Category: Banging on about… Business

All Our Futures: The Business of Education or the Education of Business?

We’re producing our next All Our Futures international education conference in June this year and, as it’s part of the International Festival of Business (IFB) which is being promoted across the Liverpool City Region, we thought it only right and proper to align the focus of the conference with the energy of IFB itself.

Which is all very well until you start thinking about the thorny relationship between those two apparently innocent concepts: ‘business’ and ‘education’.

Surely (and here I’m reminded of Prof. Derek Colquhoun, my Ph.D supervisor’s comment that any sentence that starts with ‘surely’ should ring lots of alarm bells immediately) the links between education and business are obvious and trouble free?

Educating children is about preparing them to get work, create work and become valuable net contributing members of our economy isn’t it? Surely education must attend to the needs of business in order to make sure that our net contributing members of the economy (aka children) can take their fit and rightful place at the big dining table of the Big Society? Surely schools should remember that fundamentally they are businesses in their own right and grow up and behave as such?

Well, surely these ‘surelys’ are going to get a right good going over on this blog in the months to come and throughout All Our Futures too. I hope you can join us – either online or in person – because we surely are going to put the world to rights during that week!

For more information please visit http://www.allourfutures.co.uk

Tips for Business Start Ups: 7 ways to engage Generation Y-ers in business

Time Magazine printed an article in 1967 to worried parents across the USA that Baby Boomers “seem more like dangerously deluded dropouts, candidates for a very sound spanking and a cram course in civics.” Time was following in a well worn tradition of media frenzy. The Dallas Morning News in the 1920s described its young people “as not caring about people and not having any sense of shame , honor or duty.”

So, we need to be careful about any predictive process when it comes to basing economic or social policy on the stereotypes of young people (or indeed anyone else). Bearing that in mind, what might the stereotypes of the Millenial – the Generation Y-er – suggest about how they may or may not get involved in the messy business of business start ups?

Well, the stereotypes fly thick and fast when it comes to trying to assess what constitutes the typical Generation Y-er. According to Psychology Today, they include:

being the toughest generation to manage;
growing up in a culturally diverse school and play environment;
being tech-savvy, enthusiastic, self-centred, confident, well networked and achievement-oriented;
one of the best educated generations in history;
confident with a constant need for variety, challenge and instant gratification;
Represented by the “Prizes for All ” generation.

At work, Generation Y-ers are said to:

expect their opinions to be heard and considered and are not usually shy;
want to know that what they are doing is valuable to the company and/or environment, as well as valuable to them and their career;
have a strong desire for rewarding opportunities – for them and their company.
are driven less by money and more by accomplishment;
Want to express their creativity and be able to complete tasks on their own – using their own methods;
want to know they have access to an open door to ask questions;
want to engage in work relevant to them and important to them and the company.

So if we expect Generation Y-ers to blindly follow career or vocational paths that have been laid for them, and which have been paved with rewards that may have been acceptable to Gen X-ers or Baby Boomers, we’re going to have a few surprises.

We may need to think less of how do Generation Y-ers fit into business, and more about how the business world can be shaped by a Generation Y culture.  Perhaps we might even see some of the Baby Boomer and Generation  X orthodoxies of business being challenged.

So, here’s a guide on how to engage sterotypical Generation Y-ers in business: by changing business practice around them, rather than trying to fit them into your business.

1. Be aware of the boot camp and other military metaphors

Enthusiastic entrepreneurs all over the UK are currently being inundated with all types of business support programmes from every conceivable source: their local council, their friendly bank and the taxi driver who’s trying to take them to their next networking opportunity but who has of course lost his way to name but three.

These support programmes are being promoted through a variety of metaphors which express the spirit of growth and enthusiasm which drives the people behind the programmes: everything from growing an allotment through to levitation systems (getting your idea ‘off the ground’) hothouses, hatcheries, nests and even the occasional business meeting womb.

The most insidious of these however is the military metaphor which describes the process of starting up in the starkest of terms: entrepreneurs are encouraged to attend boot camps: they are persuaded to ‘put their bodies on the line’; they have to ‘go over the top’, ‘batten down the hatches’ and ‘take one for the team’. Whilst this may be of use to some entrepreneurs who are thinking about setting up a private army which will compete of course with the publicly funded armed forces when larging it around the world’s hotspots, the military metaphor is a pretty hopeless way of describing activity whose moral compass is guided more by the desire to create jobs, improve the economy and do good in the world.

