MechanicalMole

A lesson in how not to sell courtesy of a lady who said she was from BT

2011-12-02T21:03:00.001Z

Had a really curious call this afternoon from a lady who said she was from BT. We use BT as our broadband provider and she said that she was calling to offer us a deal on the new BT Infinity service which it appears is now available in our area.Problem 1 was that the place where she was calling from was so noisy that it was difficult to hear what she was saying over the background hubbub.Then she started to ask me questions about which calling plan I was on, whether I made many calls during the day or whether I mainly used the phone in the evening. In other words she was asking me to describe in BT's product language what my service was.Stuck me that this is asking quite a lot of your customers - much better I would think to talk to them in their language rather than yours.I expressed surprise that having phoned me she didn't have such details to hand. At this point she cited the data protection act as the reason why she couldn't know which service I had, my calling profile etc! Most odd. Companies clearly can know about their customers and have discussions with them about their service/ account etc so I'm left a bit bemused as to why she would have been told the root problem was the data protection act.At this point part of me even began to question whether she was indeed from BT but in any event it seemed like a good time to say goodbye and return to playing a game of Rameses' Pyramid with my daughters.

It's not always about leadership

2011-11-29T21:32:00.000Z

I recently came across this video on YouTube which suggests that we shouldn't neglect the importance of the "first follower" in the success of a movement or change.I like the idea that it's not always about leadership but that people being willing to step forward and be the first follower are also key. We tend to focus a lot of learning on "Leadership" and this video has made me wonder if perhaps there shouldn't be more on "following" as well.As they put it so eloquently in the video ...."When you find a lone nut doing something great have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in."How many times in an organisation do we recognise and reward these key "first followers"? I suspect the answer is - not enough.

My first Geocaching Travel Bug

2011-11-27T16:17:00.001Z

I was recently over in America visiting IBM's Learning Centre in Armonk (New York State). I stayed one night at the Holiday Inn Express in Fishkill and visited the geocache in the Van Wyke Homestead
where I found Sparky the travel bug.

Sparky was keen to travel around and see National Parks so I thought he could come back with me and see some of the lovely National Parks in the UK.

So he joined me on a British Airways flight back from Newark to Heathrow

Last week we tried to place him in a cache but it turned out to be a bit small and damp - definitely not the quality of accommodation that Sparky had become used to on his travels so far. Today however we headed up onto Twyford Down and the "Bear Necessities of Life" Cache where he will have the company of lots of bears until he moves on to his next destination.

I've subscribed to his profile and will now watch with great interest to see where he gets to next.

Bye bye Sparky - it was good having you stay with us :-)

New Wine - Central and South West #NWCSW11

2011-08-07T21:59:00.000+01:00

Today has been a day of unpacking, sorting, putting away etc following a fantastic week at this year's New Wine Conference - which marked for us a decade of attending this annual event.

I spent the week working as part of the medical team - one of the 1000+ volunteers who work on various teams to make the event happen. Overall attendance at the event was probably somewhere over 12,000 people!

I had worked as a first aider on the medical team 2 years ago and it was great to catch up with some familiar faces and meet some new people this year. The team is mix of first aiders, nurses, paramedics, doctors who come together to pool their experience and provide medical cover for the event.

The New Wine CSW event is held at the Royal Bath and West Showground near Shepton Mallet and it is a sobering thought that the number of people attending probably comfortably exceeds the local population. Clearly, were the delegates to try and access the existing healthcare provision in the area it would be swamped so the aim of the medical team is to provide a wide range of care while people are at the event. This results in a medical centre on site that is a cross between First Aid room, GP Surgery and A&E Department which makes for a very interesting mix.

As a First Aider I clearly lack the depth of medical skill and knowledge of the professionals on the team but none the less it was an intensely satisfying experience and an opportunity to use some of the limited skills I do have and gain some new ones. It's also true that medical skills aren't always what's needed. For example, being by the main door and welcoming people into the medical centre, finding out why they've come, capturing the right information and arranging for them to be triaged by one of the nurses.

At last year's New Wine I decided to set myself the target of reading through all 66 books of the Bible over the next year. I found a reading plan that nicely themed each day of the week and set about following that - I'm delighted to report that I finished the task on the first day of this year's New Wine :-)

I think this was the first New Wine where I've seen a Twitter hashtag advertised - #NWCSW11. Setting up a quick search on Twitter enabled me to see a range of posts from people at the event which was great. Also led me to a blog which has a good mix of entries that capture some of the essence of the event.

As ever it was a great, enjoyable, spirit filled and uplifting week - hard to imagine that we won't be back next year.

Leadership & Governance - Making an Impact

2011-06-23T17:54:00.000+01:00

Last Friday I attended the Hampshire Local Conference for school governors at Winchester's Holiday Inn Hotel. The audience was a mix of primary school and secondary school governors with me and my fellow secondary governors definitely in the minority.

The Deputy Director of Children's services opened the meeting with some comments relating to the county's interaction and support of schools plus some thoughts on key challenges and priorities for the future,

The rest of the day was given over to Liz Cross who talked on the wide ranging topic of "Leading in Challenging & Changing Times".

Liz is a founding partner in The Connectives and their website says that she is "known for bringing real break through thinking and fresh energy in her strategic work with organisations across voluntary, private and public sectors." and on the basis of what she delivered at the conference I can well believe that this is true.

Drawing on her extensive personal experience in governance she took us through considerations of the political, social and economic challenges facing governors; some models of leadership; considerations of different leadership styles and their impact; influence models; approaches to measurement and much more.

A big recurring theme through the day was the importance of partnerships and thinking more broadly than just the school gates.   Students only spend a comparatively small percentage of their waking hours in school and a lot of what happens outside school hours will influence their educational achievement.   Challenging question then is what are we doing as governors to drive increased partnership with other organisations that could help to deliver stronger outcomes?

There was much to take from the day but for me a few of the key points were :-

Importance of not getting distracted by other people's agendas and keep focused on what matters. In the midst of a discussion on another circular on a topic you didn't know you needed to know about it can be difficult to keep that focus on strategic outcomes we desire.

Everything you do has an impact and need to consider how to get the best out of people not write them off. Martin Luther King's famous speech "I have a dream" didn't then go on to say but I'm worried the rest of you aren't up to it! Rather it sold a vision and invited people to be part of it. In all of our interactions as governors we need to find opportunities to build up those we interact with - be they staff, pupils or other governors. Find something positive to say and you can have a real impact. Nice quote from Rosamund Stone Zander "When leadership is defined not as a position you hold, but as a way of being, you discover you can lead from where ever you are." Don't underestimate the power we have to influence one child, one conversation, one community at a time.

The ability to keep on learning is key - what are we doing to ensure that the school turns out children who can continue to acquire skills and knowledge over the rest of their lives? What do we think the world is going to be like in the future and are we preparing our children for it adequately?

Are we spending time discussing the right things? What items get discussed with the governing body and which items are just acted on by the school's leaders? Do we spend time talking about the decisions where it is clear that there is only one real option or do we spend time on the 49/51 decisions that are more finely balanced.   When there is no other choice why do we spend time discussing it?
When facing a big decision do we consider in what way it helps or hinders the attainment of the vision we have for the school?

Discussion on the question of whether it's a good idea to have students on the governing body. Why not have election at the end of the year to choose a couple of students from the top year group who will come back next year and be part of the governing body. Doing this removes challenge of having them take part in decisions that affect them directly (ie as current pupils) but at the same time capitalises on their recent experience as a "user of the service".

All in all a very good day with lots of thought provoking discussion.   If you you are a governor and ever find yourself invited to an event where Liz is speaking I'd encourage you to go - I don't think you'll regret it.

TEDx Oxbridge

2011-06-06T10:20:00.000+01:00

On Saturday I attended TEDx Oxbridge which was being hosted at the Said Business School in Oxford.

Registration from 8:15am made for an unusually early, but completely worth it, start to my Saturday - not as early though as the group attending from Cambridge.

The wide ranging talks were split into 4 sets each of around 90 minutes. Between the sessions there was plenty of time to mingle and talk with the other attendees. A drinks reception, dinner in local restaurant and after event party at Oxford Town Hall provided even more scope for conversation. (As an aside I wasn't sure that I'd been to the town hall before but when we got there I recognised it as the location for an inter college Ballroom dancing competition that I took part in almost exactly 25 years previously !).

TED itself is a nonprofit organisation devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading". I can't recommend too highly spending time on their website viewing some of the TEDTalks. The TEDx label signifies a locally arranged event run under licence from TED. Living up to the quality and breadth of topics that get covered in a TED conference was going to be a tough challenge for the TEDx organisers but they did a fantastic job and the range of topics covered was absolutely huge.

I have quite a few notes from the day and links that I want to go and investigate further - hopefully a few more blog posts will follow in due course. In the meantime if you want to get a flavour of the day you could have a look at the @tedxoxbridge stream on Twitter or just search for the #tedxoxb hashtag.

Manchester Business School's "Dean's Dinner"

2011-05-19T19:24:00.003+01:00

Yesterday evening I had the great pleasure of attending a "Dean's Dinner" event in London.

The event was organised by the Manchester Business School and was hosted by De Vere's at their rather impressive Holborn Bars location, formerly the home of Prudential Insurance.

The event brought together about a dozen people from a range of organisations with a shared interest in Leadership Development.

Over the course of a very tasty dinner we got to chat and then listen to our "Provocateur" for the evening - Prof Chris Bones who is Professor of Creativity and Leadership at Manchester Business School and former Dean of the Henley Business School.

In a talk that focused more on asking questions to get us thinking than providing prescriptive solutions he highlighted some of the challenges he sees with leadership, especially in large organisations. He has recently published a book "The Cult of the Leader : a Manifesto for more authentic business" on this area in which he describes the problems and identifies areas for change that will be needed. I think I can safely say that I have never previously heard L'Oreal, Mary Poppins, Dumbledore and Peter Drucker all get a mention in the same talk.

