One of the great things about our job is that we get to travel around the world and work with some of the highest performing executives in the business world. Because of the demands of our personal travel, as well as the demands of having to be our best in front of our clients, we also get to experience the demands of today’s business world. This has made every day a lab experiment where we are constantly interviewing our clients to discover their latest challenges and trying new Mindset, Nutrition, Movement, Recovery, and Preparation for Key Event strategies to see what works, when it works, and how it works. With that said, we wanted to share an observation that we’ve made at Tignum.

By the nature of the clients Tignum partners with, almost everyone we work with is extremely talented, very driven to succeed, and in many ways swimming. To us, this is the business executive equivalent to getting to work with Roger Federer, Phil Mickelson, or Jenson Button to help them get just a little bit better for just a little bit longer. Just like top athletes quickly learn that they can’t always win, they can’t always be on top of their game, their coaches support them to try to help them get a little closer to their full potential.

At Tignum, we realize that the list and intensity of the external performance killers (i.e. travel, media, email overload, multi-tasking, long hours, shareholder/owner pressure, etc.) is growing. Because of this, even highly talented and skilled executives are constantly sliding up and down the continuum of sinking, floating, and swimming. In fact, without the best sustainable high performance strategies, our clients tell us that they are spending more and more time struggling to swim. It’s as if the waters are getting rougher, the tides are stronger, and the under current is more deadly. We are seeing the result of this when the CEO of Lloyds Banking Group has to step down, when US Presidential candidates have 57 second brain fogs, and when top leaders make poor decisions.

Sustainable High Performance isn’t a finish line; it’s a constant challenge. It requires a new level of awareness, a new level of preparation for key events (personal preparation vs. content preparation), a new level of support, and new strategies (Mindset, Nutrition, Movement, and Recovery) designed for today’s business world. There is no better feeling than being a swimmer, and all of our clients have experienced it. Swimmers are energized by the thought that there is untapped potential within them and when they develop it they maximize their reach in ways they never thought possible. True high performers live to impact others and this is why they are often so frustrated when they feel like they are floating or sinking. The good news is, we are all in the same seas, and you are always just one choice away from moving towards swimming again.

Imagine the payoff when Roger Federer wins two more tournaments, climbs one spot up the ladder, or gets into the zone against one of his top rivals. Now imagine when you are swimming (at work and at home), full of energy, executional stamina, mental agility, and resilience. What’s your payoff?

As always, we would love to hear what you think.

Jogi Rippel & Scott Peltin

It may seem like a deviation from our normal approach to Sustainable High Performance in business to talk about a high performance approach to cancer, but it’s really not. From the early roots of Tignum, it was Jogi’s experience with coaching his own father’s battle with cancer, and Scott’s experience of losing his father at the young age of 53, that inspired the passion behind the Tignum OS (operating system). This Tignum OS of Mindset, Nutrition, Movement, and Recovery strategies has been applied successfully to so many business challenges but also to many other life challenges. At Tignum, much like the world in general, cancer has touched almost all of our lives in some way.  Therefore, we want to share this personal story from one of our High Performance specialists Duncan Coombe, as he and his wife take a high performance approach to their very personal challenge.

My Story
My wife has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. This has obviously been a deeply shocking time for us as a family and we have a massive journey ahead. The last few weeks have been full of learning, reflection, and awareness-raising. While this is something very personal, it is also something relevant to everyone. And so with my wife’s permission, I want to share with you two things we have learned these past few weeks that are relevant to world of Tignum.

The Power of Mindset
This experience has really brought home the power of Mindset. Quite simply, the way that she and I choose to frame this experience has a massive impact on the experience itself. And most importantly, we have a choice. We have a choice about how we respond and the way in which we make sense of this. We also realize that we have the choice of how we define ourselves - and we will not let cancer do this for us.

She has decided on two key Mindset anchors:
- “Love over fear”, which means to approach this journey from a perspective of kindness, compassion, understanding, and love, rather than focusing on blame, judgement, anxiety, and fear.
- To treat it as an “Inquiry”, which means she is choosing to see this as an invitation to consider all aspects of her life - nutritionally, physically, spiritually, and in terms of her work. It is an opportunity to ask a lot of questions about life and lifestyle and daily habits. It is an opportunity to create a new To Be Goal. Who does she want to be as she goes through her treatment, and more importantly, who does she want to be when she is done with cancer?

