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Iain Ford Griffiths: surprising us all, right to the end.

I knew Iain from his time at LIPA in the mid 1990s when he started work as an open handed, wide armed and beaming Director of Finance – not the kind of stance you’d associate with a figure of financial authority.  The stereotype would have it that your Director of Finance had to be thin, mealy mouthed, tightly buttoned up and loathe to expressing any kind of subjective opinion about anything at all, particularly if it couldn’t be boxed off into a spread sheet. 

Iain was none of these things and was not your typical Director of Finance. His obvious financial expertise was tempered with a humanity and sense of humour which made his decisions simultaneously reasonable and sometimes alarming. There was no doubting his expertise and skillset in all matters to do with balance sheets, group accounts, cash flow and contracts; but his innate humanity and desire to do the right thing sometimes won out over the requirement imposed on him to toe the line, irrespective of whether that line was worth toeing.

I attributed his tennis playing as symptomatic of that tendency to surprise you when you least expected it. A left hander, his tennis playing could leave you completely puzzled as to why the shot you thought you had played was a point killer suddenly found its way back to you on your side of the court with added urgency, asking you all the tennis questions you didn’t want to answer at that moment. Genius or just bloody lucky? You never could quite make that out; even when the ritual retirement to the bar after the game shed no further light on how Iain had managed that particular coup de grace.

Iain’s passing for me had those hallmarks too.  Whilst we had spent many enjoyable and good natured moments together in Liverpool, my moving to the East Midlands saw dusk settle on our weekly tennis encounters and there was a slow decline in our regular contact.  I put this down to the nature of life, living and perhaps the inevitable fading of relationships, despite all the good intentions we start the day with.

So, it was with a huge surprise (thanks, Iain, that’s so typical of you!) that I learned in the early autumn of 2023 that Iain had died of liver and bowel duct cancer as far back as April 2022. Whilst our relationship had dissolved to the extent that I was unaware of this turn of events 16 months previously, I was cheered to hear that his last few years had been spent in a spirit of typical Iain bon homie: encouraging all those would be tennis players at his local club to enjoy the game and see winning and losing as the imposters they really are amongst other actions of good temper and generosity.

My sole regret now is not being able to pick up the friendship again and it’s a reminder that just because we lose touch with friends over time, the roots of those friendships needn’t die; they can be reawakened on the click of a mouse or the dial of a phone pad. God bless you Iain: I’m sure you’ll be living the high life up there.  Even God needs a pleasant surprise once in a while, and you’re just the man to provide it.

R.I.P. Ian Ford Griffiths

April 1950 – 24 April 2022

The business of business support: protecting the data from the unscrupulous

Its gone generic. We’ll replacing GVA with ERHH No.1 subsection 3.2 at some point in the 2.1 distant future. Lets write it all down on the BI1.4 form whilst taking time to make sure that 0.6 FTE has been rectified. It’s important that 7.3 HFS zero account hasn’t been deleted and the evidence is still 8.9 out here. This is the world we’ve got in the 5.5HG audit requirements from CRM. At least this has been put into place and the fields are in overkill, saving for the bare essentials subject to quote. Brackets 7 end brackets. If I can create a Accelerator drop down and register the entity register before the end of the calendar year zero 7 then the budget is likely to be in house resources 9x. Normal resource load in the induction process. We’re noting the number of assists to outcomes which demonstrating Gross GVA excluding VAT in Euro terms. But where are the data files which can be keystroked in the live staying point which will generate leads and 17hx. Factor agencies on the matrix allowance component. 7500 businesses are listing in the aerial Matrix landscape taking the helicopter view. Quick wins and heavy losses are expected in Helmand province. Treats and transparency are ongoing preventing derailing the marketing fog from demisting. How the BI17 form escapes from the usual gravitational pull is still subject to 2Bi form encapsulating the rare occasion. They have the same client Tractivity name and washing code, subject to further CRM pilot test bedding with the SWDA list and data protection issue which cannot be shared before Friday.

Let’s go live. Let’s find good clean data which is untouched and unmodified.

Come on 2026, it’s time to get your skates on!

Do you:

  • enjoy writing?
  • trust your instincts?
  • understand workplace politics?
  • understand workplace ego?
  • understand miscommunication?
  • enjoy institutional comedy?

I’m running a small creative experiment to welcome in the New Year which involves creating a fictional workplace.

If you’d like to write one new episode set in that world, using existing characters or introducing new ones, then please contact me through the contact form below and I’ll send you some further information about the project. If you’re up for it, I’ll publish it as an episode written by you, without editing or commentary.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

A Simple Audience Segmentation Tool

Purpose

To quickly understand who is engaged, who is drifting, and where attention is best placed — using behaviour rather than assumptions.

