Where do you turn for new insights, or to throw yourself into the unfamiliar? Do you have to take a year out and travel the globe? Or should you simply go out in your own street and see it through another person’s eyes?
I explained the Common Purpose 360 Day (an invitation from Common Purpose to do exactly that, and challenge the way you see the world), to my daughter last week. She started giggling. She said that I had pestered her all her life to “never judge anyone until you had walked a mile in their shoes”. She said that she had discovered the perfect response to my lecturing…you should do it, because then by the time the person you are judging has figured out what you are up to, you are a mile away and have their shoes! I fear that I am not a serious parent.
Her giggling came the day before she threw me, unplanned, way out into unfamiliar territory, because she fell and fractured her skull. It has been a grim and frightening week and her recovery sounds like it will be lengthy. I have spent hours and hours in different levels of serious casualty wards – seriously out of the familiar and challenging the way that I see the world.
So what have I learnt, or re-learnt?
How impatient I am and how much stress that puts on people around me
How easily I slide into the “group speak” of being horrible about the British NHS. At every level it has been top notch for us, all week. I must stop adding my voice to the endlessly critical naysayers and share my pride at how impressive they were.
As I walked down one corridor (for the four hundred and fiftieth time), I looked again at the notice board with the thank you notes pinned to it. I have to get better at taking the time to write letters of praise and thanks.
How lovely it is watching a team do what they really love…and doing it really, really well. That’s what the emergency room was. It took me some time watching them to spot who the leader was (in fact I am not even sure I know now). I suspect it was the person (who looked least like the leader) who came and put in another drip when all the others had failed. She (or he maybe if it wasn’t her) was invisible, but you could feel her everywhere.
Next year, I want more control over my 360 Day experience.
It is interesting that the word brave is so often watered down. “No, no”, they say, “you don’t mean brave, you mean take calculated risks.” Well I don’t really – I mean be brave. Things are moving fast, and by the time most things are fully calculated the opportunity is likely to be gone. I met someone from China last week who said she found the UK truly desperate to work in because things went so unbelievably slow. We are going to have to move faster, and to do this we will have to be brave enough to make decisions that are not calculated ones. Some failures will happen as a result, and we will have to be brave to face up to, deal with and then live with them.
I was brought up to have no respect for any position, age, background or title. My father told me that no one was better than me other than as a result of their ability, experience, achievements or character. At best people like this in me, and at worst they think my lack of deference is downright rude.
I went to a lunch with that Morgan Tsvangirai , who was in London as part of his “European Safari.” He tried to explain just how impossible it is in his culture for the young to challenge an old man. He said that it was simply inconceivable, and so deeply disrespectful as to be unthinkable.
I tried so hard to understand. The expression “Respect your elders” was almost a tease in my childhood home and has never been used in my own family. My children would laugh me out of the house.
It is such a deep, deep difference. While I am in China, I need to keep it at the front of my mind or I will appear rude.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent the day with several Egyptians. None of them saw Obama in person – they had been told not to go out on their balcony or even look out of their window as his motorcade went past – but they heard his speech and told me with delight, “It’s a different America now”.
The difference that strong, confident leadership produces is wonderful and its biggest impact can be on the leader; a leader who does not need to resort to arrogance or bullying from a distance to express themselves.
Strange how the world suddenly stops. Someone needs you totally; someone you care for dies. Suddenly, the vast action list of the morning becomes irrelevant.
Nothing like this has happened, but I am in quarantine – my son has swine flu! So people with masks over their faces come and check us out at home, and we arrange for the children who are not at home to stay with friends.
It is good as a leader to be reminded how the world spins on fine without you (except that my colleagues are carrying the load). I may feel less positive when I feel like Tom does tomorrow, but it’s only flu.
A whole host of Common Purpose graduates send me information about their mad ideas, but the maddest probably arrived this morning – it was great!
At first, I wasn’t sure I was really up for today and thought it would be better to sleep through it. Common Purpose is, just occasionally, really hard work, and two of my kids are in the middle exams and taking it out on me. But this email made it all feel possible.
The idea is “toilet twinning”. You twin your home/office/church/school toilet with a latrine in Africa to help support water sanitation there. In return you get a framed “I’ve twinned my toilet” certificate to hang in your toilet, with its own GPS reference point so that you can find your latrine on Google Earth.
So when you next stop by Common Purpose in London, I hope that you will use our facilities and see our certificate!
Tiananmen Square was twenty years ago this week. How the world – and China – have changed. The symbol for me was the earthquake last year when the Chinese government opened its reporting to foreign journalists. Over the last few months we have been talking to many leaders in China about whether we could start Common Purpose there and I believe that it increasingly makes sense . The sheer talent in China and the hunger of Chinese leaders to learn FROM people all over the world seems finally to be almost – not quite yet but almost – equalled by the rest of the worlds wish to learn at least ABOUT China. I hope that Common Purpose in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta, as a first step, is around the corner, then with luck Shanghai.
That’s 50 people I have met in the last seven days who have told me that they plan to “sit tight” through the recession. And they call themselves leaders!
I had a difficult conversation with an investment banker friend yesterday. He expressed relief that things were starting to look better, and to indicate that the basic banking model was not totally flawed. I asked him what kind of people would be needed at the top in the future. Even though he is a good friend, and knows that I am far from anti-banks, I could hear him curdle. He said that the people at the top of enterprises would always be motivated primarily by making money, and that there was nothing wrong with this.
There is nothing wrong with being motivated by money (quite the opposite), but it’s the “primarily” word that’s the problem for me – I think it belittles enterprise. I have always understood that the role of enterprise is to create the wealth, deliver the goods and provide the services that society needs. This is a fine objective for enterprise, one that puts it at the heart of society. Surely there is a difference between enterprise and self interest?
Sales. So many people don’t want to do sales. It’s somehow seen as dirty and grubby, cheap and unpleasant (and that’s if it’s not underhand, scheming and manipulative). People who understand faiths and cultures no doubt know the root of this attitude. For me, it’s something you have to overcome whether you are in India, Britain or Ghana.
People tell me that they can overcome it if they believe in what they are selling. I don’t understand this. Why would you sell something you did not believe in? You would be guaranteed never to get the opportunity to sell it again.
I think the breakthrough comes when you realise that selling is about solving people’s problems. They have a need – sometimes they know it, sometimes they don’t – but you sell them something that will meet that need, solve their problem for them.
When you realise that you are not selling but solving people’s problems – and genuinely solving them – then sales becomes huge fun.
