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Why (I think) I ran a marathon

June 5th, 2025

20 years ago, I ran a half-marathon and on finishing thought;

‘If I was running a marathon, I’d only be halfway. Ooft. That would be brutal.’

So why was it that last Friday, I decided to run a marathon?

Well, there are several reasons and the first starts with the pictured pot of jellybeans.

A year ago, I picked up the jellybeans at a conference. It was the usual Pavlovian response;

‘They’re free! Get some!’

However, soon I was reminded of my recent commitment to eat more healthily. I distinctly remember thinking;

‘The only instance when these would be useful is if I were to run a marathon.’

But I didn’t want to run a marathon, so the jellybeans went on a kitchen shelf; and they stayed there because I didn’t want to throw them away (I can’t bear waste). The almost daily glance at the jellybeans brought about a shift though and soon my inner voice was saying;

‘You’re going to have to run a marathon if you want to get rid of these jellybeans’*

In addition to my ‘free stuff vs no waste’ conundrum, I think there were other reasons:

(1) Since I’m known for being a ‘runner’, having run several times a week since I was a child, I’m often asked; “Have you ever run a marathon?”. I think part of me was simply bored of saying; “No.”

(2) I’ll be 50 this year, and despite suffering from ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’, even I am having to acknowledge the ageing process. Running a marathon is unlikely to get any easier.

These are all conscious (if quirky) rationalisations, but I think there was more to it. Something personal and subconscious. Prior to completing it, I only told two people I was going to run a marathon. Also, I did not take part in an organised race. Instead, I measured my own course which started from my house, incorporated local landmarks that were meaningful to me and ended at my partner’s house.

So what have I learnt from this (that’s hopefully useful):

1. People are Complex

The reasons people do things can be varied and may not make much sense to you or indeed them. The brain is often considered the ‘Executive Centre’, but in reality, it is more akin to the press office: producing narratives that make sense of how the body perceives and responds to its environment (for more insight into how the brain constructs its reality, I strongly recommend the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett).

1. Changing One Thing Can Change Everything

Until I started training for the marathon, I found running easy, enjoyable and was objectively quite good at it. Although training for the marathon was still ‘running’, I found it hard, often unpleasant and I was nowhere near as good at it relative to training for a 5km distance. So much so, that despite it being accepted wisdom that (a minimum of) 12 weeks is required to prepare for a marathon, I did my marathon after only 8/9 weeks of training, primarily because I just wanted to get it done and the training to stop! Changing a single variable, the distance, changed almost everything.

1. Very Little is Truly Done Alone and You May Never Know Your Impact

Despite the reputation of the ‘loneliness of the long-distance runner’, I proactively engaged the services of a dietician and a cranial osteopath/massage therapist. Both were incredibly helpful in getting me to both the start and the finish. Yet until now, only one of the aforementioned ‘support crew’ explicitly knew I planned to run a marathon. Furthermore, other sources of support can be unexpected and unplanned. To give just two examples, keeping ‘fluid’ as events unfold, which I gained from a guided walk in the woods and the breath work during an introduction to taking ice-baths, were not preplanned into my preparation, but were incredibly useful none the less.

*Days before the marathon my cranial osteopath/sports massage therapist pointed out that I could have just given the jellybeans away. Strangely this had not really occurred to me! I think because I’d already labelled them as ‘unhealthy, unless used in a marathon’, and didn’t know any other marathon runners living locally.

How One’s WHY Impacts the WHAT. When Minor Changes Matter.

October 8th, 2024

I’ve just spent several hours changing a single word on mch’s branding, marketing, presentation materials and documentation. Instead of describing my work as one of, ‘staff development’, I changed it to ‘people development’. Why did I bother to make such a change? Where did the insight to do so come from?

The answers to both can be found in the Source of Leadership Programme I deliver. A guiding premise of the programme is that leadership is a never-ending quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop oneself. To this end, an early exercise in the programme involves finding what Simon Sinek terms your, ‘WHY’. Essentially, this involves completing the following sentence;

‘My WHY is to [Insert the contribution you want to make in the world here] so that [Insert the impact you perceive your contribution will make here].

For a summary of Sinek’s work, and guidance on completing this sentence, click here.

In the Source of Leadership Programme, I raise the prospect that participants may generate multiple WHYs initially, with a personal WHY and a professional WHY being the most common. By way of example, I share the following personal and professional WHYs I generated for myself and my organisation;

Personal ‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother and friend I can be.’

Work/mch: positive impact ‘To help individuals, teams and organisations reach their full potential so they can achieve the positive impact they want to have on the world.’

