine.

Alison Rumney’s Story

As part of turning the grand old age of 20 we have been looking back on our journey as a company and as individuals, and thought it would be interesting to hear from some of the people we have worked with on their journeys over this time.

Although some of our courses may just be as short as 1 day – the tools and techniques learnt can certainly be used for a lifetime.

This week we’d like to share Alison Rumney’s story with you.

I first met Martin on a business leadership retreat for dentists and their partners in October 2010. Tim, my husband and I had attended a previous retreat and set goals for growing and developing our business and also finding time away from Illume, our practice, for family life and fun. We’d made a start and wanted to do more.
Those few days with Martin were unlike any I had experienced before and whetted my appetite to find out more so I booked a place on the NLP Business Practitioner course that started the following year. I was an ex Modern Foreign Languages teacher and prided myself on my communication skills and emotional intelligence and yet was sure these could be further developed and I had more to learn.
Tim and I had been looking to buy a holiday home in Cornwall for a couple of years with limited success, you could say no success at all, as we had not made a purchase despite several trips to the pointy end to view properties. After working through keys to an achievable outcome with Martin I returned home with greater clarity and within a year the keys to a beautiful barn conversion were in our palms. Our home is just as I envisaged, right down to the wooden floors and shutters and the upside down living and we love spending time there.
I was also using anchors to help with confidence before public speaking and team training and using favoured rep systems to communicate with the team members I led. I loved the course, the preparation and even the homework; my sons declared me a ‘study nerd’ and I wore the title proudly. I was excited about the monthly drive to Holmes Chapel. I was learning so much, I didn’t want the course to end and so when it did I signed up pretty much immediately for Business Master Practitioner the next year. I found this even more valuable and used the values elicitation exercise to enable my elder son to decide what he wanted to do post graduation. He is now a project manager for a large audio visual company and travels all over the world, designing and building conference stands. He loves it.
My role at Illume involves, amongst other things, managing the HR for a team of fourteen and being responsible for client liaison and feedback. I find that knowing the outcome I wish for, using embedded commands, reframing and perceptual positioning all help get me to where I want to be.
My story wouldn’t be unfolding the way it is without meeting and working with Martin and I’m thrilled to be an Evolution alumnus!

Read more about our NLP Business Practitioner Course or get in touch with us if you’d like to talk about how we may be able to help you and your business.

How to Buy Stuff for Your Business

If you buy things regularly you probably feel that there may not be anything else to learn about how to buy stuff for your business, especially if it’s a task that you do every day.

However, when you buy anything, from something so small as a sheet of paper to something as large as a building, you have as much responsibility for the bottom line as the Sales team.

If you spend £1,000, typically your sales team has to sell £10,000 of goods or services to pay for it.
sales teams in most organisations receive rigorous and ongoing training in negotiation, sales techniques and relationship building. This gives them an edge when negotiating with most businesses.

We think it’s time to redress the balance and give the people who buy stuff for businesses the same sort of skill set that sales people have.

This will have a dramatic effect on the bottom line

One group of buyers I worked with had responsibility for over £200 million annual spend. Between the 12 of them they had a total of 3 days negotiation training. They made the cost of their Negotiation Skills training back within a few days of the end of the course by negotiating a better deal with an existing supplier.

But it’s not just about negotiation skills.

Effective buying has to be structured, with a flexible approach to get the best deals, add the most value and increase the profit margins.

Quite simply, if you save £100 on a £1,000 spend, your sales team now only has to sell £9,000 to pay for it – or add £1,000 to the bottom line.

Does that sound like a result you would be interested in? We can show you how to do it – get in touch or have a look at our Developing Procurement Talent programme.

Martin was recently interviewed on Pirate FM’s Business Hub – if you’d like to hear what he had to say you can listen again here.

Martin Talks to Mark Peters about all things Evolution

As you may already know, here at Evolution we recently turned 20, and with this milestone had a major shakeup to the business with a re-brand and a new direction. Last night Martin was interviewed by Mark Peters on Pirate FM’s Business Hub to discuss the changes: what they are, why we made them, and what they mean to our clients – both prospective and current – basically all things Evolution.

