Jun 13
Finding a reason for walking on a beach, and then realising that the feeling of sand between the toes will powerfully evoke memories:
trying
I have looked up into the stars at night
That are so scattered
Across the infinitely deep sky
I have seen into great vacuums of awesome space
And been left standing
Not understanding
But trying.
May 16
We talk about networking as though it is something which comes naturally to some people. Are you a good networker, is a question people often ask. But like many things it is a skill which can be developed. Often people think of networking as being all about how we build up contacts and make best use of them. This is like thinking of a car as a place to put petrol. It sort of misses the point!
So, here are a few ideas / questions about networking to push the thinking into some of the mechanics and principles of the activity:
Think broadly about this. Not just people who are close friends or colleagues. Improve your skills at collecting contact details for people. To get you started, use a mind map (or spider diagram) to set out the people who you are in contact with. Each arm of the map reaching out from you at the centre can be a domain or area of your life e.g. family, friends, work colleagues, people with common interests etc. Work on this for at least 30 minutes. If there aren’t at least a hundred people on this mind map you haven’t thought deeply enough!
There are many ways of managing a network. I use Microsoft Outlook’s Contact Database to capture my network contacts. It means that I have details with me at all times as I use a blackberry. It’s a great way to capture people’s contact details as well as snippets of useful information about them if like me you have a poor memory. The database should be backed up so that system failure (i.e. your computer dies) doesn’t mean that you lose all your contacts.
I go through my network at least once a month, looking for people who I need to get in touch with to ensure that I am keeping regular contact. It takes maybe five minutes to just skim through all of the names A-Z and check for anything that jumps out at me. I usually come away from this with a few people I should drop an email to, or phone. And I may see someone in there whose details need updating.
A network needs to be up to date. The regular review helps you to keep it current. It’s also worth looking for people in the network who you haven’t been in contact with for some time. If there is no good reason to make contact now, archive the contact. Don’t delete it – you don’t know what is just into the future. You may have a reason to contact them which you are not aware of now. Try to capture contact details whenever you can. A business card, a phone number or email address. I input them into the database as soon as I can. If possible, follow this up with a quick contact if that is appropriate.
Take regular opportunities to review your network and think about potential gaps. Then take proactive steps to fill those gaps.
As I implied in the opening paragraph, effective networking is not about what you can get out of people, it is about what you can give. People are naturally suspicious of the “salesman” type approach to marketing where there is a pitch either explicitly there or implied. For effective networking it helps to begin by thinking about what you have to offer before you make the contact. That helps to maintain integrity in relationship building.
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of networking. Relationships between us is what makes the world go round. The process of networking is at the heart of this. The first step of making the initial contact is something I used to find really difficult, particularly at networking events, conferences, seminars etc. I found a way round this by introducing myself and asking a quick question about the other person to get them talking about themselves. After a few goes at this it felt more and more natural. It has helped me to really enjoy the networking event.
Mar 30
When writing something – whether a work of fiction or something factual – it often takes a little while to get started. The first few paragraphs feel a little like a warm up before exercising. So, here is an approach that will sharpen the writing.
Begin to write as you normally would. Carry on writing until you get to the end point. Then, review what you have written. Find the natural point in the writing where the work really kicks in: the point where you are actually in focus.
This is the point where you want the writing to begin. So, cut everything that comes before that – and you have two choices. You can either lose the earlier section if it doesn’t contribute anything, or move it further on in the writing.
Dec 14
I posted a couple of days ago the link to the ‘November Suite’ booklet. Here’s a poem from that collection in case you’re wondering whether to go ahead and download.
Before
The dark is rising
Now hear all of this
Last night the stars shone
And I watched them twinkle
One drop in each shard of space
Another droplet like a tear from the eye
Flip inwards, peopled with creatures
All standing shell-like, open to us
Watching the night sky
Pacing forwards and
Backwards, until
The sky empties
No stars
No sun
No
N
Dec 12
Ages ago on this blog, I promised to upload the collection of poetry which I wrote in November 2009. It was written through the month – a poem a day. Follow this link to download the booklet. I hope you enjoy it – as ever, I am always keen to get feedback (use the contacts page).
If you want to see more of my writing, please drop your email address into the box over on the right. I’ll add it to my list, and send you content that isn’t available on the website.
We spend so much time trying to figure out what other people are thinking, trying to second guess what someone means when they ask us to do something. This is the stuff of working life, the ambiguity that we face every day.
We are given a project to deliver, or we are asked to become a member of a group. In each case we may get an email, see the person who is briefing us on the project. Then we have to make sense of the task. What did they mean? Is there a sub-text to this that we don’t understand? Why have we been asked to involve that particular person when they always seem to be so resistant? What exactly should the outcome be?
So we set off on a mission to clarify what this all means. We may spend ages trying to unpack it all in our head. Then we check it out with friends and colleagues.
We can get lost in the multiple layers of an onion, each time we speak to someone a new layer of intrigue is revealed. We piece together a complex picture, wondering how we are going to navigate our way through all of this.
And then at the point where it all seems like a state of chaotic confusion, the glaringly obvious suddenly strikes us.
Just ask.
Instead of trying to read minds, trying to make sense by going all around the problem, we should go direct to the heart of the problem. If it’s the boss we often don’t feel able to check back. But that is what we should do.
We should go back to the source – and ask. Seek clarification.
Yes, I know it seems staggeringly obvious. But how often have you wasted time trying to make sense of something when you could have just asked?
Nov 28
Here’s a poem from ‘Spirit Soul: Pursuance’ to give you some idea of the contents of the latest book. If you like it, go take a look. The link is here, and on the ‘Free Stuff’ page of the site.
then one morning
eyes slightly out of focus
I was taken by surprise
there in the mist, early hours
was a deer, standing in the garden
grazing, eating berries from the trees
the winter had been hard
this deer was thin, lack of food
had left it no choice but to come to the house
I stood and looked out of the window
motionless, I waited for the deer to turn
then it looked me in the eye, ten seconds
Then gone
Just the connection, an open
one sense in which I can move on
let go of the me of last year
Spring time, will be here soon
new growth, beginnings
a chance to escape the famine of winter
Hope.
Nov 23
On Sunday I settled down late morning to write a poem. It’s approaching the anniversary of my father’s death and I wanted to do something that would help with this. I was also keen to build on something I had already written. I took a poem from a collection of poems back in 1998 called ‘Brother Spirit Brother Soul’ and thought this would provide useful inspiration.
The poem had 24 lines, so I dropped each line at the top of a separate page. The intention was to write a poem for each of the lines. After I had written one I thought I’d try another. Well, without going into detail on the passage of time, 6 hours later I had written 24 poems, chosen a photo for the cover and had a booklet completed.
I may return to it to do some further editing of the poems, but for now here it is. I’ve sent it out to a few people for comment. I’ve never had such an intensive period of creativity before. It’s fascinating to look back at it now and see how the ideas ebbed and flowed as time passed. Pushing myself on with the experiment brought through ideas that wouldn’t have otherwise emerged. An interesting experiment, which I think I will repeat.
What did it teach me? Immense amounts of creativity come just one step at a time. Commit to small steps. Having 24 titles to work with created the instant stimulus to work from, which made the process of generating something new easier because there was already a starting point.
Anyway, feel free to download the pdf by clicking here and have a look at the book – “Spirit Soul: Pursuance”. You can also go to this page to find other pdf’s for download. I’d welcome feedback. I’m still unable to open up comments without being deluged with junk, so use the contact form.
OK, I wrote a few months ago about the book I am writing called ‘The Coaching 30‘. Back in April of this year I sent out ‘The Coaching 30 - four for starters‘ to a group of 30 people to get feedback. This was really useful as it gave me lots of ideas for the manuscript as I continued to work on it.
Time passes, and I am nearly ready to send out the next instalment. It will comprise 10 of the 30 tips / ideas developed from my coaching practise. The distribution list is growing. Let me know through the contacts page if you would like to be included. What does that mean? Well, I will send you the pdf of the 10 tips and ask you to give me feedback on it – not a lengthy review, just your reaction and any useful comments you may have. I also ask you to send the pdf to anyone else who you think might find it useful.
So, do get in touch if you are interested.
Here’s a poem, hot off the press, from a new collection I am in the middle of writing called “Father, Brother, Son”. On the poetry front, I will be posting the pdf of ‘November Suite’, a collection I wrote through the month of November last year, in the next few weeks. It will be available as a free download. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading this one:
This spectacular view again, bored with it
This spectacular view again, bored with it
- Staying in this temporary home -
What happens to the flow of life, with this big disruption?
And I see a jay, in the bush, unaware of me.
Magnificent costume, my clothes drab, lesson learned then.
The sun shines on the unjust and the cruel, like the victims too.
Winds serrate the landscape at 80 miles an hour for hours.
How does this have such a gut pulling shape on my emotions?