I deliver the Source of Leadership Programme annually and always try to approach each exercise with a fresh pair of eyes (or more accurately a pair of eyes with a year’s more experience and reflective practice). In practical terms, this typically means I do the exercise myself in advance of facilitating it for participants. Doing so this year, I was struck by:

1. The multiple roles I have.
2. How artificial it seems to separate my professional roles from my personal ones: whilst some roles may be more important than others, they are all part of who I am.
3. The fact that given I only have one set of values, perhaps I only have one WHY.

With these insights, my provisional, overarching WHY became;

‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother, friend, colleague, mentor, trainer and facilitator I can be.’

These insights also explain why I felt it was appropriate to change ‘staff development’ to ‘people development’ in all of mch’s materials. My ultimate aim is not just to develop a person as a member of staff, but as a human being. This is what draws me to the type of training I deliver. The utility of the likes of emotional intelligence, mindset, resilience, management and leadership training is not confined to the workplace. These topics are equally valuable outside of work. Although there can be an understandable desire to compartmentalise life, the ‘buckets’ we create for ourselves often prove quite transparent and porous - one impacts on the others. This perspective is supported by the extended feedback I receive from participants six to 12 months after their training formally ends. One of the most common qualitative comments goes something like;

‘Whilst the training was useful at work, it’s also had a really positive impact on my relationship with my partner/son/daughter/friend/mum/dad/sister/brother.’

So what’s the ‘So What?’ to all of this? I believe there is one general and one specific ‘So What?’. The general one is that no matter how experienced you are, there can be real value in repeating the same reflective exercises, provided you can do so with genuine curiosity. The specific is that discernment is likely to serve you well, if like me, your WHY is based on the roles you have. Given that your WHY is intrinsically linked to your identity, if you start to attach your identity to a role, the question that’s then worth asking is;

‘Who would I be if that role no longer existed?’

A while ago, I was faced with this reality when a separation led to my role as ‘partner’ no longer existing. Given the multiple roles I have, the loss was felt, but did not lead to any sort of identity crisis. However, it did make me appreciate that all my roles could come to an end at any point. If that were to happen, who would I be then? This is a question I’m reflecting upon, and it may lead to a further iteration of my WHY. If so, it would be a fitting illustration of the never-ending leadership quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop.

For an overview of the Source of Leadership Programme mentioned in this blog, click here.

Reflections on 20 Hours Doing ‘Nothing’

April 4th, 2024

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Blaise Pascal, Philosopher and Mathematician

I came across this quote many years ago. It’s stuck because, for me, it highlights the potential ‘dark side’ of action. Whilst I consider it valid, it’s also challenging for someone like me who considers that ‘what we do is who we are’. I hasten to add though that why we do something, who we do it with/for, how we do it and where and when we do it are also crucial.

Having discussed this quote with others, an assumption often emerges, namely that if we sit quietly in a room alone, we’re effectively doing nothing. If you subscribe to the premise of ‘what we do is who we are’, the arresting conclusion is that if we do nothing, we are nothing.

I was keen to explore this further, but rather than sit alone in a room, I sat (and lay in a hammock) in woodland for 20 hours. During this time, I stayed within the same 15 square metres of woodland. I heard and saw no one else. I had no watch, no phone and no reading materials. I chose not to write or draw anything. I simply sat/lay and experienced day turn to night and then night turn to day. In the days leading up to it, I was apprehensive. I was worried I’d get really bored, to the point that it would be unpleasant.

Did I get bored? No.

Was it unpleasant? No. In fact, I would have been content to have stayed longer.

Did I do nothing? No. At times, I was taking care of basic needs such as eating and sleeping. At other times, I was intentional and meditated. For the most part though I simply absorbed what my senses perceived:

The smells of the forest and how they varied over the course of 20 hours.

The sensation of flies around my face (a free test of self-regulation if ever there was one).

The sound of bird song, deer movement and foxes communicating (very unexpectedly, very loudly and very early in the morning).

The differing shapes and colours of the trees.

Intermingled with this were a multitude of thoughts and feelings concerning people, places and things. Some were unsurprising, as they involved very current events in my life. However, many were far more obscure and left me wondering; ‘Why on earth did that pop into my mind?’

Was there enlightenment? Most certainly not! However, despite not sleeping very well, I felt energised and upbeat leaving the forest and for the remainder of the day.

Would I recommend it? / Would I do it again? Yes and Yes. If you do give it a go, I hope you find it insightful to explore what thoughts and feelings emerge when you allow yourself that amount of time in such an environment. Also, and without meaning to be clichéd, I hope you perceive it not as a case of getting away from it all, but instead getting back to it all.

