Speak like a Pirate Day

I was running an event on coaching and mentoring the other day for Cartrefi Cymru, a fantastic social care organisation which works across the whole of Wales. Their desire is to work towards creating a coaching culture in supervision and throughout their organisation.

Hats off to Stuart who came up with a great idea for raising awareness of coaching and of the core skill of effective questionning:

Some people will be familiar with the concept of the "talk like a pirate day", - for the whole day, e everyone in the office is expected to fill all of their usual conversations with '"ARRh"s and "Me Hearties" and "Shiver me timbers" - and what ever pirate-like phrases and accents come to mind.

The coaching variation is the "Ask open questions day." With penalty donations to charity for anyone who forgets themself and asks "Would you like a coffee?" or any other closed question.

Wonderfully silly idea, - what a great way of raising avareness of coaching behaviour and the use of open questions to promote learning and developmental conversations.

What's even better, is Cartrefi Cymru are going to give it a go!

Still no Planes!

What's happened so far?

Willie Walsh has flown his plane through the dust and survived, and several other companys have done similar.

From an industry which proclaims that safety is paramount, we are now getting "It's all a big overreaction" type statements. Decide for yourself, but it seems strange how quickly the corporate mind has changed.

Meanwhile, the UK government is sending in the Navy, a flotilla of small boats has 'rescued' travellers Dunkirk-style, European football teams are driving to fixtures and the Channel Tunnel is having a really good April!

So you can take your choice about what's most interesting and revealing about the reactions:

Airlines: "Let's pretend it's not an issue and get back to normal"

Ferry Companies: "Whoopee!! we can clean up using our existing business model"

Government: "Send in the Navy!!!"

Individuals / small operators: "We can do something new & find a different way"

I wonder if any of the emergent solutions will sustain once the crisis is over.

I wonder what the reaction will be if summer travel were to be threatened.

Volcanos, Ash and Thinking Differently!

Looking out of my window this morning I noticed an apparently clear sky. Yes, I know that actually there are a whole load of tiny volcanic ash particles with the potential to cause havoc, but I can’t see them. Nor can I see the vapour trails from aircraft that I usually don’t notice – but I notice their absence.

So how long will it be before we’re all back to normal? I’m sure we’re able to suspend this way of life for 24 hours, but 48 hours? 72 hours? How long would it be before, rather than simply closing everything down and waiting, we all decided that we needed to do something completely different? We do what we do because we’ve always done things that way. Or at least, our “doing things that way” has crept up on us over time so we didn’t notice getting into the habit.

However, the really creative thinking arrives when something happens suddenly. Whether it’s a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, a driving ban or a dreadful trauma that leaves us without the physical capabilities we had yesterday, these are the times where our creativity and ingenuity have no bounds.

There’s an interesting exercise for any organisation facing a challenge!

“So we are faced with a 10% reduction in revenues. What would we do if we had to manage a 50% reduction?” (and giving up and going home were not an option!)

“Our prisons are bursting at the seams. How could we respond if the another 50,000 people were given a custodial sentence next week?”

“Fuel prices are rising past £1.20 a litre, what if they were not £1.20 but £12.00, or £120.00”

We have that growing realisation that the way we run our lives and our society has got to change, but we can still pretend that the moment’s not yet here. If we couldn’t keep up the pretence maybe we’d come up with something really exciting – or perhaps the obvious solution that’s been staring us in the face for ages. Well, there’s a whole load of thinkers sitting in airports and hotel rooms just now going nowhere and with nothing much to do. Which of them will be brave enough and creative enough to find a different way?

The Fear Factory

Two decades of politicians playing the law and order ‘arms race’ have brought a criminal justice crisis to the UK.

Especially when it comes to our young - where we're ultimately creating more of the very thing we fear... criminals.

Despite an all-time high for re-offending rates, despite prisons at bursting point - we plan to keep on building and continue to incarcerate more young people than any other country in Western Europe.

