Is “The Right Thing To Do?” the right thing to do?

Posted on December 12, 2012 by David Tebbutt

Last December we embarked on this blog with little idea where the journey would take us. We just felt that a lot of people of good will were out there with good ideas about how to make our world better. All we had to do was find them. Or, better yet, for them to find us.

And, through a mix of word of mouth and downright cajoling, they delivered their thoughts, based on their life experiences, for us to share with a wider audience. And, for that, we are truly grateful to every one of them. Here they are:

As you probably know, this site is non-commercial. Everything is voluntary and the most anyone gets is the opportunity to see their words published and to give themselves a slight exposure to a wider audience. Some benefit from this more than others. No names, no pack drill.

I’d just like to say “Thank you” to every contributor and reader and wish you all seasonal greetings and a happy new year. We’re going to take a bit of a break now. I’ll leave you with a list of the contributions and perhaps you’ll enjoy reading some of those you missed.

Why things will get better - from a Matt Ridley TED talk
Entrepreneur Extraordinaire, Felix Dennis, on Good Fortune
Never mind GDP, what about Gross National Happiness? - from a Chip Conley TED talk
Reconnecting kids with the school curriculum - Ray Maguire
Has the Khan Academy found the right way to educate? - from a Salman Khan TED talk
Why green makes business sense - Ben Goldsmith
Is sustainable growth a myth? - Clive Longbottom
Rag and bone men of the information world - Euan Semple
The power of community Mark Chillingworth
Where’s the ‘social’ in ‘accountancy’? - Martin Banks
Mind the gap - Hussein Dickie
Inhumane HR behaviour - Tracey Poulton
Listen! (To the right people) - David Tebbutt on Cognitive Edge work
Get on the trust trajectory - Rob Wirszycz
Baby, bathwater, beware … - Anne Marie McEwan
Is green the new gold? - Tarquin Henderson
Hunters got us into this mess – will farmers get us out? - Dr. Bill Nichols
Fairtrade, Organic or Me-Me? - Andy Redfern
How sticky are your labels? - David Tebbutt
Reputation is deeds, not words - Tari Lang
Passion + talent = magic - From Sir Ken Robinson’s work
Authenticity vs perception - Dr. Bill Nichols
Could the fly save humanity? - Jason J. Drew
Ignorance and prejudice - Ibukun Adebayo
Superstorm Sandy: what would you have done? - David Tebbutt
Doing the right thing – even when no one is watching - Neil Crofts
Stubbornness – The Nailhouse Principle - Drew Buddie

So, what do you reckon? Is “The Right Thing To Do?” the right thing to do? Do you know anyone who would like to share their learnings from real life for the greater good?

Please point them at me trttd@tebbo.com. Thank you. (PS It could be you too!)

Ignorance and prejudice

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Ibukun Adebayo

I’ve never been one to cry foul when someone calls me a “‘black’ whatever”; I’m usually more concerned about the ‘whatever’ bit than the fact they’ve confirmed what I’ve known since birth, i.e. that I’m ‘black’.

I once started a job in IT whereby I met with so much resistance in my early days there that I felt like taking up kick-boxing to relieve the stress. I was turned down for kick-boxing lessons because, apparently, my massive feet could have knocked an opponent into a coma.

Eventually, the manager who had led the unwelcoming pack told me one day, “You know you’re the best leader I’ve ever worked with and the only problem I had with you at the beginning is you’re black and you’re a woman, and I’ve never worked for either before”.

Okay, so how did this two-pronged ‘revelation’ affect me, and did it influence my views on the IT industry? It didn’t really. Many people have prejudices and biases, yet very few are as honest as this manager was with his straightforward admission that he was prejudiced against women in IT and that his ignorance about reporting to a black woman was affecting his professional relationship with me.

Things got better after this; and after he’d realised my massive ideas matched my foot size (ten, if you’re interested). While on the subject of my feet, I also take strides of purpose while carrying my team members along with me. Moving to the other end of my body, my unusually large nose means I sniff about and probe and ask my managers the right questions, expecting them to provide answers as I steer my department towards our agreed vision.

