A leading article in the Times newspaper catches my eye;

“There is a small collection of things that this country is very good at.  Literature, pharmaceuticals, comedy, financial services, funny opening ceremonies, healthcare.  And cycling.”

It makes me think.

Beyond a number of sports, what IS it that Britain remains world class at, in 2012?

I pose the question on Twitter;

Aside from certain sports (come on Team GB!)… What would you say Britain is still world class at? 

Here are some of the replies…

Bespoke clothing

Politeness

“The literary and dramatic arts (we’ve always been a bit duff at the visual ones). We’re strong on creative industries generally”.

“Design ( Mr Ive), Innovation ( Mr Berners-Lee) Music (take your pick) Film ( Actors, Directors & Crew), Plus ‘Fairness'”

Theatre

“Cynicism and self-depreciation unfortunately. Let’s hope the amazing job we’ve done with the Olympics changes that”.

Galleries and Museums

“Military pageantry & most things military (which don’t involve large nos of soldiers) – training, special forces, being kickass.”

“Hi tech engineering ( F1 ) high class universities, Royalty ( We are REALLY good at that)”

“Our retail sector is one of the best in the world – lots of choice/range/convenience/quality”

“Entrepreneurs, inventors, food, Financial Services.”

” UK is leading the way with social enterprise!”

“Branding and advertising”

The British Government is currently running a GREAT campaign around the world. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office site explains;

“The GREAT campaign is designed to use the platform of the Games in 2012 to showcase Britain’s capabilities, to promote and enhance our reputation abroad and to maximise the economic potential of the Games”.

“The GREAT campaign invites to the world to take a fresh look at everything Britain has to offer. It centres on areas of British excellence focusing on reasons to invest in and visit the UK. These areas are Technology and Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Knowledge, Green, Heritage, Sport, Shopping, Music and Countryside. We want to send out a clear message that Britain is one of the very best places in the world to visit, live, work, study, invest and do business”. 

This is a powerful message to send to the world, and I just hope that it resonates back home in Blighty too.

I was struck by the words of Professor Colin Pillinger (the man behind the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, which was lost on landing), writing in today’s Sun newspaper;

“Where would this generation be without the space programme?  People wouldn’t be watching the Olympics on the other side of the world; you wouldn’t be talking on your mobile phone.  It also inspires children to study science and technology.”

In the coming weeks, much will be written about the Olympic Legacy.  Already, a worrying amount is being asked of schools and “The Government”, when I would rather be plotting how to engage more brands, parents and volunteers in schools.

We tend to think of this concept of an Olympic Legacy literally.  More rowers, cyclists and athletes please.  A healthier, more active nation.

This is important and exciting.

How equally inspiring to imagine a country which looked at itself in the mirror with fresh eyes.

Yesterday, the BBC’s home affairs editor, Mark Easton tweeted something interesting and entertaining;

Each gold is like a motivational trainer telling Britain: “You know what? You are way better than you think you are.”

I agree.

So yes, to more cyclists.

And yes to more world-class tailors, writers, designers and engineers too.

I don’t think that it’s unrealistic for the one to inspire the other.

As others have remarked, we have won a terrific number of medals for sports which involve sitting down.

If anyone in Britain is even remotely interested in helping young people to do something exceptional with their life, now is the time to stand up and be counted.

 

 

The London Olympics are in full swing and, as friends may have noticed, I’m absolutely loving them!

Here, in no particular order, are my top ten moments so far…

1) Matthias Steiner (Beijing Olympics).  This got me started before the games had even begun.  Not for the easily moved, this is a clip of a German weight-lifter at the Beijing games.  For me, it sowed the seed of the idea that sporting achievement happens against the backdrop of a person’s personal life and challenges.

2) Chad’s Dad. When Chad Le Clos beat Michael Phelps in the pool, many may have been surprised, however few will have cheered louder than Chad’s dad, Bert.  Here he is, talking about his ‘beautiful boy’.  I think that Bert deserves his own show…

3) Mo’s final lap.  Mo Farah winning the 10,000 metres has to be one of the most incredible moments of the Games.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been asking local pub landlords to ring a bell as I go past on my evening run…

Here’s a clip of the BBC commentators watching his final lap;

4) Jessica Ennis.  The face of the Games.  And didn’t she live up to it?  A modern champion.  Humble, likeable and very, very talented.

5) Boris dangles from a zip-wire.  For many (in fact most politicians), such an incident would have spelled political ruin.  For Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, getting stuck on a zip-wire was yet another opportunity to secure his reputation as Britain’s most recognisable and, dare I say, most loved politician.

