Well do you?

Firstly I have Andy Edwards to thank for the inspiration to write this article. His superb article How you do anything is how you do everything summed up the Advanced Life Driving System. Our belief is that by applying the principles of advanced life driving daily to your business and your personal behaviour everyday will result in smooth fast progress to your chosen goal – whilst enjoying the ride along the way. Your business and professional journey is through an ever changing landscape that demands skill, quick reactions and a plan to navigate towards your chosen destination. It wouldn’t take long for me to assess your leadership style from your driving style because as Andy says ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’ Here are three examples:

Speed Awareness

You have seen them I am sure, the driver who revs up the car at the stop light and then zooms all of 100 yards to the next junction jamming on the brakes. Then repeats this at every opportunity. Do you really think this leader when leading a team will make smooth, considered and effective interventions or will they much like their car – wear their team out with their constant on/off approach to leadership ?

No empathy for an expensive machine probably equates to no empathy for a talented and loyal team. If occasionally you can drive like this perhaps remember – smooth is always the fastest route to any destination.

Objective Obsessed

A personal favourite of mine because I thank my lucky stars I am not in their team. You know the ones, hands grimly clutching the steering wheel even at a stand still in case another driver has the audacity to get in front of them ! Now when this driver turns up at the office you know how it goes…..they ask how was your weekend and before you have finished the first sentence they are launching into a list of tasks, objectives and reports to be completed that week. Not the most effective leadership style is it ?

Everyone needs to be a mind reader

Here they come swooshing around a roundabout – probably objective objective obssesed and without a thought for the environment around them. The last thing on their mind is indicating why ? I am too busy getting where I am going. Great on your own at 2 in the morning without a vehicle in sight, not so clever in the middle of rush hour. In fact it also slows you down. Watch an emergency services vehicle carve through traffic, with lights and horns on , using eye contact and gestures as well to make fast, safe progress. Thats the trick and surely your team and your business want to make fast, safe progress. So leave the mind reading to stage acts if you want your team to follow you be clear in your signals and intent and check their understanding.

Finally the picture at the head of this article was chosen because he looks like a great driver looking in his mirror. How often do you review data or the environment in a 360 degree manner or do you have a focus on the 180 degrees or so that your forward vision allows. Believe me there is a lot more going on than that.

Drive Life well – Enjoy the Ride

One of my passions is storytelling, with my colleagues at The Edge. Of course, we also take pride and joy in creating great film as after all we are a film production company. Our mission is to tell our clients’ stories in a relevant way that excites them and connects their chosen audience with their brand or project. You could say a skill and a passion that is one of the oldest. Our work is increasingly with that most modern of industries – Technology.

Which unsurprisingly to us at least have the most traditional of needs. When the coding is complete, when all the beta testing has been exhausted and the wraps are off, their story has to be told. Using some examples of our recent projects, here’s how we do it at The Edge.

Pinn – Identity

Pinn is pushing the boundaries of secure authentication; an essential for all of our connected worlds. The challenge was how to ensure complex technology could be explained in two minutes.

The message – the most unique of all elements of an authentication system is you the user. We worked with Pinn to focus on this message and create the concept of – just be yourself. This is essentially the core of Pinn’s approach. Their technology will evolve – but you won’t change.

We analysed where and how the film would be used and felt that an animation with few words would be ideal for the social media channels that would form the platform for connecting with potential customers. These results could then be measured easily and effectively, with a great example being that ‘Identity’ has now been viewed over 150,000 times on Vimeo.

Deloitte – Companies Like Yours

Deloitte was looking to ensure that awareness of cyber security was moved to a higher priority in the minds of their clients and even potential clients. In their own words, ‘Deloitte has created a short film to illustrate the complex topic of cyber security and help organisations understand the huge impact a cyber-attack could have’.

The message was clear that companies had to take cyber security more seriously and it could happen to anyone, even in companies like yours.

We felt that the audience would be more traditional and therefore a dramatic presentation was appropriate. In effect, a mini drama was produced as this can be very effective in ensuring a message is conveyed without falling into the trap of talking at people rather than taking them on a journey.

To date the film has won multiple awards in a variety of different ceremonies including:

2 x Gold at the New York Festivals (Best Direction, Best Script)

2 x Gold at the IVCA Awards (PR, Professional Education)

National Crime Agency – Teenage CyberCrime

More and more teenagers and young people are getting involved in cybercrime. Many do it for fun without realising the consequences of their actions – but the penalties can be severe. The National Crime Agency required a film to form the centerpiece of a campaign to raise awareness about the growing issue with teenage cybercrime.

Using comedy, we appeal to parents to be mindful of what their teenager could potentially be doing on the computer. It needed to be easily accessible for a wide ranging audience. Therefore the central idea we proposed was to focus on a family unit with proud parents. A scenario that a large section of the population could identify with.

Our strategy was to break down the message into three elements

Understanding – Our aim was to help parents understand that they should be involved with their children’s activities online.

Need – The need identified by the NCA that parents were unaware of the digital and cyber implications of their children’s activities.

Change behavior – By guiding the viewer to the conclusion that not to intervene or be aware of their children’s online behavior could have dire consequences.

The spokesperson of the CyberCrime film Richard Jones (Prevent Operational Team Manager) gained 104 mentions, which represented almost two-thirds of coverage to a potential reach of over 40 million people. The film also reached 50+ regional publications, with the likes of BBC News Online, Daily Mail, The Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, The Mirror, Yahoo News, Daily Star and Scotsman. ‘Cyber Choice’ was posted on the National Crime Agencies YouTube and Facebook channels. Within the first week, Facebook reached 200,000 views and YouTube reached 40,000 views.

So there we have it. A few great examples of how our films explain complex technology themes in a way that everyone can understand, achieving the highest impact possible.

First published by edgepicture.com

Talking is exactly what we are doing. We have naivigated the Apple store and our first podcast is now live. It is our pilot and you can hear us talking afterwards……A work in progress we think…:)

In coming months we will cover all sorts of topics and hope you will join us.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/drivelifewell-podcast/id1464499756?i=1000438858910