In the CIO (Chief Information Officer) community, things do need to be spiced up a bit. Attending CIO conferences (we met at one – ed.) is still a pretty testing experience for me as, despite being born in Balham, I’ve always enjoyed rice – preferably extra-large plates with curry, beef and goat meat – with some nice chilli hot pepper, whereas conference delegates tend to be presented with bland tasting rice, sometimes err… dripping with water, and a few tiny bits of lamb, while, of course the ‘polite’ thing to do is to take about two tablespoons of rice and move on to an equally bland tasting sauce. But, more importantly, you don’t see many female CIOs at these events because there are so few women in ‘C’ positions in IT in the UK. And you see even fewer women there from ethnic minorities.

I don’t believe in quotas, rather in appointing the right person to each role whatever their colour, gender or religious orientation. Sexual orientation shouldn’t even come into the recruitment equation, after-all nobody should care who you get into bed with, as long as you’re personally not being asked to get into bed with anyone other than the love of your personal life.

Managerial life really isn’t that stressful and, because of my baptism of fire into a role where I received affirmation of my race and gender plus of my credentials as a good leader, I’ve learned that leadership means being able to differentiate between prejudice and ignorance. It means being able to deal with any conflict that arises from prejudicial behaviour, and being able to identify development needs where ignorance is the issue. It means ensuring that the ignorant are developed until their ignorance turns into awareness, and always remembering that not all ignorant people are prejudiced, yet all prejudiced people are ignorant.

Passion + talent = magic

Posted on September 6, 2012 by David Tebbutt

If you are already familiar with Sir Ken Robinson‘s work, stop reading now. You will already know how much sense he speaks, interspersed with jokes and asides. You’d never know from listening to him that he was born in Liverpool, to a large working-class family. He speaks beautifully and intelligently about the human condition and what we can do to make our lives better.

He rails at how so many of us fail to achieve our potential, largely because of the way we are taught and conditioned. His 2006 TED video on children and creativity is a classic (it has been viewed almost twelve million times). Here’s a quote, “My contention is, all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.”

He views traditional education as an industrial-style narrowing exercise which squeezes out creativity (my paraphrase, not his, by the way). He says, “Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.”

The RSA was inspired to get his talk Changing Education Paradigms animated by Andrew Park’s Cognitive Media. That’s been viewed over eight and a half million times. Talk about viral …

And there’s more, much more, on Sir Ken’s website. His most recent work has been around the subject of aligning your passions and your abilities. He contrasts the lives of many who eke out their working lives in anticipation of the weekends and those who are fulfilled in everything they do. Opposite ends of a spectrum of experience, but it’s easy enough to plot where anyone sits on this continuum. His assertion is that we can move. And, indeed, we should move.

In a recent presentation on Passion for the School of Life, he told the story of a book editor who absolutely loved her work yet prior to this she’d been a concert pianist. Her whole life, her education – right up to her PhD – had been centred around music. Yet, she was far more passionate about books than piano recitals. One day, after another successful concert, the conductor suggested that she hadn’t enjoyed it. It was a pivotal moment. She admitted he was right. Soon after, she became a book editor and closed her piano lid for good.

He suggests that if you are doing something you’re good at and that you love, an hour seems like five minutes. To pinch the title of his recent book, written with Lou Aronica, people like this are in their Element.

If you or your colleagues are finding that time drags, then surely that’s a clear signal that you should plan for change. And, if you need inspiration, Sir Ken Robinson can provide it in spades. Providing you’re partial to his jokes.

Fairtrade, Organic or Me-Me?

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Andy Redfern

According to my wife, cynicism is neither big nor clever. She feels that cynical remarks and sarcastic comments are the preserve of those who’ve lost their zest and zip for life. Sadly, running an ethical retail site brings me into contact with a lot of cynical people.

“What do you mean by being ethical?”

“How do you know your products are ethical?”

“That ethical tag is just way of making me pay more, it doesn’t prove anything.”

“Now we’re in a double dip recession, you’ve had it. No one can afford to buy ethically anymore”

This final comment was made by someone looking to get a cheap deal. He felt that no one cared about ethics; people only cared about money when the chips were down. He felt that Fairtrade was just a cynical marketing ploy to extract more money from him.

So, have people thrown their ethics out of the window? Do they no longer care about the ethics they claimed to hold dear during the good times?

Well, the picture is mixed. In the world of grocery shopping, the two giants of the ethical labelling world are Fairtrade and Organic. In the UK, certified organic product sales fell by 3.7% in 2011 with a number of supermarkets culling offerings and failing to add new own-label organic items. Fairtrade on the other hand grew by 12% over the same period with giants like Tate and Lyle switching huge quantities of its supplies to Fairtrade sources.