After some time for general discussion on the issues raised it was time to say goodbye and head for home - and in my case the mystery of why the 22:39 train from Waterloo was so full. Clearly it was reasonable for me to be traveling at that hour but what was everyone else doing there :-) One-off or always that full I wonder?

All in all a great evening, met some new people (and reconnected with someone who used to work for IBM but who I'd not seen in many years) and heard some new ideas/ broadened my thinking on leadership development.

My thanks to Manchester Business school for the invite, De Vere for hosting it and Prof Bones for the talk.

The puzzling economics of Friends

2011-05-14T22:35:00.000+01:00

My daughters have discovered Friends so I have recently had cause to buy some DVD sets from ebay to feed the new habit.

I'm puzzled by the economics of the transactions.

So far I've bought 3 series on DVDs paying total prices between £2.20 and £2.90

Thing is that posting a DVD set second class mail costs £2.16....

If you also allow for ebay and paypal fees then my back of envelope calculations suggest that the people selling the DVDs are effectively paying me to take them (and that's without allowing for costs of packaging materials, time, travel to a post office etc...). The figures aren't large - just a few tens of pence but surely if you were selling something you'd be looking for a positive number.

Given that ebay allows you to specify the start price for the auction and set P&P fees and the actual postage costs are predictable I'm left bemused as to why this is happening?

Wouldn't the rational economic approach be to price them at a level that at least ensured your direct costs were covered? If it doesn't sell then give them to a charity shop and save yourself the cost of paying someone else to have them.....

Most odd....

2011 Christian Resources Exhibition

2011-05-13T21:23:00.001+01:00

Today I headed up to Sandown Park and the 2011 CRE event. It's a couple of years since I was last there and fancied the chance to wander round the stands and see what was on offer.

I had hoped I might find some companies talking about accounting software for church accounts but sadly nobody was.

The "prize" for most surprising item goes to Cross Designs for their men's clerical hoodie .... and the single most potentially useful find was an organisation called 2buy2 who look like they might be able to reduce some of the church's purchasing costs which would be welcomed.

I had my lunch sitting on the terrace outside the royal box courtesy of The Bible Society - to whom thanks also for the much welcomed cup of coffee and cake. The visibility was very good and could see a very long way (possibly as far as 20 miles as could see some towers in Canary Wharf) though the distinctive arch of Wembley Stadium did have a disconcerting habit of disappearing and then reappearing as the clouds / haze changed.

"The Extraordinary Coach" by J Zenger & K Stinnett

2011-04-02T12:48:00.001+01:00

Through work I recently had the chance to listen to Kathleen Stinnett talk about coaching so I thought I'd get hold of her book ( The Extraordinary Coach - How the best Leaders help Others Grow) and read it.

I'm glad I did.

In a foreward to the book Marshall Goldsmith writes "Read it, devour it, practice it, and you, too, will be an extraordinary coach!" Having read the book this certainly feels credible.

They introduce some research that suggests there could be many benefits to leaders being better coaches including reduced employee attrition rates and greater engagement. Given I'm a keen follower of BBC Radio 4's "More or Less" the authors get a bonus mark from me when they explicitly draw a distinction between correlation and causality at the start of Chapter 3 by saying "..the fact that things are correlated does not prove that one causes the other. It only proves that there is some strong connection between them."

The core of the book is the introduction of the FUEL coaching framework -

Frame the conversation
Understand the current state
Explore the desired state
Lay out the success plan

In detailed chapters on each element they provide concrete examples of the sorts of questions the coach can ask to guide the conversation through each of the phases.

In a nice additional touch they provide access to some further resources including videos, at www.zegerfolkman.com.

The book is easy to read and has a very practical focus being full of ideas and suggestions that can easily be implemented. It has already had a positive impact on some conversations I have had since reading it - I feel a long way short of the "Outstanding Coach" title but hopefully further down that route as a result of reading and reflecting on this book.

First attempt at Geocaching

2011-02-06T20:19:00.000Z

I first heard about geocaching some years ago - now that I have some suitable equipment in the shape of an iPhone I've been meaning to give it a go.

Looking on www.geocaching.com I found that there were numerous sites near us so we downloaded their iphone app and headed out, iphone in hand, this afternoon to find one not too far from us.

The app uses a compass image to give a rather nice direction and distance indication on the screen. This got us to the right area and here the search began. We knew we were looking for a "magnetic nano" but other than the expectation that this would mean it was attached to something metallic we had no idea what we were searching for.

Initial searching didn't yield anything but after a while we found it and discovered that nano does mean rather small. However, despite its small size, it contained a tickertape style pice of paper on which to log your visit. We left our mark (first people to do so in 2011) and then returned it to its hiding place.

Great fun, despite the rain, think we may well have a go at some of the other ones in the area now.

Bible in a year

2011-01-30T18:28:00.000Z

Last August I decided to embark on a 52 week bible reading plan that should see me read all 66 books over the course of a year.

I looked around at a number of different plans and in the end opted for one by Michael Coley (www.Bible-Reading.com). I liked the way he had split the task down based on the different sorts of books that make up the bible. Sunday is spent on Epistles, Monday covers The Law, Tuesday looks at History, Wednesday is devoted to Psalms, Thursday brings poetry, Friday is for Prophecy and Saturday brings the week to a close with the Gospels.   This does result in a slightly uneven split of reading volume through the week from a couple of psalms on Wednesday to typically 5 chapters of History or Prophecy on Tuesday/Friday. The upside though is that you get a variety of style and content during the week.

Yesterday marked the end of week 26 and hence the half way point on the journey.   So how am I doing? Well, I am a few days behind schedule but pleased with the progress. I've completed 20 books (Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Ezra, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, Matthew and Mark.   The biblical scholars amongst you will no doubt have immediately spotted that Ezra and Daniel are out of sequence and shouldn't have been covered yet - these were covered by some normal daily reading notes I was following in addition to the bible in a year plan.

I like the way that the discipline of working steadily through the books is ensuring that I read all of them rather than just the more familiar passages.   I'm confident come August I'll have completed the remaining 46 books.

Today's passage from Philippians beckons so I'd best click on "publish" and go complete book number 21.

Death, love, courage and hope

2011-01-23T19:58:00.000Z

This afternoon I attended the funeral of a lady that I have known through church for many years.

The love and respect in which Anne is held is well illustrated by the fact that this was the 2nd of 3 planned services. There had already been a cremation service last week. Today's funeral/interment service was held in St Catherine's church which she had attended for many years. In a few weeks the 3rd service, a celebration of her life, will be held in Winchester Cathedral - the fact that it is being held in the cathedral again speaks to the number of people whose lives she has touched.

I always knew that she did a lot but it is still a surprise when you hear everything talked about at once in the address. As someone put it - she was the epitome of the saying that if you want something done you should give it to a busy person. Be it in the church, choirs, school or community Anne could be found taking an active role and making a difference.

She certainly fitted a lot into her life and was a blessing to many people. One of the speakers at the service suggested that all of the congregation should find something we could do to help others - as he put it this would be more "pay forward" than "pay back" for all we had received from Anne over the years. He certainly felt this would be a legacy she'd be pleased with. We may already be busy doing things but in a way that would make it all the more apt for us to do something else.

Having just completed the annual appraisal process at work, with its focus on just 12 short months of impact, today's service has reminded me of the importance of stepping back and looking at the longer term and considering what our own legacy will be. I was also reminded of a film I saw some years ago ( might have been "Death becomes Her") where 2 of the characters are seeking to live forever by taking a magical elixir. The husband however refuses to take the potion - arguing that even though his mortal life will finish he will live forever though his family and through the impact that he has had on people's lives.

Over the years I've read a lot of articles/books/etc which talk about the importance and power of a positive attitude. This is another area where Anne provided us with a great example to follow. She has spent that last few years battling with cancer but though it all retained a positive outlook and a focus on what she could achieve.

There will be rejoicing in heaven but she will be sadly missed by those she leaves behind. On earth she will live on through her powerful and wide reaching legacy that was encapsulated today in a eulogy to be proud of. RIP Anne.

IBM Prize for Mathematics

2011-01-17T23:31:00.000Z

This evening it was my privilege to present the inaugural IBM Prize for Mathematics at Oxford University which is awarded for the top performance in the Honour Moderations exams at the end of 1st year.

The evening started with a talk on the mathematics of bell ringing (think church rather than door or hand) from the retired head of mathematics at GCHQ. I followed this with a short overview of IBM and why we are interested in mathematics graduates before presenting the winners with their certificates.

Sitting in the lecture room was an interesting reminder of attending lectures over 20 years ago when I was doing my own degree. The room was much the same but I did notice the seats had been reupholstered and the blackboards have been replaced by whiteboards.

After the talks the other speaker and I were taken to Christ Church College for dinner which was very good. Hall is impressive even without the floating candles I was sure it had when I saw it a film a while back....

Over coffee after dinner the conversation ranged over sculpture, ancient Greek manuscripts (Epic and poetry), Greek mathematicians, trisecting angles, Euclid, von Neuman, and all points in between :-)

Reflections on the Chartered Management Institute's Annual Conference #li #cmiconf

2010-10-23T15:44:00.000+01:00

Last week I attended the annual CMI conference at the Royal Garden Hotel in London.

In a format like last year we were treated to an impressive range of speakers across various leadership topics. The seemingly mandatory photographer was there to intrude on events by taking repeated flash photographs of the speakers while they were presenting. It seems that this is a requirement for any significant CMI event and I have to say I've never understood why. I was hugely amused though when we were showed a video created for the CMI reflecting on events of the past 12 months and it included a warning that there was some flashing images in it - but no mention of the photographer who had been snapping away for some while in the room !!

