Milestones, mindful mindsets and new horizons

Another trilogy post I'm afraid; it's been one of those weeks.  At long last my new website for Connected 4 Good is online.  Big thanks to Richard Eason for the tech work and for Stuart Teece at Broadswords UK for the graphic design work.  Connected 4 Good is a not-for-profit social enterprise. It aims to encourage a cultural shift that will see schools and old people's care homes doing things together more regularly than the traditional Christmas carol concert.  It's early days and the signs are encouraging; from a few doorstepping encounters it's clear there is a willingness to become a lot closer and learn together.

As the venture is entering an action phase a timely tweet reminded me of the need for a strong will and a need to keep the doubting voices at bay - the tweet (I forget who from) was referring to a snippet Richard Gerver's new book; 'Change: Learn to love it. Learn to lead it.' something like 

"don't be afraid of imagined consequences"

So true! It makes me wonder how many amazing ideas have never been voiced because of the originator's internal filter or how many ideas have been voiced but never acted upon because the imagined consequences only kick in when things get real.  Just yesterday I was reminded of a great example of what can happen when these thoughts are banished; I have worked with a local makers / hackspace enterprise by the name of Access Space for a while now and have been inspired by James Wallbank, their CEO's utter confidence and embracement of possibilities- his Kickstarter project 'Infinite Crypt' has successfully reached its target and been funded.  A great mix of network and positivity has resulted in an really exciting project and emerging small business.

But maybe the biggest milestone has been happening near Adelaide. 

The wonderful Mark Oliphant College has set up Praise Pod in their early years school.  We are planning a live link to a school in Sheffield so the children can share their achievements.  It's here where I start to hear imagined consequences. Helpfully the wonderful smile on the boy's face in a moment banished those voices. It reminded me just how in the moment children are and how genuine their felt experiences are.  All the talk in the media of government spying and ISP's blocking sites relating to alternative spiritual practice (including 'mindfulness') thankfully doesn't seem to burden the young man sat proudly in the praise pod chair.  His happy disposition reminds us all that we all have the power to be in the moment.  Maybe as we get older it becomes harder to tune out the noise that gets in the way and see achievements simply as having validity because they exist, irrespective of the context in which they sit. Onward!

Intergenerational Learning

It's been a long time in the planning and too long if I was honest in the conceptualisation stage.  Finally the new social enterprise feels real and active.  Table tennis session planned for a care home, screening of the wonderful film 'Ping Pong' scheduled, two visits arranged from care homes to a local junior school and more in the pipeline.

There's an energy about hands-on work that I believe is essential to the life-blood and credibility of any service, in particular of social enterprises.  The wise words of Cliff Prior often echo around my head when I get too conceptual and avoid the really hard job of admitting your venture is flawed and imperfect and yet having the desire to make a difference that overcomes any imperfection.

Today was a great example of this process; doorstepping leads to the discovery of wonderful people with shared aspirations. And difficult questions.  But these questions are real and valuable in comparison to the 'what if?' stuff that goes on in your head.

It's early days but the wind has changed. Time for action, time for schools and care homes to partner up.  Who will be the early adopters?  Stop it!

Covert surveillance

Simple things do make a difference.  Repairing minor damage on the New York subway had a profound effect on passengers' mental state and in turn the collective behavioural norms.  Whilst it's less cool to focus on the mundane day-to-day that esoterica, it often has more impact.

And so I discovered recently that my behaviour as a visitor to a local primary school had been monitored with a simple tally chart.

What a lovely tool to promote please and thank-you's. The winning class gets rewarded every Friday and the slate is wiped for a fresh start the following Monday.

I'm pretty sure I was the only visitor that sitting, but still pleased to see the notch beside the category.

I was reminded about a time back in 2009 when I was preparing a keynote at a conference and held the door open to let the delegates out of the conference hall.  Of the 80 or so grown-ups only one said thank you.  I can't imagine children being so rude.  As we know it's all about modelling and being congruent; otherwise it's all just words.

Thank you for reading this post and the other ramblings.

Inflated opinion

I recently watched Frank Skinner's TV documentary which painted a portrait of George Formby as a hugely successful artist of his time.  Nothing new there; I'd kind of understood something of Formby's standing before watching the program, but one small twist shone a totally new light on the man, and made me reflect on the power of what Skinner did in the presentation.

Whilst the film footage of Formby to me at least looked dated; of a performer from a certain era, what amazed me was how Skinner had calculated Formby's earnings in today's money.

