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October 21st, 2009Charles Handy
August 26th, 2010Currently reading The Hungry Spirit by Charles Handy an observer and experiencer of the world, truly grounded in real life. Not favouring personal descriptions such as guru or consultant, he has experimented with different nomenclature [more in the video below] . His thinking about organisations and the behaviour within them, how our experience of work and it’s inextricable integration in society can be improved rings crystal clear. His ideas focus on a variety of related topics especially our personal responsibility and freedom – the right to experience and express this. These things can become an anathema to leaders in large organisations – frightening even. However, when harnessed and empowered, can bring about increased resourcefulness, creativity and personal self-satisfaction. I know because I have occasionally tasted it in a large organisation I worked at a while ago and at Breathe, this underpins the work we do, we strive to enable people and organisations to experience personal creativity, responsibility and freedom in the work they do.
Here’s a very long video where Charles is talking about a number of interesting topics. Take a dip into it and introduce yourself to this wonderful thinker.
Posted by Caroline Southard
When you’re feeling sorry for your self..read on…
August 26th, 2010Got this from Mark Hursts blog…good experience….they are the ‘Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership’ by Keith Kent….he wrote these when he was 19. Pretty awesome and inspiring stuff. Enjoy…
1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
Posted by Sam Ernstzen
Eat outside the box
August 2nd, 2010A fifth of emmissions associated with global warming are caused by meat production? Ant burgers could be the answer according to the Guardian (Insects could be the key to meeting food needs of growing global population). A meat centred diet is a Western obession, rapidly globalising. However 80% of nations currently include insects in their diets. So maybe it’s time to eat outside the box — candied grasshoppers, anyone?
Posted by Jeremy Rix
What pigs can tell us about how to decorate our homes and offices
July 30th, 2010Recent research, conducted by Dr Catherine Douglas at Newcastle’s School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, suggests that pigs kept in an ‘enriched’ environment are more optimistic than those kept in a ‘barren’ living conditions:
In an experiment reminiscent of Pavlov’s dogs, the Newcastle team taught the pigs to associate a note on a glockenspiel with a treat — an apple — and a dog training ‘clicker’ with something unpleasant — in this case rustling a plastic bag.
The next step was to place half the pigs in an enriched environment — more space, freedom to roam in straw and play with ‘pig’ toys — while the other half were placed in a smaller, boring environment- no straw and only one non-interactive toy.
The team then played an ambiguous noise — a squeak — and studied how the pigs responded. Dr Douglas said the results were compelling.
“We found that almost without exception, the pigs in the enriched environment were optimistic about what this new noise could mean and approached expecting to get the treat,” she said. “In contrast, the pigs in the boring environment were pessimistic about this new strange noise and, fearing it might be the mildly unpleasant plastic bag, did not approach for a treat.
Our living and working environments are too often ‘barren’. How many businesses take time to consider how an ‘enriched’ working environment might drive positive thinking and behaviour, creativity and innovation? I’d be interested to hear about researh that shows a return on this kind of investment.
As it is, maybe optimism should start at home. Take a lesson from the pigs: can those tins of magnolia, and make a a really enriched, stimulating, positive-thinking environment where you live.
Posted by Jeremy Rix
A real customer charter
July 30th, 2010I’m the first to applaud NatWest for their customer charter. I don’t bank with them – I’m a First Direct devotee and have been ever since (was it 15 years ago?) they relieved me of the chore of going into the bank branch to queue for a teller or make an appointment with the manager. But it can only be a positive that they are committed to listening to and acting on the needs of their customers. (Lots of businesses say they do, how many actually do?)
Having said this, I’ve got a much simpler customer charter. One that would make all the difference. It’s a top-down model. One that works on the basis that in most businesses, the people who are furthest away from customers, and understand them least, are the people who run them.
So my customer charter is: every member of the Board will spend half a day a week (yes, every week) with a different customer. And I don’t mean sat watching focus groups, safely behind a screen in a fancy viewing facility. Or in a presentation while a clever market researcher talks through elegant graphs.
I mean down and dirty having tea at home with Mr and Mrs Smith and really getting to understand what it’s like to be them, and how they really experience the company’s products and services. It’s called empathy. It’s sorely lacking from British business. And it can be the spark for creative thinking about how the business could deliver more exicting, relevant – and yes, profitable – experiences for customers.
I recently spent a morning at a customer’s house with a Board Director of a large multinational. She said it was the most interesting and useful morning she’d spent in 6 months. She went back to the office brimming with ideas about new propositions and enhanced customer experience.
So, a customer charter doesn’t need to be complicated. Connect with reality, get stimulus for some great ideas. Come to think of it, maybe our politicians could do with a citizen’s charter too.
