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.
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.
I found a completely new idea, startling me as I considered it, and it appeared in a fascinating conversation with a colleague. We had co-created it.
I am looking for the point of balance between head and heart. It’s the dance between the known and the unknown. I have written before about the way in which so much of the work that we do is a performance. Well, that has made me think more about the nature of the performance. Sometimes we work from a very scripted place – at such times it might be a meeting with a formal agenda, clear goals and a project plan. There is little space for innovation or creativity. This is the head space.
Then, at other times we are drifting in creative space, looking for ideas. Perhaps we are brainstorming or generating new ideas in other ways. This is the heart space.
The place between head and heart brings these things together into a creative tension. The closest of comparisons would be with improvisation. Especially with musical improvisation. If you haven’t listened to a CD of one of Keith Jarrett’s live improvisations, I would recommend that you do. He goes onto the stage with the parameters of the live event as the only boundaries. Beyond that, he empties his mind of pre-conceived ideas and creates new and fresh music on the spur of the moment. It is remarkable to hear and incredible to watch.
It is this space that I am thinking about. Thus, somewhere between head and heart, we find a creative space of improvisation. It can come in giving a presentation, running a workshop, in a coaching session. When it arrives, we find that the words springing from our mouths are a surprise. The ideas that come forward are new, they form in the interaction with others. We find a completely new perspective in the connecting with others.
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.
Nov 30
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.
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.
Strictly speaking, this is a vodcast – and it’s something I watch, rather than listen to – but let’s not be pedantic!
I have written about TED Talks before. For some time now (maybe 3 years?) I have been watching videos on the TED website. TED (Technology Entertainment Design) has the motto “ideas worth spreading”. It began as an annual conference bringing together people from those three fields to hear great presentations about cutting edge ideas. Over the years it has grown, so that there are now many events throughout the world in addition to the 2 ’official’ events.
Getting to attend TED is really difficult, and very expensive. The demand is immense. The podcast solves all of that. It is free and can be subscribed to in all the usual way (including the ubiquitous iTunes). Five days a week a new video appears – ranging from 5 minutes to 20 minutes with a small advert at the end to cover costs.
If you are at all interested, go to the site and look at a couple of the videos. I am sure you will be hooked, and find yourself being inspired on topics of an incredibly diverse nature. I’m constantly drawing on things from TED videos to stretch my creativity, and extend the ideas that I have. Strongly recommended.
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.
The model which follows was developed in a coaching session with a client who was experiencing a process of massive change for the organisation that she was leading.
At these times it is often difficult to see ‘the wood for the trees’. One can easily feel overwhelmed with the volume of work that needs attention, and confused as to the priorities. The model identifies three pillars of activity – business as usual, transition, and self care. The model applies equally to issues relating to the organisation as a whole and to the individual working within the change process.
The first pillar is the essential activities which the organisation needs to address to keep going whilst change is taking place. It is important to stay focused on this if organisational and individual performance is to be maintained.
The second pillar addresses the activities that need to take place to create the transition to the new. This may involve setting up time limited task groups, a wide range of organisational development activities, helping people to adapt to the change, offering key support.
The third pillar is important because it acknowledges the fact that it is all too easy to forget our own needs as leaders of change. Addressing self care ensures that needs are met, and resilience during the change is maintained.
Above the pillars sits ‘Legacy’ – the need to ensure that the organisation looks at the things which it has been doing in the past that need to be retained – either as activities or as tacit knowledge. Ensuring that we capture the legacy is a way of maintaining respect for the work that everyone has been doing.
Below the pillars sits ‘Values’. We work from a value base which determines how we function on a day to day basis, how we make decisions. It is important to stay in touch with our core values as we lead people through the change to ensure that we maintain integrity and are able to take people with us on the journey.
So, that is the model. How does it work? It helps us to see that there are activities in each of these boxes that we need to give attention to. In order to take things forward with balance we need to be mindful of activities in each box, so that we do not neglect any particular area.
The model builds on the work of William Bridges in his book ‘Managing Transition’, and on the work of Stephen Covey in ‘The Eighth Principle’ which looks at the importance of leaving a legacy.
The coaching client I worked with on this model found it really useful to orientate herself as she worked through the change process.
It helps to keep looking at the model and ensure that each of them is being given the appropriate attention.
OK, so you have a crisis on your hands. And then that is followed with another crisis. You are really clear that the challenge for you above everything else is to find a way to avoid feeling sorry for yourself. Finding a way to ensure that you don’t start to look for as many things going wrong as you can. The slippery slope into pity is easy to slide down. So, what do you do to counter this?
Well, many people advocate positive thinking and taking your mind off what is happening. But that amounts to a process of denial. Ignoring negative feelings doesn’t make them go away. They just end up being submerged and surface sooner or later.
