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What is the purpose of education?
Six or seven years ago my answer to this question would probably have been different. I am now both a teacher and a father, in fact I have been for nearly five years. I am both education consumer and...
View ArticleI am a snowflake distinct among snowflakes
What a beautiful line to start a song. Robin Pecknold’s lyrics (Fleet Foxes) from Helplessness Blues have been ringing in my ears during most of my recent car journeys. When I wrote about the purpose...
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Why I turned my back on teaching
It has now been 6 months since I left the classroom as a Year 5/6 teacher and turned away from my role as Deputy Headteacher which I had only started a year before. I have never really spent time...
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The Done Manifesto
Bre Pattis from MakerBot and Kio Stark gave themselves 20 minutes to capture everything they knew about bringing a creative vision to life – the result is The Done Manifesto – 13 Rules for Realising...
View ArticleUnstoppable Creators and Powerful Thinkers
This is one of the finest descriptions of a class blog I have ever come across: Welcome to 1JR’s class blog. We are a class of ground breaking inventors, unstoppable creators and powerful thinkers. We...
View ArticleFinding the Strength to Say “Yes”
“Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it....
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Successful Teams Are More Open About Their Mistakes
A research study into the performance levels of hospital staff explored something unusual about the error rates that were recorded there. Amy Edmonson the Novartis Professor of Leadership and...
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Nobody told me what to do
For maybe three years now I have been listening to a particular Daft Punk track and mulling over the lyrics. Whilst I am writing now I have the track on, take a few moments to listen to it....
View ArticleName Your Perspective
If you have spent any time with me in small group development sessions you will likely have heard me talking deliberately about perspective. I am always keen to make explicit what can often be an...
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Escaping old ideas and the bias that erodes your creative culture
I recently discovered the above quote from John Maynard Keynes, an influential English economist, about the challenge of thinking creatively. It got a bunch of attention on Twitter and seemed to...
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Responsive Leadership – leading from the back to the front
I recently stumbled upon a new label for the behaviours we associate with leadership. In this short clip Nipun Mehta explains a “different paradigm of leadership, which he calls “laddership””. After...
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Insights from taking my son to work
During December I created the opportunity for my 11 year old son to join me at work. George has just finished primary school and will be going into Year 7 in a few weeks time. I run my own consultancy...
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5 Provocations to Improve Your Strategic Planning
A key thing I spent time on during last year was strategy. Planning and developing it, reviewing and critiquing it. I know this year will be the same. I stumbled upon the work of Freek Vermeulen on...
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6 Protocols To Help You Run Better Meetings
One of the most effective strategies to run better meetings and development sessions is to establish a set of protocols at the start. These working working norms should be discussed and shared before...
View ArticleAsk this little question to improve collaboration
Launching straight into the agenda for your sessions or meetings is not always the best way to start. We all need to create some buffer space for participants to establish themselves and shed the skin...
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Run a Pre-Mortem to Improve Your Strategic Planning
A Pre-Mortem is a strategic planning activity that imagines a project has failed. This type of thinking helps to identify and mitigate risks early on in the planning phase. Exploring the worst-case...
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How to Build Better Relationships
I stumbled on this post from Jamie Portman about building better relationships. He, in turn, was re-sharing a document from L30 Relational Systems that outlines 33 ideas to think about when valuing...
View ArticleRestart, Reframe or Recast
Let’s unshackle from the present pressures and look ahead to a further horizon. See these as provocations you can use with your teams as you begin to navigate your way through the next few months. How...
View ArticleThe Shape of the Lens
Inspired by an optics metaphor used in ethnography, this mental model explores our perception and understanding of behaviour. Use it as part of your team’s developmental dialogue and process. Seeing...
View ArticleAsk this little question to improve collaboration
Launching straight into the agenda for your sessions or meetings is not always the best way to start. We all need to create some buffer space for participants to establish themselves and shed the skin...
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