Responsible leadership and the power of a good question

Over the past few months I've attended a number of talks at Winchester Business School’s Centre for Responsible Management (part of the University of Winchester).

I've listened to Steve Holmes from ASK Italian,  Gin Tidridge from B&Q,  Keith Abel of the eponymous Abel and Cole, and this week Ralf Schneider from Better Business Consulting.

Whilst there has been a strong theme around Responsible Leadership (as you would expect) the areas they have covered have been very different. Each speaker shared insights into their work over many years and talked about challenges and successes that they have seen.   Ralf's talk was the exception as, though it did cover things he had done, it focused more generally on the societal and business pressures that make responsible leadership ever more important.

As I reflect back on the series of talks I was struck by the common theme of a timely, well placed question in each of their stories.

For Steve's it was the corridor meeting with the CEO where he asks should we be greener?  For Gin's it was the organisation being asked whether they knew where the timber in their products came from.  For Keith's it was the organic farmer who asked him if he knew what chemicals were on a potato.  For Ralf ..... well most of his session was deliberately about important questions rather than answers.

Reinforces my belief in the power and effectiveness of leading through asking good questions rather than through command and control.   Also opens up the interesting question of how as a member of an organisation you can ensure that you are the sort of person who is turned to when the big questions are being asked. I suspect that in there lies the key to disproportionate influence over the outcomes.





 

"The Double X Economy"

Linda Scott gave her inaugural lecture as the "DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation" at the Oxford Saïd Business School last week.

As a formal inaugural lecture there was a degree of ceremony to proceedings and the event started with the lecturer meeting the Vice-Chancellor outside the lecture theatre and them processing in "preceded by a bedel" - which, though an Oxford term, is one that escaped me during my 3 years there.

Ceremonial entrance and appropriate cap tipping over she started her talk in which she looked at a number of aspects of gender inequality.   To quote from the abstract of her talk.  "Global data collected in the past fifteen years has shown that gender inequality is a measurable phenomenon that occurs in all nations and has massively negative effects on a range of important dimensions from national prosperity to environmental degradation to violence and disease levels.  Closing the gender gap is therefore now a world priority.  The data also show, contrary to years of academic arguments, that industrial capitalism, far from being the cause of gender oppression, has actually produced better conditions for women."

In an hour she could clearly only scratch the surface of the work that she has done over a number of years but she made a compelling case and identified various issues with conventional economic thinking in this area.  She also spoke about 2 specific projects that she has been involved with drawing lessons and insights from them but also recognising the challenges and some of the negative press that these sorts of activities can engender.

The lecture finished with another round of cap tipping and then she and the vice chancellor (preceded of course by the aforementioned bedel) processed out of the lecture theatre.  It was at this point that the audience, being upstanding for their exit, realised that it is difficult to know when to sit down again if a procession goes past you to an exit behind :-)  Social etiquette dilemma duly resolved we made our way out to a drinks reception in the foyer.

The lecture is available on the Business School's YouTube channel and if you are interested in the topic I think you'll find her an engaging and compelling speaker.  Text and slides for the lecture are on her Double X Economy website

Tumble Dryer repairs in the internet age

Our tumble dryer stopped working recently and today it is repaired and seems to be working again.  Nothing interesting in that.... except as I reflect on how it happened I realise just how much the emergence of social computing, mobile devices etc has changed life.   Allow me to explain...

I first discovered that the machine was broken when I spotted a facebook update from my wife

One evening a few days later I took the back off the machine to try and diagnose what the problem was.  In this I was assisted by the advice on various forums - found by doing a Google Search.

Advent of wifi and tablet means of course that I was able to stand over the opened machine, iPad in hand, reading the forum posts and looking at wiring diagrams.

Following advice on the forums was able to check that the 3 thermostats were all OK (who'd have thought there'd be that many).   So deduced that it was most likely a problem with the element.

Later that evening, iPad in hand once more, sitting on the sofa I search for suppliers of spare parts.  Light upon a supplier on eBay who seems to offer a good price and has lots of good feedback (score of 291617 and so few negative comments that they show a 100% positive rating!)

Part duly ordered I wait a couple of days and it is delivered to me.

Today I open the machine up again to replace the element.   Once I have it opened I can take a quick photo

of the situation as I find it (iPad again) before I start undoing any wires.

Remove the old element and start fitting the new one - referring to the nice big photo on my iPad to ensure that I have things right - discover I don't and rejig to get it right.

Close everything up and test all is well and as an added bonus thanks to @davenice I have a suggestion on what to do with the old one.

... and to round things off I blog about the whole thing !

Ed's Circuit

Ed's Circuit is a series of 16 geocaches laid on a circular walk from Compton.  It is clearly a popular series of caches to do as the footfall of previous seekers has worn extra paths to some of them....



Last weekend we did the first 7 caches and today we decided to risk the rain and return to finish it.  Started with an extra one in the grounds of Compton Church and then headed down the road to No 16 and from there round the circuit in reverse order all the way back to where we finished up last weekend.

On the way round we liberated an African Mask trackable which headed out on its travels at the start of this year in Rhône-Alpes, France and we will now move on to a new home.

We timed it well, only having a few mins of rain now and again to interrupt the sunshine and had a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours walking through some really lovely countryside.

Logged a total of 10 cache finds - a new "personal best" daily find score :-)

Also pleased to note that the number of caches left to find to complete my 2012 challenge ( to find all of the ones within 5 miles of our house) now stands at 99 - first time below 100.

Half a century of geocaching

I noticed that I have now passed the half century milestone and found over 50 geocaches since I started back in June last year.  For those not familiar with the concept of Geocaching - Wikipedia describes it as "an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world." Astonishingly there are some 1,689,466 geocaches worldwide according to the activity's home - www.geocaching.com

As with so many things, once you start you discover all sorts of benefits that you never imagined before.  Seeking to locate the caches is providing a wonderful incentive to get out and go for walks in the area and I'm discovering lots of parts of Winchester and surrounding countryside that I'd never explored before.  Looking to see if there are any caches nearby can also lead you to some surprising discoveries - such as the cache at the site of the old quarry at Leigh Delamare (East bound) services that I was introduced to the other week.

I recently paid the modest fee to become  "premium member" and hence access to lots of lovely statistics.

Here are my figures for the number of finds each month....

I've not found any really hard caches yet (though I have to say I've struggled to locate some of the ones I have found).

Most have been close to home but I've found a few further afield....

 ... and this accounts for the further afield ones....



My target for 2012 is to locate all of the caches within 5 miles of my house - as of today there are a total of 161 with 126 still to find.   Given the recent flurry of new ones that have been created in this area however it may prove a bit of a moving target so we shall have to see how we do but I'm looking forward to continuing to explore new parts of the lovely countryside round Winchester in the process.

"Let's do it"

Yesterday evening Carol and I paid our first visit to The Anvil in Basingstoke.  We were there to see Anton Du Beke and Erin Boag's show "Let's Do it".

It was a great evening of music, song and dance.  Elegant and impressive dances from Anton & Erin and their supporting dancers were interspersed with music from the orchestra and songs from Lance Ellington (one of the singers from Strictly).  As well as their intrinsic entertainment value these gaps provided the time for Erin to change her way through a bewildering array of dresses.

During the second half there was a Question and Answer session - the audience having been invited to write questions down and post them into a box in the Foyer during the interval.   In response to the selected questions we got toning advice from the 2011 "Rear of the Year", insights into favourite dances and dancers, a discussion on shoes, and some reflections on Riverdance.  All delivered in an engaging and fun way.

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

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.