One solution, which creates a helpful balance, is to use a small notebook. If you already keep a daily journal then you could use that. Take two facing pages. At the top of the first page write “Pity Page” and write down everything that is going wrong for you – ensure that you get out all of the associated negative feelings too. Once you get to the bottom of the page you need to stop! Don’t be tempted to go onto a further page. The next page needs to have the following title at the top – “Passion Page”. Here you can write down everything that is going well for you, everything for which you can be grateful, everything you have done that was good. No matter how negative you feel, there will always be something great – even if it is the sun in the sky or the food on the table. Again, work to the bottom of the page and then stop.
You’ve had the opportunity to express some of those negative feelings, but have also balanced that out with the passion of living. Now take a deep breath and move on to the next thing!
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.
Aug 3
BUGS & BUZZES – an ice-breaker exercise for a group meeting.
Ice breaking - ice breakers at work
What it does
This is a great warm-up exercise for the beginning of a group meeting. It can also be used in a one-to-one situation.
In a group, it will change the atmosphere in the room and create a co-operative energy to prepare for the business of the meeting.
How to play it
The exercise is done in two rounds. For the first round, each person takes it in turns to describe something which is really annoying, something which ‘bugs’ them. It can be in any context, although it is helpful if it is in the relevant to the context. There is no judgement of that ‘bug’ – but the rest of the group has the opportunity to contribute with comments or suggestions for overcoming the ‘bug’.
In the second round of the exercise, each person describes something which gives them a real ‘buzz’. Again, others can contribute and add comments.
How it works
The first round gives each person an opportunity to describe something which is causing problems in the daily work. There is also an opportunity to create a shared approach to problem solving. It also gives air-space to issues which might otherwise be considered too trivial to raise.
In the second round, the focus on positive things which make each of us buzz, helps to create an environment of appreciative involvement.
Jul 17
My head is full of ideas at the moment – a million ideas. Like a million stars in the sky. And that set me to thinking about the power of the metaphor.
I’m talking about ideas and stars here – it’s an interesting way to look at ideas and decide what to do with them.
It was 1997. I had heard of the concept of a Learning Set. It was something that appealed on a number of levels. For example, the idea of a community in action is one where it is possible to build links, to establish a ‘fraternity’ which can provide mutual support to managers who can often feel terribly isolated. But I was convinced that ‘building community’ would not be a sufficiently credible reason for forming a learning set.
The idea as it formed was remarkably simple. I wanted to be part of a Learning Set to share thinking on creative leadership. The subject of ‘creative leadership’ was taken from some online research I had done in the mid-90s looking at applications of creativity in leadership.
There was a clear time limit to the learning sets – six sessions – so that participants could make an explicit commitment.
The idea was tested out with an informal group of colleagues in the first instance. This was well received. Several people suggested to me that the learning sets would be stronger if they involved people who were not already known to each other. With this in mind I approached the Head of Human Resources for help. She agreed to send out the ‘flier’ to Human Resource leads in NHS organisations in the North West of England.
The letter seeking expressions of interest was intended to solicit sufficient interest to form one learning set. In the event there were well over 100 responses within two weeks. An untapped need had been identified. The challenge was one of determining how best to meet that need.
I was keen to develop an organic structure fit to the needs of each particular group. However, I lacked the confidence to challenge the advice I was being given. The traditional model of a Learning Set requires a facilitator to lead the process – this was the approach which was adopted. It took time to locate eight facilitators, but this was achieved and the Learning Sets began to meet.
From the outset there was an issue within the group of which I was a member. Was our group leader a facilitator or someone in control? It felt as though the role of facilitator took away from the autonomy of the group. I was keen to take the group into dynamic territory where it would develop its own agenda. I wanted to see what the archetypes would create. The facilitator, who set out a clear set of issues to be covered over the six sessions, resisted this approach.
The pitfalls of the approach then, were related to this tension over the existence of a facilitator and whether this was beneficial to the process.
From the outset, there was immense scope for building a sense of community, but this was not really progressed due to an overwhelming sense of over-dependence on one person. That person (me) had a full time job to fulfil, and was therefore not able to pursue newsletters and other communications channels to create a sense of a ‘movement’ being developed. This would have been the real strength of this initiative if it had been possible. As it was, there was no opportunity to communicate across the learning sets, other than through the facilitators.
This problem was one that I raised at a meeting of the facilitators half way through the six months set for the initiative. We agreed that a shared event would be useful to bring all the participants together and share experiences. It took some time to arrange this event, so it happened when most of the learning sets had reached the end of their time allocation. Nonetheless, it was an opportunity to experience some of the magic of the group event.
Although the various learning sets had each gone about things their own way, they had all seen the need for greater communication between the sets. Some felt that the sets would be a useful way to overcome the feelings of isolation often felt by managers within organisations. There was a general view that peer group support from outside the immediate environment was really helpful.