Step 1: Start with observable signals

Ignore intention, enthusiasm, or stated interest. Look only at what people actually do.

Examples of usable signals:

  • Opens or reads communications
  • Clicks or follows links
  • Replies or asks questions
  • Attends, buys, or participates
  • Returns after an absence

Do not score quality yet. Just note presence or absence.

Step 2: Place each person in one of three groups

1. Likely

People who show recent, repeated signals.

Typical behaviours:

  • Regular engagement
  • Timely responses
  • Voluntary interaction

Interpretation:
These people are already choosing you. Do not overwork them.

2. Dormant

People who show past signals, but little or none recently.

Typical behaviours:

  • Previously active
  • Long gaps
  • Passive presence

Interpretation:
They may still care, but something has interrupted momentum.

3. Risky

People who show minimal or fragile signals.

Typical behaviours:

  • One-off engagement
  • Inconsistent contact
  • Only respond when prompted

Interpretation:
Energy invested here has a high chance of low return.

Step 3: Match effort to segment

SegmentWhat to doWhat not to do
LikelyMaintain rhythm, offer depthOver-pitch or pressure
DormantOne clear re-entry invitationMultiple follow-ups
RiskyLight-touch presence or pauseChasing or rescuing

Effort should decrease as risk increases.

Step 4: Revisit regularly

Segments are not identities.
They are snapshots.

Re-sort:

  • after campaigns
  • after pauses
  • after changes in offer or context

Movement between groups is normal.

Step 5: Use the insight sparingly

The aim is not to maximise response.
The aim is to allocate attention where it is metabolised.

If everything feels urgent, segmentation is not being used properly.

Final note

This tool does not predict loyalty, value, or future behaviour.
It only helps decide where to place your next unit of attention.

Come in 2025, your time is up!

Come in 2025, your time is up!

In the final days of 2025, here’s what we’ve learned this year about arts, business and culture.

Via Cultura — Lessons from Krefeld is distilled from a real cross-border cultural exchange process in Krefeld, Germany. It sets out seven practical observations about reciprocity, co-creation, power, pace, and emotional safety in international cultural work, drawn from lived experience rather than theory. It’s shared here simply as a record of what was learned, in case it’s useful to others working in similar terrain. This summary draws on the reflections of young people who took part in the cultural exchange visit to Krefeld, Germany, in partnership with Werkhaus (October 2025). It highlights the key themes of their experience and what made this trip distinctive compared to traditional school or tourist experiences.

1. Authentic Cultural Exchange and Human Connection

The young people valued genuine friendships and human connections with their German peers from Werkhaus. They experienced mutual curiosity and collaboration rather than being passive visitors or spectators. This led to real intercultural understanding through informal conversations, shared meals, and creative activities.

“It felt more like a family holiday than a school trip.”

“We had a closer and more personal experience with the German people.”

2. Creative Expression and Shared Making

The trip centred around artistic collaboration, such as portrait painting and creative workshops, which provided a shared purpose beyond sightseeing. Participants built confidence, embraced experimentation, and recognised that creativity doesn’t require perfection.

“Not everything has to be perfect for the final product to look good.”

“I was surprised by my own talent and everyone else’s amazing creations.”

3. Emotional Growth, Empathy, and Trust

Participants described strong emotional support, trust, and openness between adults and young people. The adults were approachable, caring, and flexible, fostering emotional safety and a sense of belonging that encouraged personal growth.

“I liked that I had more casual and friendly relationships with the adults.”

“They gave me space to calm down and collect myself when I felt overwhelmed.”

4. Autonomy, Freedom, and Shared Responsibility

Young people valued the balance of structure and freedom, being encouraged but not forced to participate. They appreciated autonomy and self-direction—an experience that built confidence and responsibility.

“I liked that I wasn’t forced to do anything I didn’t like but encouraged to do things I wasn’t sure about.”

5. Cross-Cultural Learning and Discovery

Language differences, food, and daily routines became opportunities for humour, learning, and connection. The participants discovered shared humanity, breaking down preconceptions about cultural barriers.

“The fact that the German students actually speak fairly good English.”

“How friendly the Germans were — I instantly connected with them.”

6. Self-Discovery and Personal Growth

Many participants reflected on personal development—overcoming nerves, social anxiety, and perfectionism. The experience encouraged authenticity, resilience, and humour in facing challenges.

“Be yourself — people will like your authenticity.”

“I don’t have to be perky all the time.”

