Tag: work

Filling In The Gaps

I’ve been investing a lot lately, in you and me, in us. I’ve made the slightest tweak to my Twitter bio and I’m using it…

Credo. Together beats apart. Flow beats worklife balance. Productive beats busy. Connection gives us meaning, conversations are the bond.

…and my most recent seven word autobiography as guiding lights. Sometimes the lights are dim, sometimes bright. Sometimes the lights take an orderly direction, sometimes they meander.

I grow increasingly certain about uncertainty, increasingly confident about vulnerability, and the vitality of momentum is not lost on me either.

A blank page is both an excitement and a challenge. Will that first mark land in the right place? I was doodling as part of my curation role at the CIPD conference this week, and I made many mistakes. The first one bothered me. Uncertainty and vulnerability. Grrr! The second and subsequent mistakes turned out to be guiding lights on the way to something I was happy to share. As I realised this – things flowed more easily. Momentum.

2014 is nearly upon us. So far there is meaningful, useful, exciting work in the What Goes Around diary for January. February. March. April. And there is room for more, and there will be more.

I am thankful and encouraged. In being encouraged, I hope in some small way I am encouraging too.

Guiding lights. Blank pages. Filling in the gaps.

Creative Leadership – Connections Part Three

This is the third and final post drawn from my recent talk and shared experiences around connections and creativity at the Illinois SHRM conference 2013. The first part of this series is about music, vulnerability, diversity and conversations, the second is about transparency and seeing the whole picture, and this third piece is about presence and art.

Be Here Now

We talked about the importance of presence as a way of reinforcing connections, and about that good feeling you get when you know you have the attention of the other person. Someone in the audience referred to this as ‘Be Here Now’, and as we talked through what this meant to people, other words like focus, appreciate and mindful came up in our conversation. We talked about how crappy meetings get in the way of doing good work and we shared a few ideas about how to make crappy meetings better.

Art for Art’s Sake

I spoke briefly about my ongoing artistic endeavours, and how my experiment with painting started purely for enjoyment. And the more I played – with paints, pencils, and inks…

Art for Art's Sake

Art for Work’s Sake

…the more I began to realise that the very act of artistic expression, is a gateway to better work. Importantly, this gateway is open to all, regardless of the level of proficiency. I am not an artist, but I have discovered and am discovering ways of using art both as an individual and in groups with clients, to help with gaining different perspectives, aiding divergent thinking and improving problem solving.

Art for Work's Sake

The form the art takes can vary. Photography, painting, drawing, mark making, sketching, collage, poetry, and adaptation of the work of others (the head shaped example above is cut from a piece of work that CreativeConnection recorded at a previous event we ran together), are all ways of helping you experiment, think more creatively, and find new answers to problems.

Trust

The curtain came down on our time together at Illinois with a reminder of the importance of trust, and with that we went our separate ways to make more connections and learn and share more experiences together.

The Trust Overlap

I hope this review of connections and creativity has been useful. If you have any questions – or would like to explore anything I’ve written about in more detail, please get in touch.

Additional Resources

Here are the slides I used for my talk in full

Here is a link to the work on Humanizing Employee Engagement that Paul Hebert shared with us in Illinois. This was my favourite session of the conference, partly because it linked to some of the connections stuff we spoke about, but more importantly, because Paul is a smart guy who thinks a little differently. If you’re not already connected with Paul, hopefully this link will encourage you to do so.

Stuck in the Slow Lane

I had the misfortune to go to a really crappy meeting first thing in the morning last Monday. As I left the house at half past insane o’clock I could not foresee that the meeting was going to be as crappy as it turned out, but I was pretty sure the journey into London would be. Sure enough, the train was packed, the bus was packed, and the tube was packed too. Rush hour sucks.

As I was jostled from raised armpit to raised armpit, and from book cover to scowling face, I started to dream in an attempt to escape the drudgery. My mind wandered back to the few golden weeks of the Olympics and Paralympics in London last year. We were fortunate to spectate at the games a few times and as usual I was in and out of London for work too, but I did not dream of sporting endeavour as I reflected on this time. No, instead I dreamed of emptier trains, buses and tubes, and easier journeys.

In the run up to the 2012 games there were significant fears that the London transport system wouldn’t cope. The fears were misplaced, and even though during that golden period of sporting excellence, the transport networks of London carried record extra numbers of passengers, for a few short weeks, getting around London felt easier. No longer did we feel compelled to jam ourselves in the tube and struggle to our desks for a 09:00 start. Contingency plans were made, and something approaching a city wide flexible working dream briefly became a reality. Businesses worked smarter.

The population of London continues to grow so we need to manage transport flows better before the whole network disappears up its own proverbial arse sometime soon. We have the technology which should facilitate more smarter working, so why aren’t businesses responding more smartly? Among all the advances we’ve seen in recent generations, how we work is stuck pretty much at the back of the line. In fact, it’s not even at the back of the line, how we work is sitting all alone in the corner of the playground of advancement, sulking and wondering why no one wants to play anymore.

A smarter approach to flexible working = an easier journey to and from work. Is there anyone who wouldn’t appreciate that? We know we can do it – we’ve seen it happen………….. and as suddenly as it had begun, my dream of a better journey to and from work faded. I was back in reality being spewed from the underground station as if no more than a tiny particle in a huge pile of human vomit. Sorry, but that’s just how rush hour and our approach to work in the 21st century sometimes makes me feel.

photo credit