The shared event day had a feeling of celebration about it. There was a remarkably positive response to the process. The lack of focussed content did not appear to have been a problem – many of those involved suspected that this had been a deliberate decision (as it was). Some even queried whether it had been a conspiracy to see how those involved would react to the lack of structure.
In retrospect, there was clearly much scope for building on the model which was developed here. At the one-day event there was an expectation of magic, which became self-fulfilling to an extent. If a similar exercise were to be attempted, more focus would be given to the need for a clear strategy for communication and specific assignment of roles. It would also be critical to follow through the requirement that the groups should be self-managed (see ‘Maverick’ by Ricardo Semler, 1993) as this would have generated a significantly different community (see ‘Different Drum’ by M Scott Peck, 1987).
Jan 12
Two important channels of creativity – archiving and creating. The act of creating new materials is important to ensure that we continue to generate new material. Then there is the Archivist who is the editor, remastering material, remixing it, producer, director and multi-media artist. Some of this activity will be about looking after the archive of work, ensuring that it is kept in a form that can receive an audience. But some of the activities of the Archivist stray into the creative – just like working with music or the visual arts, words can be shifted into new works. This can be done by expanding on original ideas, reworking, illustrating, creating sequels and prequels. All of this adds to the understanding of the work. It also ensures that the archive of work is not regarded as untouchable. Everything can be reworked, improved and reinterpreted.
Aug 20
What is a meme? It is a term borrowed from evolutionary biology. Used in an internet context, the definition (taken from wikipedia) is:
“An Internet meme is a piece of digital content that spreads rapidly, widely, and organically from person to person on the internet. The term is a reference to memes as virus-like self-replicating packets of information.”
So, if you are keen to spend time exploring this phenomenon there is a brilliant portal where a new meme is posted each day. It is run by Gary La Pointe, who has his own blog here.
The portal points to many sites where you will find memes. Many of them take the form of ’5 questions’ or ’10 favourites’ and spread using internet tag. I’ve answered this one, now I name 5 other bloggers and ask them to do it too. A bit like a blogging chain letter.
[from the 'Things I found' archive]
Jan 22
It is incredible just how much of our lives is spent in a vague state of day-dream. Wouldn’t it be good to be really focused, even just for a few hours each day?
Do I know what my overarching goals are for this year? Some of them, yes! But without a direction, we just wander around aimlessly.
My musical interests are broad, and widening – that is a good thing. But I do need a road map to follow sometimes.
My interests in reading and writing are also very broad – yes, that’s a good thing too. But the map needs to be set out so that I don’t disappear under a mound of books and CDs.
So, what am I reading and listening to at the moment:
Books:
1. Paul du Noyer – Liverpool: Wondrous Place
This is a marvellous book which looks at the music scene in Liverpool since the 50s. It covers all the major bands and artists that came out of Liverpool. It’s brilliant to read about the scene when I was there, and a part of it. Some of the writing also encouraged me to dip back into music that I had forgotten about. If you haven’t read this book yet, you should – it is a great read.
2. Peter Senge – The Dance of Change
This is a book about organisational change – I’ve read about 100 pages of it so far and it is packed full of interesting ideas.
Music:
1. Misha Alperin – At Home
Beautiful solo piano album by a jazz pianist. Sounds more like Debussy than jazz.
2. Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding
Yes, I know I must be virtually the last person to ‘get’ Bob Dylan. But I am now digging back into his really early stuff which is fantastic. This one has ‘All Along the Watchtower’ on it.
3. Antiopic – Allegorical Power Series Vol. 6
A series of albums for free download (www.antiopic.com) which comprise a lot of strange and wonderful noises from the world of music concrete / avant garde and just plain bizarre.
4. Julian Cope – Autogeddon
Yes, I do realise that he’s completely bonkers. But he does write great melodies, and I love all this barking mad stuff. It’s great to hear someone pursuing things to the extreme.
5. Eberhard Weber – Pendulum
An album of solo double bass sounds a bit worrying, but Eberhard Weber is in a league of his own. This album comprises a set of loops and echoes that build up into some beautiful songs.
Does Creativity get in the way of productivity? It can do. How do you ensure that spinning around various creative spirals doesn’t detract from the job that needs doing?
At the moment I am producing lots of creative ideas, and my thoughts are developing fast. But my actual productivity levels are quite low. I suppose that this must be part of a cycle of energy where the productivity comes in good time. For now, I just need to ensure that I make best use of the creative flows whilst they are there.
Current musical listening:
1. King Crimson – Starless and Bible Black
2. Robert Fripp – November Suite
3. Can – Landed
4. Jan Garbarek – Rites
5. Burning Shed Sampler No. 2
A good broad range of music which oils the wheels of the thinking mind.
Next week is a really busy one – but I’ll try to drop in a couple of updates.