Now, while we have a long way to go, and of course there are moments when we both waiver, I cannot tell you how powerful these Mindset anchors have been. Being well trained in psychology and understanding the stages of grief, I am confident this is not just denial.  This is a very clear decision to choose to experience an event in a particular way.

I have been a Mindset teacher and coach for many years. These past few weeks have made my professional work deeply personal and reconfirmed the power of Mindset. The practical Mindset strategies that we teach to executives, such as reframing and using mental imagery, really do work. This is why, even as we deal with our current medical challenge, I ask you to consider the ways in which you are choosing to frame up events and experiences in your professional and personal life. Have you created a story about some people or events that could be updated to something more helpful, more constructive, and more high performance?

Cure Cure Cure…what about the Cause?
My second observation from the past month is that the vast majority of the Cancer conversation is about the ‘cure’. Huge fundraisers, massive media attention, pink ribbons, races for the cure…and hardly a word about the causes. In many ways it’s similar to business where we talk about the lack of business execution, the lack of innovation, and the lack of new thinking but we don’t talk enough about the cause.

Of course with my wife’s treatment I am only too grateful for all the effort that continues to be put into treatment and finding a cure.  But I am just blown away by how it seems as if as a society we have agreed that cancer will happen broadly throughout the population and the primary solution to cancer is to find the cure. Surely we should also be finding the causes. With over 80% of all cancers caused by our environment and our choices, we need to be more conscious and selective in the choices we make every day.

What causes cancer? Well, it depends who you ask and I think that the answer is complicated. There is certainly no single answer. The answer is some combination of nutrition, life experience, lifestyle, hormones, habits, stress, emotion, and of course genetics. If I put this into the language of Tignum, it is some combination of Movement, Nutrition, Mindset, and Recovery. I can’t help but think that so many business problems could also be prevented with better habits in these areas.

At Tignum we don’t like to use fear and threat as a motivational tool, we choose to talk about benefits. But speaking from personal experience, I am even clearer of the importance of paying attention to all 4 pillars and the thousands of choices we have every day in these areas. I write this note with a sense of hope and possibility for what we are all still to learn as a society about the true causes of cancer. I also write it because I realize that this disease can quickly overwhelm you but there is a high performance way to approach it. As always, it’s a personal choice and I hope this short glimpse of our situation helps you think about your choices.

Duncan Coombe, PhD
Tignum High Performance Partner

When you look at the great leaders throughout history, whether in politics, business, or sports, one quality they all have is courage. When we ask clients about the key qualities of a high performance Mindset, courage always comes up. But what is courage? As we take our discussions deeper, high performing executives in our groups often say something like, “It’s the ability to be bold, to go against the norm, to stand up when others won’t, to choose to perform regardless of fear, to step outside your comfort zone, or to be the person who has to do the unpopular thing because it’s right.” Several weeks ago, a CEO I was working with, made a really interesting comment. He said, in the last 3 years (even worse in the last year), in his opinion there has been a real vacuum of courage in leaders in business. He went on to add, “very few people today have the courage to be different, to think different, to argue for a better solution, or to risk being unpopular.”

How could this be? Is it possible that there’s a new breed of leaders who never developed courage? Having worked with many different top consulting companies, highly ranked international business schools, and very successful leaders, surely we would have heard if there was a new philosophy of leadership where courage had been discounted. So what is the reason that courage seems to be fading fast in the top of organizations?

One of the biggest causes of a lack of courage is actually fatigue. As Vince Lombardi, one of the most famous and successful American football coaches, used to always say, “Fatigue will make a coward out of everyone.” I don’t think this is just a product of sleep deprivation. This is clearly the result of several years of mounting pressures and challenges colliding with an epidemic of a lack of high performance behaviors in leaders. In 2008, when we completed our research for our book “Sink, Float, or Swim”, we reported that based solely on an executive’s Mindset, Nutrition, Movement, Recovery, and Preparation for Key Event behaviors, only 5% were swimmers, while 81% were floating and 14% were sinking. In 2010, on the heels of the downsizing and increased responsibility and accountability on leaders within an organization, we saw an interesting shift. Some leaders became more diligent with their Sustainable High Performance behaviors while others became overwhelmed. This led to a distribution of 14% being swimmers, 62% floaters, and 24% sinkers. Now comes the scary part, and probably a huge reason for the current lack of courage. In the third quarter of 2011, in the middle of a second wave of cutbacks and increased performance pressure from shareholders, we have not seen one leader with the Sustainable High Performance behaviors to be a swimmer. In fact, we have seen 53% sinkers and 47% floaters.