2. Engage more sorcerers than apprentices.

A new business start up is not a mature business and not necessarily a reasonable place to work. It is fragile, uncertain of its place in the world and whether it is likely to survive out in the wilds of the market place beyond the first year is open to a lot of doubt. There’s a forest load of wild animals, poison ivy and bear traps to face if you’re setting up a new business and the last thing you want is a co-pioneer complaining about their employment contract.

A new start doesn’t need solutions imported to it from mature businesses with notions such as ‘employing staff’ driving its thinking. It needs new solutions which confront the needs of its newness. The new start up doesn’t need staff at all – people who will honour contracts and deliver a job to the best of their ability in return for a negotiated remuneration – but generators: people who can not only deliver the business core activity but who can also generate more activity, more income and emulate the entrepreneur who has brought them to the party.

New businesses need people who have the ability to generate something from nothing, to make value from where there was none before, to act as alchemists rather than as commi-chefs who can follow recipes to the letter but who don’t have the inspirational touch which invents, creates and conjures further opportunities from thin air. They need to engage a lot more sorcerers – not more apprentices- in the kitchen that is the new business.

3. Work in, on and under the business

Perhaps what’s more important than working in and on a business, is an understanding of what was going on under the business: the stuff which tells you why a business is important to other people and why it matters. Working in the business is important; working on the business is essential; but working under the business will provide Generation Y-ers with the energy and motivation to sustain their businesses through the long dark nights of recession and economic challenge.

4. Cash may be king but even royalty needs a moral compass

Business is frequently portrayed as a moral free zone with no rights or wrongs other than can it sell? Can it make a profit? What are the loop holes? and is exemplified in Milo Minderbinder’s moral code of ‘there will always be trade‘ as he cleaned up after organising the bombing of his own squadron at Pianosa by the Luftwaffe in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22.

5. If in doubt, use the C word

Dropping the ‘c’ word into any business venture is bound to galvanise the Generation Y-er and the wider workforce, impress investors and stoke up the heat of admiration upon you. It doesn’t matter what the ‘something something something’ is (you could have equally said blahdy blahdy blah): the fact that you’ve introduced the ‘c’ word to your proposal is what’s fired up the meeting.

In the olden days we would have used the words ‘magic’ and the effect would have been the same. These days, ‘creativity’ has replaced the word for ‘magic’ (and ‘alchemy’ and ‘smoke and mirrors’ and ‘snake oil’ for that matter) and the world and it’s business offices have become far happier places as a result.

So, if in future you’re stuck in a turgid negotiation, CRM update or monitoring moment, just drop the word ‘creative’ into proceedings and see your Generation Y-er grow wings and fly to the heavens. He or she may not last long up there as they get too close to the sun, but your colleagues and customers will thank you for liberating them from their non-magical daily grinds.

6. Join a movement – Slow, Guerilla or Digital

If your Generation Y-er has got bored with your business then you could do a lot worse to align it to one of the many movements out there which in their own way are crying out for new forms of activist engagement. Just add ‘slow’, ‘guerrilla’ or ‘digital’ and your business will discover new legs and give you added oomph when you wake up in the morning. Failing that, you can always make your own movement: try ‘Independent’ ‘messy’ or ‘chaotic’ when it comes to rejuvenating your business and watch those customers come flocking.

7. Write your own business language

Like many people who want to set up a business, the following language fills the Generation Y-er with dread, suspicion and horror:

* Connect with your customers confidentially
* Identify your USP intelligently
* Optimise your Search Engines efficiently
* Motivate your employees easily
* Maximise your value added effortlessly
* Shake your booty heartlessly
* Strut your stuff engagingly
* Wedge your bling tellingly
* Fluff your tail provocatively

Don’t worry: lots of potential entrepreneurs and business start ups look aghast at the terminology they are expected to use as they hunker on down in the depths of business speak land. Many of them throw away perfectly respectable business ideas just because of the language they are expected to subscribe to.

But fear not: if your idea stands a chance of surviving the challenges of that language, it will survive anything: and it may turn you into a guru in your own right which will allow you to coin your own aphorisms, cliches and incontestable business jargon.

A great way to start is to generate four columns: in the first, write a list of verbs which might be used in any military, medical or porn movie context. In the second, write a list of personal connectives: my, your, our – that sort of thing. In the third, write a list of any part of your body and in the fourth, write any adjective that might describe a boxing match.