6) “We Won The Olympics”.  When Sophie Hosking and Kat Copeland won Olympic Gold in the women’s rowing, they looked at each other in disbelief.  It was Kat’s wonderfully childlike phrase which will be remembered though… “We Won the Olympics!”

7) Seb Coe meets a Doctor.  Lord Coe describes his most powerful memory of the Games as the moment he met one of the Games Makers (the Oympic Volunteers) on the tube.  The man, Doctor Andrew Hartle had been involved in treating patients in the wake of the 7th of July bombings, and explained;

“For most of the last seven years those two events – the award of the Games and the July bombings – have been pretty inextricably linked.

“I found the opening ceremony really quite cathartic. It really gave me closure. London is now known for something else – it is known for hosting the Games. Being part of it has been an astonishing experience.”

Lord Coe said;

“That really summed up to me what the volunteers are doing here and that is a conversation I will remember for the rest of my life. That was a seismic moment in terms of conversations I’ve had with volunteers.”

Listen to a recording of Seb Coe telling the story on BBC Radio 5 Live.

8  The Opening Ceremony.  Specifically, the moment in  which Danny Boyle’s incredible chimneys rose from the floor of the stadium.  I watched with millions as the Victorians arched their backs in awe;

9) Lizzie Armitstead.  I must confess, there are a number of stars of the Olympics who I had not heard of before the Games began.  Lizzie Armitstead was one of them.  She won Great Britain’s first medal of 2012 and, alongside millions of others, I discovered one of our incredibly inspiring athletes. Humble, ambitious, refreshing.

10) Olympians supporting Olympians.   I found it inspiring to see a Knight (Sir Chris Hoy), still massively in his element, winning Gold for Great Britain.  I also enjoyed seeing his support for his fellow athletes in other disciplines, using Twitter.  It is this kind of camaraderie, between athletes, hosts, Londoners and visitors, which has typified the Games for me.

“That’s how to do it!! Finish the job in style! Just superb @j_ennis !!!!”

So that’s it.  Some funny, some serious.  Some we may forget in a few weeks.  Others we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.

What are your favourite memories from London 2012?

 

As London prepares for the Olympics to roll into town, the news today is full of the transport chaos which is set to ensue.  Hearing about the newly active ‘Olympic Lane’ and the complaints which will doubtless follow, I was reminded of the poster, seen around the world;

“You are not stuck in traffic.  You are traffic.”

I must confess to feeling a sense of loyalty at this time, both to London and to Britain.  There will be many opportunities for Londoners to complain over the coming weeks, and at the risk of sounding like a toadying sycophant, I’m going to resist that urge.  The world is watching and, as the saying goes, this is a brilliant opportunity to keep calm and carry on.  In fact, I’m reminded of a favourite line by Mark Twain;

“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.”

Yes, call me old-fashioned.  Friends of London and Britain have a world-class opportunity to decide what to say, and what not to.

*****

I was thinking about road-blocks earlier this month.  At lunch with a well-known foundation, we were asked to consider how we could get more social entrepreneurs helping the next generation.

Guests spoke of new platforms and the idea of harnessing the latest technology.

For me, there was an unspoken truth which, being shy and retiring, I chose to share, and ended up getting pretty passionate about.

Many people claim to be ‘up for helping others’, and passing on what they have learned.

Sadly, however upbeat their intentions,  their day-to-day behaviour simply doesn’t reflect this desire.

Here are a few questions for them;

1) Do you regularly (really regularly) distil the lessons you’ve learned, the mistakes you’ve made, the people you’ve met and the organisations you’ve found helpful, sharing them online for anyone to read about?

2) Have you made any sustained effort to make sure that those insights reach the widest possible audience, by offering your views to better-read publications than your own personal or company sites?

2) Do you make yourself accessible enough to people starting out?  If I Google ‘contact Fred Snooks’ for your name, is it clear to me how to get in touch?

3) Do you regularly (really regularly) make useful (sometimes spontaneous) introductions between people, especially those who are just beginning their career?

4) Do you make a point of sharing (especially using social media) every time you discover a useful article or resource?

If it’s a massive YES to all, then that’s fantastic.

I know it isn’t for me.

My hunch is that breakthroughs will come sooner through changes in behaviour than the invention of new platforms,  however exciting.

If we are not connecting, we are being a barrier.

If we are not helping people, we are slowing them down.

“If you want to build a ship,
don’t drum up the men
to gather wood, divide the
work and give orders.