We can draw an interesting conclusion from this apparent difference in the relative ethical tags. I contend that core customers of both labels are unchanged and it’s only at the margins that organic customers have slipped away. When even Nick Clegg and his lawyer wife claim they can’t afford to shop at largely organic Waitrose, there is clearly a perceived high price to pay for ethical items. But I would suggest that it is all about motivation and belief rather than price.

When I first heard of fair trade in 1983, it seemed so obvious a concept to treat developing world suppliers fairly that I expected supermarkets to switch entirely to fair trade within three or four years. 30 years later, with sales of over a £1billion per year, it’s a huge niche market but capturing the hearts and minds of consumers has been a slow process. The ‘problem’ is that many consumers ask, “What’s in it for me?” So Fairtrade has always had an educational element at its core to help people understand why it is the right thing to do.

I believe that this is what makes Fairtrade more recession-proof than organic. There never was a “me” benefit with Fairtrade. People support it because they believe it is right and so, even when money is tight, we tend to stick to our key beliefs. The Organic shopper is more diverse. The dubious “me” benefit of organic being better for you was tough to prove scientifically, so the fad-led consumer has moved on to the next thing to make them feel better.

This is a key lesson in long-term sustainability. People will commit to a brand and its products in the long-term if they believe it is the right thing to do. Fads come and go, but things which support our core beliefs are here to say. Doing the right thing may prove to be the most radical marketing strategy yet.

Baby, bathwater, beware …

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Anne Marie McEwan

William Hague said recently, “There’s only one growth strategy: work hard.” Without daring to go near the politics of that statement, I have to say that it would have made more sense to say “work smart.” You can flog your guts out working hard the same old way but if you don’t take into account the changing world and intelligently figure out how to work with it, then you’re likely to exhaust yourself and fail into the bargain. Sorry William.

At the moment, you hear a lot of buzz around ‘social business’ or, before that, ‘Business 2.0′ and similar sounding slogans. The trouble with such ‘paradigm shifts’ is that they all imply a jettisoning of past experience. How stupid is that? And, no, I’m not taking a pop at anyone or any organisation in particular, just making the point that ‘new’ is often complementary to some of the ‘old’.

Some of the ‘old’ is with us, rallying under a new banner. “Organisations are networks of formal and informal relationships.” Geddaway. Of course they are; they always have been. The difference now is that we have software and communication tools to massively improve their effectiveness.

We have the legacy of the first wave of smart working, in particular, “the need to make innovation everyone’s business and to empower workforces to ‘take action that will benefit the customer without layers of bureaucratic approval’.” Lessons learned from the successful pioneers of these working methods are invaluable input to what’s needed now, in this even more uncertain and chaotic world.

We need to build flexible systems with adaptability, integration, disciplined collaboration, innovation and knowledge sharing in mind. This isn’t a lazy set of buzzwords, each is a vital consideration as we invent our way to a better future. I could have added more – discovery, sharing and co-creation, for example. The point is that the networked world really is a network of brains, knowledge and information sources all orchestrated for the collective good. ‘Collective’ in this case has to include customers which, by extension, means suppliers. Otherwise you won’t have any customers when the current turmoil ends.

Turmoil? No, I’ve not made a big deal of the ways in which the world is changing and the challenges we face because I assume you know. But, just in case, try these for size: ageing populations; shifts in global economic power and declining industries. The latter being replaced by new high-value industries such as: bio-tech; electronic gaming; renewable energies; and so on. Adapting to change is not easy but the status quo is no longer a place of refuge.

The future of work is visible. Most of the ingredients exist, even though we’re bound to see more come along. It doesn’t matter; we have enough to act. We can blend the old with the new and connect up to internal and external knowledge flows.

Here’s an example taken from a presentation by Alistair Moffat: NSN, a 60,000 person organisation formed from parts of Nokia Networks and Siemens Communications, faced the challenge of accelerating the emergence of a common culture. It chose to use discussion forums to create The Culture Square, a forum where company‐wide conversations could take place.

People were encouraged to talk freely and anonymously without risking dismissal for saying what they believed.The values and attitudes of the Chief Executive and his desire to nurture an organisational culture consistent with adult-to-adult relationships, where people could disagree without being disagreeable, were core to how the conversations unfolded and, indeed, succeeded. The Culture Square came to represent trust and inclusion., revealing the important issues that people were most concerned about.

