Second Half Thinking

At this time of year my thoughts are focused on Wimbledon but since 2005 this time of the year also reminds me of the concept of Second Half Thinking which Sir Clive Woodward detailed in his book 'Winning' about the how England won the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

After the 1999 World Cup he realised that it was necessary to make some changes. One of the problems was that although the team started a match well they did not start the second half of a match with sufficient focus and he realised that what he wanted was to see "the players performing as if it was the first-half all over again".

Changing the player's shirts at half-time was symbolic - a "physical act to trigger our minds to 0-0, fresh start, Second Half Thinking." He felt that "it should be irrelevant what the scoreboard said". If the team were losing they needed to forget the first half and play really well in the second half and if they were winning they needed to win the second half too.

In June 2005 my then Area Manager shared this idea with the branches under his leadership and challenged us all to think about what we would do differently leading our branches for the second half of the year. I was working as a Service and Sales Manager in Crawley at the time and the branch performance and engagement of the team were going well; so was there a need to change?

We used the idea of Second Half Thinking to celebrate the team's successes in the first half of the year with an indoor lunch-time barbecue on the 4th of July and we changed the layout of the furniture and bought lots of plants to give the place a fresh feel. At the lunch everyone was encouraged to jot down their ideas on big flip chart sheets under Stop, Start and Continue headings and we talked these through at a subsequent team meeting and implemented almost every idea (including replacing a wobbly toilet seat...because that was clearly important to someone!)

I've used this concept several times since; as a branch manager having recently taken over a very demoralised team and as an area manager encouraging my branch managers to take a fresh look at how they were doing things, each time taking the opportunity to celebrate the successes of the first half of the year as well.

But it also is a great prompt for anyone working towards individual goals or targets. What may have been the right approach in early January at the start of the annual performance cycle may not be appropriate now - but how many of us look at our performance objectives on an ongoing basis and change our approach in response to outside events?

For me, having started gardening leave last week it is the perfect opportunity to stop looking back and missing what I can no longer have but to look to the second half of the year and put some new goals in place. So goal setting will be the subject of my next blog......