The Heart and Soul of OD – An interview with Fuchsia Blue

The other week, I was privileged to interview Julie Drybrough of Fuchsia Blue.  I am absolutely made up with the work of Simon Heath who sketchnoted the film in his blog at SKETCHNOTE BLUE.  Simon may be contacted at sjheath@live.co.uk for his incredible work.

The dialogue was wide ranging and we learned the following things from this:

About Organisation Development

Boards are often unaware of the habitual patterns of communication.  Julie employs a range of Organisation Development practices to help boards make the most of their time together, such as process observation and feedback.  The Organisation Development Matrix that I have found to be of great use over time is shown below:

The OD Matrix

About Dialogue

Dialogue differs from discussion, in so far as it is a much deeper form of conversation that leads to much better results.  It turns out that we have both travelled similar roads around the work of Physicist David Böhm and Peter Senge.  If you want to have more productive conversations about important things, a study and practice of dialogue is essential.

About Emotional Intelligence

Julie differentiates the idea of being human at work from ‘human resources’.  If human beings are our greatest asset, we make a big mistake by treating them as human resources.  This requires leaders to possess and demonstrate emotional intelligence, having mastery of themselves and being aware of their own impact on others.  More on this aspect at Emotional Intelligence.

Julie may be found on Twitter at @fuchsia_blue  and works predominantly in the public sector on Organisational Development Strategies and Practices.  I’m looking forward to finding an opportunity to work collaboratively on dialogue using music in the future.  Let us know if you wish to advance this proposition.  Since Julie hails from Scotland, we must mark the occasion with some music from that Big Country:

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About the Blogger:  Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock – Keynote events with a difference and Human Dynamics – Business and organisation development, training and coaching.  Contact via peter@humdyn.co.uk

Riffs and Myths of Leadership

Last week saw the culmination of the “Monsters of Rock Event”, featuring Bernie Tormé, hosted by the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply in partnership with The Open University.  I must say it was a super night.  If you were unable to attend, here’s a little window into what took place on the evening.  Click on the burning guitar to see Bloomberg TV’s report with Owen Thomas on the evening.  Bloomberg have 300 million viewers worldwide which is a mind boggling number:

I seem surprised at the ‘spontaneous combustion’ of my Les Paul prior to the Monsters of Rock Event – Click on the guitar to view Bloomberg TV’s feature on the event

BBC Radio 4’s Melanie Abbott also attended and put this splendid feature together on their flagship You & Yours Programme:

To my surprise, the event was also featured on BBC One News by the wonderful Mark Norman:

Riffs and Myths of Leadership also featured on BBC 6 Music, The NME, The Independent, Gibson Guitars, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, The Sunday Express, The Belfast Telegraph, Planet Rock Radio and many other media, so if anyone is looking to make an impact out there, do get in touch.  This prompted my good friend,  Richard Strange, the “Godfather of Punk” to ask me to get off the media so other people could have a chance! 🙂

We also had an extremely diverse audience, ranging from Academia to Pharmaceuticals, HR Specialists, Industrial Entrepreneurs, Insurance, Construction, Railways and even Lloyds of London.  People came from as far afield as Malta, The Midlands and The Isle of Man for the event.  So, what did they get?  Here’s a few remarks:

“Very enjoyable. But, on a serious note you also make a lot of sense in the areas of management and leadership”
Alex Watson, Lloyds Register

“Inspirational – a structured delivery of key management tenets through the art of rock music. The potential for chaos and mayhem reinforced the learning points – risk mitigation came in the form of common understanding, shared direction, a teamworking ethic and the freedom to demonstrate and develop creativity. Net result – a fun-filled, thought provoking learning experience. If you get the chance, take it or regret another missed opportunity to live your business life in the fast lane ……..      Peter Cook (and his band of associates) rock the business world!”

Neil Smith, Oxford Brookes University

So, big thanks to Vicky Nolan at O2 for playing drums, singing and playing harp, Guy Cresswell of Promuseast for providing the lighting, John Howitt, international session musician and or course to Bernie Tormé for his superb guitar playing and good humour.

