The What Goes Around Blog

Music to Die For

Today is my birthday. Somehow I’ve made it to 48, the age Mum was when she died. Today is a day for celebrating, for being happy, and thinking ahead.

If I have a faith, it is in people – past present and future. My funeral won’t be a religious affair, so in place of hymns, there will be music instead. Currently, here’s what will be on offer and why:

1. I Fought The Law

Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won

This song is carved into the heart of my late teenage years. Mum died just before I turned 19. She not only endured my interest in the punk movement, she encouraged it. The prospect of stomping around Croydon in shiny black ten hole Doctor Martin boots sporting a black Harrington jacket and a bad attitude is what used to get me out of bed on a Saturday morning. That and the fact that my £1 weekly allowance was enough to get the bus to and from town, buy a copy of the Cost of Living EP from Virgin Records, and have change left over for a Mars Bar. Happy days.

2. Rock O My Soul

My soul is weak
Rock my soul
And thou art strong
Rock my soul

Before Elvis and The Beatles, there was Lonnie Donegan. Donegan was born in Glasgow in and began playing in London clubs in the late 1940s. With his simple guitar rhythms, powerful voice and rock solid band he chalked up 24 consecutive top 30 singles. This quote of his speaks volumes to me in terms of making music accessible:

“In England, we were separated from our folk music tradition centuries ago and were imbued with the idea that music was for the upper classes. You had to be very clever to play music. When I came along with the old three chords, people began to think that if I could do it, so could they. It was the reintroduction of the folk music bridge which did that.”

My Dad grew up listening to Lonnie Donegan, and as is the way, so did I. In my teenage years, my interest in Donegan waned in favour of bands like The Clash and The Damned, and when Dad died in early 2012, I rediscovered Lonnie Donegan’s simple power, and humour. Listening to his music has been a significant part of evolving grief into cherished memories.

3. The Garden

The treasure of a life is a measure of love and respect,
The way you live, the gifts that you give

In the fullness of time,
It’s the only return that you expect

Earlier this year I took myself and two very close friends off to the O2 to see Rush on their Clockwork Angels tour. We took the riverboat down to the venue, treated ourselves to seats right down the front, drank beer, spilled beer, and watched the band play. This song was a highlight and since that day it has pencilled, painted, inked and now tattooed itself into me. I love this song because it reminds me of my shortcomings, and of how far I still have to go. I love the idea that life is a garden to nurture and protect.

I have much nurturing to do. I’m off to do some now.

Have a great day.

There are successful bands all over the world with average guitar players, and singers that can hold a note, but every great band seems to have one thing in common. This post is for drummers and percussionists everywhere. To those who keep the rhythm, so the rest of us don’t have to.

Asking Better Questions

Neil Morrison wrote a piece this week about strange things recruiters say, which talks about stuff like big hitters, industry experience and hitting targets among other things. The post got me thinking, less about the demands people put forward, and more about the questions people ask.

How intelligent are you?

I’ve got ten A star GCSEs, five A levels, a degree, an MBA. Actually I don’t have this wonderful list of qualifications, but that’s a typical answer to the question, ‘How intelligent are you?’

When you think about a response to that question, it almost certainly has its roots in a fairly traditional set of skills. Skills like maths, literacy, and science, or if you’re really old school, how about the three Rs – Reading wRiting and aRithmetic. They’ve all got their place, and yet in a world of work that increasingly craves creativity, a set of skills like this is not the only way to think about intelligence.

How are you intelligent?

In his book, The Element, Ken Robinson suggests the question ‘How are you intelligent?’ might be a better question to ask. Small twist, big difference. When you think about a response to that question, I hope you feel invited to pause and think beyond the three Rs. Think about how you draw, write, paint, play, invent, cycle, dance, see and hear. Simply because someone is less good at, say maths, and better at drawing, this doesn’t make them less intelligent, just differently intelligent.

Our current fixation on that which can be more easily tested for is limiting our opportunities to identify and work with the best people. So, not only do we need to think differently about the things we say, we need to think differently about the questions we ask. We need to think differently about intelligence.

Silence

I’m working alone today, flying solo. I cut this card from the Stop Doing Dumb Things deck and I’m enjoying thinking about and practicing, silence. As someone with talkative tendencies, I’m a little outside my comfort zone.

Awkward Silence

In the corporate world you often hear the words ‘any questions?’ at the end of a talk or presentation. Occasionally the words get asked along the way, but overwhelmingly they come at the end of the bombardment, sorry, I mean presentation. And often what follows is this:

Any Questions + Tumbleweed = Awkward Silence.

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Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Sometimes you find yourself sitting in a meeting and there’s no silence. Far from it. Sometimes everyone has an opinion and they’re falling over themselves to voice it. No one is really listening, everyone is too busy thinking about the smart, witty, insightful thing they are about to say.

In these conditions, just as nature abhors a vacuum so the workplace abhors silence.

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Golden Silence

This seems to me the rarest variety of silence, hence its name I guess. Golden silence is wonderful quiet time, spent alone or together, when no one feels in any rush to fill the gap. It’s not awkward because there’s no pressure to conform to any expectations. Time to think, time to be.

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