Formby commanded a fee of £1.5 million per film (and he starred in over 30)
Formby's father, himself a successful artist took home £58,000 per week in today's money

Suddenly, simply by using salary figures that equate to today's stars I was perceiving Formby in a new light; as a savvy, commercially powerful brand and industry leader of his time.  I was drawn to enquire more and ask how did he manage to negotiate such good deals? How did he create and maintain such a strong brand? How did he differentiate himself from the inevitable competition and remain on top?

In musing through these questions I began thinking about contemporary icons; the David Beckham and Robbie Williams sprang to mind for some reason.  Suddenly I'm no longer seeing an old man in Formby but in many ways a peer or role model to current superstars.  And all with a simple recalculation.

I wonder how much differently the older generations would be perceived if everything they referred to was presented in today's real money terms?  Their first house, car, wages, suit, etc.  Would we still chuckle at the cheapness of everything back in the day or realise that we could learn a thing or two ourselves. Whilst it might feel good knowing that your house is worth 20 x the value of your parent's first house it's important to not get an inflated opinion of oneself.

Valuing older people as super-managers

People in care homes are learners. Of course they are; perhaps more so than at any other time in life.  Why? Well okay the brain forms fastest in the first 2,000 days of life but what I'm talking about here is another form of learning; the everyday learning that is needed to manage complex health conditions and manage change.

Complex health issues are perhaps easier to understand than managing change; indeed both intertwine.  As far as health goes, every day is like a balancing act managing symptoms and effects of choices and behaviours. Hard enough, but layer onto this the need to manage the loss of what used to be better in life as well as taking the risks associated with learning to benefit from new technologies and you get the picture.

The sheer nature of having lived many years means older people have more memories to manage and to integrate into a coherent narrative. More accumulated knowledge and historical perspective bears down on every contemporary national event and policy as well as a person's private world.  Incredible skill and processing is taking place every day to help shape understanding and maintain a healthy, balanced perspective on life without becoming totally overwhelmed by infinite ruminating.

And yet increasingly we have marginalised older people from society in favour of almost exclusively young thought leaders.  No wonder then that older people feel deeper undervalued and often suffer from social isolation with its serious health implications.

Care homes are full of people with incredibly rich and diverse histories, and yet the system seems reluctant to see this.  Risk aversion has become a dominant culture, overriding creative engagement with older people whereby they are empowered to pursue purposeful activities and make a meaningful contribution to their community and the wider society.

Thatcher's legacy

I do try to be positive on this blog but there are times when it's hard to keep a lid on things.  After returning home from a short self-imposed offline break I find my social media connections engaged in heated and antagonistic debate about Thatcher's death.

It's at times like this that we all need to step back for a second before hitting the 'send' button and firing off our thoughts into the bloodbath of venting that is Facebook, Twitter etc.  My 15 year old daughter has become quite engaged with the notion that the media is owned by such partisan individuals as to render it untrustworthy.  This is good; a piece of learning coming out of an attempt to re-write history, and a young person hungry for knowledge forming their own mind.  As Richard Gerver cites in his excellent blog this month, the trust rating of politicians and journalists is over four times lower than that of doctors and teachers for a reason.

Okay, I have been guilty of making a comment or two, and only then it dawned on me that Thatcher, even in her grave, is still a corrosive force, turning friendships into polarised battles that no doubt in some cases will be damaged beyond repair.  The affection or hatred towards Thatcher seems to run so deep that it renders all else irrelevant.  It's as if we become so untwined in her representation and policies that we can no longer see a person in front of us as we scroll through our Facebook comments page.  All we see is good and bad opinion. Friends and enemies.

And there it is:

'friends and enemies'

The very same language of Thatcher's reign (incidentally now re-emerging with some of Michael Gove's desperately arrogant remarks towards the community of academics)

There were two extra words that flavoured the former with a sense of chill and exclusion that need adding here:

'Special' and 'Within'

Special friends are of course special for secret reasons that only a few know or are party to.  Special friends and special relationships tend to happen outside of normal rules and protocols, and as such tend to lack transparency and openness.  Like the conversations Thatcher had at Hillsborough which only time will reveal.  And special relationships with special friends tend to involve deals done behind closed doors (e.g. Westland?)

Where Thatcher's 'friends' include dictators such as Pinochet, a bribed police force and experimental economists, and her enemies included tens of thousands of normal working people and their families it all gets a bit paranoid, and we start to doubt who we can trust.  In such a climate it becomes tempting to take sides and literally go to war against the enemy.  Why? Well this is preferable to becoming someone else's enemy within; particularly when you have absolutely no idea as to what constitutes an enemy within.  It's playground stuff, fuelled by fear and deep anxieties about alienation.

So as we enter the week of planning before the state-funded full military funeral of Thatcher my hope is that it is marked not by people turning against others, but in a celebration of community and diversity.  Let's help the infamous remark, "There is no such thing as society' be seen for the shallow, selfness, divisive, manipulative and dated soundbite that it was.