This is alarming because, the world economy, and many great companies,  are fluctuating between sinking and floating and the only thing that will ultimately change this course is a group of leaders who have the courage to be bold, to think different, and to chart new courses (even when they are unpopular). But in order for this to happen, these leaders will need the energy, executional stamina, mental agility, and resilience to be their best. Without these things there is no way they can lead others, there is no way they can change company cultures, and there is no way they can swim. Without personal energy how will they energize others? Without executional stamina how will they push their new ideas forward?  Without mental agility how will they possibly be innovative? Without resilience how will they possibly bounce back from the setbacks they will face?

So where do we start? Right now is the time for companies to teach their critical leaders (those who lead the programs, processes, and products that create meaning and momentum) the Sustainable High Performance skills they will need to be their best. Right now is the time for companies to support these critical leaders like a Formula One race team supports their car and driver in the middle of a heated race. Right now it’s time for these critical leaders to model Sustainable High Performance to their teams and the organization to create cultural change. Right now is the time for bold and courageous leadership.

I’d love to hear what you think.

Scott Peltin
Chief Performance Officer

When you hear the word engineering you probably think of a mechanical engineer who designs tools and machines, or a chemical engineer who designs polymers, or a nuclear engineer who looks at the fusion and fission of atomic particles. What you probably wouldn’t think of is a human performance engineer.

Engineering is the combination of art and science that brings together a multitude of disciplines to look at external and internal loads and then to create effective and efficient solutions. When you break this down around human performance it makes total sense. The combination of art and science means it’s not just what you create but how you implement it to create meaning, emotion, and in our case - lasting change in human behavior. The multiple disciplines include Mindset, Nutrition, Movement, Recovery, Leadership, New Ways of Working, Time Management, Performance Medicine, and many more. The external loads are all the performance killers that high performing executives face every day like shareholder pressure, uncertain political environments, long haul travel, endless deadlines, etc. The internal loads are all the performance killers that occur in the human brain and body such as sleep deprivation, low performance thoughts and stories, jet lag, hypoglycemia, adrenal fatigue, etc.

Understanding the problem can be quite complex, but when this is your passion it’s quite interesting. When we engineer Sustainable High Human Performance we take the complexity of being a high performer and we create simple, effective, and pragmatic strategies to help those who need it most deliver high performance. We realize that this is a new field but it’s a badly needed field. With only 5% of all the executives we have worked with being Swimmers (high performers), the cost of taking the same old approaches to human performance will be enormous. It’s time to think different, be different, approach our performance different, and to quit depending on luck or chance. As Geoff Colvin says, “Talent is Overrated”. This means it’s time to Engineer Sustainable High Human Performance.

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

by Jogi Rippel
Founder & CEO

Being a hybrid, or new breed, of company in the business performance world we are often perplexed at how many people want to always put you in a box. Oh I get it - you guys are a wellness company. Oh I get it - you guys are a team building company. Oh I get it - you guys build energy. I guess in some ways we should be happy that people resonate with some of the benefits we deliver but we have come to realize that being part of a new breed isn’t always easy for people to understand.

If you look back in sports to 30 years ago, athletes did very little performance training. You were either strong, fast, agile, and confident…or you weren’t. Then along came strength training and suddenly athletes were benching and squatting huge amounts of weights but the training was not very specific or refined. Still, performance improved and the idea of performance training in sports began evolving. Now 30 years later, training high performance athletes is a complex endeavor. You have strength coaches, speed coaches, movement coaches, flexibility coaches, massage coaches, skill coaches, psychologists, sports nutritionists, etc. As the margin between winning and losing diminished (and the investment teams made in their athletes increased), the need to find every possible way to improve performance became critical. Similarly, the amount of support that is required by the athlete to perform at the highest level has also increased.