I was a bit puzzled by the title of the conference "From Mediocrity to Excellence" which, though I'm sure it wasn't intended as such, did seem like a bit of a downer on the leadership capabilities of the attendees and at the same time a "slight" overselling of what results might be achieved by attending.

As had been the case last year we had a late change to the programme due to a planned speaker not being available and so missed out on hearing Karen Brady talk which was a pity - especially as I had stayed up the night before to make sure I had watched a recording of that week's Apprentice to see what she said in case she referred to it in her talk :-(

So here are some thoughts that I jotted down from the day - most of the presentations are up on slideshare ....

First up was Ruth Spellman Chief Executive of the CMI. She talked about the progress the CMI is making both in terms of membership (now over 90,000) and in terms of brand recognition (now appears in the Superbrand survey top 500 - some 35 places above the CIPD). Talked about the importance of management qualifications and showed a video about work Serco has done at Doncaster prison using CMI training to increase the capabilities of their leadership team with great results. Right at the end of her talk was an interesting idea - keeping a weekly "Learning Log" to capture what you've learned each week and from whom. I thought this sounded like an interesting way of triggering reflections on the week gone by and capturing thoughts from it - may give it a go.

Next we had Mike Southon, a political and business columnist for the Financial Times. He talked about a range of topics, two things in particular caught my attention. He introduced the idea of 7 stages in life.

21-28 - try as many things as possible
28-35 - serious attempt at something
35-42 - maybe decide to try something different
42-49 - at the peak of your powers
49-56 - maturing self awareness
56-63 - start to worry about your legacy
63-70 - elder statesperson

Interesting to note from the political sphere that Clegg, Cameron, Milliband and Obama all fit in the 42-49 bracket.

He also spoke about "Talent dynamics" and the importance of creating teams that balance the skills of the members. Again from the political sphere he spoke about the Labour team of Blair (star), Mandelson (deal maker), Brown (accumulator - eye on the money) and Campbell (mechanic - making things happen).

On the topic of money vs wealth he suggested that money is what you have in the bank and wealth is what you have left if the money all goes - ie reputation, trust, respect etc

After a break for coffee (and some rather lovely cake) we reconvened to hear Rob Law (he of Trunki fame - sit on suitcase famously broken by Theo on Dragons' Den). He talked about the history of his company, challenges faced and how they overcame them. Importance of picking the right people and and making sure they were engaged with the company was highlighted and he spoke about some of the things they do. Their new office space was deliberately fitted out in a vibrant and wacky way consistent with the company values. Interested to hear how they had an education fund of £1000 per employee which enabled them to grow new skills - intriguingly they can now see a reduction in consultancy costs as the staff they have gain broader capabilities. Also touched on how important it is to make events memorable - highlighted a Christmas dinner that they had one year which was run at a cookery school so the staff actually had to cook their own meal. Years later it is still remembered fondly.

The last slot before lunch was taken by Jo Salter who was the UK's first fast jet pilot in the RAF. Lots of interesting background on how she progressed through the RAF to take that role and the challenges associated with being the first women to do so. Four keys to success that she offered....

Be open to opportunities that present themselves
Surround yourself with people who make you feel good and fill you with energy and maintain a "glass half full" mentality
Take responsibility for our actions - how we choose to behave drives what we do
Enjoy the journey - have goals but rather than just focus on meeting it then setting another make sure you enjoy the ride along the way as well.

After a break for a very nice lunch we reconvened for the afternoon session which was kicked off by Stephen Howard - CEO of Business in the Community. In an echo of comments made by Mike Southon in the morning he noted that we tend to spend the first half of our life chasing success and then decide to focus less on success and more on making significance - making a difference. Talked about his role and Business in the Community and came across as someone really thrilled by what he gets to do each day - lots of reference to things being "fun". He recounted a story of meeting Mother Theresa on a plane in India. She asked him what he did and then as he started to talk about his role (at that time a company CEO) she interrupted him to ask "no, what do you do that matters". Seemingly the conversation had a profound effect and his encouragement to us was to think about how we can use our position and where we are to make a difference in the world. "What can I do today that will make the most difference?"

Professor Lord Eatwell (CMI Chief Economic Adviser) spoke about the latest Economic Outlook published by the CMI based on survey of its members. The news wasn't great with significant drops in business optimism since the last survey 6 months ago. Whilst this was driven by a big decline in the optimism of those in the public sector (perhaps not surprisingly) there were also declines in the responses from both the not for profit and private sector as well.

As noted above Karen Brady was unable to attend the conference so we had a substitute speaker in the shape of James Cann. In a wide ranging talk he touched on some of his own business successes and how he had got to where he is today as well as some thoughts relating to his role as a Dragon.

To finish the day we had the rather amazing Chris Moon. His website has a short video that talks about his background so I won't repeat it here. Instead here are some thoughts I jotted down while he spoke...

Stick to your values - respect other people
When facing death you are haunted mostly by the things you haven't done and the people you could have helped.
Courage isn't the absence of fear, it's overcoming that and doing what we know we need to do
Do not assume the role of victim whatever happens
Be focussed on where you are now - make use of time you have
Never take things personally, listen to what people say and don't rush to judge
Never underestimate the power of belief - he talked about a pig he had seen that was tied with a piece of string to a wooden stake. Clearly the pig had the strength to get the stake out of the ground by pulling on the string and hence get free but it didn't - why not. As a piglet it was tied to the stake in the same way and tried to get free but eventually realised it couldn't. Later when it was tied up in the same way it "knew" it couldn't get free so doesn't try.... ie it becomes constrained by it's belief that it can't get free.

Finally he left us with his philosophy - be realistic about the situation you face, choose a positive perspective and choose a positive attitude. It is this philosophy that has enabled him to survive and achieve what he has.

All in all it was a good day. Whilst I like hearing from the high profile speakers I do miss the smaller breakout sessions that used to be a feature of the CMI conferences. These smaller scale presentations added a lot of value by covering a wider range of topics and providing a chance to make connections with the speakers. Some years later I am still linked with a number of the people whose talks I attended - either through subscription to their newsletters/blogs or in person.

A week of looking inside my head - physically and metaphorically

2010-09-19T23:43:00.000+01:00

As I looked back at the last week it occurred to me that amongst the normal ebb and flow of the days 2 things stood out - and both concerned looking inside my head.

On Tuesday I met an ENT consultant to look at the results of an MRI scan that I had a couple of weeks ago. (A few years ago I had a couple of operations to remove a cholesteatoma from inside my right ear. Not unsurprisingly I have been left with a residual tinitus in the ear which isn't a big problem but did get worse earlier this year. The MRI scan was mainly a precaution to check whether there was any sign of the cholesteatoma regrowing.) I'm pleased to say that the results came back without any evidence of return. It was fascinating to be able to see the scans of the inside of my head even if the orientation was a bit difficult. The image showed nose at the top but right ear was on left of screen - ie you need to imaging that you are standing at you feet looking up at a cross section through you head. Lots of detail of bones inside the ear, brain etc and, as he moved the computer mouse to pass through the images, an alarming sudden appearance of my eye balls in brilliant white on the screen !! There was some white stuff on the image inside my ear which is probably swelling due to a previous cold or other similar infection and should hopefully just sort itself out over time. Consultant said there were 2 options ... A) leave it alone and it should hopefully settle down by itself or B) open the ear up again to have a look around inside..... pleased to say that we both felt option A was the best.

In preparation for a workshop that I am attending later this month I had to complete a Hogan Test this week. The test is designed to give some insights into my leadership strengths, risks around how I may behave under stress, my values etc. I completed the lengthy questionaries and booked a 1 hour feedback session where the results would be explained to me. I've done a number of these sorts of tests before and am always fascinated to see what the results come back as, and how what they say maps to my own self perception. On Friday I had my call to discuss the results and was very fortunate to be assigned a lady who clearly had a lot of experience in administering and explaining the results of these tests. We had a great discussion about what the results said about me and more broadly what sorts of things the survey can highlight. I am going to be moving to a new role in IBM in October so this also gave an opportunity to think about how the profile identified by the test fitted with the likely needs of the new job. I'm pleased to say that the fit between my profile and the new role look good - I thought it was a good fit when I accepted it but it's nice to see some validation of that choice in the data from the test. Really looking forward to the workshop in a couple of weeks and learning more about the test and what it shows.

Downs Benefice Parish walk - Day 1 Minstead

2010-08-16T19:17:00.000+01:00

Today was the first day of the Downs Benefice Walks - every 2 years the benefice runs a week long series of walks. This year we have a series of 6 circular walks close(ish) to Winchester all with some literary theme.

Today's was an 11, or so, mile walk (at the end my pedometer said 27,158 steps which feel about right) starting and ending at Minstead.

We had a lovely day for the walk and at 9:30am an intrepid group of 16 walkers headed out from Minstead into the forest.

The walk was a lovely mix of tracks, road and open areas in the New Forest and we saw our fair share of ponies as well as some free roaming pigs.

After lunch we stopped in Brook at the Green Dragon pub for a quick beverage and to collect another group of people who would be joining us for the afternoon section of the walk.

Our numbers swelled we pressed on back through the forest to Minstead, stopping off at the village church to see Arthur Conan Doyle's grave and look round the lovely church.

The day finished with an ice cream at the suddenly very busy village shop.

Few photos from the day in a set on flickr - here

New Wine - Local churches changing nations

2010-08-01T21:19:00.000+01:00

Our home for the week

Looking down from our pitch on Brown 4

We spent last week at New Wine's Summer Conference "Unstoppable" which was held, as usual, at the Bath and West Showground in Shepton Mallet. This was our 9th year attending but the first time that we were the only people from our church who were camping. Christ Church Winchester had around 250 people camping and were happy for us to join them up on Brown 4. Thank you Christ Church for the BBQ, Cheese and Wine evening, Hog Roast and afternoon Cream Tea - me thinks we may well look to camp with you again in the future ....