Each person involved in innovation and problem-solving can be augmented by the knowledge and capabilities in their network. This is massive. And it’s at our fingertips. Yet what are many businesses doing with social technologies, the potential turbochargers of change? Imposing a blanket ban.

How blinkered is that?

Anne Marie wants you to know that she was aided and abetted by David Tebbutt in the creation of this post.

Has the Khan Academy found the right way to educate?

Posted on February 1, 2012 by David Tebbutt

Last week’s post by Ray Maguire (on using computer game development to rekindle a sense of purpose among schoolchildren) led to a number of offline and email conversations around the topic of education.

One of the first was from Jim Farver, a man with 30 years of industrial training experience, who introduced us to the Khan Academy which is a fantastic and growing free resource of short (and that’s important) videos on masses of subjects. I learnt about gravity and diabetes but I could just as easily have worked through a sequence of videos on calculus or chemistry.

What makes these videos special is the fact that anyone can watch the videos at any time. Been off sick and missed a bit of trigonometry? The normal approach is to get an already hard-pressed teacher to coach you or to pick up what you can from fellow pupils, who might have better things to do. And, how embarrassing is it if you still don’t ‘get’ it? You can watch the Khan videos until you really understand.

In the classroom, how about letting the kids pace themselves and step in when needed? Back end metrics can show who’s doing what and who’s stuck. Everyone in the class moves through the curriculum at the pace that suits them rather than having the teacher delivering the same material to all, boring those who are fast and leaving behind those who are slow.

It transforms the lives of teachers and pupils alike. And, if you’re at all curious about subjects like gravity or diabetes, the answers are right there, delivered by a friendly human in less time than it takes to read a Wikipedia page, for example.

Here’s Salman Khan explaining his approach at TED:

Reconnecting kids with the school curriculum

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Ray Maguire

One of the most serious problems we face is the number of young people who are neither in education, employment or training, the so-called NEETs. It is a problem for the people themselves, for the society around them and for the country as a whole; just Google “the NEET problem” if you want to dig deeper into this important issue.

The purpose of this post is to show that something radical can be done with young people, it can transform their life prospects and it comes from the unlikely direction of computer and video games.

Recent government statements have highlighted the inadequacy of ‘ICT’ training in schools; in the 1980s the emphasis was on development skills as a result of the home PC (like the BBC micro and the Sinclair Spectrum), but in more recent years it has focused more on office applications such as Word and PowerPoint. Not entirely useless, but hardly engaging, especially when many children are already familiar with them from their home life. Furthermore, they lack the almost universal appeal of games.

Simply playing games isn’t going to engage a generation in any practical way. It won’t create the mathematicians, scientists, engineers, artists, writers and so on that Britain will need in a digital future, but it will offer a strong bridge to developing an interest in these subjects if the children are invited to create their own games. Suddenly they need to think about plotlines, characters and dialogue, about the appearance and physics of the environment in which the game takes place. Balls bounce off different surfaces, tanks burst through different barriers, each type of debris from an explosion behaves differently as it falls, … I could go on, but you get the general idea.

The thing about computer games is that they can represent any aspect of the real world and can engage the interest of the participant in all of the subjects touched by that world. Free and paid-for development tools accelerate the game-building process, avoiding the need to learn BASIC, C or even assembly language programming skills, allowing the students to concentrate on the higher level skills which map directly to the school curriculum. Those who previously could see little point in traditional subjects can now see a point, albeit in a single context.

I’m not suggesting we throw out the current ICT training in favour of what I’m advocating here, but we can augment it by offering games clubs to primary and secondary schools. Teachers can be given basic ‘how-tos’ to get such projects started and my own company, and others, can offer low-cost tools and assistance. Our aim is to minimise the likelihood that a school will say “no”. From that point forward, the development of the club and the identification of the learnings and outcomes are all within the schools’ remit. Most importantly, as the clubs are ‘out of school’ and voluntary, the kids learn in the way they want to and it’s their feedback that will shape the growth and development of the clubs moving forward.

Today, we can announce that we have signed up the first hundred schools to run iO Games Clubs and we expect to grow this to 200 by the end of February and 500 by Easter this year.

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