I thought it was about time I wrote another blog post, so here’s a post about 5 things that are currently rocking my world.
Being outdoors
More and more as I get older, I realise I love being outdoors. Indeed, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been camping this year, whether festival style (I do love an alternative festival or two) or not. For me, the best camping experience is rural, with an open fire. Cooking on the fire, foraging for wood and anything you can munch on and spending time with those favourite people around you. In my eyes – there really is nothing better than it. People often say to me ‘I can never find a campsite that allows me to have a fire’. There’s plenty – some of which very local to Sussex. Here’s a good website to start with when locating campsites that allow a fire in the UK, but always check with the campsite owners first.
Soundcloud
For me, Soundcloud is really starting to come into it’s own and is now a contender against Last.fm and Spotify for a place for me to go for new music. I’m seeing all my favourite artist have a soundcloud account where they often post pre-release versions of newly produced tracks for feedback, mixes and ‘free to download’ back catalogues of their older material. The ability to comment on media at certain time stamps is great too – encouraging feedback and interaction. Soundcloud ftw. Go on – perform a search and see what comes back for you.
Ostrich burgers
I like occasionally trying something random for dinner. I’m lucky to have a fiance who gives my random taste excursions a go – even if only to humour me. Some time back it was pigs trotters. They went down OK. Though they took too long to cook and had hardly any meat on them. Ostrich burgers however are great! Purchased from the wonderful Principle Meats in Brighton, they are rich, tasty, lean and low in fat. Highly recommended on a rustic baked roll with salad and a tangy sauce.
Jay Rhoderick
Jay Rhoderick is a bit of an improv/training legend – running various courses on improvisation and how improvisation can benefit business and stimulate creativity, not to mention a whole host of other things. In his own words ‘Business improvisation is my passion’. I was lucky enough to attend a workshop run by him a couple of months back (he’s US based) and have since started following him on Twitter. His timeline is great and he’s constantly providing lots of useful resources for creativity, teamwork, commitment, business tips and improvisation techniques. Check him out on twitter or bizprov – he doesn’t have a mountain of a following, but I think we are going to see this grow in time.
Learning new musical instruments
I believe that all learning is good and I’ve always been one to constantly try out new things, sticking with some of the things I discover and putting others aside. My current foray into the world of experimentation is with the fiddle (or violin, depending on how you play it). I’ve always loved this instrument and finally decided to buy one and start learning how to play. True, it’s not the easiest instrument to play, but I am learning and it’s great fun, whether I continue for years or simply binge on it for a few months. I’m almost a tune down and as my fiancé is learning to play the Ukulele at the same time, I can get away with being noisy. I recently came across this video – which show that the fiddle is capable of some quite amazing stuff. Yes or Michael Jackson anyone?
My suggestion to anyone is if there is anything you want to try out, don’t hold back – give it a try, you never know, you might like and be a dab hand.
So those are the 5 things rocking my world at the moment. What’s rocking your world?
Anyone noticed the extremely rapid feedback loop currently circling Twifficiency. “In a nut shell, Twifficiency calculates your twitter efficiency based upon your twitter activity”. So basically it’s yet another tool that analyses your Twitter profile. Yay! Read more…
Please stop what you’re doing now, and go and do something more useful. More creative. Whatever that is for you.
Well done if you stopped.
If you are still reading do you ever wonder what makes it so difficult to stop? There seems to be something about the human being that makes us want to consume words – many of us seem to find it hard not to keep on pressing forward, seeking to find out what’s in the next sentence.
Perhaps this is what fuels our addiction to the (streaming) media?
It’s not just words of course. Moving images, and sound too. We watch. We listen. We consume.
In the light of some research on the use of the iPad in the home that our Insight practice is cooking up, I wondered whether we’re getting something wrong.
It took me years to give up watching TV. I still find it hard to pass a newspaper stand. And the constant chitter-chatter of the radio presenter still has an attraction even on a slow news day.
And what have I done? I’ve replaced those streams with others: Twitter, Facebook, email.
Of course, I celebrate the idea that we’ve at least loosened Big Media’s unique hold on our attention.
For a couple of years I worked in a company trying to change the way source information was delivered to consumers.
And, lo and behold, fifteen years later, a really popular app for the iPad is Flipboard – which allows the user to build their own newspaper out of their own Twitter and Facebook feeds – the totally personalised and customised newspaper dreamt of by media futurists for more than 30 years. And with content that may – or may not – be produced by a media professional; content direct from the source.
But what monster have we created? With the iPad, and the commodity-priced tablets that will follow, a way for anyone, including corporations of course, to reach directly into our homes. A way for anyone’s voice – even mine – to reach you.
And there’s the rub. What are we giving up by allowing our valuable time, our valuable headspace to be used up by the sound and fury of others voices?
Isn’t there value too in a bit of peace, a bit of quiet reflection. In staring into space. Listening to our own voices? Why the rush? What are we running away from? What are we scared of?
I know that in this new world we can create and produce too – I’m writing this post aren’t I?
But that is my problem; yours is that you are reading it.
So stop entertaining yourself to death. Why not go and sit quietly? Eat a peach? Ride a bike? And enjoy.
This term was coined in the 1960s in the US and widely adopted in the UK in the 1970s to describe a situation where an entire organisation, rather than just one or two individuals within it, collectively fail a particular group of people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. In the UK the term was used to describe the police after a number of high-profile events such those at the Brixton riots, Broadwater Farm and so on.
The idea is that, at least to some extent, the inappropriate behaviours and attitudes of individuals are so widely adopted within the group that they become social norms – because they are so prevalent, no one questions them. Of if they do question them, their questions fall on deaf ears.