Each year we enjoy the worship, hear great teaching, and spend time with friends on the campsite. The girls enjoy the freedom of taking themselves off to their sessions and activities during the day (this year Alice was in "Boulder Gang" and Helen was in "Club One"). No matter how many times I go the scale of the event always impresses - for example Boulder Gang is for just for children aged 10 or 11 but they still have around 500 children attending !

Numbers for dinner swelled by day visitors

Though we were the only ones from our church camping for the week we did also have one person staying in a nearby B&B who joined us on site each day and were delighted to have friends visit for a day during the week.

Among the many highlights for me this year a few were ...

Simon Ponsonby's great teaching in the morning bible study sessions in Venue 1. He was supposed to be looking at 5 parables from Matthew 13. However after 3 insightful sessions he decided that the other 2 he'd prepared weren't as interesting so changed tack and instead gave us a session on love based around John 21v15 and a talk on Joshua 3 v5.
An interesting explanation of the famous "turn the other cheek" passage suggesting that, when taken in the context of the time it was written, this is actually an example of taking an effective non violent stand against injustice.
Mark Griffiths telling the story of the "The Happy Prince" at the All-Age Celebration, having a "reverse collection" (a bucket passed from person to person and rather than putting money in you take out a small gold coloured disc), and being challenged to perform an act of kindness over the next 4 weeks that costs us something, in time, emotion or money, but which has no chance of being repaid.
Hearing of the inspiring work of the Street Pastors - volunteers who spend time on the streets on Friday and Saturday nights (10pm - 4am) being with and helping the people who are out at that time - largely club//pub goers.
Browsing the marketplace and talking to people about the HoverAid charity and the work that it does reaching the otherwise unreachable in Madagascar
Hearing Adrian Plass talk in the ToyBox Cafe - a wonderful mixture of the amusing and the serious. Including why Joseph is the character in the bible who best understands inner wholeness, why having a note of the names of the mid 90's Sri Lankan cricket team tucked away inside your bible could prove useful, and the importance of not trying to navigate further than Milton Keynes before you are married,
Mark Melluish (following Simon Ponsonby's lead) and abandoning his planned talk for the final evening and instead talking about Love. Based around the story of Bartimaeus he talked about the importance of being interruptable, ready to stop, listen, pray and make room for others in our busy lives.

When we collected the car from the car park at the end of the week it was covered in dust - just what you want after a week's camping as it only happens if there was no rain to wash it off :-) We've had wet weeks at New Wine in the past and dry weeks and I have to say that, whilst both are fun, the dry ones are better.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in running this year's conference and I pray that the people attending this week will be similarly blessed as were those there last week.

Weekend of dance

2010-07-18T21:41:00.000+01:00

A busy weekend draws to a close. Friday saw us heading up to Durham for my mum's birthday party on Saturday. It was great to catch up with family at the party and over the weekend. She had booked a band for the evening and we had a great time doing lots of English Folk dances and watching the Irish Set Dancers in our midst perform some figures - now we just need the time to process the videos in iMovie.

This morning we headed back down south - thankfully we had a clear run with no real holdups along the way so we made it back to Winchester in time for Platform School of Dance's annual show.

Alice did a Rock & Roll number and a Mambo with her Saturday Latin class and I did a Jive with the rest of the Tuesday evening adult Latin group - more videos in need of attention. This was quite possibly my first time dancing on stage - only time will tell if it will also be the last..... I have a sneaking suspicion that having got us to do one this year the pressure will be on to do so again in next year's show.

Brag!

2010-06-22T23:12:00.000+01:00

Over almost 12 years in a range of Management roles at IBM I have taken part in a lot of annual appraisal meetings, interviews, 1-1s, career discussions etc in which I have heard people talk about what they have done.

I'd noticed of course that some people seemed to be better at communicating what they had been up to than others. People's reputations also varied hugely, and not always in line with what I thought I could see of their work.

In a chance conversation with one of my US colleagues over coffee one day he recommended I read Peggy Klaus' book "Brag! The art of tooting your own horn without blowing it."

I did and found it to be a very interesting and thought provoking read that gave me an insight into what I had observed in all those meetings.

Today I got to give a talk at work based on some of the ideas from the book plus some thoughts of mine relating to our particular work environment.

I get a real buzz out of doing presentations like this on topics that interest me and where there are often no clear right or wrong answers. My audience obliged with lots of questions and discussion and the materials that I had prepared proved to be a good fit for the allotted time.

If you are looking for ideas and advice on how to ensure that you are effectively communicating your achievements and desires for the future then I really recommend Peggy's book to you.

Feeding my CV into Wordle

2010-05-13T17:34:00.001+01:00

As a way of seeing what my CV says about me I thought it might be interesting to feed it into Wordle (wordle.net) and see what happened. Well here's the result....

After nearly 22 years in software development it's no surprise that they come through. I do like the way that some of the words have fallen to create things like "responsible technical manager" and "worldwide career". Leadership and innovation don't seem to quite have the prominence I would have expected so perhaps I need to go tweak the CV a bit in those areas.

Gadget Show Live

2010-04-16T15:50:00.001+01:00

Last week the girls and I went up to the NEC to attend Gadget Show Live. We had a great time. We arrived late morning, spent a few hours looking round the exhibits and finished up by attending the 4pm Live Show.

There was so much to see - for us a few highlights were ...

3D - masses of technology around this space. We tried on different sorts of glasses some projecting images in front of our eyes and some used in conjunction with a screen. Our favorite was the 3D TV, viewed normally it was a fuzzy looking image but put the supplied glasses on and WOW the image really came to life. Rugby ball appearing to fly out of the screen certainly made people jump :-)

Old tech - lots of chance to play with some tech from the 70's and up to current day. Great to be able to show the girls some of the early games machines and just how blocky the early games were.

The live show was good fun - chance to see the presenters "in the flesh" and also a range of other items. We especially liked the flying penguins, Titan the robot and the amazing dance/light routine. To get a flavour of it here's a video someone recorded of the dancers and from there you can navigate to their videos of Titan and then the Penguins. At the start of the live show the presenter said words to the effect of..... "you will have noticed that your tickets say no photography or recording of the show..... how crazy is that, this is the gadget show.... record, photograph, post it, live stream it to the internet - we don't care" :-)

After the live show it was time to head back to the car in the depths of the N5 car park and drive home.

So ... did we leave the show laden with tech? Well I bought a Winkku mirror for my bike. Alice tried to buy a Vectron Wave from Air Hogs but sadly they aren't for sale in the UK until July :-(
Helen used the show as a chance to check out the wide range of remote control helicopters on sale and will probably get one of those after a bit more online research. Taking out a trial subscription to T3 magazine also got me a small speaker to go with my iPod.

Photo challenge finished in style

2010-04-01T19:53:00.000+01:00

Well I managed to complete my photo challenge in style. For Helen's birthday party we took some of her friends bowling and on my last go of my last game I had a high scoring round (completely against the run of play) and when I looked at the scoreboard I realised I had scored 83 which was my last number !

For this year I think I will change tack and build a set of photos of doors/entrances that have some significance - for example places that we visit during the year.

Last few photos needed for challenge

2010-02-13T20:56:00.000Z

It's nearly a year since I started my photo challenge of taking shots of all the numbers between 0 and 100. It's been great fun to spot the numbers and the whole family has got involved. The resulting set on flickr is a great summary of the last year, all I need to do over the next fortnight is find the following... 74, 76, 78 and 83 to complete the set. The subject should be relevant somehow to my year or places I have been - bright ideas and suggestions gratefully received on subjects or events I should get along to.

Conference for Secondary School Governors in Hampshire 2010

2010-02-10T23:35:00.000Z

In my role as a parent governor at Henry Beaufort school I spent today at the Marwell Hotel listening to talks and discussing issues related to "Stronger governance - improving pupil outcomes".

This was the first such conference that I had attended so I didn't really know what to expect - I have to say I was very pleased with the day and will certainly be looking to attend in future years.

There were some great talks and a fantastic opportunity to meet and talk with governors from other schools across Hampshire.

Sue Hackman was the first speaker of the day. She is the Chief adviser on School Standards at the Department of Children Schools and Families and used the"Your child, your school, our future" whitepaper as a framework to talk to us about a whole range of issues mainly related to analysing performance. This could have been a very dry subject but she did a fantastic job of articulating the importance and meaning of various metrics available to schools. In particular she spent some time looking at the kind of reports that the RAISE online system can generate. These can, for example, help a secondary school to identify whether pupils are achieving the results that their performance in primary school suggests they could. There was also quite a bit of discussion around "the middle rump", those pupils who aren't in the top or bottom groups. It is easy to focus on helping those at the bottom and working to stretch those at the top - both good things to do - and end up making some of those in the middle group feel resentful that they don't warrant any special attention. Whilst you could argue the whole system is set up for them they may, all the same, not be feeling it.

After a break for coffee, and the chance for a chat with a governor from another Winchester School, we had 2 workshops. The first "Setting Targets in Secondary Schools" followed on nicely from Sue's presentation and looked in a bit more detail at some of the figures for Hampshire and what sort of progress is expected as you move through from Key stage 2 - 4. As part of this we also looked in some more detail at the area of the comparative attainment levels of Children in Care and some of the work being done in Hampshire in this area.

The second workshop looked at School Improvement Plans and in particular what some of the barriers/challenges faced by governing bodies are as they seek to be supportive of the school and a "critical friend".