Of course, If you would like to have a micro experience of our work or maybe a 24 hour strategy retreat, please contact us.  On the horizon are a sales team conference with Scott Mc Gill, improvisational jazz guitarist and a creativity masterclass with Richard Strange.  I’m off for a well-deserved beer with Bernie this evening to discuss opportunities on the horizon with Google, a trip to Romania and a well-known pharmaceutical company …

Light my fire : Bernie Burns the Les Paul

All the small things

Arriving at BBC Radio 4 for ‘You and Yours’

Tuesday is a red-letter day for me.  After many months of planning, we deliver the “Monsters of Rock’n’Roll Business” event featuring Bernie Tormé, for a large group of business managers at the Dartford Hilton Hotel.  The event is being recorded for broadcast by BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme, Bloomberg TV, The Independent, BBC TV, The Brazillian Financial Times and many more.  People keep asking me how I managed to achieve such levels of publicity. Others seem to think I have a major PR agency working for me.  This is not true, and the back story of this may be summarised as a lot of hard work … and a little bit of luck.  It all comes down to ‘the small things’.  Let’s hear Blink 182’s take on all the small things:

Our story has important lessons for all those who have to deal with the media as part of their business.

I had sent a press release out to various places for the event.  The story got picked up by The Independent newspaper last Thursday.  The journalist rewrote the press release to read as follows:

Cook will be joined by Bernie Tormé, former lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, and Ian Gillan, the Deep Purple singer.

It’s perfectly accurate, but do you see what has happened here?

• I will indeed be joined by Bernie Tormé.  Fact.
• Tormé was indeed guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne.  Fact.
• Tormé was also guitarist for Ian Gillan.  Fact.
• Ian Gillan was the singer of the legendary hard rock group Deep Purple.  Fact.
• Ian Gillan will not be, and was never due to be, at the event.

The BBC’s editorial team picked up on the story but missed the all-important comma.  By Friday morning, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme ran a story that more or less suggested I was responsible for reforming Black Sabbath and Deep Purple – An awe inspiring thought but sadly untrue!  By Saturday evening, The Sunday Express and New Musical Express had copied the mistake and amplified our event into a ‘tour’ through the strategic addition of the letter ‘s’ to the word seminar ! 😦 Despite copious efforts to correct the story online, the mistake was repeated on BBC 6 Music’s Radcliffe and Maconie show on Monday.  At the time of writing, the story has reached USA Today, The Times of India, Planet Rock Radio and Gibson Guitars.

USA Today copied the mistake and suggested that Ozzy and Gillan were joining a business consultancy – ha ha

This is graphic evidence of what has been said recently in the Leveson Enquiry that:

“Checking your facts = I read it in another paper”

You might say that all publicity is good publicity?  In this case, I had to spend considerable time and energy correcting online media and apologising to Ian Gillan’s management.  Rock’n’Roll HR can be cruel and I’m pleased to say that I still have all my body parts after this process!  I also had to spend quite a bit of time dealing with old rockers and rock chicks, who wrote e-mails to confer God-like status on me, for forging a reunion between Ian Gillan and Bernie Tormé.   Having  pulled this trick off, some of them even expect me to resurrect Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse!

The Belfast Telegraph picked up the story and decided to replace Bernie’s picture with Elton John !  I have not yet decided to get a piano in for the event …

Well-known Irish Pub Singer Elton John turns up in the Belfast Telegraph

What then are the lessons for people who deal with PR and external affairs?

1. If possible, get national media journalists to send a proof of anything they release.  Of course they don’t like doing this, but it helps to avoid this kind of PR disaster.
2. Act fast to correct errors.  I stopped the Sunday Express print run by contacting the paper at midnight on Saturday, but the ‘runaway online media train’ had already ‘left the station’ re online copies of the article.
3. Commas cost me a few apologies to some class A rock stars, but the consequences could be more serious for your business.  In the warped words of Blink 182, All the small things count.

Postscript:  The event was filmed by Bloomberg TV, BBC One News.  BBC Radio 4 also made a programme for their You and Yours Programme.  Woohoo !

 

Another Brick in the Wall Thinking

Wall and peace

Introducing Tony Wall, who works at the University of Chester in the UK.  I will leave him to take up the story, inspired by Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”:

“Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!” is one of those lyrics that many of us recognise instantly. That’s not surprising as “Another Brick in the Wall” reached No 1 around the globe. For some, it was simply a unique and catchy melody, but for others, it was a lot more. For these, it was a powerful protest against rigid schooling, which created ‘another brick’ in a ‘wall of limited thinking and acting’ – a wall stopping the learner thinking differently or learning differently. For Pink Floyd, it was a wall of “thought control”, a message calling for our education systems to facilitate more innovative thinking. Listening and watching the song and its performances in 2012, it’s striking to realise how current Pink Floyd’s message is in today’s schools and universities…

Think about typical university education for a moment. What are the bricks in the ‘wall of limiting innovation’? The university says which courses are offered. It says what specifically will be learnt. It says where it will be learnt. It says how it will be learnt. It says how this learning will be assessed. It says when the student can start and stop learning. It might even say what date and specific time they have to learn. All in all, these are just more ‘bricks’ in the wall of standard thinking and acting (as Pink Floyd would probably not say). These ‘bricks’ exist within the model (or paradigm) of mass university education. If we took this paradigm, and turned it upside down, the wall would fall to pieces, but opens up new avenues for facilitating innovative thinking and acting. We might call the opposite model, a personalised university education, whereby the individual learner makes choices, and choices way beyond that already conceived by flexible universities around the globe.

