Work – Page 4 – The Consulting Artist

Find Another Way

How do you respond when things go wrong?

Note: I first started writing this post over three years ago. At the time I was not in a good place, and I drafted something with lots of anger in it. Since then I’ve played with the draft many times and never managed to get the balance right. This week I took another look and I think I have finally managed to position things in a way which is helpful to me – and hopefully for you too. Thanks for reading.

I’m having a great week. Meeting interesting people, having interesting conversations, doing work I enjoy and which I believe makes a difference. Learning to appreciate myself and others more, trying to make good, better. This week I’m on a roll and I am grateful to everyone who is helping me right now. I hope you’re having a good one too.

But what happens when the opposite is the case? Sometimes things don’t go to plan, and when that happens, it is helpful to have someone to blame. I do it, and you do it too, don’t you?

I Blame HR

I blame HR, with their pointless annual appraisals, their patronising diversity training and their crappy happy clappy fund raising bake sales. I blame HR.

I Blame Finance

I blame finance, with their stupid budget restrictions, their over complicated spreadsheets and their mind numbing expenses policy. I blame finance.

I Blame Sales

I blame sales, with their cheap suits, their bonus chasing greed and their legendary ability to over promise. I blame sales.

I Blame Facilities

I blame facilities, with their untimely fire drills, feng shui faux pas and their utopian paper free office strategy. I blame facilities.

I Blame Customer Services

I blame customer services, with their call waiting stats, their net promoter index and their ‘I can’t do that, you need to speak to my supervisor’ unhelpfulness. I blame customer services.

You get the picture. But have you ever stopped to think, maybe it’s you? OK, maybe you didn’t cause the problem, but let’s face it, pointing the finger at everyone isn’t much help. The attitude you choose, particularly when things aren’t going to plan, says an awful lot about you. So the next time things go off course, if it’s only a little, then hey – try and enjoy it, maybe there’s another way. If things are way off course, then try and be useful, find out if people need help to get things back on track. Most importantly, try to be kind about it. More and more I’m realising that a little kindness goes a long way. It’s The International Day of Happiness today, so why not push the boat out and throw your best smile into the mix too.

Blame is not the answer. Find another way. Have a lovely weekend.

The Next Generation of Work

Two free tickets available for CIPD student members to ‘London’s Skilled Future’

A Lucky Break

When I left school I was very fortunate in that one of my teachers (Mr Pope – technical drawing and graphical communication) introduced me to my first employer. I somehow managed to fumble my way through an interview and into the world of work as a trainee draughtsman. I learned a lot in this first job working among some supportive colleagues, both in the head office where I was based, and out on our many constructions sites too. All good things come to an end, and when I left this job, I had accumulated skills and experience beyond those I’d gained at school, and so found further employment. I was given a valuable hand from school into the world of work – many are not so fortunate.

In The Dark

Not long after starting my own business I did some voluntary work at a local school, helping kids with interview and CV preparation.My overriding memory of these experiences was how utterly unprepared nearly all the kids were. Prior to meeting me and other volunteers, pupils had apparently been doing some work on preparing a CV and getting ready for interviews. As the sessions unfolded I saw almost no evidence of this work as the volunteers and pupils clunked along together as best we could. I spoke with school staff after these sessions and the whole thing, right through to the involvement of us volunteers too, felt very much a last minute idea, ‘Oh look, some of our pupils are about to leave….should we be doing something…?’ I walked away from this experience feeling underwhelmed.

A New Direction – Taking Part

Fast forward to 2014, and I became aware of Learning to Work, a programme led by the CIPD to promote the role of employers in reducing youth unemployment.

The overall aim of the programme is to promote the business case for investing in the future workforce. We encourage HR professionals to offer a wide range of access routes into their organisations and ensure their recruitment and management practices are youth-friendly. We also promote direct contact with young people via two youth volunteering programmes, Steps Ahead Mentoring and Inspiring the Future.