After lunch we turned to look at Local Children's Partnerships. John Clarke took us through an overview of the idea - basically setting up a partnership between all the schools/colleges in an area and other bodies such as district councils, local NHS, police, social care etc. This partnership would take responsibility for all of the children on its patch and work to improve their outcomes. As part of his presentation he mentioned a book called "The Spirit Level" by Wilkinson and Pickett which he said drew a conclusion that increasing inequality of wealth in a country correlated with a decrease in an "index of health and social problems". I need to add that to my "must read some day" list to see what's behind the claim - the graph certainly raised a few questions in my mind - always a bit suspicious of charts whose scale is marked "low"...."high", where the data aligns neatly on the plot and which rely on an "index" whose constituent elements don't all seem to be independent (I would have thought for example that including obesity and life expectancy might end up double counting).

Moving on from the conceptual idea we then heard about the East Hampshire Education Improvement Partnership and the impressive real life examples of what they have been doing. No measures of success presented, I suspect because it's early days yet, but very encouraging to see the levels of cooperation they have created and what that has enabled them to do.

The conference was drawn to a close and, once we had completed our survey forms, we were allowed to head home.

I felt it was a day well spent - tasty apple crumble and custard for lunch certainly helped :-)

Certainly feel better equipped to take part in the discussion on RAISE Online and FFT data we have lined up on tomorrow night's Full Governing Body meeting.

Plus I got to meet some new people - including Fiona Grindey who, following today's event, has set up the "Hampshire Governors" facebook group.

Notes from "Managing & Leading Through Challenging Times" - part 4 of 4

2009-11-20T12:10:00.000Z

Fourth and final installment of my notes from the recent Chartered management Institute's conference (part 1, part 2, part 3). In here we will meet a "Future Strategist" and a "Business Guru" - both very good and compelling speakers.

First we have Charles Leadbeater who was there to talk to us about Innovation and New Leadership thinking. As an aside his surname seemed to cause a few people problems as they introduced him or referred to him later - so I offer you the handy hint that it's not the same as Margot and Jerry's.

Charles told us that he used to be a journalist at the FT and then The Independent but over 13 years ago he left to work for himself. As he rather wonderfully put it "The longer my title got the more boring my job got, and the more boring my job got the more boring I got."

He offered 3 simple rules for what to work on

Don't do it unless it's interesting
Stop doing it if you're not learning
Build new relationships

.. do this and he suggested the money will follow.

Turning to think about Innovation he had the thought provoking definition that if you are describing something truly innovative then at least half of your audience should think you are mad :-)

To innovate you need to address three dilemmas :- Technology (will it work), Business (who will pay) & Social (will consumers incorporate it into their lives). Successful innovations are technical, organisational and social.

He offered us the 8 C's of how to get innovation going....

Crisis - generates focus, urgency, sharing, and innovators respond by seeing new ways of doing things
Curiosity - space to explore, where do you have your best ideas? Don't get trapped by your desk.
Combination - finding new mixes and recipies often of old ideas. eg iPod was based on a new combination of existing technologies.
Connection - look sideways (even backwards) and borrow. most ideas come from looking sideways even though we tend to think of innovation as being about looking forwards
Conversation - need to create settings for exchange of ideas and discussion
Challenge - ask "stupid" questions, value useful deviants, to get innovation need to have a climate where people are willing to challenge
Co-creation - innovate for but also with customers. There are more people that know more about your business outside your company than inside it.
Commitment - you don't learn to swim standing by the side of the pool.

The final talk of the day was a high energy affair and was given by "business guru" René Carayol.

His slides can be downloaded from his website where he also has a range of other materials and links to clips of him presenting - if you are interested in leadership I'd recommend watching a few of his clips on YouTube

He covered a lot of ground in his talk looking at attributes of leaders as well as the importance of a company's culture. Here are a few of, what for me were, the highlights.

The "illiterate" of the 21st century will be the people who can't learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Management = responsibility for people
Leadership = responsibility to people

The A class (ie best) leaders surround themselves with people who are better than them.... B class leaders however surround themselves with C class players.

"Leadership is the art of achieving more than the science of management says is possible".

He was very hot on the importance of values, both personal and organisational, and suggested that in some cases companies are sacrificing their values at the alter of performance management.

He mentioned that google is one of only 2 companies (the other being Proctor & Gamble) that receive over 1 million unsolicited job applications a year. His point was that these people are not applying because they fancy working on a search engine - no, they want to be part of the organisation and its story.

Throughout his talk he referred to many great leaders. His final example was Rudi Giuliani and he recounted hearing him talk and stress 3 essentials for successful leadership

Love people - if you don't then please find a different role, don't seek to lead
Optimism - if you aren't optimistic how on earth are the people you lead going to be
Be clear what you stand for - what are your values and how do you display them

He closed the talk (spot on schedule as he had promised at the start) with a question for anyone interested in being a leader to consider........

"What do you stand for and why would anyone want to be led by you?"

Governor day in school

2009-11-12T22:03:00.000Z

For just over a year now I have been a parent governor at Henry Beaufort School in Winchester. Given my other interests and career it is perhaps not surprising that as well as being a member of the full governing body I am also on the Finance & Premises Committee and the "attached governor" for ICT.

Today all the governors were invited to come and spend a day in the school and I'm glad I took the offer up.

First up was a discussion with the Senior Leadership Team about their varied roles and the huge range of initiatives and activities that they are involved with.

Over the course of the rest of the day I got to .....

- Have a tour round the school with 2 of the year 11 "Student Leaders" including a chance to see the new all weather pitch up close.

- Spend time with the ICT teachers and see a range of lessons in progress in the various IT suites including the very swish Apple Mac equipped media suite. As part of this I got to talk with a number of the students about what they were doing.

- Have a very nice cottage pie in the Bistro

- Sit in on a vertical tutoring session

- See the Student Council in action helping to provide feedback to the staff for use at a future inset day.

- Experience the general ebb and flow of the school day

We finished the day discussing our thoughts and reflections on what we had seen and done.

I never cease to be amazed at the enormous breadth of activities that there are at the school and the ability and quality of work being produced by many of the students I saw seemed superb. What will stick with me longest though is the outstanding maturity of the discussion I heard in the Student Council meeting. The way the students were able to express their own point view, listen to others with different thoughts and collectively discuss the topic was simply amazing.

Weekend at Morston Barn

2009-11-09T22:36:00.000Z

We spent last weekend at Morston Barn helping to celebrate my sister's birthday. The building is lovely and full of character - great place to stay but not sure it would suit me as a place to live. Minimalism is all well and good but I have a lot of stuff that would need to go somewhere :-)

We were blessed with 2 days of great weather. On the Saturday we drove along the coast to Cromer including a stop at Sheringham to have a look around. By the sea they have a great mural celebrating the lives of fisherfolk and lifeboat crew through the ages. I really liked the way that the pictures seemed to be of real people such as Tom "Coaly" Barnes Cooper (celebrated for being skipper of the lifeboat for 39 years).

We had lunch at The Crown Hotel which was tucked away in Wells-Next-The-Sea. Sat Nav said she knew where it was but at the last minute as we were supposedly just about to get there she changed her mind and denied all knowledge of it ! A U-turn and a press of the recalculate route button and she remembered, taking us down a road she had previously mysteriously ignored and delivering us to the door - though finding a parking space was very much left to me.

Rest of the afternoon and evening were spent back at the barn helping to eat copious quantities of cake ... and a little Pina Colada that needed drinking up... well, it would be rude not to....

Sunday dawned clear and sunny and we headed off to the lovely Holkham Beach

where we enjoyed the sunshine and had a go a flying Bridget's kite.

A delicious late lunch (I can recommend the Roast Rib Eye beef with trimmings) at The White Horse in Brancaster Staithe and then, all too soon, it was time to hit the road and head for home.

Notes from "Managing & Leading Through Challenging Times" - part 3 of 4

2009-11-06T14:00:00.000Z

Third installment of my notes from the recent Chartered management Institute's conference (part 1, part 2). In this episode we will meet Prof Lord Eatwell, have lunch and then hear from Lord Bilimoria.

Prof Lord Eatwell is the chief economist for the CMI and is responsible, amongst other things, for the production of their "Economic Outlook". He discussed the second edition of this publication which is based on survey responses from the CMI membership. During Aug/Sept 15,000 members were invited to respond and the report brings together the responses from those who took part.

Couple of points of interest that I noted down. A year ago there was a strong sense of commitment from managers to trying to preserving the workforce and retain investment in skills growth. Twelve months later the continued recession has had an impact and managers are being forced into making redundancies and have reduced investment in skills. On the positive side, though things are bad, the perception is that we are getting through. A year ago the responders thought that the recession would last for 2 years. This time they are expecting it to last another year or so.

Next we had lunch which provided an opportunity to talk with other delegates. On hearing I had worked for IBM for over 21 years one person amusingly remarked "but I didn't think people like you were supposed to exist anymore". As ever things aren't quite as cut and dried as they may seem. We hear a lot of attention on changes in patterns of careers with people moving between companies more than they did before but of course there are still those who will remain with one company for many years.

Lord Bilimoria (Chairman of Cobra Beer) was first up after lunch and spoke about "Leading your business through challenging times". He spoke about the history of Cobra Beer from its creation through to where it is today working with Molson Coors. He provided lots of examples and insights but for me the thing that shone through most was the need to be responsive to change. He talked about some key moments where external events had impacted his business and had the potential to destroy much of what they had built. There would have been no way to forecast these changes and so the ability of the organisation to adapt to the new circumstances was critical to their survival. This chimed well with some of Brent Hoberman's comments in the morning. In another nice link to an earlier talk he listed Molsen Coors' definition of what makes for an extraordinary brand :-

Tell a compelling story based on an undeniable brand truth
Live by & refuse to compromise on your principles
Be instantly recognisable
Provide a unique, relevant and consistent experience
Inspire people to become loyal brand champions
Deliver enduring extraordinary profits

Notes from "Managing & Leading Through Challenging Times" - part 2 of 4

2009-11-05T18:37:00.001Z

Part 2 of my notes from this year's Chartered Management Institute Conference covering talks by Rita Clifton and Brent Hoberman. In part 1 I talked about the adresses from Sir David Howard and Ruth Spellman.