The eye of I wonders why.
Should I stare at a Rothko painting for days on end,
Contemplate the suicide of a place of turmoil,
To see into his three band state of mind?
Or should I walk on deserted beaches, deckchairs flapping
Seagulls pitching and dive bombing, thoughts of
Everything I lived in, everything I have lost?
Landscape then is all there is, the sense that
Living is bigger than loving, that is the start point,
Where survival holds all together, safe in harbour.
I will sail again, for new places, new people
But not until I have let go of old journeys,
And anniversaries that scrape the surfaces of my experiences clean.
Jun 12
…. in case you need just a little more tempting to follow the link, here is a short poem from ‘Scrapes against the Soul’:
Pictures on the wall were all taken with this new camera
Living in a world where every second can be captured as a
Perfect digital image. Still or moving images
Everything caught as a series of digital code
So that every trace of every life can be saved for future viewing
If only we had the time to review everything
At least then we might learn something from the mistakes of history.
If you follow the link to the ‘free stuff‘ page, you will be now be able to download a free PDF booklet of ‘Scrapes against the Soul’, a booklet of poems which I produced last year.
Coming soon – ‘November Suite’ - a booklet produced (not surprisingly) last November.
Over the last few months I have been working on the latest book, “The Coaching 30″, which is a set of 30 tips drawn from my coaching practise. They will be useful for coaches, and also for anyone looking to improve their creativity and productivity. I have 28 tips prepared and undergoing editing. So I thought it was a good time to share some of this. I’ve already posted a few of them on this blog. But I wanted to share 4 tips in a booklet form, so that readers could see what they will get in the full 30 tip e-book. I have sent this booklet out to a small group of contacts who are acting as a ‘Critical Friend Circle’. The feedback from this so far has been incredibly helpful.
I’m keen to keep building this circle of support, as well as building a readership for the finished book so if you would like a copy of the booklet please do get in touch using the contact form and I will send it to you.
If you have encountered pay scales in the NHS, you will be aware that they were overhauled a few years ago. This was done using something called the Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF) which was the basis on which comparative grades were built up in the service. The theory was that skills could be compared across professions, so that everyone (except for very senior managers and medics, interestingly!) could be put on a single pay spine with grades stretching from the most junior to senior managers.
Well, I was thinking about this the other day. I was in conversation with someone about how to best market oneself when looking to change jobs . (They were looking to change jobs, not me, I hasten to add). There is no doubt that the Knowledge and the Skills that you have are important attributes to describe. But if you stop there, the CV ends up looking very dry, just like everybody else’s. Sure, we need to describe our Experiences, the depth and breadth of it. That helps – but there is one more dimension to ourselves which really helps us to stand out from the crowd.
Deliverables – the things we have achieved in the jobs we have held. In some cases deliverables might be actual products – a report, publication, a new innovation. Sometimes it might be a significant change in a service. Identifying these deliverables – perhaps, 5 or 6 key ones – and setting them out clearly in your CV will really help to differentiate you. Above all else, it shows that you can really deliver in jobs that you do.
So, perhaps we should be talking about Knowledge, Skills, Experience and Deliverables.
Nov 12
I’m in the middle of an exercise to write a poem a day for November – the resulting collection, once edited, will be called ‘November Suite’. I am using various exercises to generate material. For example, I take the last line of the previous poem and google that phrase. Then I follow the links and harvest phrases and words from the pages that I find, using the material which this produces to steer the sense of the poem.
The following poem was created using a phrase which I stumbled across – this became the title of the poem and was then put through google. This is an early draft, but I like the direction it follows:
The Voice of Wittgenstein
“After several attempts to weld my results together
The best I could write would never be more
Than philosophical remarks
My thoughts would soon be crippled
If I tried to force them on
Against their inclination”
An anti-systematic attitude
Like John Cage’s music or Stockhausen
A permanent condition
Numbered aphorisms, as though
The world of existence could be reduced
To a set of interwoven statements
Everything succumbing to the power of language
Different voices in dialogue
The first of the post-modernists
Voice 1, then Voice of Tradition
Voice of Perplexity
And the Voice of Clarity
These voices are inside my head
All at once, they seize language
Mess with it, precise but dissective
Taking objects and making of them
A contradiction, a complexity
Confusion that removes sense of self
Uttering a word, a phrase – I love you
Lost in translation, in perplexity
A permanent condition.
