Signposts & Weathercocks

I have a lot of time for Tony Benn. He is a genuine politician, an honest man, and someone always worth listening to. I heard him recently put in refreshingly simple terms the whole essence of leadership. It summed things up for me admirably.

Signposts are reliable. They provide you with a sense of direction. If you wander off and get lost, when you come back to them they are still pointing in the same direction. They stay firm and committed to where they believe they are going. They are not knocked off course easily.

Weathercocks on the other hand change at the whim of the wind. They seek out forums, opinion polls and swing with the tide of popularism. They cannot be relied upon.

Give me a signppost over a weathercock any day.

Change Your Mind More

"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." wrote George Bernard Shaw.

Pining for the Fjords

Just back from my first ever trip to Scandinavia. I loved Oslo and Stockholm - two contrasting but equally enchanting cities. But the western fjords of Norway was the area that blew me away. This is a magical land. A land of legend, vikings, longships, trolls, and wonderful modern day people. The snow capped mountains around the Aurlandfjord drew me to them. We climbed higher and higher round hairpin bends, the car nose pointing to the sky. This felt like the top of the world. Quiet, peaceful and wild.
This is a part of Norway that is unspoilt and uncrowded. Just a few miles away in Flam, the crowds of tourists mill about and flood off the cruise ships. But up here, high above the fjord, it is tranquil, beautiful and stunning. This corner of the world is truly amazing and one I have started to pine for already.

What were you working on before you checked your email?

The question "What were you working on before you checked your email?" struck me between the eyes one morning. It immediately summed up to me all that is wrong with email - or at least the way we allow it run our lives. Don't get me wrong - I love my email. I'm pretty attached to it and wouldn't want to go back to a pre-email, snail mail world. But, how often does your day take on a different course than what you had planned after you start reading your email? How often does an email intrude on your day and take you on a totally different journey. Is your email ruling you, rather than you being in control of it? I received the message from a regular newsletter I receive from David Brownstein, Hollywood Coach. I worked with David a few years ago when I was being trained as a Leadership Coach, and he has some great messages such as this on his blog. I recommend it to you. Click on the title to read David's newsletter.

Let's not lose the plot

Is anyone else feeling that this whole MPs and their expenses thing is getting out of hand? Of course we need to weed out the immoral MPs. Yes, we need a major overhaul of the system and bring it in to the 21st Century. There are enough major companies out there, who have got perfectly satisfactory and workable expenses systems, which could easily be adapted and reused for Parliament. Just get on and do it.

But for goodness sake, let's get refocused on what is really important. This whole thing is a ridiculous distraction from all the major issues we are facing across the globe. It is incredible the amount of attention and outrage that a small number of our money-grabbing MPs are generating. If even half of this level of attention was paid by the general public to the most serious and appalling issues we face, then our ability to drive change as a society would be unstoppable. Let's get our priorities back on what really matters, the hard challenges, and stop focusing on the 'easy options'.

What is Web 2.0?

It depends which book you read or which guru you listen to. But basically it is a loose and unplanned confederation of functionality on the web, which acts together like some giant organism. Perhaps a coral reef is a better analogy. Beautiful to look at, but what's it for? Under threat from predators, in the shape of the environment and divers. At best, it is a collaboration experiment on a grand scale; collaboration of both creativity and chaos. It is natural selection at work. The fit survive and people vote with their feet. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube. Today's superspecies. Tomorrow's dinosaurs? What are the small mammals waiting in the trees for their turn to inherit cyberspace? Who are the birds of the air or all-pervasive insects? Twitter? Aptly named perhaps.

The Significance of Stones

I've got two books on the go at the moment (well actually I have 4 - but only two I want to allude to). Both have stones as their central theme. "We Think" is all about the Internet, Facebook, Blogging, Twitter phenomenon, and what it all means and where it is heading. It uses pebbles and boulders as metaphor and is proving to be a really stimulating read. Looking forward to the rest of it. The one I can't put down, though, is Stone of Destiny by Ian Hamilton. Ian, together with Kay Matheson, Gavin Vernon and Alan Stuart planned and executed the most daring robbery inflicted on the English establishment in centuries. Four students from Glasgow University (my alma mater) repossessed for the Scottish people what was rightfully theirs - the Stone of Scone from Westiminster Abbey in 1950. To make the reading of this true story even more enjoyable, I have a personally signed copy by the author - a gift from my mate Mike, who is a good friend and colleague of Ian's. I must hunt out the movie they made of this story a year or so back and have a look. My appetite has been whetted.