In my opinion, today’s business world is where sports were 30 years ago, except the demands are much higher, the available time to train and recover is much shorter, and the cost of losing is much greater. While a lot of training has gone into the strategy and leadership of business, very few people have looked at the human side of business performance. As executives begin to break down from the huge load of external performance killers, companies reach for health and wellness programs as a quick fix. The problem is that while this approach has some value, it is the equivalent to just telling an athlete to lift some weights like they did 30 years ago. With health being the absence of disease, and vitality being the state of being strong, energized, and active, clearly there are some raw benefits to these programs even if they are only treating the symptoms of the problem. But when you look at performance as being focused, strategic, present, engaged, resilient, agile, solution-oriented, and innovative, clearly you see that just having energy or being healthy isn’t enough.

As the demands on today’s top executives increase, clearly the need for advanced human performance strategies has also grown. Businesses who want to win have invested heavily in their critical talent (we call them the critical 1%) and if these leaders and teams don’t deliver, the business will fail. Ironically, why did athletes reach out for advanced training and support from performance specialists?  It was the increasing level of competition, the narrowing of the margin between competitors, and of course the huge value in being the one who wins that led athletes to today’s complex and advanced training methods.

As you look at the growing amount of external performance killers, the need for high performing talent, and the limitations of the human brain and body to sustain high performance without support, you can clearly see that we don’t have 30 years to wait. Digging into the human “black box”, dissecting the demands that today’s business world places on top talent, and developing pragmatic solutions that will create high performance is the only answer. We must look under every rock (mindset, nutrition, movement, recovery, preparation for key events, etc.) for every opportunity to develop and support talent. This is the competitive advantage that many top athletes are enjoying today and it could be the competitive advantage for companies tomorrow.

As always, let us know what you think.

Scott Peltin
Chief Performance Officer

Last week I had a meeting at one of our client’s country offices. The building where we had the meeting had seen better times – it was almost a bit depressing. However, what was interesting to experience was the great energy, the dynamics, and the smiles that you could sense and see from the people I passed by in the corridors. I was talking to my host about my observation and he confirmed that some small adjustments on how they work together made a big difference in performance and collaboration. Being curious about what they had changed, I dug deeper to learn their secrets. Before we entered the meeting room, he showed me a sign with three words that they put on the door of every single meeting room. The sign read: ARE YOU READY?

He explained to me that after working with us they realized that their meeting culture was very unproductive and that most people came to meetings unprepared and didn’t add any value. In a way they lost their fire. To improve this issue they defined three areas of preparation for meetings:

.01 Technical//Tactical - This is the area of knowing the numbers, having all required information, bringing some ideas, solutions, and unique thoughts.

.02 Mental – This is the area of setting clear intentions for the meeting and preparing for the personal performance (e.g. how to react when things are not working out as envisioned, having a clear picture on how to engage/collaborate/listen, purposefully being in the right emotional state).

.03 Physical – This the area of having mental agility, high alertness, and great stamina (e.g. nutritional preparation of the brain, having the right posture, getting rid of pain and tension,  and bringing energy to give).

The preparation in all three areas is required and everyone knows what is expected. In other words, people are held accountable if they haven’t adequately prepared themselves.

My host also shared one of his personal insights since they implemented the ARE YOU READY? approach.  “In the past, we struggled to move ideas forward. Many times people would be half asleep and you would assume they were on board only to later find out that we had to revisit the same stuff over and over. Now our teams are much more engaged and present and this leads to better ideas which people are willing to fight for. This means better, more innovative solutions which at the end leads to better results. But the real kicker has been that people feel good about these productive meetings and these great results have motivated and inspired our teams to be even better.”

Three simple words with a huge impact. So let me ask you, ARE YOU READY?

by Jogi Rippel
Founder // CEO

I bet you were thinking that I meant T as in Tignum. Of course the strategies we teach at Tignum have a tremendous impact on brain performance, but in this case I’m actually talking about the beverage tea. As many of you know, at Tignum we are passionate about tea. There are many reasons why we’ve converted to be avid tea drinkers- its high antioxidant level, its array of detoxification properties, its protective mechanisms against diseases (e.g. some cancers, diabetes, heart attacks, stroke), and even its immune enhancing powers. However, when it comes to performance, nothing is quite as astonishing as tea’s impact on brain performance.

