Tag: collaboration

Fire

Posted on by philipdodson

Fire by Philip Dodson

Yesterday I was at a OuiShare London workshop in Hackney and the day was all about collaboration skills, organised by Neil Brook and facilitated by Judy Rees.

The first question of the day by Judy was ‘when you are working at your best, what are you like?’. Once we’d decided that, we then had to draw it on sticker and wear it. After that we had to answer questions from our partner about why we had chosen it.

I chose fire and drew it on my sticker and started answering the questions from my partner.

I explained what I meant by ‘fire’ and after they realised I wasn’t a destructive pyromaniac, then the other person listened and started to figure out what I was trying to say.

So this is what I mean by being like ‘fire’ when I am working at my best.

Typically during my life, I have lit lots of small ‘fires’ and because I have lit so many of them, most of them go out before I can get them to take and build into nice roaring fires.

I have learnt gradually, that it is better to light one fire, spend time tending to that ‘fire’ step-by-step everyday, small focussed steps, then slowly but surely the ‘fire takes’ and starts to build. Then if I keep at it, the ‘fire’ grows day upon day and over time I have a bigger ‘fire’, then a bigger ‘fire’ and eventually I have got a ‘raging inferno’, a ‘forest fire’.

From this my passion, motivation, my flow grows daily and then I am literally buzzing and on ‘fire’, where nothing can stop me and I tear through my action list and then I am ready to start the next small ‘fire’ and so the process goes again.

So for me it’s discipline, small steps and focus on one thing at a time that makes me happiest and most productive. If I follow these steps, then momentum builds and the compound effect over time kicks in.

The workshop was a great example of why working with others is so important. As the number of self-employed continues to rise, getting involved with organisations like OuiShare and getting involved with co-working communities, is vital.

Collaborate or die.

Education – it’s a 21st Century fail

Posted on by philipdodson

Education – It’s a 21st Century fail

old school

20% of the jobs today didn’t exist 5 years ago, self-employment is on a global hockey stick growth curve, we’re living through the biggest revolution since the industrial one – a digital revolution.

We’ve moved from an industrial age into a digital ideas economy, there is a rising collaborative sharing economy and there is the ever growing and more powerful connected generation. We have an increasing number of social enterprises and people are looking at life very differently.

People are turning their backs on the old world capitalist model, turning their backs on consumption, turning away from the world order of yesterday.

However, how are we preparing the next generations for this new world, how are we equipping the children of today to face this new age?

By largely serving them up the same old out-dated stuff that has been served up for decades. Education in the developed world is largely failing to prepare our young for the world they will be facing.

Giant state run education factories, preparing children to jump through meaningless government imposed hoops, in a typical party political lead box ticking exercise. That will all be undone and changed in a few years time when the other lot take over the reigns of power.

Then you have private independent schools perpetuating the privileged class as they desperately cling on to a Victoriana Imperial world of times gone by.

The net result is the connected generation of today’s youth are bored, disenfranchised and are being sold woefully short of a proper preparation for their lives ahead. In fact not just the millenials, but I would say anyone who has been educated from 1970 onwards.

We need to move towards smaller community based local schools, we need to start properly bringing the digital revolution in to education.

Prepare them for being self-employed, after all 50% of the working population within 10 years will be. Prepare them to embraace social media and the internet, not try to scare them away from it. They are all using it anyway.

Bring coding in to education, teach them how to set up a company, run one, show them about opening a bank account, pensions, real life things.

Stop filling their heads with a chronological historical route march through time, stop teaching things they can look up on the internet.

Allow them to be truly creative, don’t teach them all the same, work out what they are good at and love doing and then help them to succeed in that.

This is not some utopian fluffy pipe dream – just need to stop party politics and open our minds that doing the same old, same old, will get the same poor results. Use imagination and harness children’s lack of fear and imaginations to create truly amazing things.

Bring in meditation, yoga, wellbeing and other proven things. Bring in partnerships with local businesses and other elements of the community.

Teach them all first aid for example, not by a teacher in a stuffy classroom, but get them to work with St John’s ambulance. FT (food technology), why not take them to a real live restaurant or a bakery to learn from experts.

Half of what they are taught is generic, out dated and to be honest they will never ever use.

Everyone needs a bank account, most will fill in a tax return, have a pension, may run a company, the list of real life practical things to teach is endless, yet none are taught.

Stop failing our society with old out dated rubbish and start teaching them what they need and start allowing them the true freedom to be creative.

I have recently been working with many young students and from all over the world – the theme is common with all, they are not being equipped for the world we live in and the world that is evolving.

Many are doing business degrees, yet they are not being shown or taught the most basic things about business or about being an entrepreneur.

So what to do? we all need to campaign for a change in the system and encourage others to do so. We need to get more integration between business people, community leaders and education.

We need to remove party politics from education and most other aspects to be honest. We need to help young people and give our knowledge and experience to them as business people, get involved in mentoring and coaching.

Things have to change.