Jo Ayoubi and Sir Bob Geldof
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a three day conference, and one of the guest speakers
was Sir Bob Geldof. Now being of a certain age, I remember when Bob was a scruffy
rock singer with an attitude. And being a fellow-Dubliner, I always felt a bit of
kinship with him through the years.
Having met Bob at this conference, and having heard him tell his story, it’s clear
there’s so much more to him and his success than meets the eye. As well as having
started the Band Aid and Live Aid campaigns – which are still feeding and supporting
thousands of people in Africa to this day – Bob is a very successful businessman
and entrepreneur with a number of businesses in publishing and media.
Being fascinated with how people work and perform, it was really interesting to
understand what motivated Bob throughout his life and his various careers. You could
boil them down to a few nuggets:
- Be obsessed by what you’re doing – it’s got to really mean something if you’re going
to do it extraordinarily well
- Be really clear about your outcome
- Face all your own excuses for not doing what you need to do, then just get on and
do it
- Reward yourself with what matters to you, not someone else
- Take action – Bob quoted Goethe’s famous saying “Whatever you think you can do or
believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.”
It goes without saying that to achieve brilliant performance, you need to apply
these to yourself; it’s certainly reminded me of a few home truths!
But if you’re responsible for the performance of others – as a manager, leader,
HR or training professional, are you helping those people to get obsessed with their
work, clear about the outcome, face their difficulties, get the rewards they value
and take action?
If you’ve got ideas about how you can do this, and things you’ve done to improve
performance, I’d love to hear from you. Just contact us here.