A Week in a Buddhist Monastery: An Exercise in Patience and Forbearance

November 21st, 2023

I first encountered meditation in my mid-twenties. Surprisingly perhaps, it was while working at the international management consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company. I was part of a project which was analysing how the performance of executives was impacted by how they spent their time. With the key caveat that correlation does not always equate to causation, the most striking finding for me was that almost all the top performing executives meditated. Furthermore, they didn’t just meditate before/after work, or at weekends, it was incorporated into their working day.

Work at McKinsey is largely project based, so there is a continual cycle of working with one team, and then moving on to work with another. A year or so into my time at the company, I joined a team which seemed ‘different’. It was calmer. Although work was still conducted at a fast pace, it was more relaxed. Deadlines were still set and met, but the atmosphere was ‘loose’ rather than ‘tight’. It turned out that everyone on the team (apart from me) meditated regularly.

Up until this point, I’d had a very narrow/biased view of meditation. To me it belonged in Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, or to the counter culturalists who wanted to ‘Turn on, tune in and drop out’. Now I was seeing it in the ‘mainstream’, and it appeared a useful aid to performance. So, for the last 20 years or so, I’ve ‘dabbled’ with meditation. In a good week, I may meditate five or six times for around 10 minutes each time. More typically, I manage three to four 10-minute sessions and a smattering of ‘micro-meditations’, where I pay attention to the inhale and exhale of 10 breaths.

I’ve persisted though; in part, because my experience at McKinsey established a belief that mediation aids performance. Given my desire to perform well in various areas of life, I therefore felt it was something I should do. It’s also piqued my curiosity. I find it intriguing that something that appears to be so simple;

‘Just focus on your breath’

can be so difficult to achieve, on account of distractions by thoughts, feelings and other sensations.

Over time, I’ve come to appreciate that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ meditation. The very thoughts and feelings that prevent me focusing on my breath are often ones that I’ve been unaware of or have tried to dismiss too soon. Creating the time to meditate allows me to acknowledge my thoughts and feelings and either accept them more fully, or attend to them more constructively. On the rare occasions when prolonged focus on the breath is achieved, I perceive that I’m subsequently calmer and able to think more clearly.

So, with this ‘amateur’ interest in meditation, how did I end up at an intensive, week-long meditation retreat at the Samye Ling Centre (the largest Buddhist monastery in Western Europe, situated in the rural lowlands of Scotland)? Well, old friends will tell you that a personal motto of mine is;

‘If you don’t have a go, you’ll never know.’

Having just gotten over a potentially life changing illness, my (often naïve) enthusiasm for new experiences has been reenergised. Added to this was a growing interest in Buddhism. My perception that it advocates universal compassion on the one hand and emotional non-attachment on the other, interests me in relation to both intimate and professional relationships. I’m also a great believer in the inherent value of immersing yourself in a completely different way of life (even if just for a few days). Doing so invariably broadens my perspective and helps me appreciate what I truly value. If I’m lucky, it can also make me aware of, and then question, truths I’ve (often unconsciously) developed in my ordinary life with respect to ‘how life is’. In terms of the retreat, each day was structured around six 60-90 minute sessions, so 42 sessions in total. The first session on each day started at 5.30am and the last finished at 8.30pm.

The first session felt quite auspicious, around 140 people were assembled in what to me was a very elaborately decorated temple: lots of gold and hundreds of statues of the Buddha. Then our teacher for the week, a purple- and orange-robed lama, who had flown in from Nepal, entered the temple with his translator. Gongs sounded, chants were made and the more ‘serious and knowledgeable’ attendees (of which I was not one) performed a series of prostrations and genuflections. An overview of the week and some very basic rudiments of meditation were then outlined.

Of the remaining 41 sessions, 40 of them basically involved non-directed meditation, or the lama sitting at the front of the temple and (via a translator) telling the assembled that we could NOT learn ‘real’ meditation because;

“you are fixated with happiness and most of you have mental health problems.”

Instead of teaching meditation, he gave what, to me, were very different perspectives on some fundamental human characteristics. For example, in his view;

“Kindness is understanding your stupidity and then showing continual endeavour to reduce it. The general Western approach to kindness is spoiling the individual.”

From my perspective, time was also given over to publicly criticising the monks and nuns of the monastery and hours were spent talking about a yearlong retreat which only a handful of people seemed remotely interested in. Questions could be asked, but they had to be submitted in written form. There was also some sporadic, but very in-depth analysis of (what seemed to me) an obscure Buddhist text.

