Paths to Enlightenment - Day 5

Day 5

Take Five (the biggest selling jazz number of all time) is the best known piece
by musician Dave Brubeck, viewed as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.
Take Five is on the 1959 album Time Out, significant for its use of uncommon, complex time
signatures - influenced by the pianist's classical training.
Brubeck had intended to become a vet (his father ran a cattle ranch) but
his popularity as a weekend pianist in nightclubs changed his mind.
If you wish to hear Take 5 here is the link to it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmDDOFXSgAs
or click below.

Today's post is by the inspirational Alison Smith. She wrote her piece while "taking 5", so to speak, on a retreat in Scotland.  Alison is a procurement specialist and an expert in change and facilitation. She lives in Scotland, just north of Edinburgh, in Fife, but works where she is needed and is a respected and valued coach. She writes an excellent, wide ranging blog: www.thepurchasingcoach.co.uk, which focuses on the challenges facing many of us (not just those in procurement or work). You can follow Alison on Twitter via @PurchasingCoach.

*****************************************************

When I first joined twitter the fine band of HR twits/tweeple welcomed me with open arms. Thank you so much for that. A common bond found perhaps in putting people first - despite our professions having a different title - me with my procurement hat and you with your various HR ones.

The common thread between both professions was ever present at #CIPD14 earlier this year, when I read of HR grappling with being taken seriously by the organisations it supports and works with. The same challenge we in procurement have, and it would seem, many "support" functions find themselves facing, if tweets at the time are anything to go by.

This blog explores how I have addressed the perceptions others have of the profession I am a member of, and of me. The path towards our enlightenment perhaps - but, as I write this whilst ensconced on a spiritual workshop in Northern Scotland, I would say that, wouldn't I?!

Enlightenment is never about the collective but the individual - I wonder if that's also true when we search for the professional enlightenment we all so much desire.

In the past we've banded together and identified with our professional archetype - trying to change the archetype from within. Forgetting however that the very essence of the archetype, its patterns and ways of being, have been forged in steel. Each belief, value and behaviour laid down over the years for all to obey. The more we fight against its grip the tighter it holds us.

Enlightenment comes from leaving behind the redundant archetype and embracing a new one. A new archetype free of those negative perceptions, and still warm and malleable, as those at the forefront boldly go where no (wo)man has gone before.

Is that what I achieved this year? Is that the path I took? I'll let you decide.

I started the year as a full time procurement interim for one client - commuting each week from Fife Scotland (near the Forth Road Bridge) to Liverpool. A change from the ad hoc procurement and communication and influencing training, coaching and consulting I'd done for the previous 7 years with numerous clients.

Forth Road railway bridge at dawn

A change not least because I couldn't run away. I couldn't hide. I'd make a statement, or take an action, and was there the next day to see the repercussions of such.

The biggest insight for me was the perceptions others had of me, internally and externally:

"You're not like other procurement people we've met"

"Wow - honesty and fairness - that's new"

"Your openness is very helpful"

"Trust isn't something we encounter that often"

"Its obvious how much you care"

"You've brought the best out in us/them"

"We've never done that before - ever"

"I've really appreciated your collaborative approach"

"You've taken responsibility for ensuring we've kept on track - irrespective of whose responsibility it was"

"Thank you - you've helped us get the results we needed"

The journey didn't come without its challenges - the politics and the game playing that were ever present - however much I played a different tune. The challenge then became about not getting dragged into such games!

Oh I didn't get it right all the time. In fact think I got it wrong more than I got it right - but isn't that what enlightenment is all about? Doing what you do well - well, and practicing the stuff that comes less easily. Honesty, truth and openness are not easy bed fellows when faced with these games. Even if on reflection I realise they were the hand I needed to play more often at those times.

When I've blogged in the past, preaching at those in my profession to change their ways, its fallen on deaf ears. The more I've ranted and raged the deafer those ears have become. I realise it’s because in those moments I've been trying to change the old procurement archetype, and that's a structure that is immutable, and therefore it's an impossible task.

Since finishing that interim assignment my blogs have had more hits than ever, more engagement, more interaction. Simply because I think I've shared what I do - shared the beliefs, values and behaviours of a new procurement archetype (with the occasional rant granted!). At some level it’s resonated with others.

Sharing
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Slowly others it seems are also abandoning the old archetypes and joining those of us on a journey to our professional enlightenment. I realise it’s not about what we call the archetype it's about living it for all to see. Laying down the structures and patterns, so others that follow can, and will, find it more easily - so that they may know there IS another way.

I know I'm speaking to the converted, to those already laying down the new HR archetype. I just hope that, as you've learned of the path I've taken, the insights you've had will support you all in your quest for professional enlightenment - because together we WILL get there.