Before you know it, your business lexicon will blow away your competitors and you’ll be calling the shots, imperiously.

One thing that is guaranteed is that the Generation Y-er will engage with your business with all their usual, stereotypical intelligence, panache and style – and may well help you innovate and radically reshape your tired business propositions and orthodoxies.

Maybe, just maybe: the role of the artist entrepreneur.

Maybe, just maybe the artist entrepreneur could answer the question of how the fuck are we going to manage when public sector funding has dried up? When audiences are becoming more conservative? When the corporates are opting for the safe and secure? When the cliches are running rings around new thinking opportunities?

Maybe, just maybe the artistic entrepreneur can see opportunities for new productions and new services…

Maybe, just maybe the artist entrepreneur can carve out new marketplaces rather than be beholden to preconceived ideas of what constitutes the marketplace…

Maybe, just maybe the artist entrepreneur could ignore boundaries of professional, amateur and community and facilitate engagement processes which work with the power of the artistic vision rather than the pragmatism of the cultural realpolitik.

Maybe, just maybe the artist entrepreneur could reimagine a future which is based on vision, critical engagement and personal and social transformation.

Maybe, just maybe the artist entrepreneur could galvanise the artist to wake up to what their power and possibilities are, and to quell their worries and anxieties.

Want to start a business in Wirral? Why not start right here, right now?

We’re coming out of recession. The banks aren’t lending. Its nearly winter. There’s a million and one reasons why there’s never a right time to start up a business. And a million and one why it’s the right time.

You get to shape your own future, rather than have it shaped for you by distant beaurocrats. You get to develop your own ideas, unhindered by the pressures and politics of more noisier colleagues who are always putting you down. You get to shape the culture of your workplace rather than being the unwitting object of other peoples cultural outdated cultural habits. You get to employ people, create jobs and make a difference to others around you.

Sure, none of this easy, and none of this makes for sleepless nights and a stress-lite existence. For a sleep-full and stress-empty life, you might be better retiring to the hills, writing your memoirs and feel comforted in what could have been, what would have been, and what should have been.

But if you have an idea which is itching to get out, which will contribute to your community, your society and the people around you, then now is absolutely the right time to set up your new business.

Aspire Trust is now offering business start up services for all Wirral residents (or those who want to set up a business in Wirral). We offer:

Advice and guidance on income generation and funding
Structured 1:1 support and group based programmes
Cross trading opportunities with other new businesses
National and International trading links
Customised programmes for your own business requirements.

We work across all business sectors – creative, digital, retail, manufacturing, you name it – our advisors are there to help.

The service is not free – but its absence of public funding means that you don’t waste your valuable business time filling in pointless forms and ticking boxes for the sheer hell of it!  It also means that you won’t be working with advisors who’s interests are more on hitting their funding targets than on supporting your business interests.

Your time is the most precious asset you have – and our work with you recognises that.

Just drop me an email at nick@aspire-trust.org if you require further information.

броненосец-потемкин: Творческий потенциал проекта

Об организации «Aspire trust»

«Aspire trust» – это организация, которая находится в Ливерпуле (Великобритания) и осуществляет свою деятельность в области культуры. Она была учреждена в 2002 году. С этого времени «Aspire trust» развивается, объединяя работу в таких сферах как культура и образование, реализует проекты в Великоритании и во всем мире.

Основные направления деятельности компании включают:
* создание и поддержку небольших компаний, работающих в творческих областях деятельности

* образовательные проекты для учащихся школ и университетов в таких сферах, как креативное преподавание, обучение и педагогика;

* программы по внедрению креативных методов обучения для учителей и работников творческих профессий;

* культурные проекты и организация мероприятий в сферах искусства и образования;

* научно-исследовательскую деятельность в области образования и общественных наук.

Подробную информацию о новых программах Вы сможете получить на сайте: http://www.aspire-trust.org.

«Сокровищница» – наша недавняя совместная театральная постановка, которая была представлена зрителям в октябре 2012 года. Представление проходило в здании Англиканского Собора Ливерпуля, и его смогли увидеть порядка 3600 зрителей. С более детальной информацией Вы можете ознакомиться на сайте: http://www.atreasuredevent.com/

Планируется, что следующим нашим проектом станет «Броненосец Потемкин»: ошеломляющая мультимедийная опера по мотивам легендарного фильма Сергея Ейзенштейна.