Recently, neuroscience research has begun to look at the components of the tea leaf (the Camieila Sinensis plant-which provide green, oolong, and black tea) and the positive influence those components have on brain function.  One expert on the mechanisms of cognitive attention, Dr. John Foxe, Director of the Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory at City University in New York, noted that throughout history, reports of drinking tea were primarily associated with people feeling relaxed. Now, there is scientific evidence that drinking tea improves sustained focus and concentration. According to Foxe’s research, “the amino acid- theanine, which is found in green, black, and oolong teas, causes a decrease in the brain’s “alpha rhythms” when people perform complex attention tasks, causing them to pay closer attention”.

Theanine also increases GABA (gamma-amino-butyric acid), an important neurotransmitter in the brain that functions as the brain’s natural sedative.  If GABA levels are too low, brain excitability is heightened, which sometimes leads to restlessness, insomnia, and difficulty in focus and concentration. Drinking tea from a biochemical perspective may help those who sense their brain is easily distracted or scattered.

Further strengthening the case of drinking tea for improved brain performance are current studies showing that the antioxidants found in tea may in fact curb brain cell death and encourage neurons to repair themselves. At a recent conference, Dr. John Weisburguer, renowned researcher, summed up tea’s attributes by saying, “Drinking tea soaks your brain in antioxidants, potentially slowing down brain decline”.  In another report, Dutch researchers found that tea keeps blood vessels that feed the brain healthy, likely due to the synergy of the antioxidants and theanine. In summary, tea’s benefit to improve concentration and calmness while also bathing the brain in a rich supply of antioxidants makes drinking it a “no-brainer”.

Many of you often ask the question, “Does the caffeine in tea have the same effect as the caffeine in coffee?”  As it turns out, the theanine found in tea reduces the stimulating action of caffeine, thus providing a balancing effect. By ingesting tea, the brain subtly receives the best of both worlds – the alertness from caffeine while maintaining a calm and focused state.

Are any of you interested in joining me in a campaign to make tea the universal brainpower beverage? I would love to hear your thoughts and input as to if tea makes a difference for you.

Patti T Milligan, MS RD CNS 
Partner/ Director of Nutrition

As many of you who follow Tignum know, our message about Movement (purposefully not called exercise) is clear. The body is built to move, it feels better when it moves, it decreases all diseases and depression when it moves, and it isn’t always about doing more or doing it harder. Today, Reuters reported about a landmark study, from Chi Pang Wen of Taiwan’s National Health Research Institute, that followed 416,000 participants for 13 years and looked at the impact of only 15 minutes of movement on longevity. After taking into account differences in age, weight, sex, and a range of health-related indicators, they found that just 15 minutes of moderate exercise (Movement) a day increased life expectancy by three years compared to those who remained inactive.

Once again, research is proving what we already know, but it’s great to have the scientific proof. I often tell the story of being in China and watching 60, 70, 80, and 90 year old people doing Tai Chi in the morning. Never once did I see a person with weights in their hand, a weight vest on, or a coach with a whistle (boot camp style) yelling at them to push harder, go deeper, or do 3 more reps. These people have intuitively learned that there is a huge impact to consistent fluid, calm movement.

As an exercise physiologist, I can recite for you the “overload principle” which simply states that for a muscle (or energy system) to get stronger it must be stressed beyond its normal capacity so it will recover in an enhanced state. This is proven and it has its place. If you want to run faster, jump higher, lift more weight, or go for longer you definitely have to push your limits (overload the system). But the real challenge, for most of our clients, is how can I feel better, be more efficient, improve my mental agility, be more resilient, and of course simply live longer. Even more important, how can I do that when I’m traveling across the world, working long hours, under constant demand at work, and trying to be my best at home? In this world, the key is not to add more stress into your system but to use Movement in the right doses to help you engineer high performance in your life (at work and away from work).

Like any drug, Movement has different actions at different doses. At too high of a dose it causes pain, break down of the tissue, adrenal fatigue, sleep issues, and even immune system compromise. In the right situation, with the ability to fully recovery, these high doses may be tolerated and even produce super human athletic performances. But in the wrong situation, like most of the corporate world, too much exercise (or exercise that’s too intense) will be detrimental. One aspirin a day (80mg) can help men over 45 prevent heart attack and stroke. Chronic overdose of aspirin may cause fatigue, fever, confusion, collapse, ulcers, rapid heart beat, and uncontrollable rapid breathing. The key is the right dose at the right time.