Having been invited to a couple of events designed to showcase and promote this interesting work, it became clear to me that young people involved in the programme, including CIPD student members, are getting a lot from their participation. Through talking with these younger people, it also became clear to me that small businesses like mine also have a useful role to play. Big businesses are often the ones who offer support on programmes like this, and while they are surely useful, and have the added benefit of big, familiar names to help with the PR side of the scheme – they are not the only gig in town. When I explain my work to people at these events a lot of them say they would benefit from having access to smaller businesses like mine. With this in mind I joined Inspiring the Future (you can too if you like) and have supported the programme through attending and participating at events at local schools. The basic premise is not so different from that which I experienced when I first set up in business, but the whole Learning to Work programme benefits from a much more intentional approach. I think this programme is one of the most important activities currently being undertaken by the CIPD and I have just extended my involvement by signing up to offer student workplace placements in my business. Nothing grand, just working with me for a day or two – as a way of helping people explore what goes on in a small business like mine.

London’s Skilled Future – and your part in it

As part of this future focussed work, on March 16th, CIPD London are running a conference called London’s Skilled Future. The conference will tackle subjects like youth unemployment, low pay, the London economy, and much more besides. The CIPD has structured ticket pricing so as to appeal particularly to student members, and I encourage the CIPD student membership based in London to check the event out. If you are a current CIPD student member and would like to attend, but do not have the budget, then I may be able to help. I have purchased two student tickets to the event which I would like to give away. If you would like one, all you have to do is leave a comment on the blog, and I will draw two names from the hat on Friday 27th February. Thereafter I will contact the two winners so you can register, and make arrangements with the CIPD about which sessions you would like to attend. If you win one of these two tickets, I hope you have an excellent day at the conference. And if you are reading this and know someone who might benefit from this offer, please let them know – it is open to all current student CIPD members.

Three Little Words

Setting your own signposts and nudges for the year ahead.

Happy New Year

Towards the end of 2012 I made an attempt to distil some of my 2013 aspirations into three words. On that occasion, I chose Focus, Finish and Fun as my three little words. In the coming months, I struggled to hold onto my three little words and though I’m sure my 2013 contained elements of focus, finish and fun – the experiment didn’t stay with me as I had first hoped it would.

I didn’t repeat the exercise last year, but over Christmas I saw that Michael Vandervort had posted a blog post by Chris Brogan about the idea on Facebook, which you can read here. In his post Chris suggests avoiding words like ‘focus’ because they are too vague. This may go some way to explaining why my first attempt at this experiment didn’t sustain. He also suggests avoiding negative words too. So – after a failed attempt followed by a rest year, I’m going to give this another go. I’ve thought carefully over a period of time about some of the things I need and want in order to have a successful and enjoyable year, and here’s my attempt to distill things into three little words:

Appreciate

I want to be more conscious about the good stuff that happens to me and around me. In part this means getting better at recognising and acknowledging good work. When I get positive feedback about the work I do, I will take it more readily than I’ve done in the past, and think about how I can build that feedback into my own development. When I see good work happening around me I will offer timely feedback with as much clarity as I can. I will also invest in deepening my understanding and my use of Appreciative Inquiry as an additional framework for making work better, and I’m currently investigating a few training courses to help with this.

Plan

I’m good at planning for things in the near term, this has been identified as a strength for some time now. However I am much less able to set an effective direction over time, which is In part because things change often, but too often I think I’ve used that reason as an excuse to drift. This year I’m going to build on my ability to prepare and plan short term and sketch some longer term thinking out too. Nothing too detailed because like you I’m hopeless at predicting the future, but enough to improve and sustain my motivation. This is the biggest challenge of my three little words, and if you have any ideas on how I can bring this to life, I would love to hear from you, thanks.

Improvise

I want to develop more improvisation into my practice. This means, among other things, a greater focus on my continuous professional development so that I have a broader range of options to offer up in my work as a facilitator. Art for Work’s Sake is a great example of improvisational process, of being open to possibilities, and to adapting and improvising. I can now be very loose with an Art for Work’s Sake session or more structured – depending on what people need and want. I’d like to explore improvisation further so I have invested in The Comedy Store Players Improvisation Academy Foundation Course.

So there you have it, my three little words: Appreciate, Plan, Improvise. Not so much a set of resolutions (because nobody makes those, right?), more like a nudge in a helpful direction. Will they work better for me than finish, focus and fun? I hope so – this certainly feels like a more intentional, useful set of choices. We shall see. Maybe you’d like to try this three little words idea for yourself?