Ради этой постановки мы создаем уникальную творческую команду, в которую войдут: Патрик Динеен – режиссер/композитор, работающий в Ливерпуле, Кевин Гудли – один из всемирно известных создателей музыкальных видеоклипов, “Muf” – лондонское сообщество архитекторов, занимающееся городской архитектурой / художники и работники культуры, участвующие в Глобальном проекте по созданию виртуальных театральных постановок (Global Virtual Theatre Project).

Кроме того, мы хотим привлечь творческие кадры из России для участия в основных действиях постановки, а именно:

* Руководителя хора из России, который сможет приобщить исполнителей (среди которых будут как профессионалы, так и любители) к музыкальным традициям и особенностям славянской музыки и пения

* Либреттиста из России, который заинтересуется возможностью написания либретто для проекта (на русском и/или английском языках)

* Дизайнера из России, заинтересованного в создании костюмов, декораций и элементов освещения для проекта.

За более детальной информацией просьба обращаться к:

Доктору Нику Овену Кавалеру Ордена Британской Империи
Директору ООО «Aspire Trust», Великобритания
Valkyrie Lodge
30 Valkyrie Road
Wallasey CH45 4RJ

Тел. 0151 639 9231
Моб. 077422 71570
Email nowen.aspire@btconnect.com
Skype name richardnyowen

Сайт http://www.aspire-trust.org

Tips for Business Start Ups: how working with the grain of the wood can combat institutional fungal infection.

Many start up business men and women start up precisely because their current employer has an innate ability to shut down the burgeoning entrepreneur’s energy, vision and appetite for the work in hand.

Ray has been working in the public sector on and off for over 20 years: more off than on in recent times as he sees his employer become increasingly wooden in its response to the economic challenges it faces. It obsesses about targets, forgets about quality, treats it staff with ever increasing forgetfulness and takes on the appearance of an ash tree suffering from the later stages of ash dieback.

Whilst Ray has loved his work, he realises increasingly that this is not shared by the battalion of administrators who have taken root in the work place and who are trying to save the stricken fraxinus excelsior. Where once his work was concerned with public service, it now is increasingly preoccupied with spin, counter spin and presenting itself for maximum impact in terms which aim to woo venture capitalists from sunnier shores rather than reassure its local citizens of how it will enable them navigate the social service storms which are on the horizon over the next five years.

Ray is faced with a conundrum. He has been seduced by the vision of plotting his own destiny as an independent trader through the economic squalls which batter his home city’s frontiers. But he knows too that a lowly carpenter in a large public sector organ is not going to find it easy to persuade the wider world to buy his skills and products which are increasingly being squandered by the infected tree at the bottom of the allotment.

Whilst he’s been adept at knocking out things from his shed in a remote part of the organ’s empire, he’s worried about his ability to sell anything and scale up his production line which would enable him to pay the bills. The organisational fear he’s been fending off for years is in danger of infiltrating the grain of his carpenter’s soul.

However, his skills on the lathe, plane and jigsaw; his knowledge of the many grades of sand paper and different types of lacquer means that he knows intuitively how to erase any obtuse pieces of bark, wear away any unsightly stains and polish a seemingly dull veneer into something resembling mahogany. He knows too that working with the grain of the wood, rather than against it, is likely to produce a much more satisfying working environment for himself – as well as higher quality finished artefacts.

Ray may have honed his carpentry skills in the workshop by applying them to unprepossessing lumps of 2 be 4 – but he’ll find that they can be transferred to dealing with customers, estate agents and bankers. All he needs to do is look hard inside his own woody workshop soul, make an inventory of his tools, skills, knowledge and experience and start to make his skills work for himself, rather than for the infected lump of organisational driftwood he is currently wasting his time in.

Ray may have worked in wood for years and worked with wood in the work place for even longer: but his future now depends on his carpentry skills being applied to his life outside his workshop. If he doesn’t get out now, the fungus infecting his current employer is likely to infect the young sapling of a business he is currently nurturing in the potting shed at the bottom of the allotment.

Tips for Business Start Ups: Hang out the laundry!

Business start ups can get so engrossed in the daily nitty gritty of survival, plotting the next step and welcoming the first clink of cash in the bank account that they can often forget to mark the very special moments of achievement they bring about as their business gathers pace and starts ruffling a few feathers down at the business allotment.