Wishing you all seasons greetings and a 2015 full of new opportunities and surprise.

View from the Dining room at Findhorn

Stepping into the Future - Day 4

Day 4

International Rescue's Thunderbird 4
30ft long 11t wide
Propulsion: 6 electrically driven reversible axial-flow turbine impellers
Max speed 160 knots underwater and 40 knots on the surface
Piloted by Aquanaut Gordon Tracy

Today's post is from a man whom I have had the privilege of sharing much of the past year with, David D'Souza. He has been a wonderful colleague and is a valued friend. If it wasn't for Twitter we would never have met and my life would certainly be the poorer. He is a popular and well known voice, in work related and HR communities, (both on and off line); David is bright, passionate, values-driven, knowledgable, funny, loyal, challenging and keen to encourage positive change (in individuals, organisations and society). He was the brains behind both Books of Blogs and hence many bloggers now can state in all honesty that they are published authors and that their book(s) made it to number 1 on Amazon. 

If you don't yet, you should follow him on Twitter via @dds180 and read his blog. He will make you smile, frequently surprise you and usually encourage you to think. I am indebted to him on many levels - the top image (International Rescue that can go to great depths and lengths to see that the right things occur) is very apt. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank him for his support and encouragement (not just to me but also to many of the readers of this post).

***************************************************************************

I've always been absorbed by the possibilities of what might have been. All of the realities that didn't come to pass.

I can't remember the first time I heard about The Butterfly Effect, but I do recall from an early age understanding how mistaken people were to say about football matches 'we would have scored three if we'd put those chances away'.

Because logic dictates that if you had scored the first of those chances then everything would have changed. Everybody would have returned to the centre circle and the patterns, behaviours, mentalities and choices that evolved would be completely different to what happened in the first reality. The romantic comedy Sliding Doors, featuring Gwyneth Paltrow (before she became odd) and John Hannah (before he was in a position to turn down films like Sliding Doors) featured this pattern of thought to its conclusion. What would happen to your day if just one small facet of it changed? In the film it was the main protagonist missing a train that led to the change in her life - in real life we are always just making trains or just missing them. Our days fundamentally change based on those events.

John Hannah and Gwyneth Paltrow in "Sliding Doors"

Unless you travel via Southern Rail in which case you spend most days watching departure boards giving you information on fresh delays...

This never-ending schism of possible realities manifests itself in similar ways with our careers, with our relationships and with every business. The impact of small things often dictates the path of the bigger things. My daughter is a notoriously bad sleeper. If she had slept better on just one night a few years ago then maybe my wife and I wouldn't have cracked and decided we couldn't survive without being nearer family. In which case we wouldn't have moved to the South East. Maybe I'd still be working and living in Yorkshire. And if I was still living in Yorkshire then I wouldn't be writing this blog about having moved to the South East. I probably wouldn't even be writing, I certainly wouldn't know the people that I know now. My life would be poorer for it - I assume. My life would certainly be different for it. That's all I can really know. 

It's A Wonderful Life remains my favourite film and my company was named after Clarence, one of the characters in it. Simon Heath is a person I'm lucky to call a friend and he created a wonderful logo for me based on Clarence that I never got around to using...I wouldn't have met Simon if my daughter was a better sleeper. That's how life works.

The film centres on the impact of a man by an incident outside of his control. The only thing he can control is his reaction to the event, but the beauty of the film is the gradual realisation of how much a difference to other people one person can make. Our worlds are shaped by the people around us. Social media allows for even more random collisions, but make no mistake that our interconnectedness is what determines our lives and always has been. This isn't new.

I was lucky enough to be Best Man at a friend's wedding a few years ago, It's A Wonderful Life happens to be his favourite film too and we now have a ritual of finding a way to watch it with each other every year. He is a far better person than I would ever hope to be and one of those who goes through life constantly making the difference for others. I read out the following quote from the film at his wedding as part of my speech - "Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?". What we don't tend to appreciate is that our lives are influenced not just by those closest to us, but by a network more complex and intertwined than we could imagine.    

When I was travelling to this year's CIPD conference I got talking to the lady opposite me on the train. I don't cope very well in an environment without stimulus and the very best type of stimulus is conversation, so if you are ever unfortunate enough to sit near me on public transport then please expect a conversation. The story of the mystery train woman was a wonderful 'sliding doors' story. She has been working in a special needs school for 7 years. After qualifying as a teacher she had taken a few years out and then found it very hard to get a job in a school. I hadn't realised how many applications there are for each teaching role - it was a sobering experience listening to her describe her job hunt. It is a tough market. Eventually she had give up on a permanent role and settled into supply teaching, but disliked the routine and the lack of certainty it brought. 

