Tag: copass

Collective inspiration

Posted on by philipdodson

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Day 4 at the DNX/Betahaus/Copass camp, has only convinced me more than ever about the power of inspiration versus motivation.

Motivation is where you listen to a ‘guru’, usually, they are self-proclaimed, and they invest heavily in a manipulation machine to convince you that they are the number 1.

Sure, when they are bouncing around a stage, supported by loud music, shouting and gimmicks, promising life changing insights, you can get lifted by the collective hype and atmosphere. You walk out of the show pumped.

The problem with this shallow process is the only winners are the ‘gurus’ and you wake up the next day having to deal with your life and it’s challenges without your ‘guru’.

Having been to many of these types of camps, the thing I find each time is I walk away with inspiration, which is much deeper and longer lasting than motivation. It is something that touches our soul and heart. Passion and inspiration come from the heart, not from the shouting and guarantees of the motivator.

However, another thing comes into play with gathering people with shared values together in a camp for 10 days, not only is it fun mixed with work, it is something much more powerful, a collective of like minded people. The most important thing happens is you get collective inspiration from listening and sharing with others.

Today’s inspiration came from talking with Claudi of GreenMeBerlin, her ideas of bringing fun into the often dull, serious and evangelical pioneering of green issues, is a classic ‘purple cow’ as my mate Seth puts it.

We’ve had green campaigners for many, many years, and some have had success and others very little impact. That’s often because they have failed to make their story or mission appealing. Now that does not mean everything has to be turned into the lowest common denominator to give it mass appeal.

I discussed this recently with my friend Stefano and his point was that in order to get people to change you need to make it appealing and not preachy. Appealing means putting inspiration into it, something that ignites our emotions that drive our decision making.

Sure you can try and motivate people short-term by guilt, but longer-term that never works.

What I’ve taken away from this so far, is that these gatherings and the people who attend are proof that there are others in the world who share my values and passion for real change. It is signal that people want an alternative.

It is up to all of us who want that to continue to collectively inspire each other beyond the camps.

Together we can build the alternative we want.

I shall not attempt to define it, but I know it when I see it.

Posted on by philipdodson

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“I shall not today attempt further to define pornography, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it” famously said a US judge.

Day 2 for me at the Lemnos Camp and this post is inspired by some chat’s today, especially with Tosh from Betahaus.

So the buzz word, not just in the brave new world of coworking but in the strategy of every new funky start-up is the word ‘community’. I can not seem to escape using the word, even though in my last podcast we talked about not using the ‘c’ word anymore.

When a word or a thing becomes popular, I tend by nature not to like it anymore. Some words like pivoting, onboarding and authentic I disliked from the very beginning. Authentic is a particular pet hate – see my previous post.

The ‘c’ word is so overused now, yet whenever you get into definitions of what ‘c’ is, then a good deal struggle to avoid the typical jargon speak.

For me, if you can define community, then actually it is probably not the ‘c’ thing. Like Simon Sinek and his ‘Start with why’ the most important things that touch our heart and emotions live in our limbic brains and like the people we love in life, it is often hard to describe why we do, but we know that we do.

So if we set our values clearly, our mission, our cause, our why from the beginning and if we then stick to that, avoiding selling our soul to be ‘investor ready’ (another of those fucking phrases!!) then the right people join the tribe. The wrong people and that is not a judgement just wrong for this tribe, de-select themselves easily.

Then it is up to everyone in the tribe to take ownership, do their bit and make a contribution. The ‘c’ thing is not something for one person or organisation to own or direct, it is for all within the tribe to be involved in.

I have no idea how to define the ‘c’ thing or even what word to use to describe it, but I will know it when I see it and that is the tribe I want to be a part of, not some over engineered jargon-filled artificial group of mainly disconnected people pretending they’re in a ‘community’ of ‘authentic’ serial entrepreneurs onboarding assets into their platform.

If you’re selling a product/service versus inspiring people to be part of your journey and loving your cause, then you’re unlikely to see what the ‘c’ thing looks like.