[20:30]
Oct 30
I am looking at print-on-demand publishing services like Lulu.com and Createspace.com. Both of them offer services which mean that you can turn a pdf file into a book manuscript which can then be printed off as a book. These can be printed when required so rather than printing a thousand books and watching them gather dust in cardboard boxes, it is possible to print off individual copies as required at an economically viable cost.
Now, unless I am much mistaken, some detailed research suggests that Lulu is probably a better service if you are based in the UK, because the other service (which is owned by Amazon) only prints in the US.
There is also the option to produce books through both services, although this might be somewhat cumbersome. Any views on the two services are welcome – just post a comment on this post.
I’m going to use this service in the next few weeks to produce the first couple of books. This is a real move forwards for my publishing press (bluewater books), which until now has only produced hand-printed chapbooks. I’m looking forward to experimenting, and will blog about the progress with it over the coming weeks.
Oct 23
I am in the middle of a few hours working on the ‘Archetypes at Work’ manuscript. I have pushed the word count up to 18,000 words which is really encouraging.
I have just used a quote from Bartok:
“What is new and significant must always be connected with old roots, the truly vital roots that are chosen with great care from the ones that merely survive.”
In striving to produce something startlingly different which pushes into new territory we always need to help the process of communication by creating hooks for the audience. Bartok did it by pushing music into new soundscapes whilst drawing heavily on the folk and ethnic music of his homeland, Hungary. He and Zoltan Kodaly were active musicographers – generating a growing archive of the history of Magyar music. This simultaneous exploration of the historical context with the pushing out into new territory is key to charting new territory.
So, complexity for its own sake, working against the conventions just to be obtuse is counter-productive.
I read a book a few a few years ago by an academic from Warwick University, Gibson Burrell (now at Leicester). The book was called ‘Pandemonium’. It was about a post-modernist approach to organisation studies. In keeping with the subject it was laid out in an unusual format with the text working from front to back for the top half of the page, then from back to front for the bottom half. It was an imaginative approach which worked well. A departure from the norm – but there was a clear guide to get the reader through the book.
So, the point of this post is to remind me that if I experiment, I need to ensure that the communication is not lost because of the lack of cues or clues for the reader. In the words of the title, by all means explore complex issues and enjoy the journey – but remember the acronym KISS – keep it simple stupid!
I said in mid-September that I had nearly completed the latest poetry manuscript, ‘Scrapes against the Soul’. Well, I have been stuck on the last poem for a few weeks now. It is a long piece which captures my experiences of Liverpool in the late 70s and early 80s.
I’m hoping to have it finished before the end of this month. As soon as it is finished I will be posting a pdf for free download – and it will be possible to buy a hard copy of the book too, very soon.
I have also begun work on Collected Poems: Volume One which covers 1985 to 1996. More news on this very soon.
Archetypal Descriptors are evident in the work of Handy, Morgan and Neville & Dalmau. In most cases a formal mythological framework is used. Most commonly this tends to be Greek Mythology, since this is a symbolic structure with a wide currency. Having set out the limits to the approaches already developed in this area, the Archetypal Casting Toolkit which I have developed is contrasted with this metaphorical approach. The work of Morgan is central to metaphor and organisations. My development in this field sets out to demonstrate that analysis of this form is a useful background to more detailed specific work on individual analysis.
In interpreting the interactions of communities as they exist in the organisational context, it is important to ensure that the overall approach avoids the tendency to over-simplify. This is the weakness of a metaphorical approach alone that focuses too much on the organisation as an entity in itself, rather than unravelling in more depth the interactions and complexities of the numerous scripts that are in evidence.
However, the use of archetypes as themes that can be used as overlays, can generate evidence of the type of culture that prevails, a way of interpreting what is going on.
trying to find something which doesn't exist
The latest collection of poetry is nearly completed. I am in the middle of the final poem which is an extended piece called ‘seventy nine to eighty two’.
Here’s a verse from it:
Watching bands at Eric’s – seeing Simple Minds
Keyboard player with his head between the beams
Music bouncing off walls, everyone saying look at me
- Looking and seeing ideas for the next night out
I have found an old painting of mine which I am going to use for the cover of the book. You can see it in this post. It’s a watercolour in the form of a mandala. I’m not really much of a painter, but I liked this image, particularly when I scanned it into the laptop.
I have posted several of the poems from this collection over recent months. The middle section of the book comprised a series of poems each beginning with a line from one poem by Robert Bly – this was an interesting process which took my writing away to topics which I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered.
Once I have completed the book, I will post a pdf of it for free download. Watch this space, as they say!