Sometimes I wonder whether some organisations today suffer from institutional corruption.
We all know the extreme examples: Enron, BCCI, Satyam, and so on. Companies where, ultimately, criminal behavior crashed the companies to the ground.
But isn’t corruption sometimes more subtle, and more pervasive? A few days ago, and this is going to begin to sound like an episode from Money Box, my insurance company sent me a renewal notice for my household insurance. Something made me check – and I discovered that they had increased the premium by 30% compared to last year.
When I called them, as soon as they heard the problem was “price” they put me on to their “loyalty team”. When the salesman heard the price he quickly recomputed it (without apologising) and said it would be the same as last year.
Now my guess is that probably quite a few customers can’t be bothered to check last year’s premium and automatically renew. Personally, I think the company’s behaviour is verging on the criminal. Imagine if I was leaving a shop and the shopkeeper tried to overcharge me by 30%.
When I enter into a relationship with a company I expect to be dealt with honestly – I want to trust that company and have them reward my trust. Would that shopkeeper retain my trust?
Is it possible, then, that an entire company can be institutionally corrupt? Is it possible that the salesman thinks of his role as an upstanding member of the “loyalty” team – when actually he’s in the “covering up our corruption” team?
That his managers and others in the company think that this kind of behaviour is so normal that it’s “commercial best practice”. Is it possible that even the senior management, and the CEO, are so institutionally blind that they believe it right and proper to accept large compensation packages even while their employees are behaving in ways that verge on the criminal?
Could this institutional corruption extend beyond the company to the whole industry? To other companies? To its regulators? To the media? Sometimes there’s not a critical voice to be heard, anywhere – “this is just the way it is in this industry”.
When the UK police were accused of institutional racism I can still remember the confused, questioning voices from their representatives: “You can’t be talking about us? We’re not racist”. It took a long, long time for the idea to really sink in.
The irony, is of course, that as with the police force, or any other organisation, the public recognise this institutional racism, or corruption, or whatever it is. It feels wrong; but the fact that everyone else is telling you it’s right makes it harder to put a name to it.
Of course, businesses that are institutionally corrupt will lose loyalty in the long-run, especially in a social-web-enabled world. My insurance company has already lost mine.
But how do we get beyond this – to a better world?
One of the words that is much used in business is accountability. And its correlate, a “blame-culture”, is much discussed, and much derided. We talk about accountability and blame here at NixonMcInnes; and we talk about them with our clients more and more, as we help them change the way they relate to their customers.
I guess we all routinely blame our colleagues, our customers, our competitors. We routinely blame the economy, the government and even the weather.
I really don’t suppose the weather does it on purpose. I know, when I think about it for a moment, that the weather really hasn’t got it in for me.
So why would I blame it? Or the government, or the economy, or our customers, or our competitors? Why do I think, if something doesn’t work out the way I want it to, that it is my colleague’s fault? It’s always their fault. And rarely anything I did.
Two concepts really help me around blame.
The first is the concept of contribution. If I accept that in any situation, I contributed something to it, and so did others, I start to move away from an attitude of blaming towards something more useful.
Blaming is often associated, for me at least, with unhelpful emotions – like anger. By accepting my contribution to a situation, not only do I start to accept those emotions, but I also start to move to a position where I can regain some influence over the situation.
When I am in a position of blame it is all so much easier. I don’t have to do anything, or change anything, because clearly it’s someone else’s fault. Nothing to do with me.
Which leads to the second concept: influence. Steven Covey put it best many years ago when he described our circle of concern, and our circle of influence.
The first contains those things we hold a position of blame about: what the government does, what the economy does, what the weather does, and maybe even what our competitors, customers, and colleagues do. These are things that upset us, but we don’t really have any control or influence over.
The second circle – influence – contains the list of things we can control, that we do have influence over. Blaming my colleague for something they did puts their action in my circle of concern. Thinking about what I did that triggered (or contributed) to the situation puts their action in my circle of influence.
As soon as I put something into my circle of influence, or as Covey suggests, take action to grow my circle of influence, I take back the power I need to start to change my world. I assume a position of self-responsibility. I start to work out what I can do about it.
So, that’s blame. What about accountability? Does accepting that I contribute to and have an influence on everything, yes everything, that happens to me mean that accountability goes out the window? How do I hold colleagues to account if I don’t blame them?
I think of accountability as a process, not an event, not a characteristic.
First, it involves commitment. Often commitments are made so rashly and loosely, that you really wouldn’t want to be held accountable for them.
I say “I’ll fix such-and-such by Wednesday”, knowing full-well, if I think for a second, that I’ve got a hundred and one more important things to do before then. Knowing that, from experience, it’ll take much longer than I said.
Knowing, again from experience, that things rarely work out the way I plan them – nearly always something unexpected happens just at the very worst moment. It’s true for me – it’s true for you.
So the first stage in accountability is making a proper commitment – something that I am happy to be held account for. I can make this easier for myself by challenging myself before I commit; or someone else can help me get there by challenging my rash or loose commitments.
The second stage is challenging. This is where accountability so often goes wrong. Because we so easily step into blaming.
Cue “contribution” and “influence”. If we can avoid blame, then accountability is simply the process of observing accurately what happened. You said you’d do such and such, and then you didn’t. What happened? Who did what? What didn’t we do? What else contributed? And crucially what can we learn?
This is hard because blame and the emotion that goes with it is just so damn attractive. It’s so much easier to blame. And the emotion feels so good.
So much easier to blame Sepp Blatter and FIFA for failing to introduce goal-line technology. Than work on our own game.