The public's fear of youth crime bears little relation to reality and the young are more demonised, more alienated and more easily caught in a self-fulfilling prophesy of our own making...

….The Fear Factory

With funding from The Nationwide Foundation, three Third Sector agencies came together to commission this film, Safer Wales Ltd, Construction Youth Trust and Addaction. We all work intensively with young people who are either offenders or at risk of offending, to break the cycles of vulnerabilities, and prevent re-offending.

As Chair of Trustees of Safer Wales Ltd. I am really proud of this film which is uniting a range of otherwise very diverse agencies and becoming a catalyst for long-overdue action.

Please take a look at The Fear Factory Website and Blog

http://www.thefearfactory.co.uk/

- and add your weight to the campaign either by simply following the blog or, if you represent an interested organisation, by joining the Coalition.

We are currently discussing the broadcast of The Fear Factory with UK National Broadcasters.

Thoughts on Leadership - Martin Luther King Day

Last Sunday evening I was driving from my home in South Wales to the North in preparation for delivering a learning programme on Monday.

Amongst the many programmes I heard on the radio (it's a long drive!) was the BBC's Americana http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kpjpm. In the final segment, a group of Chicago primary school children imagined that Martin Luther King was still alive. What would they ask him if they had had the opportunity?

I'm not sure why this segment made such an impact on me, - but it did so, to the extent that I have transposed the audio from BBC i-player and reproduce it here. (Sorry BBC for reproducing without permission - but it's all good marketing!)

"How did you feel when you could not play with your white friends anymore?"
"How did it feel when people were mean to you?"
"When you were marching, did you think you might get killed or arrested?"
"Was it hard for you to protest against all the unfair laws?"
"Out of all the unfair things, if you could pick one, which one did you dislike the most?"
"When you were a child, did you know you were going to change the world?"
"Do you think that some laws should still be changed?"
"Why did you tell people not to ride the bus?"
"Do you think fighting with words is better than fighting with fists?"
"How did you get so many people to follow your example?"
"What was your very first speech & how old were you?"
"What was your favourite speech you wrote?"
"How did you get to make your speech in Washington DC?"
"When you marched in Washington, what did it feel like to be in front of millions of people?"
"How did you feel..."
"Were you afraid..."
"Were you nervous when you were out there?"
"What went through your head when you gave your 'I Have a Dream' speech?"
"What part of your 'I Have a Dream' speech do you think got people to listen the most?"
"After the speech, where did you go and what did you feel like?"

"What else are you going to change?"

Americana, BBC Radio 4 Sunday 17th Jan 2010

The Necessary Conditions for Innovation

There is little doubt that public service, whether statutory or voluntary has entered those ‘interesting times’!

Those at the higher end of the food chain now know their budget settlements for next year, those that are not, have or certainly should have, a pretty good understanding of where things are heading.

Whilst many settlements are not quite as scary as many had anticipated, there is little doubt that 2010/11 will be a year of preparing for unprecedented cuts to come.

So, how should organisations respond?

David Snowden, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge offers a useful perspective.

I find David’s argument about ‘The Necessary Conditions for Innovation’ is particularly interesting right now - because it seems to me that those conditions are arising in abundance in public services, in Wales, in the UK, in Europe and across much of the World.

Take a look at this You-Tube clip and decide for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlmesbbPqtU

In summary, the argument is that there are three necessary conditions which promote an innovative approach amongst individuals and groups:

Starvation, - a substantial reduction of resources,

Pressure of Time, - the realisation that we really can’t carry on like this much longer,

Perspective Shift, - the realisation that what was critical yesterday is incidental today, - and there’s a whole new order of Critical we’ve just discovered!

“Necessary, but not sufficient…..”

Just one thing, David’s word of warning:

These three conditions do not guarantee innovation – they just make it possible. If organisations are to benefit from a new appetite to innovate, just reminding people that “we’re broke, it’s going to get worse and the stuff we went on about last year has no bearing anymore,” is possibly not quite enough!