Give your pre-loved tekkies a second wind

I absolutely love this initiative:

The Sneaker Shack and School of Hard Knocks SA (SOHK) are calling on runners and exercise enthusiasts to support a Project Run initiative to collect 250 pairs of running shoes this May, with 70 pairs still to go.

Together they are on a mission to collect and donate to those in need and keep quality running shoes out of landfills and on the feet of enthusiastic young runners. 

The Sneaker Shack founder Lolo Ndlovu explains: “We want to encourage our people to think twice before they throw those unwanted kicks away. We live in a society where many people cannot afford to get their own pair of running shoes, so this is where we are hoping to help and make a difference.”

Established in Johannesburg in 2015 as an in-store sneaker laundry service, The Sneaker Shack provides active individuals with professional footwear cleaning. 

Project Run is an in-store initiative set up to encourage all runners to donate their pre-loved running shoes to aspiring young athletes. 

With all The Sneaker Shack stores in Johannesburg and Cape Town acting as in-store drop off points, runners are welcome to drop their less worn and pre-loved running shoes and sneakers into the designated donation boxes. The Sneaker Shack team will clean the shoes and pass them on to those in need via running clubs, looking as good as new!

By donating running shoes rather than simply throwing them away, people will be contributing to a more sustainable, circular economy. The clothing industry is notoriously toxic on the environment, often encouraging a culture of seasonal consumption, rather than one of sustainability and care.

According to a Business Insider article, the equivalent of one garbage truck full of clothes is burned or dumped in a landfill every second. More often than not, these preloved clothes still have many years on them and can be passed on to live a new life. It’s this sustainable living mindset The Sneaker Shack is trying to share with their community. 

As part of their 250 Soles campaign, The Sneaker Shack is on a mission to collect and donate over 250 pairs of sneakers to those in need and keep quality running shoes out of landfills and on the feet of enthusiastic young runners.

Ndlovu believes that a healthy and active lifestyle is a key ingredient to feeling happy and fulfilled, adding, “There is nothing like that post exercise feeling, the feeling of empowerment and the feeling of rejuvenation. Over the next few weeks, we are hoping to collect as many of those pre-loved pairs as possible, so that together we can pass on this feeling.

Joining The Sneaker Shack in their quest to spread happiness through sport is SOHK, a non-profit that uses a ground-breaking combination of psycho-social counselling and rugby coaching to support hundreds of young people without access to mental health services.

To get involved in Project with The Sneaker Shack and SOHK, head over to your nearest The Sneaker Shack store and pop your shoes in the donation box, or find out more on The Sneaker Shack website.

Stores are located in Rosebank, Sandton, Linksfield, Fourways, Bryanston, and now Kloof Street Village in Cape Town.

You can drop off your pre loved running shoes at the Hout Bay Harriers who meet every Tuesday evening that the Beach Club at 18:00. The Club are also in need of running shoes for their development runners, so if you have a pair of running shoes that you would like to donate, please support either your local running club or Project Run highlighted above. 

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Book: No Rules Rules, Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention, Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer

It's always fascinating to learn from successful companies. This is a very easy read, with a very interesting take on how they do things at Netflix. 

The three key things: 

1. Have a brilliant team, see them as a team not a family;
2. Do away with policies and procedures. If you have a brilliant team that does things in the company's best interest, you are not going to need too many policies and procedures (unless of course you are in an industry where safety and people's lives are at stake) and
3. Candor, giving very open and honest feedback in front of others.  

Some of the passages I particularly liked:
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Leave the spin in the gym.
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Whisper wins and shout mistakes.
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The advantage of sunshining a leader’s errors is to encourage everyone to think of making mistakes as normal. This in turn encourages employees to take risks when success is uncertain… which leads to greater innovation across the company. Self-disclosure builds trust, seeking help boosts learning, admitting mistakes fosters forgiveness, and broadcasting failures encourages your people to act courageously.
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[I particularly liked this:]
Brené Brown, ”we love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we are afraid to let them see it in us…Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy me.”
Anna Bruk concluded that being honest about mistakes is good for relationships, health and job performance.
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…above all you have to be humble, you have to be curious, and you have to remember to listen before you speak and to learn before you teach. With this approach, you can’t help but become more effective every day in this ever fascinating multicultural world.
A good, easy read, specifically recommendable to anyone running their own business. 
4/5 

Celebrating World Donkey Day: Strengthening efforts for donkey welfare

“Patience is the virtue of the donkeys” French Proverb. 08 May is World Donkey Day.

The Council of Equine and Equestrian Professionals South Africa (CEEPSA) is a non-profit company, recognised by SAQA as a professional body, and aims to protect the welfare of all equines, which includes donkeys and mules. CEEPSA are lauding the SPCA and traffic police in the KwaZulu Natal Midlands who recently rescued just over 100 donkeys from crossing over into Lesotho, where they would have been slaughtered for their skins for export as traditional oriental medicine.

“The culling of donkeys needs to stop,” shares Allister Jack Executive Director for Equity Programmes and Development at CEEPSA. Stealing donkeys has a direct impact on the livelihood of people in our communities. Many people are reliant on their donkeys to assist them with their work and to help them to put food on the table.

“We are working on strengthening the relationship between community members and their local municipalities to help them to protect and, where necessary, rehabilitate their donkeys,” adds Jack.

