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Hunger for Inspiration

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Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think this offers us some powerful, but largely ignored, clues as to how we should design our enterprise development services.  We need to offer a service that helps people to seek, find and, crucially, act on their inspiration.

Their inspiration – not our policy goals.

Their inspiration – not ‘our’ desire to get ‘them’ off benefits or back into work.

Their inspiration – not our idea of ‘opportunities’ designed to meet employer demands.

Because the reality is that MOST enterprise development services are not designed to inspire.  They are designed to teach people how to commoditise themselves.  How to ‘fit in’ with the needs of the economy.

Take a good, honest look at your services.  Are they really designed to develop the users agenda – or to channel them into ours?

Perhaps this is why we are continually engaging ‘inspirational’ speakers in the false hope that we can somehow put back into our service a missing essence.  An essence that will always be missing until we change the assumptions around which our enteprise services are built.

The cornerstone of a service based on the hunger for inspiration would be a relationship in which users can be open and honest about their hopes and aspirations.  A relationship, not a workshop, or a series of workshops or advice.  A relationship.

A relationship that recognises that development takes time.  That it will feature highs and lows, lapses and relapses.

Because it is only in a relationship, characterised by compassion, competence, respect, belief, optimism, commitment and skill that people will be open and honest about their hopes and dreams and start to get in touch with what inspires them.  It is only in such a supportive relationship that people will really dare to dream and act.  It is I believe only through a relationship that people can really find inspiration and the resources for transformation.

  • So how would we market such a service?
  • Where would we find clients?
  • How would we pay for it?
  • Who would manage it?
  • What might we expect from it in terms of outputs and value for money?

But the big question that always gets asked here is about affordability.  A genuinely personalised service.  Delivered primarily through 121 conversations – isn’t that ridiculously expensive?  Well no its not.  The numbers stack up well in comparison to competing services.

The real challenge here is changing the mindset of service suppliers and commissioners.  Helping them to recognise that our communities are not full of the feckless and ignorant who need to be fixed.

They are full of people seeking inspiration and the power to act effectively on it.

Full of people who would love to become the kind of person that they know they could be.

As soon as we start designing our services around these assumptions we might get some much more positive results.

Interested?

What Inspires and Transforms Us?

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I have had several conversations with a range of professionals in regeneration and enterprise in recent weeks to explore what specific skills, qualities and behaviours are likely to help to ‘transform’ or ‘inspire’ a client.

I am interested because:

  • I have witnessed the power of personal and transformational relationships myself and think it would be useful to understand the recipes (if they exist)
  • Many claim that their mission is to ‘inspire and transform’ yet their methodologies are based on transactional consulting –  data collection, analysis and advice/recommendation.  These can be useful but I do not think they consistently (or even occasionally) inspire or transform.
  • If we are seeking to provide relationships through which others can inspire and transform their lives then perhaps we ought to have a little more organised insight into what makes the process work.

I have read a lot of the theory and it has its merits.  However I am interested now in the experience of those who have been inspired or transpired:

  • What skills and qualities were present?
  • What behaviours were used?
  • What made the inspiration/transformation happen?
  • Was the relationship face to face – or mediated through a book or other media?
  • Was it intentional – they were offering to transform and inspire an dyou were looking for it)?
  • Was it accidental – unplanned, spontaneous?

All insights welcomed and I will of course share the results!

Conducting and Leadership

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Find yourself half an hour and wathc ths wonderful video to learn about leadership from conductor Itay Talgam.

Looks at various conducting styles and teaches profoundly while entertaining!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGF6E0R5tj4]

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Passion Depletion?

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We all have days, sometimes weeks, months even years when our enthusiasm and love for life is not as high as we want it to be. Don’t we?

We all suffer bouts of ‘passion depletion’.

In my world ‘passion’ is not just about enthusiasm, love and enjoyment.  It is also a measure of suffering – as in ‘the passion of Christ’.

It is a measure of how much suffering we are prepared to put up with to pursue that which we love.  It is linked to the question ‘Are you willing to pay the price for the success that you desire?’  What will you put up with, put at risk in order to pursue your dream?  How many hours of practice, research, writing, planning and thinking?

In this formulation ‘passion depletion’ (now meaning a reduction in the amount of suffering you are prepared to put up with in order to pursue your goals) is a sign that you are falling out of love with your original goal.  Perhaps there is something else that you would rather suffer for?

It maybe a very positive sign that ‘new doors’ are opening.

I know that this formulation about suffering is not popular, but for me it does reflect more of the truth of day to day life and professional and private practice.  It provides me with a useful benchmark against which to gauge my life choices.

When some of your team seem to have ‘passion depletion’  it might be telling you, and them, something important.

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