The What Goes Around Blog

You Won’t Succeed – Unless You Try

If my earlier post this week is the A side of the single, then I guess this is the double A side (remember those?). The title of this post is taken from the end of verse two of Clash City Rockers. Even if you read no further I urge you – click the link back there and go watch The Clash doing what they do best, better than all the rest.

I’ve been humbly motivated by the feedback and comments my ‘You Will Fail’ tale brought forth. A number of people spoke about our potential for failure and whether we might reframe failure in order to alleviate the fear around it. David Goddin summed it up, ‘do we really know ourselves if we will fail or succeed? The reality is we just don’t know unless we are given the opportunity and try to succeed.’

Let’s wind the turntable back a bit…

When I was employed as a business leader I made a point of not asking people to do things I wasn’t willing to do myself. I’m not talking skills here, but attitude. The kind of attitude which in my case brings you into disagreement with the group CEO. In my experience most CEOs get told what people think they want to hear and either through arrogance, ignorance or both they end up believing the hype. My good fortune is I’ve never been a yes man, other than when yes is the right answer, and it often isn’t. Now I run my own business and help people in other companies to make work better. The essence of that for me is authenticity, and an ability to create an encouraging environment within which to experiment.

Three weeks ago I spotted a fun opportunity to be a part of an interesting art and music exhibit. In years gone by I would have read about this opportunity and probably gone to see it, once it was completed by others. It was so far out of my zone I don’t think I would have dreamt of participating. Things are different now.

I contacted the exhibitors with a simple and passionate request to be involved and moved on. Future focus is important. I’d decided to engage, I’d written, now get on with the next thing. A few days later I got a reply inviting me into the South London studio to record a song on good old fashioned vinyl with Ted Riederer as the producer. I grinned. For several days I grinned. Here is a picture of me in the studio grinning. The recording went well, one take, a few tiny mistakes – just how I like it!

I’ve gone on enough already and yet there’s so much more to tell. What happened thereafter involved me painting the record cover, getting my record played at a few gigs, being part of a real life London art exhibition, meeting Arturo Vega, watching him screen print a shirt for my daughter and a jacket for me and a little something for someone else. In my own small way I’ve become a recording artist and an artist artist! I’m still grinning.

I love creating an environment where people feel willing, even comfortable to try new things. And I love being in that environment myself. Authenticity rocks. I’d like to highlight another experiment in the blogosphere (do folk still call it that?) going on right now. The very fabulous Alison Chisnell is in the home straight of a very engaging blog experiment over here. Alison put a few subject ideas up to the vote and has blogged every day this week covering the most popular items. It’s been a very engaging week over at Alison’s place.

Joe Strummer is right; you won’t succeed unless you try.

What are you going to try next?

You will fail

In my early years at school I loved learning French. The fact that my first French teacher was a kind, enthusiastic woman who drove a yellow Triumph Spitfire had no bearing on my enjoyment whatsoever. Miss Draisey was an excellent teacher, encouraging and trusting. I remember how shaken she was when discovering two girls cheating in a French spelling test. You just didn’t cheat in Miss Draisey’s class, she was too…nice.

Jump forward a few years and I’m sitting in the exam hall at Purley High School for Boys, aka Colditz. With a few notable exceptions, the teaching staff led by DGS Akers, our thoroughly unpleasant cane wielding headmaster, were a similarly grim bunch. They made Severus Snape look like Mr Tumble. My French teacher at this school was Madame Ananin. She came across pretty miserable most of the time, and seemed to have a loathing not only for all of us school boys, but her beautiful native language too. How odd.

Back to the exam hall. I’m at my desk, just one boy in an anonymous swathe of rows and columns. The teachers responsible for adjudicating the exam stalk the rows and columns as we prepare to start ‘O’ Level French (yeah I’m really that old!). Madame Ananin is on duty and she walks purposefully along the row of desks. She stops, puts a hand on my desk and leans over. She speaks four words, ‘You will fail Shaw’. She moves away from my desk and carries on. Thanks for the vote of confidence!

I passed ‘O’ Level French. I got a B grade and an A grade for spoken French. I won the inaugural Bruce McCallum Memorial Prize for spoken French that year too. My love for the French language was and is too strong for Madame Ananin.

Nowadays in the pursuit of helping people and teams to develop I encourage people to push themselves, often to and beyond the point of failure. Through failure we learn. To make mistakes and to fail is simply human, and in an encouraging environment it is a most powerful thing.

Know this. Creativity and innovation are forever locked in a whirling dancing fling with failure and chaos. As a leader, when you tell me you want creativity and innovation that’s great. And when you join the dance you never know whose hand you’ll take. You will fail. If you practice, you will learn and you will improve. And I will be there to celebrate that with you.

Thank you Madame Ananin.

photo c/o theirhistory

Second Time Around

In May this year I attended the first Engagement Taskforce (guru group) meeting. Arrggghhh I have to put those words in brackets I hate ’em mustn’t let them escape! I tweeted about this event at the time and invited questions, comments, any kind of input before the day. There was barely a whisper, which gave me some indication of how people felt about the whole thing.

After the event I reported back here and here and a very active conversation rapidly emerged. David Zinger was kind enough to say that in his opinion the resulting dialogue was one of the most vigorous online conversations on engagement in recent years, and indicates that perhaps there is interest in this initiative after all.

We’ve been asked to come together again for another session on September 23rd. I want you good people to know this because I remain keen to hear from you with comments, criticism, input, ideas etc which you think might inform the engagement taskforce project. You can read more about the project here and I hope to hear from you soon.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.