Fundamentally, we have taken all of our skills, knowledge, and experience gained over the last 20 years and combined it into 3 key areas:

Interaction Engineering: Working artfully to manage the outcomes of communication and interaction

Procurement Dynamics: Enabling the procurement process to support strategic goals

Navigator: Planning a strategic direction that keeps everyone on board

To hear about these changes in Martin’s own words, you can listen to the interview here:

If you’d like to listen to the whole Business Hub show, you can access it via the Pirate FM Business Hub Page

As mentioned in the interview, this is not the first time Martin and Mark have met – in fact they recently wrote and published a book together – Evolve or Die . This ‘ultimate self-help book’ is available on Amazon.

A Procurement Professional’s Guide To Buying Christmas Presents

It’s that time of year again, your family require Christmas presents to keep the relationship going, you have a limited budget and you are running out of time.

Do you start with a plan? Do you wander round town looking in the shops, choosing stuff at random and then try to fit the present to the person afterwards? How many times do people have to return the presents after Christmas?

There is another way – you can apply procurement theory to buying Christmas presents.

Let’s look at each of these quadrants in turn

Routine: low spend, lots of suppliers.

If you are looking for socks, slippers, book vouchers or bottles of generic whisky then there’s no need to waste time, just go to the Supermarket – job done.

Leverage: high spend, lots of suppliers.

If you are looking for Xboxes, computers or Bikes, then the power is with the buyer. There are lots of suppliers, all wanting to shift product before Christmas so have a look online and either buy there or check out prices and walk around the High Street. In either case bargain hard!

Critical: Low Cost – few suppliers, or high risk of not getting what you want

If you want that gift voucher from the artisan basket weavers you visited when you were on holiday, or your children absolutely NEED the latest version of Buzz Lightyear or Tracey Island, or you have left it until 4pm on Christmas Eve to buy your Partner’s present, then be very careful.

The power is definitely with the supplier here and if you want a good deal you are going to have to bargain very carefully. Build rapport, help them to understand your predicament, gain their sympathy and you might still get what you want without having to mortgage your soul.

Strategic: High spend, few suppliers or high risk of not getting what you want

If your partner has had a lifelong dream of flying a helicopter, Learning to Windsurf or eating at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck on a particular day, then you need to work hard to get the deal.

Build a relationship with the supplier – people are much more likely to go the extra mile, do a deal or be helpful for someone they like. Avoid being stroppy, demanding, patronising or superior. Remember the supplier has the power to destroy your Christmas.

So, have a plan, analyse and categorise the presents you are going to buy and negotiate in the most appropriate way and you’ll have a great, reduced stress Christmas surrounded by happy and grateful people.

When you wake up on New Year’s Day and make those New Year’s Resolutions, perhaps you should make one to contact us and see how we can help you and your business next year?

Whatever you choose, we hope you have a fantastic Christmas and a successful New Year.

Do You Make Lists?

Do you have too many tasks to keep them all in your head?

Do you make lists?

For lots of people, the problem with lists is that is difficult to prioritise them. We tend to start at the top and work our way down, and any new tasks either get added to the bottom or we do them as they come in rather than continuing our systematic approach.

At the end of the day we turn the page and start the process again the next morning.

This is ineffective, unproductive and demotivating.

Dwight D Eisenhower said in a speech in 1954 “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent”

Urgent means that a task requires immediate attention. These are the to-do’s that shout “Now!” Urgent tasks make us reactive.

Important tasks are things that contribute to our long-term objectives. Sometimes important tasks are also urgent, but typically they’re not. When we focus on important activities we are much more proactive and motivated.

Steven Covey popularised this approach to prioritising with an urgent/important matrix split into four quadrants. This helps you to decide whether a task should be done, dumped, delegated or delayed.

I have adapted this approach to make it more dynamic so you can continually review and revise tasks throughout the day or week and accurately change priorities when new tasks arrive. It also allows you to feel a sense of achievement when you have completed tasks – always a good motivator.

Contact me if you’d like to find out more about how to use it in projects, or teams.

I made a video to explain the two approaches (it’s currently had 8,399 views and I’d love to see it achieve 10,000 so please share it with as many people as possible)

watch the video here:

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Author: Martin