Posted by Jeremy Rix
Uncertainty is the only certainty
July 28th, 2010Uncertainty is the cause of all human suffering. We know that… but why are we so programmed to find it so distressing? After all, we never really know what is going to happen next but our whole existence seems to be gravitated around making lifes uncertainties as small as possible.
I think there are some uncertainties that are absolutely distressing, awful events that happen without warning and cause a huge amount of upset, like death and illness. Having to deal with these things is maybe what makes us want to avoid them.
But uncertainty is a lot more pervasive than that, people literally live their lives around eradicating uncertainty in every situation as uncertainty is transformed into fear. This is when uncertainty becomes dangerous, people live their lives in a constant state of fear. Fear of things that may or may not happen. Not of the big things, but even in meetings at work. People need to know what is going to be the outcome and don’t allow the outcome to be the outcome.
When you put difficult situations in your life under the microscope I bet the thing that is really causing you the distress is the uncertainty, nothing else.
Let’s accept uncertainty as a fact of life, trying to control it causes us more pain and more suffering than if we just allowed the uncertain things to happen. Let go and see uncertainty for what it is, the universe doing its thing.
Posted by Sam Ernstzen
Empathic civilisations
June 1st, 2010
Posted by Sam Ernstzen
Squeezing ourselves out of the recession
May 24th, 2010“The biggest of all the departmental cuts will be at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, totalling £836m” Source: BBC news on the 7 points of the coalition government’s spending cuts
Unless we create new reasons for customers and businesses to buy products and services, unless we innovate, we create no new income streams and no growth in GDP. We will truly be squeezing ourselves out of this recession.
Posted by Caroline Southard
In defence of compromise
May 10th, 2010Against the political background of a nation apparently unable to make up its mind (actually, everyone who voted made up their minds, we just couldn’t agree to any great extent), I’d like to come out strongly in favour of compromise.
Somehow a dirty word and concept in the English language, compromise seems to contain all of the opposite connotations of strong leadership, single-mindedness and clear-thinking. For compromise, in the UK, read fudge.
I see the opposite to be true. The ability to compromise is an asset. Wilful compromise is part of every effective decision, and fundamental to every decision made by more than one person. Where everyone understands the compromise being made, there’s real opportunity to learn from it, and to benefit from this learning to make a richer and more meaningful decision.
So in celebration of compromise, here is my top-of-mind list of great compromises I’ve made, and what I’ve got out of them:
- I’m impulsive. So is my wife, but she has a great way of keeping my feet on the ground. So I don’t get to live in a beach hut in Mexico on a Wednesday and climb Everest on a Friday. It’s a compromise, but I’ve learned to value what I have rather than seek fulfilment by looking over the hedge.
- I like to get things done quickly. I hate to miss a deadline, it feels like a job badly done. But last week I missed a deadline and went on, when I eventually completed, to do a much better job than I’d ever have managed by the deadline. It’s a compromise, but I learnt to put quality before completion.
- I like to be on time. My kids are less bothered (unless it’s to the fair/ sweet shop/ friend’s party). It drives me crazy that I have to nag to get everybody out of the door on time. They’ve forced me into submission. So sometimes I’m late. It’s a compromise, but nobody seems to mind me turning up after the time we agreed (actually, a lot of the time they seem quite relieved) and my God I feel less stressed about the whole getting there thing.
You’re getting the picture, right? So the rest in shorthand.
- I like fresh food, lovingly prepared. Compromise: Pizza, it’s fun sometimes.
- I like to watch movies, uninterrupted. Compromise: Kids’ films at the cinema – a riot! Participation rather than consumption.
- Red wine. Compromise: Sparkling instead – no hangover.
- By car. Compromise: Train = time to think, relax, read, breathe…
- Holidays in the UK. Compromise: Abroad = sunshine.
- Avoid shopping at all cost. Compromise: A chance to catch up, a bit of lunch, maybe. And trousers that fit.
- Mess. Compromise: Paint everywhere, happy kids.
The reality is that anyone who doesn’t recognise that they compromise is deluded (or surrounded by people who curiously have no needs of their own). And that people who see compromise as weakness are missing out on a source of new experiences that can enrich their lives.
So good luck to the politicians, and their single-minded advisors, because in compromise they might learn something, and there may well be benefits in it for the rest of us as well.
Posted by Jeremy Rix
Making data acessible
May 8th, 2010Having been bored by many a bar-chart, I was delighted to see there is someone challenging our usual approach to visualising important information. And it is very pleasing on the eye.
Check out how beautiful and accessible complicated information can be….
Posted by Caroline Southard