Rita Clifton is the Chariman of Interbrand and was the first of the non CMI speakers to take to the stage. Her topic was "How to build a world class brand".

She starting out by talking about the importance of a good brand and to help convince us of this told us that Warren Buffet's investment criteria include (in increasing order of importance) a good balance sheet, the management team and the brand. (Note - since attending the conference I happened to see a TV programme on Warren Buffet and they also listed that in order for them to invest the business needed to be something they could understand and to have a sustainable competitive advantage)

She referred disparagingly to companies that were just interested in "logslogs" ie logos and slogans and not in understanding what the brand stood for and ensuring that the brand promise is delivered consistently across the organisation. If your brand is all about excellent customer service it would be a good idea to make sure this is communicated to the people who answer the phones. Ultimately, what makes brands work isn't the visible bit.

She offered a definition that I liked ..."A brand is a central organising principle, symbolized in a trade mark, which if used correctly creates value".

She noted that of the top 100 brands ("by value" but I'm not sure how that is assessed) 8 come from France, 11 from Germany, America racks up 51 but UK only manages 4. ( During Q&A someone asked which ones they were and they are ... BP, HSBC, Smirnoff and Burberry).

As an IBM employee it was nice to see us get a mention as the second most valuable brand. Significant risers up the league table in 2009 include Google, Amazon and Zara. Fallers included Morgan Stanley, Amex, Citi, UBS (spotted a pattern yet?) and Harley Davidson.

Made the interesting comment that one of the banks that has survived better than most is Goldman Sachs which has a clear brand and she said was also the one that had Warren Buffet as an investor.

For the final part of her talk she turned to the question of how we could think of ourselves as a brand. To do this successfully we need to get clarity of what we stand for and how this makes us different. Next we need to ensure that we are consistent across everything that we do - internal has to match how we portray ourselves externally. This is an interesting comment as I am sure that many people see themselves as different in their work environment to how they behave at home/with friends. With the increased emergence of social networking sites that bring together people from different aspects of our lives into one "place" I think this issue of behaving with consistency and integrity will become more important.

After a break for coffee we had Brent Hoberman - co-founder of Lastminute.com talk about Entrepreneurship and innovation in difficult times. The original programme had listed Martha Lane Fox but she had been called away elsewhere. Intriguingly the switch had happened early enough that the printed programme showed Brent as the speaker but the website still showed (and indeed still shows) Martha.

The talk was more a series of interesting thoughts than a narrative flow and some of the bits that jumped out for me were....

Don't over intellectualise - if in advance they had known how hard it was going to be to get lastminute.com running they could well have argued themselves into not doing it. Sometimes you've got to "jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down."

React as circumstance change ( a theme that was also called out by Lord Bilimoria later in the day) - He would receive basic sales data updates every 15 minutes and more detailed info every hour ! Key thing is that whilst reports are good what matters is how you react to the data.

Make each mistake once

Take decisions quickly - if you get it wrong you can change (see reacting as circumstances change...) very easy to not spot the potentially huge cost of failing to take a decision

Understand and communicate the behaviours you want from your employees

Put your smartest technical folks on the most boring and repetitive tasks - they will find ways to automate them away.

Be courageous - say what you think, take smart risks, question decisions that are inconsistent with company's values.

Constantly recruit the smartest people - means you can run company less formally, in buzz word speak .. "increase the talent density".

If you find that the company / department/ ... can only manage to handle 3 things at once don't restrict what you do to 3 but rather figure out what the inhibitors are that are stopping you from getting on with 20 things ar a time.

Keep changing ... as Benjamin Franklin put it "When you're finished changing, you're finished."

Notes from "Managing & Leading Through Challenging Times" - part 1 of 4

2009-10-26T17:57:00.001Z

On the 15th October I attended the Chartered Management Institute's Annual National Conference. During the course of the day we had a range of speakers talking about different aspects of how we cope with the challenging times we live in. This is the first in a series of posts covering what for me were the key points of the various talks and some of my thoughts on the topics covered.

Nadine Dereza was the chair/facilitator for the day and got things started with the usual housekeeping, please turn of your phones etc messages. She then introduced Sir David Howard (President of the CMI) who proceeded to set the scene for the conference - "Managing & Leading Through Challenging Times" - by talking about how there has been a change in the business and economic landscape and the challenge of motivating teams in a period of austerity. We've undoubtedly been through some tough times and, though there may be some signs of recovery/reduction in rate of decline, we should expect the next few years to be tough as well - as he put it rather poetically "the sea is still foaming and the sky is still grey".

He handed over to Ruth Spellman (Chief Executive of the CMI). Ruth joined the CMI in June last year and it is interesting to see how much change has occurred in the Institute in that time. To me there seems to be much more of a sense of purpose and urgency about the organisation than I remember from the past. She talked passionately about the importance of skills and in particular driving improvements in the skills of the UK's managers. There are currently 4.6 million managers in the UK and it is estimated that over 60% lack any formal management qualification. The CMI has set itself a target of driving towards 50% of managers being professionally qualified by 2020. By my maths that means getting in excess of 460,000 managers to complete a qualification in the next 11 years (if you assume the 4.6m figure remains static and approx 40% of new entrants to the profession over that time have a qualification) which would be an impressive achievement. She talked about how the CMI is responding to the needs of managers and how they are seeking to broaden appeal through access to training and an emphasis on the value of professional membership. Clearly doing something right as membership is up 11% on last year and there are now 965 chartered managers (up 271 on last year). She noted that "too many people suffer from poverty of aspiration" and talked about how the CMI is looking to establish a "Youth Academy" and this forms part of the CMI Manifesto for a Better Managed Britain.

Thoughtful Thursday

2009-10-23T21:23:00.002+01:00

Yesterday evening I headed off to Canary Wharf (30th floor of 10 Upper Bank Street to be exact) for an Oxford Business Alumni "Thoughtful Thursday" meeting. I caught the 17:18 train from Winchester and for the second time that day realised I had made a false assumption - it was a lot fuller than I had expected. (The first false assumption being it doesn't matter that I can't find my small umbrella it won't rain). All went smoothly on the journey to London and I got to encounter what has to be the cheeriest Guard I've ever come across on a train - I didn't notice her name but whoever you are you brightened the day of a lot of travelers.

Clifford Chance kindly provided the location for the meeting on the top floor of their building. The architects clearly felt at ease with heights as they had installed floor to ceiling windows - great views but not designed to engender a feeling of security in those of a nervous disposition at heights. There was a good crowd there and after drinks and some time to mingle Satish Pradhan (Executive Vice President Global Human resources, Tata Sons Limited) spoke about careers and career development. His main theme was around the importance of figuring out what truly matters to you and what you want to become. He drew an interesting contrast between 2 senior managers he had worked with. The first one would walk around meeting staff and ask them "Are you winning?". Management style was very driven seeing challenges as either win or lose. The other manager would walk around asking people "Are you enjoying yourself?" - a very different style reflecting his belief that if you create a good climate in the workplace then you have a fertile ground for success. Both managers were successful leaders but clearly stood by very different values and beliefs.

He was asked what experience and skills were critical for people aspiring to senior leadership roles to develop. He suggested there were three key areas - ability to deal with complexity, ability to cope with scale and the ability to exercise good judgement in the face of uncertainty.

All in all an interesting evening, chance to meet some new people (including a fellow IBMer) and some useful thoughts.

Around 9pm I decided it was time to head home so made my way back to the Canary Wharf underground station which, despite the late hour, was still very busy with people heading home from work. Got myself back to Waterloo and then home on the 21:35 train to Winchester.

Chartered Management Institute's Annual Conference #CMIConf

2009-10-15T21:17:00.000+01:00

I spent today at the impressive Hilton London Metropole Hotel attending this year's Chartered Management Institute Conference.

This was the 5th such conference and the other 4 have all been 2 day affairs with a mixture of workshops and main tent sessions. This year the format had been changed to a single day and there were no workshops - just a series of talks from a range of speakers.

I missed the opportunity for discussion that the workshops had given but on the other hand liked the range of talks that had been put on and the greater consistency.

I've not done a careful check of the attendee list but it certainly felt like the proportion of people from the education sector was higher this year. I also met a number of people who were sole traders or worked for a small/medium companies but I don't recall meeting anyone else from the world of large corporates - though that could of course be down to the random nature of who I go to talk with over lunch/tea/waiting for speakers to start etc.

Interested to see IBM get a mention by 2 of the speakers including our standing as the 2nd most valuable brand in the Interbrand survey.

I have quite a few notes to work through from the various talks and will post some more thoughts in the coming days.

Right now I'm going to sit down with a coffee and then tune into the analyst webcast on IBM's 3rd Quarter Results.

Wadham Networking Event

2009-10-14T23:15:00.000+01:00

This evening I attended a Wadham Networking Event up in London at the rather splendid offices of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP at 65 Fleet Street. I'd received the invitation a couple of weeks ago and coincidentally was already booked to be at IBM's Bedfont Lakes location near Heathrow in the morning so worked from there for the day and then headed into London. From the numerous possible approaches I opted to drive to Richmond, park there and take the train into London. Worked really well - even remembered to get off the train on the way home to collect my car.

There were a lot more people at the event than I had expected which was great - got to meet up with some folks I knew already and plenty more that I didn't. I love the huge diversity of careers and people you get at events like this. Met quite a few lawyers but with lots of different specialisations from employment law to property via medical negligence. Also met up with consultants, a commentator on middle east politics, member of an NGO focusing on helping the Palestinian people, and a specialist in the manufacture of hair bleach amongst many more.

Looking forward to 2010 and all the celebrations to mark Wadham's 400th birthday.