The takeaways here are simple:
_Movement should feel good
_Movement should take away pain not create pain
_Move every chance that you can
_Start most days with 15 minutes of Movement (I’ve attached our Daily Prep (pdf) to maximize your benefits)
_Use exercise at the right time, in the right dose, and always with adequate rest and recovery
_Do movements that you love

All around the world, in all sectors of business, our high performing executive clients often share the benefits they’ve experienced by doing their Tignum Daily Prep and by simply changing their habits to intuitively move more. As always, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Scott Peltin
Founder/Chief Performance Officer

You may have noticed that the recent news to capture major headlines with an article that stated that drinking 8 glasses of water a day was a myth. Of course any headline that can create the reader to sit up and pay attention is a good one for the media. As a friend of mine used to always say, “Dog bites man, that’s not news – Man bites dog, that’s news.”

Unfortunately, for those of us who are passionate about the facts, the whole truth, and the impact these things can have on our client’s performance, eye-popping headlines aren’t so entertaining.  Even worse, this type of “sound bite” reporting can cause confusion and makes people suspicious as to what is the truth anymore.

Recently, Dr. Margaret McCartney wrote a commentary in the British Medical Journal regarding hydration, which made many of the news headlines. In the summary, Dr. McCartney reported that there was no reason for keeping yourself hydrated above your thirst indicator and declared that there was no clear evidence of any benefit to higher levels of hydration.  The problem is that this study only looked at hydration in terms of urine output and concentration and this only tells part of the story.

If you look at the whole picture of hydration, and the function of water in the body, you have to look at it from several angles.  First, given that the brain is composed of 80% water and the body is close to 60% water, water balance in the body impacts every physiological function in the body.  Second, we store water in three compartments in the body:  our cells (where the majority of metabolic activity happens), between our cells (interstitial fluids) and lastly, and systemically in our cardiovascular and lymphatic system. Interestingly, 93% of the water in our body is located in our cells and between our cells. Third, optimal hydration is critical for the proper functioning of our kidneys, digestive tract, brain, cardiac system, and joints to ensure adequate nutrient availability for all cells in the body. 

In Dr. McCartney’s conclusions, she does not differentiate or clarify whether all three compartments are optimally hydrated based on thirst. Similarly, since only urine tests were used as the key hydration indicator, it is unlikely to measure adequate hydration in all three of these areas.

If we look at the cellular studies, and the body’s need for water, we know that water functions as a catalyst for enzymatic reactions in the body, including digestion, detoxification, transport, and the production of energy. When cells are not adequately hydrated, these functions become impaired and compromised.  Unfortunately, currently no good practical test exists (and researchers are diligently looking to find one) to assess whether inside the cells and/or between the cells are fully hydrated. We do know that physiologically we are hard-wired to always divert water levels to support the systemic (cardiovascular) system, at all cost.  In fact, the body will shift water from inside the cells, and between the cells, to support the systemic system.  This means that by the time the body registers the cardiovascular system is at risk for dehydration, and the thirst mechanism is initiated, the water balance within the cells and between the cells has been disrupted. Interestingly, if the urine test is the only hydration indicator used, it would register adequate because the systemic system had been preserved.

At Tignum we are always looking at the latest research to help us fine tune our strategies. We are also constantly listening to the experiential feedback our clients have from “doing” our strategies while they perform in their highly demanding lives. Based upon these criteria, after increasing their daily hydration levels, they report less brain fog, improved focus, greater concentration, less afternoon fatigue, and less joint pain. Additionally, while traveling they report less jet lag symptoms, less food cravings, and a stronger immune system (get sick less).
 
Reframing my frustration, I must admit, there is one positive aspect to this type of nutrition “sound bite” reporting. Without a doubt it can challenge us to experiment with our nutritional habits and see what we feel, and how we perform. It may even motivate us to dig deeper, beyond the headlines, and verify for ourselves what enhances our sustainable high performance. 

I would love to know what you think and what you have experienced as you’ve experimented with your own hydration levels.

Patti Milligan
Partner/Director of Nutrition