And breath.

Aesthetics

I stumbled across this wonderful collection of images today and the experience of viewing them reminded me of the distinction Sir Ken Robinson draws between the often anaesthetic process of education and the emotion of being truly alive through the  engagement in some form of art.  The collection of photographs illustrates the breathtaking range of humanity from the touching interaction  of a group of children to the illustration of man's ability to shape the world on a vast scale; for good and for bad.



Thank you to all the image makers for giving me a moment in my element and giving me the determination to rekindle my own love of taking photographs.

Curate without control

I've been spending time looking for the ultimate business model to take Praise Pod forward and in doing so begun the steep learning curve that is the world of open source software.  It strikes me how loaded many of our commonly used words have become; the word 'business' feels different today to the way it did even a few years ago.  Perhaps the connection with business banking and the growing suspicion of institutions driven by selfish motives?  Similarly 'open' and 'free' are perhaps more synonymous with the arts and volunteering than serious concerns.  Oooops, this is of course heresy as the arts / creation through playfulness is arguably the highest expression of humanity, and thus very 'serious' indeed.

I stumbled upon this thought-provoking article and began the think that the challenge we face in the pre-'proper' internet society is to find solutions to distribute not just the wealth more evenly, but ways to distribute happiness, playfulness, intrinsic motivation, meaningful work (i.e. work that you would be more likely to do for the love of it rather than purely to pick up a pay packet) and ways to help more people create stuff rather than be employed to protect and control other people's property.

Perhaps the breakup and hollowing-out of middle wage roles within public sector organisations will actually help force some people out of unfulfilling roles and find meaning doing things they always wanted to do in their hearts.  This is easy said, but the benefits of sticking in a safe, slow-moving, hierarchical organisation are significant and long-term.  Nothing to do with happiness, but more about safety and security in old age.  Almost like deferring gratification for the whole of your working life in order to (sadly in my opinion) do something that makes you feel truly alive in the final phase of life.

As with many dilemmas it's important not to get too caught up in polarised positions.  Surely we can find some middle ground that helps individuals find their creative selves and infect the host organisation with some new values.

My hope for those charged with monitoring outcomes and being 'in charge' is that they can be helped to exercise their duty more as curators and less as controllers.  Maybe then more of our time can be spent finding meaning and connecting with others to share and collaborate rather than in a state of anxious protectionism.

Vulnerability, perfectionism and responsiveness

My escape from the red tape of a large local authority organisation has solved some immediate issues, yet even in a place of freedom its influence still lingers.

This week has highlighted the differences in working with the wonderful Access Space - a place of possibility, responsiveness and deep creativity.  Contrast this with the process of applying for a small pot of council funding and I'm soon back in the crushed, dispirited mindset that is so debilitating.

Power and control structures, it seems to me are a throwback to another time.  Planning, planning, planning, at the speed of the slowest moving part in a big machine achieves what exactly?  The status quo for sure; fine if your aspirations are to keep things nice and constant until your retirement kicks in, but for me all I see is a chronic waste of human capacity.

Brene Brown's thought-provoking TED talk from 2010 articulates some elements of this situation.  On the one hand we have an organisation in denial of imperfection going to extraordinary lengths to protect its reputational risk when the reality that resides within is so well known it is laughable. Literally, often being the source of jokes for local stand up comics.  On the other hand we have a small organisation doing its best to ask searching questions and open up a dialog engaging with human imperfection on a human level.

I know where I feel more alive, and more things possible, and hope that in time some of the thinking and planning takes root in tangible services and products that make a real difference to the lives of people who may come to use them.

Brene's notion of embracing one's vulnerability may have been behind Novak Djokovic's moment of playing possum in his final match at the Australian Open.  Over the course of just a couple of games he shed his outward demonstration of perfectionism and came to terms with his own human frailty, and in doing so rediscovered the creativity and shot making needed to win.  Paradoxically his ability to be imperfect lead to a near perfect display in closing out the match in comparison to the tightness of the first set and half.

So my lesson from Novak and from Brene and from the good people at Access Space is clear - show your frailty!  Easier said than done, and I've got some serious work to do over the coming months.  That said, it feels a more meaningful and exciting challenge than it did a short while ago.  Life is I guess a grand slam event for us all, with no tiebreak in the fifth there's time to work it out, get a new game plan.

A covenant for our children - thoughts

I just love this brilliant little book as it reminds us of the importance of acknowledging soft skills in children.  A must read for anyone wanting to move their school from behaviour management to values-based learning.  See the good in everyone, in many dimensions and the rest will follow. . .