Anyone who knows me will know that I hate clichés but thinking out of the box really has been the order of the day today. Moving from Plan A to Plan B and then eventually to Plan 96, if I didn’t have a list of things to achieve, heaven only knows what would have happened to Wednesday.
My first visit to BNI Spire (Salisbury) scheduled, I ‘merrily’ exited the house before most people would even consider getting out of bed. 5:15am and I was travelling down the A4 with Gertrude (my faithful Satnav) telling me to ‘turn around where possible’. But I knew I was on the right route…. and carried on regardless. Fear not, this is not a ‘satnav-gone-wrong’ story, it’s an idiotic user story! Having managed to inadvertently extricate the memory card from Gertrude’s derriere when affixing her charger, she had – bless her – forgotten where I had asked her to direct me to and was heading me to Bourne End in Buckinghamshire, where I had left at 9:30pm last night.
I arrived earlier than I expected to at The White Hart Hotel in Salisbury – amazing what little traffic there is on Salisbury Plains at this time of the morning – to be warmly greeted by the chapter members at Spire. Educating each other about what they do and the referrals they are looking for, my role as their Director Consultant will unquestionably be an enjoyable one.
Running Members Success Training for the morning with 65% of the chapter, allowed me to get a deeper knowledge of the businesses represented in the room and as an initial BNI sceptic, most of the more ‘challenging’ issues raised were ones I had asked myself – why this, why that, how this, how that….? Perhaps being dubious and asking those probing questions helped!
Initially thinking I might be stuck in the hotel car park for the rest of the day, I eventually managed to wend my merry way back to home to find my neighbour kindly bringing my recycling bin back up the drive and not just returning it to near my house but putting it around the back of the house, just in case I didn’t have time to do it. Bless her – there are some truly thoughtful, fabulous people around.
And who would have thought that this was barely HALF of my working day? I could go on but I won’t! Thinking out of the box – a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective, according to Wikipedia (so it must be right!) – in order to achieve my goals today, has certainly required some creative thinking.
I am a ‘can do’ person but how I have managed to ‘do’ all the essential list, I have no idea. Duracell batteries….? Back to family, local and social history tomorrow. Promise….
