Engagement – Page 15 – The Consulting Artist

Calmly Excited

Today’s the day Stop Doing Dumb Things rolls into town. Well it is if you live in London, and if you have a ticket 😉

I’ve lost count of the number of live events I’ve run and helped to run over the years. They’re great fun, and energising, powerful and experimental, so I suppose that makes them a little dangerous too?

Everyone involved in our event today is an experimenter. I congratulate you all for your willingness to try something different. And quite apart from lots of format tweaks and new ideas, there will be a couple of things I personally will choose to do differently. It’s no secret, because I choose it not to be, that these events, these gatherings, make me nervous. Will I give of my best? Will you be happy? And if you’re not happy will you be comfortable enough to tell me? And if you do, can I help put that right?

I choose not to bring a musical instrument with me this time. I need a break, and so do you. And as it happens, I’m playing a 1970’s disco set in the New Forest this weekend. I’m happy to give you a sneak peak, and I figure one scary music day in a week is enough 😛

I choose to take a more participatory role this time. I’m lucky to be working with Jonathan Wilson and Peter Massey again and we’ve taken the time to make sure we all get time and space to play today, as well as facilitate.

If you can’t join us in real life through today, follow our experiment on Twitter using the hashtag #sddt. That way you’ll get a sense of the useful fun we’re having. Sorry though – unless you’re in the room, you won’t get any home made cake. We haven’t figured out how to get that through cyberspace, and to be honest, I hope we never do.

Thanks in advance to Neil, Neil, Peter, Ben, Martin, Tim and his team, and all our guests 😉

Whatever you’re doing, have a great day folks.

photo credit

From Start to Finnish

Back in March of this year I went to TEDxGranta and had a fab day, partly because I met Ross Sargent, co founder of Cambridge Kung Fu. Since that day I’ve kept in touch with Ross on Facebook where he shares some interesting and useful stuff. Recently he shared a video talk by Pasi Sahlberg called ‘Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland’. Here’s a link to the video (it’s a whopper – clocking in at 1 hour 20 minutes, Ross suggests you can wind through the first ten mins):

Now being a kind soul, Ross watched the talk then summarised his observations. He’s kindly allowed me to repost these as a guest post, thanks Ross. I’m inspired by what the Finnish people have achieved and as Ross says – we could do this! Here’s his summary of the talk and why the Finnish education system works, hope you like it.

1. Trust people to do their best.
2. Teach people to be responsible don’t make them accountable.
3. Value teachers especially primary school teachers above pretty much all other professions! Pay them a good salary and give them plenty of time for teaching and planning within their work hours.
4. No testing under the age of 16.
5. No external checking.
6. Start half day school at 6 (combined with half a half day of play) and full time school at 7.
7. Multiple avenues for success that are equally valued in society – both academic and practical.
8. No private education – the aim is for absolutely everyone to be given the exact same opportunities to succeed.
9. Teachers get to design their own syllabus for their school – and studies have shown that this has led to by far the least variation in academic standards across all schools of all measured countries!

Along with Singapore and South Korea, Finland is consistently in the top 3 performing schools in all known measures and has been for the last decade or so.

We live in a different country with different issues but 30 years ago Finland did not have a good education system and now they have the best, so change is possible. They were not ‘born’ with a good education system, they thought about what needed to change and made the changes they felt were needed and have continued to refine the system and will continue to do so. We could do this!

A Little Vulnerability Goes A Long Way

Summer camp is drawing near, and as is tradition I will be opening the entertainment on Friday evening. I’ve just found out the theme for 2012 is disco, did I ever tell you how much I hate disco? My spare moments are currently cluttered with The Bee Gees, Abba, and if that wasn’t enough, The Village People! I’m sorely tempted to squeeze in Disco Man by The Damned and Disco 2000 by Pulp just to try and hang on to my sanity.

Over the years I’m slowly learning to enjoy these performances, primarily because I’m learning to love the vulnerability that comes with putting yourself out there. I feel the same way about my ongoing art and painting project, and though I cringe a little every time I push the ‘publish button’ on a new piece of work, I’m equally stimulated because my learning is evolving.

In the world of work, I’m noticing it is slowly becoming OK to talk more about, and express vulnerability. It’s a hugely powerful way to demonstrate leadership and show, through demonstrating your own vulnerability, that it can be OK to make, and admit to, mistakes. Mistakes that we all can learn from. Too often I speak with Chief Execs and others who demonstrate bluster and swagger in public, yet show uncertainty which sadly often manifests itself in defensiveness and anger, in private. I have a little sympathy as too often, these people are fed lines that other people think they want to hear. And they are also responsible for their own actions. A lack of dialogue with front line staff and customers will do that to you.

Vulnerability is, I believe, an essential human quality. Without it we are prey to arrogance, over confidence and the kind of chest beating and hooraying that maybe, just maybe, does us more harm than good.

In case you are interested, my disco performance is on June 29th. Watch this space – I Will Survive 😉