1st Invention Plateau award

2009-10-13T22:17:00.001+01:00

Earlier this year I reached my first IBM Invention Plateau -I was a co-inventor of 2 ideas which have been submitted to the US patent office and 6 other ideas which, though novel, weren't deemed worthy to attempt to patent and were hence published through ip.com.

As this is my first plateau I qualified for an "IBM non monetary award" in addition to the regular plateau cash award. This turned out to be a choice from an online catalog with a range of gifts. I made my choice, placed the order and it duly made its way across the Atlantic to be with me. . I'd chosen a Bob Mackie luggage set and am pleased to say that having opened it up it looks very good - there was one worrying black screw loose in amongst the packaging but can't find anywhere that it's come out of so guess it's just there to puzzle me.
Sadly, look as I might, I couldn't find a number anywhere on the packaging that would help me towards my photo challenge :-( It did however come with a nice small brass luggage tag with the Pisces logo on it (can you spot it in the picture?) - the same logo that appears on any invention related certificates you receive at IBM. Next step...get my thinking cap on, have some more good ideas and see if I can work my way up to the next plateau....

Generosity in Discipleship

2009-10-06T19:35:00.000+01:00

Last night I attended a meeting arranged by the Diocese of Winchester called "Generosity in Discipleship" which promised to look at issues of giving in general and money in particular.

The meeting was held at Christ Church, Chineham near Basingstoke - it was my first visit to the church and I was really impressed by the facilities they have. As a modern building it is a real contrast with my usual church - St Catherine's, Littleton.

The evening was led by Dr John Preston, National Stewardship Adviser, and Rev Steve Pierce, head of Stewardship Money. They did a fantastic job of guiding us through a presentation that covered biblical models of giving, key tasks for PCCs and church leadership in teaching on giving, a range of ideas on how to analyse giving as well as pointers to a wealth of resources to help - and a few jokes along the way :-)

At one point in the evening we were asked to estimate how the "average" church expenditure broke down between 5 categories. As treasurer for our church I was relieved that my answers were close to what they had which were...

Supporting other organisations (eg charity donations) - 7%
Maintaining inspiring centres for worship - 17%
Mission and Ministry - 51%
Administration - 6%
Running costs - 19%

I have already done some of the things they suggested, particularly around how we analyse the breakdown of giving to the church. They did however have other ideas that I think would be well worth investigating further including making some changes to how we structure our annual report - something to remember come 1Q2010 when we have to write it.

It is interesting to consider the lessons from the corporate world and mainstream charities and think about how they do or do not translate into the church. For example, much of the giving analysis suggested is straight out of business text books on how to look at clients and assess their relative contribution to your organisation's profitability. The difference though is what you do with the outcome of the analysis - in the church context rather than the absolute level of giving we would see giving in proportion to what you have as more significant - widow's mite and all that. We certainly wouldn't want to focus our attentions only on those who gave the most and ditch the low contributors.

As well as doing more to provide teaching on what the bible says on giving I think our focus needs to be on creating a compelling vision for our church and what we want to achieve.

I long for us to have such a strong sense of what we want to do that our next budget has a huge hole in it that we need to fund from reserves because we just can't wait to get on and realise the vision.

The visible things matter - particularly in the absence of good communication - lessons from a car service

2009-09-08T16:17:00.000+01:00

My car went in for a service and MOT last Friday. It's a lease car so the garage selection and booking was done by the lease company, all I had to do was make sure the car was in the car park at work in the morning and it would be collected, work done and returned to me in the afternoon.

In the morning I called the garage to confirm the car was there and also to tell them that I had spotted that the rear wiper had started to split so please could they replace it.

Car was collected as planned and returned to the car park. On the front passenger seat was a survey form for me to complete and send off - no other communication from the garage. The car had been washed so looked good but two things concerned me. Firstly the feedback form had a box on it for them to tick if they had done an MOT and it was blank. Secondly the rear wiper hadn't been replaced.

I phoned the garage and they said that the MOT had been done but by a separate mechanic who wasn't the one who filled in the form on the seat. As regards the wiper blade they queried whether this was something I had asked them to look at. I confirmed I had, he did some checking and came back on the line to say that they "hadn't been able to get one the right length". Suggested I should pop into a Halfords and get one .... which does beg the question why they couldn't get one...

That evening I checked the details in the service book and inspecting the condition of the wiper blades should be part of the service.

I now start to wonder what the quality/thoroughness of the rest of the service was like... if the thing I can see hasn't been addressed how confident can I be that things like brake pads/disks have been checked properly?
Odds are that everything else is fine but my confidence is shaken. Full marks at this point to Leaseplan - having spoken to them they have booked car into a main dealer for them to do a check over for me and replace faulty wiper.

Things would have been so different if the garage had left a note in the car saying - we noticed that the blade is damaged but couldn't replace today, we have ordered one and would it be OK for us to pop over on Monday to fit it while it's parked in the car park?

Then I would have had an entirely different impression.

Communication is critical and so is making sure that the easily visible things are done well - they may not be the most important part but they set the tone for everything else. I am reminded of the beautifully tied knots on a bandage round my head when I'd undergone surgery on my ear and the confidence that this inspired that the work inside my ear was good as well. Irrational maybe but somehow reasuring :-)

Littleton & Harestock Show

2009-09-06T20:56:00.001+01:00

For us this weekend has been dominated by the annual Littleton and Harestock Show. Saturday morning saw us getting to the tent in time to set up our entries - photos, cake, veg, floral display, clay models, marzipan animals, pizza, collages, pictures. Quick trip back home for a coffee and then we were back on site to set up the St Catherine's church stand where people were going to be able to make puppets. Home again for lunch and then back for the show opening at 1pm. The next 4 hours were spent on the stand or looking round the show. Helen helped out on the Teddy Bear bungee jump (with 3 of Alice's teddies being on hand to take part in the jumps). We also had the excitement after 2pm of being able to see whether any of our entries had won a prize. Nothing this year for me or Carol but the girls managed a good haul of prizes each.

I managed to grab 5 more numbers (8, 33, 44, 48 & 99) towards my photography challenge which means I now only need another 40 to complete the set.

Sunday saw us return to the show once more, this time for the annual Littleton & Harestock Show Service. This ecumenical service brings together the Churches in North Winchester for a celebration in the show marquee. The highlight this year was without a doubt (in my biased opinion) the 2 performances by the "Ups and Downs" puppets. Their first spot was a reprise of their award winning (in the southern regional puppet ministry competition) "I turn to God" and for their second number they gave us "He's the one that I want". The performances were very well received and it looks like they may have some more bookings as a result.

Toilet Twinning

2009-09-01T20:25:00.004+01:00

While we were at New Wine this year we came across the CORD stand in the Market Place offering the opportunity to "Twin" a toilet with a "bog in Burundi". We thought it was a great idea - the £60 payment covers the costs of building a toilet and you are then sent a certificate with details of your twinned toilet.

I'm very pleased to announce that we have received our certificate and our downstairs toilet... ...is now officially twinned with Latrine No 332 in Giharo, Rutana Province, Burundi, Africa (lat -3.852969, long 30.249261). Here is a link to the satellite image from google maps - sadly the image quality is low .. just to the west is a much better resolution.

If you want to twin your toilet get yourself along to toilettwinning.org

Ordinations at Old Basing for Diocese of Winchester

2009-07-04T22:08:00.002+01:00

This evening I was privileged to be able to attend the Ordination of new priests for the Winchester Diocese. The service was held at St Mary's Church in Old Basing - a lovely church with plenty of room in the Sanctuary for the assembled clergy and deacons. I was there with the rest of the family as guests of Stuart our curate.

It was a lovely service and great to see so many people there to support the 5 deacons being ordained.

After the service there was a chance to chat over drinks and I was able to take to the opportunity to meet the Archdeacon. He and I are both speaking at a deanery meeting in a couple of weeks so nice to have the chance to meet him beforehand.

After availing of the evening sunshine to take some photos (clicking on the one below will take you to my flickr account where there are a few more)

it was time to head for home. I hope you noticed the way his stole is now adjusted to be worn in the manner of a priest rather than the sash configuration of a deacon.

God's blessing on you Stuart as you embark on this new phase of your ministry and we look forward to being at your first communion service in Chilbolton tomorrow.

Year 7 Celebration Assembly at Henry Beaufort School

2009-07-03T20:22:00.003+01:00

This morning we, along with all the other parents of year 7 children at Henry Beaufort School, were invited to a "celebration assembly".

The morning started with coffee and croissant at the Beaufort Bistro - near to the hole in the ground that will become a fantastic new all weather pitch in the coming months.

We then moved to the hall where all of the year 7 children (just under 180 of them) were gathered with their form tutors.

The headmaster started with a talk highlighting some of the impressive list of achievements of the school over the last year and talked about how well the year 7's had settled into the school and how they are shaping up to be a great year.

This was followed by a short violin quartet performed by 4 of the year 7 boys to an impressive standard.

Next, 2 of the teachers read out statements from each of the form tutors which outlined some of their thoughts about the individual tutor groups.

Finally, we had the impressive logistical operation of presenting each of the children with a certificate of achievement. Each child had been assessed on 4 separate criteria (reward level/stamp total, attendance, uniform, and participation in school life) and for each given a score between 1 and 4 depending on level of achievement. Their total score then determined whether they received a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum level certificate.

The children didn't know what level they were going to receive until their name was called out. I think Helen was pleased with platinum - I know we were proud of her.

Sway - The irresistible pull of irrational behaviour

2009-07-01T13:15:00.003+01:00

I recently read this excellent little book by Ori & Rom Brafman - ( with thanks to Michael who recommended it and lent me a copy )

Based around a series of engaging anecdotes the book explores some of the factors at play that can cause us to depart from what our experience, training and logic would lead us to and instead take seemingly rash and illogical decisions.