One day a teacher at a school on the other side of the city called in sick (sliding doors moment...). The request to get up at short notice and travel to the other side of the city on a rainy day was the final straw that triggered a decision. That decision was to call agencies and say that any kind of longer term contract work would be acceptable. She just wanted a permanent home.  One of the agencies had a role starting immediately. 


Nursery School, Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy, 1898

So this experienced and qualified teacher started work as a Junior IT Support technician covering for maternity leave. Whilst pushing around a trolley full of laptops and freely admitting she knew nothing about IT the teacher got to know the rest of the staff. When the first permanent vacancy (non IT related...) came up she got the job. She is still there now. 

Every career and every life is made up of little decisions. Every decision is the result of the events that shaped the thinking and feeling behind it.

A wise person once said you regret the decisions that you didn't make, but in reality we can never understand how different our parallel lives would have been. We can't change the past, but we can always change how we step into the future. I love the fact that I met someone on a train (thanks to Virgin for allocating that seat) - who has been supporting children who really need support for over 7 years.

I love that this came about because she decided to pretend to be an IT Technician. She decided to do that because she didn't like getting out of bed at short notice on a rainy day. That decision came about because someone she never met was sick - in some ways the most incidental person in the story is the most important trigger for all that went after. I hope that person was sick because they had consumed too much champagne and strawberries having the night of their life. They deserve it. 

Life is rich, unpredictable and full of stories that we never hear. I hope you get to make some great stories this year - I hope I get to hear some of them.

Merry Christmas and I hope you have the best New Year that is possible.

Thank you for Being a Friend - Andrew Gold

Recalculating... Day 3

Day 3



3 Fates - Painting by John Strudwick, "The Golden Thread", 1885
Thetis is the goddess of creation and the dispositions.
Poros is responsible for the path of the individual’s life.
Tekmor determines the ending.
Often an ending is also the start of something new...

One of the best things about social media is its ability to connect people who otherwise probably would never have met. I have made some wonderful friends and one of my most treasured is Paul Thomas, the writer of the below post. I am so glad that our paths crossed. Paul is one of Europe's leading experts on cheese (but not in his writing) and is a top food scientist; he is erudite, quick witted, a fabulous family man and delightful company. You can follow him on Twitter via @wheymaker  

****************************************************************

Call me old fashioned but I’ve always liked maps. I happened to be looking at one while stuck in motorway traffic a few weeks ago – much to the amusement of passengers in the car beside me. They waved their satnav out of the car window. “You should get one of these” they mocked. I prayed for cloud cover.

Satnav is an incredible invention. You tell it where you want to go and it tells you how to get there. No judgement or skill required. Earlier this year I stopped to give assistance when a truck carrying a wide load collided with a small van and became wedged in a narrow, sunken lane. “The satnav sent me this way” said the truck driver. Sadly the satnav declined to make a witness statement to the insurance company.

The greatest limitation of satnav is not, however, its lack of accountability nor its intolerance of weather conditions. It is the fact that sometimes a person does not know where they should be heading. Sometimes you need to look at a map and see where you could go. There are also times when there are no maps; you have to navigate unfamiliar territory and start to draw your own.

When I graduated in 1999 with an honours degree in biochemistry I had little idea of what I really wanted to do with my life. After failing to land several jobs in pharmaceutical development, I was fairly certain that science didn’t feature significantly in my future.

After an unusual career switch and a decade working as an affineur and cheesemaker, last year I gave up the security of paid-employment set up a raw-milk cheesemaking business. I had planned to undertake some technical consultancy and to teach some cheesemaking courses to help to pay the bills during the start-up. Eventually the phone started ringing quite a lot – but we were not being deluged with orders for cheese. The calls were coming from cheesemakers who needed advice on food safety, staff-training, hazard analysis, product development and ripening defects.

One of Paul's delicious cheeses

Last month, after some difficult decisions, I decided to cease making cheese at the end of the 2014. With my focus directed elsewhere, it was becoming impossible to make enough cheese for the business to thrive.

Another of Paul's cheeses
The 2 cheeses shown were names Dorothy and Little Anne
after his and his wife's grandmothers

As evidence of a thriving food-culture, there are actually quite a lot of cheesemakers in the UK now. That’s a lot of competition for a new cheesemaking business but it is also a large target market for a dwindling number of technical consultants. Many of them are retiring and there are few people coming through to replace them.

In the past year I have written papers and delivered lectures on cheesemaking and dairy science, I’ve been elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology and I’ve started to train the cheesemakers of the future. Last week I found myself at a dairy hygiene meeting in the Netherlands, making significant contributions to a discussion on DNA-based techniques for detecting STEC E.coli in foods. I appear to have come around full-circle.

