Like anyone our business must continue to learn and change.
Maybe it’s time for a new cycle tour. 🤭
Innovation
Tag: change
Rise up tempered radicals
Reformists of the world unite
people are worried about AI taking jobs away.
If it looks likely — then surely here’s a golden opportunity (naive? Socialist?) to resurrect an old idea.
Slash the working week by let’s say a half:
— Provide a living payment to everyone and in return encourage people to be active citizens with their newly available ‘free’ time.
— get people to ‘sell’ the idea to everyone by creating new opportunities for training, mentoring, working to identify what needs doing to help sustain healthy communities and life in general, and for each other and to jointly plan and implement things as active participants.
Yes it needs a revolution
It requires intervention by government, an alternate view of what means to have fulfilling roles, a shift from our prevailing free market orthodoxy, a challenge to the thousands of years old social structures of unequal shares of resources and opportunities.
Not a big ‘ask’ then.
Surely if AI is going to take jobs away plus we’re constantly hammered by our collapsing societies in addition to the bleak environmental predictions of global warming — this is exactly the time to act.
But of course— the pessimist pops up here— as I often say — there’s abundant solutions and answers to our challenges. For many reasons we just can’t work together, yes we’re unable to cooperate to be able to act and change.
Back to Gandhiji
Maybe this is why I was so attracted to India
It does hold the answer to all our challenges
We can find anything and everything in India, including
— all our mistakes.
Come on let’s give it a go
Ed: who’s he speaking to?
Critical management.
I’ve tried to help people become active participants in the decisions affecting them throughout my life.
I’ve worked to develop and improve their organisations as facilitator and manager since the early 80s.
Initially this was in NGOs and government but later in my career i was guide: consultant and trainer working with MNCs (multi-national companies) and by developing partnerships.
Occasionally, here I’ll post opinion pieces and insights from my experiences. These are for anyone but particularly young people and especially members of our reflective space group here in Mysore.
Here’s the latest.
Dancing Elephants about personal and organisational change
Management styles: whimsical
Management Styles: Banyan Tree
More subjects will follow about innovation, motivation, developmental stages of an organisation, responsible business, thinking…
blah blah blah
..
With dancing elephants we introduced an award scheme. Years later we found an incredible coincidence.
Sometimes things were meant to be.
….
Manjula’s Library
There’s a great range of books including those on learning, management, history, philosophy and education in Manjula’s library at our house aka Mysore Bed and Breakfast. My favourites are the children’s picture books which are of course for all ages!
….
My MPhil was a research degree in Critical Management undertaken at Lancaster University in the 1990s
In my studies and practice, I focused on human behaviour in different contexts. When I reached my 60s, I realised I’ll never understand human behaviour 🤪
I’ve helped develop hundreds of projects over the years. As a facilitator no one probably associates them with me.
I’m satisfied with that.
Stephen
We’re losing so much
There are signs everywhere of the man-made environmental damage resulting from not anticipating the consequences, concentrating on short term gains and our lack of care.
Even seas go missing. Due to all the above combined with local and global pressures.
All around the world, including in our backyard in Karnataka with the Kaveri river, there’s conflicts about water being taken from rivers and little being left for the communities further down.
Why does the foreigner
Save that old stuff
The neighbours think I’m bonkers and a joke.
Art work from every place in India is throughout the house. They can sort of understand that, but it’s not practical or functional.
Why save the wooden wheels, the cart sides, painted chairs?
I remember as a child, the horse drawn wagons, workshops repairing wheels and tailors in every town. They’ve all gone now.
We still have them here but they’ll go. In the eight years of mycycle tours the number of wooden ox carts being made at the workshop we visit has decreased by over eighty percent.
Hopefully some will recognise what is happening and work to preserve the heritage…, fab city, life affirming trees, characterful market, .. beautiful colourful women, skilled artisans there so much wonderfulness. , Otherwise in future years the neighbours will remember the crazy foreigner and realise he was right and understand what they’ve lost.
All Change
Part One
Our Garden has been a wonderful addition to the home we share through Mysore Bed and Breakfast. It’s been a memorable part of our life.
todays
team shifted the plants to the ground floor
the owner of the house has arranged to resurface the roof as after nearly forty years and a garden for ten it’s letting water in.
He’s understandably nervous of the plants going back on the roof. It took six of us around four hours to shift them. So we have a new arrangement.
I can feel the nervous worry of guests around the world.
Don’t worry, we’ll have it ready soon and Madam is keeping an eye on things.
The work continues
over the next few months we’ll have three smaller more intimate super gardens and Manjula’s stone benches in the park opposite.
People want change
How can they find it?
In America, four out of five people who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 saw an ability to bring about change as his most important quality. That tells us less about Trump than it does about the way that real agents of change, social movements that can truly transform people’s lives, have crumbled.
People need change, although they might deny it, and need to feel they have both purpose and some control over their lives.
Image is from my 50th birthday invite and how life changed a few years afterwards.
So what’s life without it purpose or meaning?
Humans, Frankl suggests, find themselves only through creating meaning in the world. Meaning is not something to be discovered – it is something that humans create. They do so by acting upon the world. “Man does not simply exist,” Frankl wrote, “but always decides what his existence will be”
Check the article here for more info.
I created my change and a new meaning through my muse, my catalyst, my Manjula.
I write this on a reflective journey, realising we can’t control, seeking to add to that meaning and find fulfilment whilst holding my dear to me.
Customer service
I’m fresh back from delivering a workshop on engaging employees as a responsible business here in London.
We hung out with swans
We covered the usual stuff including issues related to quality, services, customer satisfaction and empowering employees to innovate.
I find a message waiting for me.
It’s from the cycle shop in Mysore. I’d left my main cycle to be fixed.
They’ve written to tell me that they’ve installed the wrong part which affects/reduces the performance of the cycle gears by one third.
Why have they written to tell me instead of just fixing it?
In my view… free consultancy…. it’s pretty clear what the options are….
1….Do it again, this time with the correct part.
2….Replace with the original part and give back to me as it was.
This sort of thing is common in India but I can’t say that I can really understand it. How is it that the supplier didn’t supply the correct part? Did the cycle shop order the wrong part and did they not check before they installed it? Why haven’t they just solved the problem? Do they expect me to take it back like this?
It reminds me of the case of the Chinese Oil….
I’d ordered Tung or China Oil to treat our new Rosewood chairs and sofa. The seller was in Delhi who would arrange delivery. It didn’t arrive.
Me: where’s my oil?
Seller: it’s with the transporter sir.
Me: where’s my oil?
Transporter: we can deliver the container sir but there’s no oil in it, it’s leaked.
I’ll not bore you with the whole story. Suffice to say. ‘The it’s not my fault guv’ wasn’t accepted. The seller and transporter sorted out responsibility between themselves. It was eventually delivered.
I’ve placed trust in people and they are accountable to deliver what they’ve promised. Any problems, well it’s up to them to sort it out, if necessary to apportion responsibility. Hopefully we all learn from our mistakes and improve for the future and the business continues to thrive and survive. From it I also know who to trust, maybe.
What’s so difficult about that?
For some reason my Indian friends just accept this poor service and don’t challenge. In that case how will anything ever change?
Me and MYCycle 