Influences covered included

- how the desire to avoid potential loss can lead us to illogical choices - "all-in" packages versus pay-as-you-go being one area where the risk of being charged more than the all in price causes us to accept the fixed rate even when the other option could well be cheaper.
- how the perceived cost of something affects how we value it - if it's free can it really be any good
- why as a man you should be wary of an attractive women who approaches you after you have just crossed a high rope bridge
- how the concept of "fairness" could lead people to turn down free money and studio audiences to deliberately banjax a contestant's chances of winning
- how offering a bit of money can lead to a worse result than relying purely on altruism. Altruism triggers the nucleus accumbens area of the brain whilst monetary reward triggers the posterior superior temporal sulcus - they say, and who am I to doubt them. They can't both operate at the same time so if you try and rely mainly on altruism but offer a small monetary sweetener you can end up closing down the altruism response completely.
- the value of dissent (and dissenters)

Ultimately I think the main lesson to take from the book is to be aware that as I take decisions and make judgments all sorts of hidden forces and influences are at work swaying my choices. By being more aware of what they could be, staying alert to wayward value attributions and assumptions about those around me plus taking steps, such as seeking out the dissenting voice, to counteract them, hopefully some bad choices can be avoided. I think the reality is that being "Sway"ed is here to stay so we need to accept that some of the decisions we take will be wrong and be prepared to admit it when it happens.

I hope there's a sequel sometime in the future and, like anyone else who has traveled out of Waterloo on the Weymouth train, my money's on the title being "New Milton".

LinkedIn milestone

2009-06-23T18:04:00.003+01:00

I noticed today that my 3rd degree contacts on LinkedIn has just passed the magic 1 million mark. This is a doubling since October 2007 when I passed through the 500,000 mark. How long to the next 1m I wonder?

Happy Brithday Littleton Memorial Hall

2009-06-22T09:30:00.002+01:00

It is now 10 years since the Littleton Millennium Memorial Hall opened (did you spot the clue in the name?)and to celebrate this milestone there was a party last Saturday.

A lot of people congregated at the hall with their provisions to enjoy some alfresco dining.

despite some rain early on

the weather did clear so we all stayed dry and were also able to enjoy a flying display by Paul Ambrose

and some great music from the bands...

even if dancing on gently sloping grass did feel a bit like taking your life in your hands.

One Way UK regional puppet ministry festival

2009-06-06T21:33:00.006+01:00

Guest post from Carol who writes.....

Yesterday saw the "Ups and Downs" puppet team heading to Guildford for the One Way UK Puppet Ministry Regional Festival. Helen and I are still relatively new to this puppeting thing, so we allowed ourselves to be persuaded by Ros (our team leader, who has many years puppetry experience) to enter the song competition. We were amazed to find, on arrival, that we were the only team to have entered this particular competition, which removed some of the pressure. However, as each entry is judged on its own merits (rather like the Chelsea Flower Show), we still needed to put on a good performance.

Here is a video of a practice session for the routine

The morning consisted of workshops and performances by visiting puppet teams, who put on some very impressive shows. Lunch was next, and then the moment we had been waiting for arrived and we were on. The performance went without any major hitches, and we were then able to relax and enjoy the skit competition that followed, with 4 entries ranging from single puppeteers, to a sizeable team that told the story of the ascension of Elijah with a very impressive chariot.

When the team competitions were over, it was time for the Lip Synch challenge, which Ros had very kindly entered me for. This involved 4 contestants at a time going behind a screen, choosing a puppet, and then lip synching and performing along to a previously unannounced song. Ros and I both won our initial heats, which meant that we were competing against each other in the semi-final. I couldn't believe it when both our numbers were called to go through to the final, but really thought my ears were deceiving me when they announced the song for the final - Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! I had great difficulty stopping my arm from shaking at the end of that one!

The final workshop was followed by the results of the competitions. We were awarded a very respectful Silver for our song, and I was stunned to get second place in the Lip synch challenge (ahead of Ros who came third). Thankfully she didn't take it personally, and still agreed to drive us home after a very successful and entertaining day!

Cycling to work

2009-06-04T19:35:00.003+01:00

A couple of months ago I bought a new bike under the bike to work scheme.
This scheme provides the ability to buy a bike with pre tax income so long as you commit to its majority use being to cycle to work.

Well today I started to keep my end of the bargain and tackled the ride from home to Hursley.

The journey turned out to be 6.58 miles from door to bike shed and took me in the region of 1 hour. Coming home bizarrely was a tad further despite following the same route. Quietly pleased with myself though that I managed to keep going up the hill through Oliver's Battery.

I have worked out a great route based on small backroads which meant that even though I left home around 7:45am I only met a couple of cars on the whole route. Hopefully as my fitness level increases I will be able to enjoy the wonderful scenery a little more:-)

The Big Sleep Out

2009-05-28T20:06:00.002+01:00

A guest entry post from Helen who writes....

On Friday 15th May I was privileged enough to take part in The Big Sleep Out hosted at Winchester Cathedral. It was in aid of the Trinity Centre and the Winchester Night Shelter. I went along with St Catherine's Youth Group. When we arrived we decided to set up outside in the Cathedral close. There were 2 adults, 2 boys and 4 girls in our group. At 10:00pm we went into the cathedral for the speeches. Sadly we only lasted 10 minutes till we decided to go out and get some dinner. Dinner was provided by the Army and there was a special sleepers soup from Brasserie Blanc, I had a Burger and salad. Later on in the evening we went back to our area and played some games. Later at about 11:30 Juliet the vicar came down to see us and wish us good luck and good weather. Finally, after visiting the Hot Chocolate and Coffee van, (and after being offered free doughnuts,) we settled down on our cardboard for bed. At 3:00am we all got up collected our things and trouped into the cathedral because it started raining! When we finally got up at 6:00am on Saturday morning we packed up our things and went to have breakfast in the refectory and then went back home for a hot shower. Between us (the youth group) we raised over £800. I would do it again if I ever got the opportunity. It was a great insight into how the homeless people live.

Helen

TED talk by Ken Robinson on education and creativity

2009-05-19T17:06:00.004+01:00

Thanks to a twitter message from @macker I recently watched a recording of a TED talk by Ken Robinson where he suggests that Schools kill creativity. As a parent of 2 school age children and a school governor I was interested to hear what he had to say.

It is only 20 minutes long or so and well worth the time to have a watch and listen to his message.

Basically he makes the point that the children starting school this year will expect to retire in 2069 - we have no real clue what the world will be like in 5-10 years so what are we doing to prepare them for the future. He argues that creativity will be a key attribute for success and asserts that our education system tends to educate creativity out of us rather than growing it. The foundations for education systems that we have were laid many years ago when the world was a very different place.

Children are artists when they are young and prepared to take a chance, if they don't know something they'll have a go anyway. Progressively most will lose this as they grow up.

It would seem to me to be wrong to lose the importance placed on numeracy and literacy but I do wonder what more I could be doing as a parent to ensure my children retain their creativity at the same time.

Twitter Power by Joel Comm

2009-05-12T17:25:00.002+01:00

I recently read Joel Comm's book "Twitter Power" and got to hear him speak on a short webinar

Having used twitter since November 2006 (www.whendidyoujointwitter.com) I already had a good deal of experience using it and so was interested to see whether the book had anything new to add for me. The quick summary is that yes it did. My use of Twitter has been very much as a social networking tool to keep in touch with people I know and also a convenient way of updating status and having it echo through to my facebook profile. What I took from Joel's book was a very different perspective that helped me to see other ways that Twitter could be effectively used. For me I think the main thing I took away was a set of thoughts around how I could be more intentional with my use of Twitter.

His book also includes some thoughts on steps you can take to increase your following. One of the suggestions being to engage in conversations through twitter. If someone replies to you then that will appear in their Twitter stream and some of their followers may then go see who you are and follow you. I can vouch for the validity of this approach having sent a tweet to Joel after the webinar, got a reply from him and then saw my follwer list rise by 15 people over the course of the next day.

Photo challenge

2009-05-08T14:31:00.001+01:00

87 - street light at Bray, originally uploaded by Michael Coleman.

I decided to set myself a photography challenge for 2009. I have seen other people post photos of numbers so inspired by that I am aiming to take 101 photos to cover the numbers 0 - 100. Photo above for example is of a street light and was taken at the seaside in Bray (co Wicklow).

Clearly I could just walk down a road and photograph the house numbers so the additional twist to the challenge is that the photos need to be relevant in some way to my life and experiences in 2009.

1/3rd of the way through the year and so far I have 14 photos (0,1,2,7,9,10,12,16,17,30,42,57,73 & 87) so a little behind where I need to be but hopefully with the better weather I'll be out and about a bit move over the coming weeks.

"Prosper with a clear conscience" - Just10 Winchester

2009-05-07T15:58:00.000+01:00

Last night I went along to Winchester Cathedral to the third talk in the Just 10 series. These evenings centre around a set of 10 talks delivered by J John looking at the 10 commandments. Rather than focus on the commandments as a simple list of dos and don'ts they are turned round into a discussion of how they can guide our lives. Last night we were treated to the 7th commandment and how to "Proser with a clear conscience" rather than a simplistic "do not steal".

Delivered in a humorous and engaging way the talk had lots of thought provoking content and challenge to us all to reflect on some of the less obvious ways that we may have been "stealing".

The evening ended with a challenge to the audience to use the coming week to return any items they had stolen and if that wasn't possible to bring them along next week to place them in "Amnesty Bins". On previous occassions these bins seem to have attracted a wide range of items from wads of cash to a good supply of hotel bathrobes/towels.

Based on my experiences last night I will definitely be back in future weeks to hear more of these talks. If you are around Winchester on a Wednesday evening I'd recommend you get along.

Making a start

2009-04-27T14:31:00.000+01:00

They say that the longest journey starts with the first step so here we go with the first post into this blog.

I have blogged behind the IBM firewall for a few years and thought it was time to have an external blog as well so here it is.