7. Why It’s Different from School Trips or Tourism

Unlike traditional school or tourist trips, the Krefeld exchange focused on relationships and co-creation rather than observation. It blurred the boundaries between leaders and learners, offering a relaxed, empowering, and family-like atmosphere.

“On school trips it’s usually more of a lecture type thing, whereas on this trip we made friends and had individual conversations.”

“It’s a lot more relaxed — more like a family holiday than a school trip.”

Summary Insight

This cultural exchange offered reciprocal, co-created learning – a model of cultural participation rather than cultural consumption. It allowed young people to grow as artists, citizens, and individuals through shared humanity, empathy, and creativity.

Tips for Business Start Ups: why skills and knowledge are hugely overrated attributes in your potential workforce.

Alfie confided in me that the beauty of running a taxi business was that you didn’t need to know many things at all to make it succeed.

You didn’t need to be able to speak – many customers preferred you not to speak in fact; you didn’t need to be able to listen as your customers could either write down or text you their destination; you didn’t need to be able to add up as the meter did all the calculations and you certainly didn’t need to know where you were or where you were going as the Satnav would do that for you.

His next business challenge was to find a way of employing drivers who didn’t know how to drive or indeed recognise a motor vehicle in the first place.

He will find a rich vein of potential employees from the job centres or universities who will only too happily join his business and apply their lack of skills of driving and knowledge about taxis to great effect. They will join the growing band of aspirant Robert de Niro brothers who are only missing the obligatory Glock which would entitle them to call themselves fully paid up members of the taxi driving profession.

The notion that a complete absence of skill and knowledge in your workforce can benefit your business is a useful one which many other start up businesses – or even longstanding corporates – would do well to learn from.

Alfie has in fact recently left a telecoms giant where the inability to communicate with human beings was a real asset. His taxi business is clearly set to go far (just make sure you don’t get in one of his cabs if you want to make it home safely).

Day 25 of the 26 Day Big Shut Up: the final countdown

https://videopress.com/v/LnzYSCJF?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Over the last few years, I’ve been supporting The Mighty Creatives’ annual ‘Be Mighty, Be Creatives’ fundraising campaigns.  Whether this be through a Rock’n’Roll extravaganza In a Nottingham Church, a 24 hour Bring-Your-Own-Vinyl-A-thon in a Nottingham pub,  an exploration of Nottinghamshire by bike, or exploring the physical exertions required to net a basketball from a stationery position in the pouring Lincolnshire rain, the campaigns have been fun and firmly directed to supporting a mighty cause: fighting for the creative voices of children and young people in the East Midlands.

This year is no exception.  Called The Mighty (Un)Mute, we’re aiming to raise £5,000 to support the artistic creation for one of ten Globe Sculptures in The World Reimagined art trail across Leicester, one of the most multicultural cities in the UK. 

Our Globe has been created by local young people and supporting artists, responding to the theme of Still We Rise. The purpose? To recognise and honour those most impacted by the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans through the centuries to the present day.

The TMC staff team are going to support the campaign by taking part in the Mighty (UN)Mute, a day-long vow of silence, on the 5th October. We’re going to put ourselves ‘on mute’ to turn up the volume of young people’s voices, especially those who identify as part of the Global Majority… those young people who so often go unheard. We won’t be communicating with anyone throughout the day verbally, electronically or in written form.

Over the last 25 days I’ve contributed 25 blog posts on the topic of shutting up, silence and being silenced. There’s been lot to consider and lots to discuss. And this is my final request to you to support our campaign.

If this isn’t possible (and heaven knows we’re all in tough financial times right now), then anything you can do to share and shout about the campaign would be equally welcome and appreciated.

So… come and encourage me to shut up, once and for all. You know you want to.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/richard-owenmum

The pressing question for the Modern City: how to deal with Urination Hot Spots?

Deeply woven into the psyche of our cities planners are many challenges of great significance: traffic lights, pedestrianisation and the night time economy to name but three. The third member of this triumvirate of city signifiers  brings many benefits but has also led to the emergence of a rather peculiar and problematic cityscape feature: the urination hot spot.

 That’s right: those places in the city which quietly and unassumingly attract hundreds upon hundreds of visitors nightly to relieve themselves before they gleefully hop back up the street to join their fellow cavorters in fuelling themselves up before visiting the next urination hot spot. No need for a tourist guide, website or city ambassador  here: urination hotspots apparently announce themselves with the minimum of fanfare but with the maximum of impact. 

Now there’s nothing odd about having a piss outside: it’s something that is as natural as eating kebab and chips in windy bus stops. No, what’s remarkable is that our collective pissing has generated places which are like magnets to urine: places which call to our bladders, ‘Piss here, please piss here! Not over there but just right here!’  Just as our architects have dreamt up fabulous new city vistas, so our collective bladders have replied to those dreams with their own unmistakeable response to city living: the urination hot spot.

