The What Goes Around Blog

The Art of Recognition

A perfect thank you

It is the end of another enjoyable, packed, fascinating week of work. In the middle of this week’s canvas was a trip to Tate Modern to enjoy the Matisse cutouts with a small group of friends.

I returned home on Friday to find a bright purple envelope waiting for me. I opened it, and inside was this beautiful hand made card:

What a lovely surprise! This gift hits all the right recognition buttons for me:

It was unexpected.
It is personal.
It is relevant – I love the simple genius of making a cut out card after visiting an exhibition of cut outs.
It is timely – we visited the exhibition on Wednesday afternoon – the card is with me on Friday.

Thanks Hilary – what a pleasure. I’m really grateful.

Today I’m heading to Shoreditch to take part in Recfest. Before we get stuck into a day of talking how to make recruitment better, I’ll be playing and singing a few songs for whoever else is crazy enough to turn up at 08.45.

I’m on the train. What’s buzzing round my head right now?

The guitar I’m using today isn’t mine. I’ve not seen or played it before, so I’ll get there early enough to have a quick practice.

I have a bunch of tunes to choose from, more than enough for the time I’ll be playing. I know which one I’m starting with and beyond that, we’ll see. I want the flexibility to develop the set as I go.

I enjoy encouraging people to try out different ways to work, and for me, today is one of those days where I step into a different, uncertain space. I need to feel that uncertainty personally, direct contact with it matters to me.

There will be bum notes. There always are.

I am nervous, and excited too. Tuning the dial between nerves and excitement is a tension I enjoy, most of the time!

I hope your day holds something a little different for you too, enjoy tuning your dial to suit the mood.

Update

It’s approaching 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and Recfest continues at a pace. I’ve done my bit and left everyone to it, thanks for having me folks. I woke up very early today, around 4.30am, probably due to early onset of adrenalin. I feel very tired right now, and I thought I should update the post to reflect that. Doing stuff that we are not used to can be tiring – so whether you are encouraging folk to work differently, or challenging them to, I think it’s worth being mindful that these new and less usual things take a lot of energy.

Creativity – Ebb and Flow

Creativity – identify the tensions and dichotomies in your work and find a way to play with them.

Following yesterday’s post about no agenda, David D’Souza and Ian Sutherland both got in touch to suggest that my thinking was less about having no agenda, perhaps more about cocreating one. I agree.

My thinking on cocreation and agendas was further provoked by Julian Stodd writing about the enemies of innovation in organisations, and in particular his observations about dichotomies, for example the tension between trust and rules. These tensions brought to mind the knobs and dials on a mixing desk, and with this in mind, last night I invented a new toy. Ladies and gentlemen (drum roll) I give you the patented, ‘Creativity Ebb n Flow Meter’ – V1.0.

As you can see, the device is a series of complex tensions, adjusted through a series of knobs and sliders. On the far left is the all important panic button and a limited choice of beverages is available on the right. All this magic is contained in an old cereal box, which is a bit crunked because I sat on it by accident.

I’m now looking for investors to help me develop a version 2.0 of this product, so if you know any angels, and if you’ve any thoughts about modifications I should make to improve things, please let me know.