Instead, teach them to yearn
for the vast and endless sea.”

Antoine de Saint Exupery

Speaking of yearning, I’ve just heard about a rather exciting voyage.  For a few years, the Unreasonable Institute has been bringing together groups of twenty five entrepreneurs, in Boulder, Colorado, for an intensive bootcamp.  Once in Boulder, the organisers leave no stone unturned in finding some of the world’s best mentors to join the party.

Here is the pitch:

“Imagine if the likes of Richard Branson, Mother Theresa, Muhammad Yunus, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, and Rosa Parks came together to develop solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. Now stop imagining. That’s what we do with 25 of the world’s most promising entrepreneurs at our 6-week Institute. Our secret sauce? Everyone, including visiting mentors and capital partners, lives under the same roof and helps build their ventures together“

I think you’ll agree,  Boulder sounds like it rocks…

As George Bernard Shaw observed, progress depends on the unreasonable man.  Therefore, in the spirit of gathering no moss, the Unreasonable men and women have decided to throw off their Coloradan shackles and take the project somewhere that even the more imaginative entrepreneurs might not have guessed;

Onto a boat.

Yes, Unreasonable at Sea is brilliantly simple;

“20 Mentors. 100 days. 1 ship. 14 countries. 10 ventures. 1 belief that entrepreneurship will change the world”.

Yes, it sounds amazing.

Applications close on June 22nd.

*****

Andrew St George knows a thing or two about a life on the ocean waves.  After three years of research, he has just published his book, Royal Navy Way of Leadership.

It’s well worth a read, and one of my favourite sections is one in which he lists twelve leadership qualities.  These have been gleaned from literally hundreds of interviews with serving and retired members of the armed forces.  At the very least, they are inspiring food for thought;

1) Capacity for Judgement and Decision Making (“the ability to judge, decide and convey that decision succinctly and persuasively depends on high levels of thoughtfulness and intellect, and the ability to decide and to act fast”)

2) Cheerfulness (“no one follows a pessimist and sense of humour is part of Royal Navy ethos”)

3) Clarity and Vision (“the key aim of any leader is clarity of intent so that people know where they stand”)

4) Communication Skills (“great leaders communicate in all ways: by the way they stand, speak, write and work. However, great leaders are also great listeners”)

5) Confidence (“in oneself and in others”)

6) Humanity and Humility (“the other leadership qualities cannot display themsleves without this quality”)

7) Innovation (“being creative, resourceful, agile and sometimes lateral rather than direct”)

8 ) Integrity (“integrity and trustworthiness are important moral standards.  They are conveyed and tested with every decision and every action”)

9) Moral and Physical Courage (“a rare quality, and essential for leadership”)

10) Professional Knowledge (“all other leadership qualities depend on this foundation”)

11) Stamina (“most great leaders have stamina, both physical and moral, which makes them highly resilient as individuals”)

12) Trust (“the ability to trut and be trusted as an individual, a team or a unit”)

I recommend Andrew’s book – buy it for yourself, or for someone you think might enjoy reading it.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”  George Bernard Shaw

Something remarkable is happening in Vauxhall.

Contrary to what conspiracy theorists may think, I am not referring to the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, based just next to the bridge.

Instead, I’m thinking of bridges of a different kind.  The first, between unemployment and work.  The second, between education and the world of advertising.

At the Spring Project, Darius Norell and colleagues are cooking up something extraordinary.  In their words, it is about “radical employability”.

“a social enterprise that brings together job seekers, recruiters and empty spaces to provide world class training.  The three foundations of the training are: being of service, personal responsibility and integrity. More than 1,000 people have participated in the training since its launch in January 2010.”

On the face of it, then, this is about employment.  As you enter the vast hangar which houses the project, it is clear that this is no normal training centre.  Above the main space hangs a Japanese sign which would  look more at home in a dojo.  The connection is more than coincidence, as it soon becomes clear that, for the founders, the shifts which they are interested in are as much about state of mind, as state of job.

The open day I attended was a chance for employers, and other interested parties to look around and quiz the team.  We  met a group of students who had recently completed a local challenge, which involved performing three ‘random acts of kindness’ in the local area, on a series of unsuspecting strangers.  The girl I met had (in a small group), cleaned a car mirror, straightened a shirt and cleared some plates from a pub table.

The exercise interested me for two reasons.  Firstly, as friends will know, I’m convinced that most people leave school with a worrying inability to engage with strangers.  This is partly because we are taught (or brainwashed) to believe that strangers are dangerous.  This is initially for our own safety, however we forget “the big reveal”, and most people leave college misinformed and ill-equipped.