Now what’s that all about? Intuitively you might imagine that the pattern of piss over a city centre in one night would be randomly spread: people pissing wherever the fancy takes them, whenever it takes them. But apparently not: the phenomenon of the urination hot spot suggests that certain spaces in cities are privileged with being pissed on more than others; and that there is something magnetic about those spaces where, like in all good capitalist morality tales, wealth attracts wealth and piss attracts piss. 

We might ask ourselves: is there something in the architecture of the city which attracts piss heads to piss where others have pissed before them? Or is there something  hormonal about piss which biologically communicates with other people’s bladders over the ectoplasmic equivalent of wifi and which urges passing strangers to “piss here! Not there but here!”  Or is it a cultural phenomenon? A kind of “I pissed there cos my dad pissed there and his dad pissed there before him?”

Whatever the reason, you’ve soon got a urination hot spot on your hands (if you’re very unlucky). And if you’re a city planner  you’ve got an even bigger problem in your face (or nose) if your job is to improve the quality of living in your city: how are you going to get rid of such urination hot spots?

Given the managerialist culture those planners work within, there’s only one thing you can do first of all: measure them and implement interventions  which are intended to reduce or remove them altogether. And this is where it gets tricky. How do you baseline a urination hot spot?

Presumably you would need to measure the volume of piss poured into the hot spot over night and compare measurements both before and after your intervention strategy.  But before that happened, you’d have to have a definition of what constituted a urination hot spot in the first place. How would 15 rugby players emptying their bladders over half an hour register on the UHS scale? (See, there’s an acronym already – a sure sign we’re working in a genuine managerialist culture). And how would them drinking Guiness compare with a gaggle of estate agents drinking litres of Pino Grigio over the same period of time?

The managerial challenges are endless but one thing is certain: the Urination Hot Spot is, along with pigeons, McDonalds and inexplicable public art, here to adorn our streets and boulevards for many years to come.  

Bullseye! Look at what we could have won…

“That’ll kill you,” I cheerfully called out to the car parking attendant at the Covid-19 Vaccination Hub as he lit up a surreptitious cigarette on the side of the road. No doubt attuned to the futility of my off the cuff remark, he ignored me and kept his stare on the argumentative pair of security guards who were at it hammer and tongs down at the security gates.

“If you don’t like the fucking job why don’t you just fuck off?” remonstrated an elderly man heatedly to his younger colleague who was no slouch when it came to returning the insults. I missed the rest of the barbed comments between them as I turned the corner and entered the inner sanctum of the Hub: a long queue of hopefuls and sorrowfuls were stretched out in front of me, all waiting our turn for what we fervently hoped would be our promise of happier days ahead.

The inner sanctum had in a previous life been the hallowed ground of the Central TV studios where the ITV gameshow, Bullseye, was produced. Mixing general knowledge questions with darts, Bullseye was fronted by its once famous compère, Jim Bowen, who used to encourage his participants with several catchphrases: “Super Smashing Great” (although he disputed he ever said that); they’d receive their “BFH: Bus Fare Home” if they gambled but lost; “Keep out of the black and in the red; nothing in this game for two in a bed” referred to how contestants would have to avoid hitting the dart board in the same place twice; and perhaps the biggest killer catch phrase of all time, particularly in these Covid-sensitised times, “Look at what you could have won!”.

There was plenty of time to think about the irony of a site of a popular TV quiz game turning into a mass Vaccination Hub where the only prizes were of the Oxford / AstroZeneca or the Pfizer variety because the queue wended its way slowly into and around and through the studios.

There was no random throwing of darts into an outsize dartboard though; just the careful and attentive work of many NHS staff and volunteers, ensuring we were all focused on one common purpose: our salvation and wishes for better days for our friends, families, communities and nations after the disasters of 2020.

Look at what we could have won. You just had to read the news on your phone or in your newspaper to catch up with the recent mortality figures. 121,000 and still counting in the UK; unimaginable numbers across the planet.

But for all the solemnity and patience of the queue, the ability of the staff to react swiftly to an ever changing situation was remarkable: one young lad with diabetes was brought through the Hub at pace. He’d been struggling but his carers were dealing with it swiftly, directly and with the minimum of drama or game show pizazz.

It was one tiny insight into the myriad of struggles that people here, across the country, across the world, have been enduring over the last year. “Look at what you could have won!” I nearly called out to the car park attendant on my way out but thought better of it. He was enjoying his cigarette in the warm early Spring afternoon air and didn’t need any more reminders of what is just around the corner.