Paul in action

Still, in spite of the progress I’ve made and the opportunities that are opening, there is still a sense of disappointment about the business that I’m closing. A hint of failure perhaps? When we were talking about it, my wife offered this advice:

“That’s the thing about a path – you can’t always dictate where it goes. Sometimes you just have to follow it.”

She’s a very wise woman, my wife. She doesn’t use a satnav.

Happy Roots - Day 2

Day 2

2 is the smallest, first and only even prime number
The evolution of the number two, to the shape (glyph) we now recognise, is:

In Japan and China 2 is still depicted by two horizontal lines.

Today's post has travelled a long way to get here and is a continuation of a story that was started in 2012. It is written by Zoe Mounsey, who was the Head of Business Intelligence and Change Management at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain before taking time out to study and then emigrating to New Zealand, with her family. She is currently a Researcher at Massey University, looking into the psychosocial impact of the Canterbury earthquake on healthcare professionals. Zoe is a longstanding and popular voice on Twitter (you can follow her via @zoemounsey).

****************************************************************************

I feel like I am writing to a long lost friend as this is now the third post from me in the advent series. My first was in 2012 which was all about the starting of a new journey as we were about to move to New Zealand. In 2013 I shared the story of our first year and some of the key lessons I had learnt from the journey. Transition was the key theme for 2013 as we settled into our new lives. 2014 has been about putting down our roots. We had both sets of parents come out to visit this year so there was that sense of showcasing our new lifestyle to see if it met with approval. I am very conscious of the hurt and upset our decision to emigrate caused some people so there was a desire to show off everything New Zealand has to offer from stunning scenery, amazing food and wine to the freedom that living in a small community offered the kids. We also bought a house – the process was much easier and quicker than in the UK – so feel more settled living somewhere that we can make our home.

Vineyards, New Zealand

For this year’s Advent series we have been asked to reflect on the theme of ‘Paths and Perceptions’. This is quite pertinent for me as 2014 has been the year in which I have turned my focus on myself and thought about the path I want to take in the future. My focus in recent years has been very much on others as you would expect it to be in the early years of having children and last year was about helping everyone to settle in New Zealand. So this year I have turned the spotlight on myself and thought about what makes me happy, what helps me to feel fulfilled – thriving rather than just surviving.

I have fed my passion for learning by doing a few MOOCs (online courses) in different areas – indigenous studies to learn more about Maori history and culture, irrational behaviour to understand people better, science of happiness as I am really interested in how we think about happiness and organisational analysis to have a better understanding of how work is organised. It has been very different to my previous studies, which were very academic in nature with lots of assignments and deadlines. This was more relaxed and self-paced, especially as I was doing it out of interest rather than the desire to achieve a qualification. I have also taken myself out of my comfort zone to connect with others more – a fantastic trip to Auckland to meet lots of Twitter peeps and attending Tedx Wellington were highlights. I feel I have broadened out my areas of interest and paid attention to wider ideas and thoughts. I have also started writing, but this is pretty hit and miss to be honest – finding it hard to let go of the idea that writing should be easy rather than hard work. I took on the physical challenge of walking from Wellington to home (some 50kms over two days), which has reminded me of how much I enjoy walking and losing myself in the landscape.

Walking near Wellington, view of New Zealand's 1st lighthouse

In all of this I have been considering my future path, thinking about what I want for the future for me. I haven’t really come up with any clear answers so, rather than trying to come up with a five year plan, I am trying to be aware of the values that drive me and use that to guide my way. An opportunity came up recently would have ticked many boxes for me professionally – working with smart people on issues of health and happiness for New Zealanders, with a good salary and status to boot. But the more I learnt about the organisation the more it didn’t feel right – there are good people there doing good work, but I wasn’t sure I would feel at home there. I realised that in following some of my ambitions I would still have to compromise my ideals in other areas of my life. Lots has been written about whether or not you can ‘have it all’ – a fulfilling career alongside a happy family life. I am not giving up on it – not yet - but I am recognising that there are still compromises (mostly mine) to make. My current role may not meet all of my aspirations in relation to a career, but it provides me with challenging work that is contributing to a better world (I hope) and gives me the flexibility I need to still be there for the kids. I hope my path for 2015 takes me closer to finding the balance between meeting my own professional aspirations and maintaining the family lifestyle that we enjoy.

Psychosocial impact of earthquakes -
illustration from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1886
depicting garden wall collapsing during the Charleston earthquake

So 2014 has been a bit me, me, me but as a wise person (@projectlibero) once said to me “if you are not happy, then no one else will be happy” so, by focusing on me a bit more, hopefully, I am adding to our overall family happiness.

Merry Christmas to everyone and may 2015 be everything you hope it to be

Zoe

PS living in New Zealand is still awesome