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The Price of Art in Luton
On the bridge approaching the railway,
the man was begging.
I said draw me a dog
and I’ll give you a quid.
So I gave him some paper
and he did.
And I said, there you go, mate,
you can make money out of art!
Will you sign it?
As I handed him the one pound thirty-odd
I had in my pocket,
he informed me that the signed ones were a fiver.
More John Hegley here and here.
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I have just come across a really good online video, thanks to Phil Gerbyshack, called Change is Good. It seems to sum up so many of the principles that I try to teach people how to practice in my PMN workshops. (There are still someplaces left on Giving and Getting Great Feedback on 20th May in Leeds).
The film is only a couple of minutes long but contains so many great hints, tips, reminders and pointers to profound truths that should have immense implications for personal and organisational change.
Why not show it at your next team meeting and see what reactions, suggestions and feedback it elicits.
The video has a soundtrack – but still works if you are not sound enabled!
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There is so much great on-line training for people who wish to start, or are thinking about starting, or are looking to develop and existing business. I wonder why we don’t encourage our clients to make more use of it. (Could it be because we are too focused on bums on OUR seats and hits to OUR websites).
On-line learning does not suit everybody – and much of it does originate from the USA – but it is a wonderful resource that the engaged and committed would use AND it can be a tremendous vehicle for establishing client commitment and learning styles.
Here is a page with 85 FREE online learning resources for entrepreneurs.
Wouldn’t it be great if advisers and coaches could use on-line learning management systems with a full range of on-line and off-line resources that allowed us to help clients to manage their own learning – and ensure that what we taught actually was correlated with later success?
If we could help connect would be entrepreneurs with sources of advice and support through social media networks.
If we could provide regular ‘nudges’ and opportunities to engage through applications like Twitter and Facebook?
When I was looking at this a few (10?) years back the technology was expensive and unreliable. Now most of it is free/low cost AND more or less ubiquitous. Most of the publicly funded business support sector is so digitally illiterate (the ranks are not exactly swollen with digital natives) and focused on old bums on seats/intensive assists metrics that I don’t expect a web 2.0 revolution in this sector anytime soon.
Anyone up for a Digital Britain?
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Recovery, regeneration, renewal, renaissance.
What is it with the ‘Re’ prefix in the economic development business?
‘Re’ indicates a sense of reversal, going back to the original place, a sense of ‘undoing’.
Recover -“to regain health or strength” – “to get (anything) back“
Regenerate -“make over, generate again,”
Renew – “to resume, revive – to bring back vitality“
Renaissance – “to be born again“
In each case there is a sense of making good something that is now broken. Of restoring things to how they once were – of returning to better times; of making new starts as if we had somehow jumped the gun in the 100 metres.
So what about that other old chestnut in our business – ‘development’? Isn’t ‘de’ just another prefix indicating a retrograde step – meaning, as it does, ‘to undo’?
But what about the second part – ‘velop‘ as in ‘envelope‘ meaning ‘to cover‘ or ‘to veil‘.
So the root of ‘develop’ is something about ‘uncovering’, ‘unveiling’ a sense of ‘revealing’ something. Think photography in the pre-digital era.
Development is not about going back but allowing, even facilitating, movement forward. It is about removing ‘covers’ so that what is already there can flourish. It is not about putting things right, making fresh starts and ruing mistakes.
It suggests that things are just the way they have to be. The question is not about what we once were – but what we have the aspiration and potential to become.
The challenge is how best to move forward to a new future rather than how to move back to a ‘glorious’ past.
Semantics matter.
If we believe that our job is to put right something that has gone wrong; to mend what is broken, this will define our work. A belief that our job is to help good people make progress will define our work in a way that will prove much more effective.