In short, it was bizarre. People were leaving early and many (including myself) were asking why a meditation retreat had been organised, if it was not considered possible for us to meditate. The need for a translator compounded the frustration, as there could be over 20 minutes of incomprehension before the lama stopped speaking and the translation began.

And then came the 42nd and final session and the lama’s answer to the final question; ‘Can you give some insights into how to meditate?’.

The lama proceeded to introduce the six Buddhist perfections:

1. Generosity.
2. Morality.
3. Patience.
4. Energy.
5. Meditation.
6. Wisdom.

He stated that the order of the perfections was very important. He then proposed that many of us may well have found the week frustrating, because it was uncomfortable sitting for hours and not understanding what was required to meditate. If so, this was good, as this was developing the third perfection of patience. By sticking at it, and returning to the temple, session after session, we had also been developing the fourth perfection, energy, grit, forbearance and perseverance. These are the key precursors for meditation: you can’t hope to meditate without patience and energy. Finally, at the very end, he gave a 10 minute insight into how to meditate and then it was all over! As a trainer and facilitator, I had deep admiration. On the basis that the lama’s approach was intentional, in my view it takes real resolve to try and frustrate 140 people for almost an entire week, in order to illustrate a point.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Ultimately, it gave me some valuable insights for meditation, which was my primary aim for the week. Like with so many memorable experiences though, the most valuable insights were unexpected. Firstly, it was a privilege to gain a completely different perspective on fundamental issues such as kindness, happiness and suffering. It highlighted that certain ‘truths’ I have are WEIRD: they are based on experiences and research from largely Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic countries. Alternatives exist.

Secondly, it provided a valuable reminder that cognitive understanding is not the same as knowledge. Experience and the emotions that come with experience are crucial too. For example, before the retreat, I understood and agreed with the value Buddhism places on accepting unpleasantness. I cognitively accepted that it is often my response to the event (rather than the event itself) that creates the most suffering. When I suffer the most, it’s due to the effort I’m making to resist the way things are, because I want things to be different. However, experiencing almost a week of persistent frustration made me really know this to be true. For me, the author Arnold Bennett summarises it well;

‘There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.’

Finally, I valued experiencing a series of dichotomies in relation to my emotions. During the week, I felt: • Pride, hubris and humility • Frustration, boredom and the energy/motivation that comes from gaining insight • Loneliness and connection • Confusion and clarity • Dread and excitement • Resentment and admiration • Sadness and happiness • Guilt and compassion In short, by the end of the week I felt a fuller, more authentic human being. Going forward, it will be interesting to discover the extent to which this fullness can be retained, back in my ordinary, WIERD world.

Making Business Better with Formality and Quirkiness

November 21st, 2023

mch has always tried to operate a four-fold approach to business. We believe sustainable success lies in resonance and harmony between:

1. Providing a great service to clients
2. Treating people well: those who work for and with us
3. Having a positive impact on wider society
4. Minimising mch’s negative environmental impact

How we formalise this approach is detailed in the Corporate Social Responsibility reports we publish every year. mch is committed to sharing the steps it is taking to develop its four-fold approach further. In keeping with its culture, these steps can be both formal and quirky. Here is an example of each:

The Formal

mch has recently become part of the Better Business Act Coalition. This coalition aims to change the law that governs how businesses act. Specifically, the aim is to amend part of the current Companies Act to ensure businesses are legally responsible for benefiting workers, customers, communities and the environment, while delivering profit.

In signing up to the coalition, mch has voluntarily changed its governing documents, so it now has the legal responsibilities the coalition wants all businesses to have.

Ideally, all businesses would voluntarily choose to do the same. Realistically though, change will require a collective effort, which is why mch is supporting this campaign for government to make change mandatory.

The Quirky

The proposed Better Business Act aims to empower directors to exercise their judgement in weighing up and advancing the interests of all stakeholders. To help with this process, mch has (informally) enlisted the help of two new Directors:

(i) My recently seeded wildflower meadow

To help biodiversity, I recently converted a part of my garden into a wildflower meadow.

(ii) The Garibaldi fish

For various reasons, this is one of my favourite animals.

By bringing the meadow and the Garibaldi fish onto the Board, mch hopes to make better decisions, particularly in relation to the environment. When faced with both strategic and operational issues, it is hoped that better decisions will be made, simply by asking ourselves;

“What would be in the best interests of the wildflower meadow?” Or “What would the Garibaldi fish prefer?”

If this proves successful, more Board members may be added, to help broaden our perspectives further, particularly in relation to social issues. If you can see the value of such a thought experiment, who or what would you add to your Board to better represent the environment and broader society?