What would such a radically innovative system be like? Within the UK, we can look to the University of Chester’s Centre for Work Related Studies (CWRS) who has been operating this system for over a decade. Here, the learner negotiates a qualification that meets their specific needs and aspirations, and negotiates their qualification’s title (say Masters in Business Innovation and Creativity or Masters in Leading Innovation). The learner chooses when to learn. They choose what specifically they need/want to learn. They choose how they will learn it. And they choose how they are assessed. In this model, this means learning normally (rather than abnormally) happens outside of the classroom, in the workplace, or in life. All in all, this enables innovative and diverse ways for the learner to make changes to their life, and engage in an educational approach, which is authentic and meaningful to them personally. They have to think for themselves, though supported and guided, and not constrained by the ‘walls’ of subjects, disciplines or Teacher preferences (or dark sarcasm!). It is a model that has led to CWRS being one of Europe’s largest centres of its kind, with commendations from the UK university quality body and showcases by the UK university funding body.

Shouting “Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!” in this new paradigm doesn’t apply, as the “Teacher” is replaced by tutors facilitating personalised learning with individuals. Turning existing paradigms upside down is one way of creating innovative solutions to challenges or seizing opportunities. So, that leaves us with two questions:

• What ‘bricks’ are you taking down to release innovative thinking?
• What model can you turn on its head for something radically new and valuable?

Innovation in teaching and learning is about getting the relationship right between teachers and learners.  This is exactly what they are doing at the University of Chester.  And, just for fun, these principles apply just as much in primary education as they do in tertiary.  See the piece from BBC News where we ran a ‘School of Rock’ which helped 10 year old kids surpass their teacher’s expectations of them in their exams.

For more like this read the book “The Music of Business”, acclaimed by Harvey Goldsmith:

Oops I did it again – Britney Spears and learning companies

I commented on the concept of a learning company in my posts on Lady Gaga and David Bowie recently.  The idea of a learning company is a company which learns faster than its competitors and speed of new product / service delivery is vital in today’s business world.  Many academics, such as Peter Senge, Chris Argyris and Peter Senge have commented on this idea, which Britney Spears unwittingly stumbled upon in her classic hit “Oops, I did it again”.  Let’s see Ms Spears in action:

In the context of business, “oops I did it again” refers to the tendency of businesses to repeat themselves, sometimes in the face of compelling evidence telling them to change course.  Organisational learning can mean several things:

Single loop learning – Where we keep existing values and introduce new behaviours – this is often dubbed ‘continuous improvement’, where we look for better ways to do existing things.

Double loop learning – A fundamental reassessment of the way we operate – often more radical and therefore even more difficult.

Companies find it intensely difficult to institute learning at an organisation wide level, be it single or double loop learning.  Marks and Spencer nearly went out of business through having such a strong culture that it did not learn from its customers.  Manifestations of this included a refusal to accept credit card payments for many years and their disastrous initial expansion into Europe.  On the other hand, Toyota have based much of their growth in recent years on behaving as an organisation that learns, alongside other approaches such as lean thinking.  This has given them an incredible edge compared with their competitors.  I have just come back from giving a keynote on this very topic at the 7th International HR Leadership Conference in Athens on this topic, which is central to a turnaround in the way in which businesses operate in the new world order.  I also met Evan Davis from the BBC programme Dragons’ Den last week, where we discussed the need for some new thinking if we are to create a sustainable turnaround in the economy and I shall post separately on this topic soon.

Lessons from Britney:  Don’t repeat yourself.  Learn and adapt.

I have scoured Britney Spears back catalogue for other songs that have a business leadership lesson in them and, frankly, I have failed.  “My perogative”, “Everytime”, “Toxic” – not one transferable business lesson, unless someone can spot something I have missed.  So, I have no particular reason for including the video of “Baby one more time”, except for its own value!

p.s. My new book ‘Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff’ is available FREE via the Punk Rock People Management webpage.   A print and e-book version are also available at PUNK PM.  Britney Spears gets a mention as an honorary punk rocker in the book, even though she is not one.

HR without all the boll...cks - Photo courtesy of Lindsay Wakelin Photography

Finally, let’s hear a Louis Armstrong mashup of Britney’s masterpiece: