Leap Day

photo c/o rick harrison

Amid all the good morning and Happy February greetings on Twitter it struck me that 2012 is a Leap Year. Woohoo – we get a free, bonus day. What to do with it? Surely we can think of a few fun, useful and interesting things to do together?

So I hereby declare 29th February 2012 as Leap Day. I’d like to make a few things happen in London on that day and I’d love some help.

Maybe some of you will join in, maybe you won’t.

Maybe some of you will suggest stuff we can do, maybe you won’t.

Maybe some of you will come along for the whole day, maybe just a part of it.

Maybe some of you will organise your own Leap Days in other places, maybe you won’t.

If you would like to get involved in anything from coming along to suggesting and perhaps leading on a part of the day all ideas are would be very welcome. Time and enthusiasm will be given freely. Any cost for the day will be agreed in advance and will simply cover materials, any entrance fees or anything else that is suggested and co-created and all that jazz.

Warning! If you choose to take part you may end up meeting interesting people. You may end up enjoying yourself and there is a high risk you will learn useful new things.

So if you fancy a mini adventure, a Leap into the unknown – stick your name down here and we’ll start to make stuff happen.

Update:

Leap Day is Taking Shape

Bringing work and art closer together has interested me for as long as I can recall. Art helps us think differently, whether we are viewing it or creating it. Different parts of the brain are stimulated by different activities and I’ve seen for myself how applying art into a team environment can spark new and different ways of thinking, and solving.

I would like to invite all our Leap Day guests to explore and discuss and practice how we might bring work and art closer together, for mutual benefit. Developing creative opportunities, learning opportunities, business opportunities.

Vandy Massey, one of our Leap Day guests, is an accomplished painter, specialising in water colour. Vandy has kindly agreed to lead a painting workshop as part of the day. We’re also looking at visiting a gallery, and bringing some speed coaching into play too. Doubtless other things will emerge as more ideas are sent in and shared.

I’m in discussion with a quirky, different, and suitably lovely venue close to Waterloo which I hope we can use as a base, as a leaping off point for some of our activities. I’ll have more news on this soon.

The day will start around 11am with coffee and conversation and we’ll take it from there. I expect we may want to wind things up around 4pm and perhaps move on for optional beers and maybe even a bite to eat in the early evening. There will be opportunities for people to hook up with us through the day if the suggested start and finish times aren’t suitable.

Update:

Photography will be playing a part in the day. Some folks are bringing cameras so I wonder if we can try and make a photo collage and try out some cool photo apps too. We may have a poetry reading too.

Update:

Delighted to confirm the venue for Leap Day is Coopers Natural Foods, 17 Lower Marsh, London SE1 7RJ. Coopers was featured in the recent Rebecca Ferguson video – Nothing’s Real but Love. Awwww. Thanks to Tim at Coopers for agreeing to let us use his famous place as a base.

Sharing and Growing – A Social Framework

So there I was, goofing around on Facebook back at the end of January, when this intriguing picture caught my eye. It’s called ‘a social framework‘ and it was being shared by sharer par excellence, William Tincup.

William used it to frame a talk he gave at The Workforce Institute about where he spends time on social, doing what, why…etc. Thereafter William stuck it on Facebook. Now I like to make my talks about the conversation – I usually just use a few photos and images on screen to provoke discussion and trigger a few thoughts in my head and I really like the way William has framed a discussion on one slide here. I was keen to learn more about what William meant by ‘promotion, 30 days’ so I got in touch and William fed back:

Doug – think of it this way… Gen 1 – it was enough to just be smart, Gen 2 – one had to be smart AND create thoughtful content, Gen 3 – assume Gen 1 and Gen 2 AND promote the heck out of stuff… so, most people create content and promote it once or twice… IMHO, that’s not enough… I suggest a promotion schedule that is more like 30 to 1… for example, create a thoughtful blog post and promote it (differently) for 30 days… rather than just once, twice or three times… or so goes the thought process…

I’ve been thinking about sharing and growing for a while. I enjoy writing this blog and I work hard at it and though still modest, the traffic volumes are picking up (hey I busted through the 4,000 visits mark last month – thanks folks). I tweet my blog posts once or twice when I write them, sometimes stick ’em on Facebook and LinkedIn too if relevant.

And I’ve played around with taking my game to where bigger audiences are. I mean – if my content is good enough, hell I don’t have to just host it here. My Waltzing Matilda collaboration with @democracyfail garnered over 10,000 hits at Human Capital League last year, compared with 800 direct hits on youtube and 134 on here. Clearly waaaaay more than I could manage by being too parochial and expecting folks to come by here all the time. So I guess I’m saying, get over yourself. If your stuff is good, find ways to get it out there as well as just leaving it on your own front doorstep.

