I attended the Christmas drinks for the Queensland chapter of ISACA last week as a guest of CA. As long term sponsors of the ACT Brumbies Spuer 14 team they managed to engage head coach Andy Friend to drop into Brisbane as the guest speaker.

Of all the speakers I have heard this year - ranging from Dan Ackroyd to Malcolm Galdwell to John Farnham and Peter Beattie - Andy was by far the most inspirational. By the end of his 20 minutes, if he had of asked me to pull on a jersey and stand between Jonah Lomu and the Irish Club buffet in the next room I would have done it.  

Stripping away the obvious rubgy focus, so much of what Andy recounted last week resonated with me as a people manager that I have felt compelled to share it here in the hope that it inspires a few others to use the upcoming business "off-season" to prepare for next year.  

For many vendors the year is all but over. And as a vendor sales person Christmas is a great time because it is the one period in the year where there is a reprieve, no matter how small, from targets, budgets and the grind of results, results, results.

For managers it is a time of regrouping. It is a time for reflecting on what things have worked. This year many things may have not worked whether due to the GFC or other more regular challenges.

But just like football teams that don't hang up their boots at the end of the final series and wait until the referee blows time on the following year to start again, this time of year is the business equivalent of the football offseason. And there is always plenty of work to be done.

Like a football team, a company or business is simply a group of people on a journey. At various times throughout the year various members of the team are pushed outside of their comfort zone. It is only then that you see the real person. In any team there are selfish people and there are selfless people. There are stable people and there are unstable people. A managers job is to fit them together towards a common cause. So how do you do that?

Well according to Andy you need to first ask yourselves some questions. For me that question would be "as the head of an analyst firm, what do I care about?" For you it may be totally different.

As a growing company I constantly get tested on this one. Whether or not it is talking to staff, potential new employees, partners, or clients I invariably get called upon to outline my core values within some business context. It is the "what do you stand for?" question.  

In the absence of always having an answer - because business and life are complex - I have opted for transparency as my underlying value. It was the underlying premise of calling this blog "The Naked Chief".

As some other examples Andy Friend was happy to share the excellent values of the ACT Brumbies. There are some great examples here for you to use as the building blocks for 2010 strategic planning: 

1. The way you do something is the way you do everything;
2. Focus on the positives;
3. The next thing is the best thing;
4. Getting beaten is acceptable. Losing is not;
5. Get your foot over the line (do as you are asked or commit to do);
6. Don't turn a blind eye to standards; take personal responsibility;
7. The way we start is the way we finish;
8. As coach, don't leave it all up to your players;
9. Is what I am doing going to make the team play better;
10. We have the talent to attack from anywhere;

11. If we don't have the footy (the advantage) then we need to get it back.

Yet even for great teams that live and breathe great values things don't always go to plan. For the Brumbies that happened this year with the tragic loss of player Shawn Mackay when he was struck by a car during a South Africa playing trip. 

At the time, one of the values instilled in the players was "Mistakes aren't fatal". Last week Andy commented "but it turned out that it was so we changed it". That is a very powerful message.

Quite often, like a football team, companies will recruit new players in the new year. In terms of ensuring team coherence and performance Andy recommends the importance of telling your people to forget evertything they did last year and to start again.  

His final word was as simple and as powerful as his other messages. If you lay down values, and goals and performance objectives then above all else, to be successful, everyone must demonstrate that each of these these things are important to us.

Have a wonderful offseason.