Secondly, ’employment’ is, at least in part, about helping people, for money.  If we can encourage people to spot small opportunities to add value, I’m interested how this can lead to finding other, paid ‘acts of kindness’?

As the Spring day came to an end, the students (on their one day course)  introduced themselves to the guests and shared an insight or two from their day.  A number of them talked about their state of unemployment leading, they hoped, to ‘a job’.  Whilst I understood this in principle, the framing made me think.

Standing in that huge space, something occurred to me;

Life is a series of jobs.

Some big, some little.  Some last a few minutes,  others a few hours.  Some are paid, some are not.

When we talk about people being ‘unemployed’, maybe we shouldn’t rush to see the solution as a ‘big’, ‘multi-year’ job.  Perhaps the solution to unemployment is simply ’employment’, fuelled by a series of jobs.

This would lead to new types of organisations.  Little Job Boards.  Little Job Centres.  A new way of thinking.  A new slogan;

Little Jobs For Life.

Seen in this ‘stepping-stone’ way, it  may be possible to break down the challenge of finding ‘work’, because rather than a permanent home, finding a job becomes a question of finding someone, who will pay you something, for something.

Imagine you are an employer, and someone approaches you, asking for ‘a job’.  You might (rightly) think about that as a serious commitment.  You probably pause.  It’s a big question.

Might you think differently if someone asked if you had any “jobs which needed doing”?  Any Little Jobs.

I’m interested in this space between ‘full-time employment’ in the traditional sense, and ‘entrepreneurship’, the idea of starting a company, which goes onto employ many people.  Often we see the world divided into the employers and the employees.  There is something more powerful, and more subtle going on.

Not so fast, I hear you say.  If your so-called ‘solution’ to unemployment is ‘simply’ employment, then who is going to employ these people, as they embark upon this ‘series of jobs’.

Simple:  They are.

It’s about a wider understanding of ‘self-employment’.

It’s a big idea.

The thought that everyone can and should see themselves as self-employed, no matter what they are doing.

This way, at least in terms of mind-set, people would hire themselves.  

They become self employed.

This, I think, is a serious point and not simply semantics.

You are now employed.  Employed by yourself.  Now you need to find your next job, not ‘a job’.

You are not a gaping chasm away from ‘work’.

You are ‘in work’.

An actor does not stop being an actor, between jobs.

Your challenge is to move between jobs, to make money, to enjoy yourself.

The jobs you are now seeking may be smaller, and closer than you think.

 *****

If you imagine a school dean as an elderly, buttoned-up principal with half-moon glasses and a frosty glare… then you probably haven’t met Marc Lewis.

 Also to be found amongst the maze of roads near to Vauxhall station, this extremely undeanlike dean is creating a new kind of school.  A school for the communication arts.

Two dot oh.

The ‘oh’ comes when you realise just how ambitious Marc Lewis is. The serial entrepreneur wants the School of Communication Arts 2.0 to be the best ad school in the world.  And I think that it will be.

This year, for the school’s fourth intake, over twelve hundred students applied for less than forty places.  Three hundred will be seen for an interview, some of which will be spent onstage presenting work to fellow students, some in small teams working on a pitch, the rest in one-to-one interviews.  And Marc doesn’t care about their grades;

“If you got good grades at school, that’s great. We won’t ask though. We look for people who think a bit differently, are passionate about advertising, and who can string a sentence together. We are always looking for rough diamonds. Love ’em”

The school is unusually well connected to business, boasting a pool of over five hundred mentors, many of whom can be found ‘hanging out’ for a morning in Vauxhall, rather than the more formal ‘chalking and talking’ involved in contributions to other establishments.

The Dean is not simply interested in finding his students ‘jobs’, although in this regard he is succeeding, with the last cohort receiving over six offers per student.  No, Marc is interested in developing Ideapreneurs.  Students with the get-up-and-go to launch their own businesses.

Just one morning at the school (an unashamedly ‘shabby’ building, next to a church) convinced me that I had crossed paths with some of the stars of Britain’s creative future.  Mark my words, in the same way that we talk about the Cambridge Footlights or the Brit School, so we will come to see the SCA2 as a breeding ground, and launch pad for world-class talent.

Great institutions will always try to evolve and adapt, however some of the most interesting projects I’m seeing at the moment seem to be coming from people with the courage and commitment to start again, from a blank sheet of paper.

“If you would get ahead, be a bridge” Welsh Proverb