I’m intrigued by William’s ‘3o day’ plan so I’m having a play at combining that with the ‘go to where the crowd is’ technique I’ve just illustrated. I’m using the recent report I wrote on Social Media in HR as the content for the experiment. It’s very early days, so far I’ve used this blog, and Scribd to host it. HRZone picked up on it and invited me to run it over that their place too, where it snuck into the top ten most read 😉 It’s on the CIPD Facebook page and Michael Carty will soon be providing a link from XpertHR. Thanks in advance.

So far this experiment has yielded a seven fold increase in hits to this report (comparing direct hits to here against those I can track elsewhere). I’m pretty happy with the return on investment so far.

I intend to move on and reframe the report for my customer service audience too. After all – what chance has a company of being social outside if it can’t get social inside? It will be interesting to see how this part of the experiment evolves and I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, huge thanks to William for encouraging me to look into sharing and growing anew. And to all of you I’d ask, what works for you? How do you share and grow ideas? I’d love to hear what you think.

Liveable Lives – Humanising the Workplace

Conversation and the human element are at the heart and mind of great work. We need to stop trying to force the vagaries of humanity into a four box model and think more about how we adapt the models, processes and restrictions of work to fit us humans better.

In March 2010 Ziona Strelitz of ZZA published a paper called Liveable Lives. In the words of the author, this paper seeks to:

alert Human Resources and Corporate Real Estate professionals to the tensions employees face in managing their commitments to work and the rest of life, challenges that are magnified when long travel time is involved.

It’s a powerful and easy read. The paper talks about a range of subjects which circle the dreaded ‘work-life balance’ and you can grab a copy here.

In the Autumn of 2011 Neil Usher took Liveable Lives, turned it into a set of lyrics and kindly gave it to me to play with. I gave the song an airing at Stop Doing Dumb Things 2011 and left it, hanging in the air. The truth is I wasn’t too happy with the arrangement I’d concocted.

The song has bounced around inside my head ever since. Yesterday I found myself with a few minutes between tasks and the mood took me to have another go. I made this tune up on the fly and I think it suits Ziona’s and Neil’s work much better than the first attempt. I hope you enjoy the paper and the song – I’ll be revisiting some of these humanising concepts throughout 2012 and beyond. And if this subject interests you I recommend you buy a copy of Humanize by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant it’s a fabulous invigorating read about putting people at the centre of organisations in this social world of ours.

Liveable lives

Well they shut my office and consolidated
me, all the way to the city
Now I spend three hours incarcerated
In vacuum-packed self-pity
They said it helps collaboration
And competitive position
But I only leave my workstation
For coffee – and micturition….

We’re masters of our destiny
But no-one wants our opinion
Our liveable lives are a fantasy
As a 21st century minion

Well, they declared me an agile drone
Took away my rolodex and chair
then sent me home to work alone
in a bedroom only ten feet square
I bought this condominium
To avoid the grim commute
Now I’m stuck with the barest minimum
Can’t work – and I’m skint to boot

We’re masters of our destiny
But it still feels most unpleasant
Our liveable lives are a fantasy
As a 21st century peasant

Well, they can’t see me panicking
The departmental bedrock
And they can’t hear the faint ticking
of my biological clock
I still feel fairly saleable
When perfumed, buffed and lacquered
I’m lonely and available but
But overworked, stressed – and knackered

We’re masters of our destiny
But lost in hopeless wondering
Our liveable lives are a fantasy
As a 21st century underling

Well, we’ve all agreed I’m flexible
Work when, where and how I choose
And as childcare costs are miserable
Its homework, and nothing to lose
But there’s marmite on my laptop
And my iPhone’s in the toilet
Its a perfect life if you can stop
The little ones’ will to spoil it

We’re masters of our destiny
But we’re overcome by hassle
Our liveable lives are a fantasy
As a 21st century vassal

Well, I declared myself a professional
Dad, a five-year blue-collar sentence
Its the hardest job that I’ve ever had
No leisure time for repentance
I never thought I’d miss the life
Where I wasn’t consumed by intrigue
Or the ice cold thrust of a corporate knife
From an underachieving colleague

We’re masters of our destiny
But don’t recognise our werf
Our liveable lives are a fantasy
As a 21st century serf

Well, I got my cherished promotion
To a Senior Vice President
And the office buzzes like a bee
on heat, I so long to be a resident
But my parents need me to be around
As they play out their encores
and my absence only brings the sound
of a corridor – of closing doors

We’re masters of our destiny
But fast-tracked to the grave
Our liveable lives are a fantasy
As a 21st century slave

We’d be masters of our destiny
If we could only see what’s wrong
Our lives need not be the fantasy
Of a 21st century song
Our lives need not be the fantasy
Of a 21st century song.