Communities and local municipalities are encouraged to get into contact with CEEPSA to help them facilitate the establishment of rehabilitation centres, rehoming and general best practices when it comes to donkey welfare.  For more information on CEEPSA visit www.ceepsa.org or admin@ceepsa.org or call 082 510 0138.

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Audiobook: Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Shooweee, for me personally, this was like swimming in syrup and did not enjoy the book nearly as much as the hype behind it. I am glad that I went the audiobook version, otherwise I do think it would have taken years to get through it. So for the past few bicycle and car rides as well as gardening sessions Yuval Noah Harari has kept me company.

It's the history of humankind, but the crux for me is that humans are anything but kind. 

Five other notes that I made: 

1. Life is a pointless rat race. ("great")
2. To be at peace, you need to liberate yourself from cravings.
3. The development of economics e.g. Netherlands versus Spain and how one nation thrived and the other one ended up in tremendous debt. 
4. It's interesting how money is the one constant that everyone seems to have bought into (unlike all the different religions). 
5. I do wonder why 'they' are looking at mapping Neanderthal genomes to recreate a Neanderthal as well as well as a Mammoth.

Unless you have a particular interest in this topic, I would not recommend it.

Media release: Lessons from hanging off a cliff face

 

Chris Bischoff, reputation manager and environmental specialist on my team has recently taken up a new hobby of mountain climbing. Here's a wonderful article that he has penned down about some of the key lessons he has learnt on this new climbing journey:

We are often bombarded with advice from top businesspeople, multimillionaire entrepreneurs and motivational speakers, but how often do we really listen to our own inner voice?

Life often throws lessons our way, which are not necessarily solved between the pages of a book.  Sometimes our own life experiences teach us our lessons.

Whether you are an employee or a business owner, on a regular basis you are required to manage people, teams, tight deadlines, uncertainty, and challenges. Everyone has a capacity to deal with adversity, but how often do you learn from the challenges that are thrown your way?

Chris Bischoff, reputation manager at Reputation Matters, has taken the opportunity to look at the basic lessons that he has learned from rock climbing since he started this new hobby eight months ago.

Focus on what is directly in front of you. “Standing in front of a sheer cliff face, it is very easy to get overwhelmed, nervous and tempted to quit even before you have started. Most of the times, just the act of starting is what you need to do. Once you are on your way, the most important approach to keep on making progress, is to only focus on what is in front of you,” says Bischoff. “Use what you have at your disposal, physically and mentally to focus on the task at hand.”

“In our professional lives, the same lesson applies. While it is good to have a greater plan or strategy, it is the day-to-day operational tasks that keep a business going and your clients happy. Focus on achieving the best quality outcome for those small daily tasks; ultimately the accumulation of small daily wins will help you progress towards achieving your greater goal.”

Small step, big step. “When climbing a challenging route with a limited amount of hand holds, places to grip on to, taking small steps upwards can open up more opportunities. This is one of the best pieces of advice I have received since I have started my climbing journey. On a number of occasions as I was learning new techniques to ascend a particularly difficult rockface, I would feel stuck as there was no obvious place to grip to make my next move. But by moving my feet up slightly, even as little as 10cm, potential new hand holds and cracks in the rock would enter my line of sight. This would then just be enough to get through a difficult section.”

The lesson: projects very rarely go exactly according to plan, there is always a probability that you may reach a bottleneck with any project that you are working on. Think about what you can do, that is immediate and easy to implement, that will help you progress forward. “At Reputation Matters, we rely on small team huddles and brainstorms to get us through tight deadlines, big projects and bottlenecks. It’s a very brief and simple level of team communication, but very effective to coming up with solutions and new ideas to tackle challenging work,” shares Bischoff.

You do not have a fear of heights, you have a fear of falling. This is a lesson of trust. “I remember facing my first outdoor climb and looking at the wall and thinking that it was just too high for my level of experience.” Professional climber, Alex Honnold put this into a great perspective by pointing out that people standing within the top floor of a skyscraper generally do not have a fear within themselves, meanwhile, put them on a ledge and they will be overcome with fear. Even though they are higher up in the skyscraper, the reality of falling does not exist to them, they trust the concrete that they are standing on. For people standing on the edge of a cliff, that fear is very real, it is a fear of a catastrophic fall.

“When I was just about to reach the top of the wall that I had said to myself was out of my level, I fell! Only to be caught by the rope and anchor at the top. After many falls at a similar height, and being safe, the fear became more manageable. It was the trust in my equipment that was making me progress up more challenging and higher walls.”

While my harness and the top anchor may be my most important safety parts of climbing, at work, the biggest assets are our team members and our tried and tested methodologies. We know that we individually have a big role to play with our projects and we trust each other to show up the next day with our parts done. “I know a climbing anchor and a fellow colleague may be a far-stretched comparison, but we all get a sense at some stage that we are just completely overwhelmed and having a knowledgeable and supportive colleague is an important ‘anchor’ that we need in our professional lives.” 

It’s all about trust and consistently doing things in the right way, and continuous improvement.  

A company’s reputation is also built on trust, consistently doing things in the right way, and continuous improvement. As with learning a new skill like climbing, it takes time to build.   

Next time you are outdoors, embarking on your favourite weekend activity, think about the subtle lessons that are in front of you. Books, webinars and podcasts can be rich sources of information, but life experiences can be just as valuable.

For more information contact on reputation management contact us on research@reputationmatters.co.za or visit www.reputationmatters.co.za

 

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