They plough on and on, tweaking websites, signing bank mandates and ordering shed loads of stationery ignoring the significant moments of the first sale, the first press review, the first glowing testimonial on TripAdvisor which wasn’t written by their mum or dad.

Whilst they don’t want to get carried away at every milestone by opening up a bottle of Moët, the new self found fledging entrepreneur does need to value those special moments with some out-of-the-ordinary action.

Hanging out the laundry would be one special way to mark a special day if you don’t have a collection of Union Jacks to run up your office flag pole; treat yourself to a frothy coffee using your own milk whisker if a lunch table at the Savoy is out of reach at the moment: or if needs must, dance a little jig on the edge of the station platform when you’re headed off to meet your next customer. It won’t be exactly like an out-take of Riverdance but it will give you added oomph for the day and help mark those special start up moments.

Calling all football fans: Football Beyond Frontiers tours the Balkans

Football Beyond Borders (www.footballbeyondborders.org) is an NGO run entirely by volunteers that aims to use football to tackle political, social and cultural issues.

They are organising a tour to the Balkans this summer (previous tours have taken in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Brazil and Ghana) to promote racial tolerance with messages through football, one cultural medium which still divides the Balkan countries in partisan, volatile fashion.

The tour will take place from 28th August – 18th September 2013. The group going on tour will be made up of 24 individuals of mixed gender and of diverse ethnic backgrounds. On the tour, they will ravel to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, teaming up with local grass-roots organisations. These include:

OSCE – Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (www.osce.org)
Belgrade – Belgrade Faculty of Sports and Physical Education, Balkan Alpe Adrian Project
Sarajevo – Bubamara BC (www.bubamara.ba), The Orhideja Stolac Association (orhideja.org/wordpress)
Mostar – United World College Mostar (www.uwcmostar.ba)
Zagreb – qSPORT (int.qsport.info)

They aim to organise multi-ethnic football tournaments to bring divided footballing communities, especially those from rival fan groups, together and preach our inclusive, anti-racist, anti-sexist stance. Staying at the homes of local families will also help us to integrate deeper into the community.

To raise money for the tour, they have been staging events across London, such as mixed-gender football tournaments, and on 25th August they will be hosting a dinner at Russell Square, London. They welcome all interested parties to the dinner, which will be a 3-course meal at £20 per person, including keynote speakers from those closely involved with the tour and the organisation including Jasper Kain, the founder of Football Beyond Borders.

They also have a sponsoring page which gives full, comprehensive details on the tour, including a promotional video on our work:

http://www.sponsume.com/project/football-beyond-borders-leveling-playing-field

They would therefore welcome any feedback or support that you may have for our work, as we are constantly seeking partner organisations that we can work with to strengthen our message.

For further details please see:

Football Beyond Borders – http://www.footballbeyondborders.org
Balkans Tour Sponsorship – http://www.sponsume.com/project/football-beyond-borders-leveling-playing-field

Listen hard, listen long and don’t forget to waggle your ears: It’s World Listening Day!

It’s another “World of…Something” day today, and today’s celebration is for the skill of  listening.  Hardly a day goes by these days without it turning into a day to celebrate some human micro-activity or another.  Many of these activities are focused around very small neuro-muscular complexes and are intended to produce specific movements by those complexes, presumably for the benefit of the individual concerned and the human race as a whole.  Today’s celebration is the combination of little bones, muscles and nerves which permit the act of listening.

In education recently, we’ve seen this tendency to glorify minor muscular movements in lots of different manifestations: we promote the acts of writing, singing and reading for example in stealth-like attempts to exercise and strengthen the neuro-muscular arrangements that constitute the fingers, the vocal cords and the ocular muscle systems.

This increasing focus on micro-regions of the human body has naturally generated educational initiatives and consequently businesses which promote those differentiated, atomised and fractured human activities. We already have many organisations which focus on the actions of writing, of reading and of talking: and today no doubt there are businesses committed to building the neuromuscular assemblages which will improve our ability to listen.

Whether we are able to express ourselves any better, comprehend what previous generations are telling us, or hear what someone is trying to tell us is a moot point: but this fracturing of the human body into profit centres can only be good for the economy as a whole.   Whilst some faint hearts might be questioning whether or not fracking our planet might be good news for the environment as a whole, the good news is that the fracturing of the human body into profit centres can only be good for the economy – and with the minimum of disruption to the Blackpool pleasure beaches to boot.