Spinning hits Norfolk

Years after everyone else, my local gym has bought a batch of reconditioned spinning bikes and launched some super Sunday morning classes.

It's supposed to be brilliant for runners so I signed up - to find I'm the only bloke doing it, so there's the added bonus of being surrounded by red faced women!

Yesterday, there was a perma-tanned, false nailed, heavily made up, blonde 40+yr old at the spinning class on Sunday - pretty gruesome for a Sunday morning - (well, she didn't do anything for me!) Although the rest of us were dripping sweat, her mascara didn't even run . . so either she's supremely fit or she kept the resistance on the bike to a minimum . . . perhaps I should try that too (cheating that is, not mascara!)

A difficult decision

Isn't it strange how a harmless oversight can lead to a massive conundrum? I popped into the gym today, on my way to a meet a senior public sector manager. My thinking was that a hard run on the treadmill would be brilliant preparation for the meeting.

But then things took a turn for the worse.

After chucking my sweaty stuff in my gym bag and enjoying a log hot shower, I found that I had packed a pair of my wife's knickers instead of my own more modest underwear. What should I do? There was no time to go home for a pair. I could wear my sweaty ones - not nice; go without - not comfortable; or wear my wife's knickers and hope I'm not in an accident and rushed to hospital.

Of course the risk of being exposed in A&E as a temporary cross-dresser was extremely slim. I am a careful driver and why should today be the day I get unlucky and end up on a stretcher. Logic said pop them on and laugh it off at bed time when she spots her underwear clinging to my bum.

I couldn't do it . . . . . so opted to manage without.

What would you have done?

Do you follow or fight desire lines?

I've become fascinated by 'desire lines'. These are the paths that people create by walking where they choose, rather than where the planners intended.

When confronted by desire lines, you have too choices. Adapt to meet the demand or enforce a change of behaviour. In other words, make a path where people walk or use barbed wire to deter them. Which of these would you do?


Businesses are always encountering 'virtual desire lines'. These are those annoying instances where the customers don't behave as you expect. The successful entrepreneur recognises sees these as opportunities and responds accordingly. The fool takes it as a snub, erects 'barbed wire' and loses customers.

Once you start to think about desire lines you see them everywhere. What's more you will probably feel liberated enough to create some of your own!

Good luck

Why do we worry about the wrong things?

This is a picture of George Derbyshire. He's a super bloke who runs the National Federation of Enterprise Agencies. He also has a rather impressive beard. George and I both attended a conference last week and I could not help but compare his established facial growth with my own, rather newer version. In any competition, George would beat me hands down.

But only after accepting that I had grown a rather inferior version, did it strike me that on top, I have a full head of hair and George has gone bald. In other words, if you compare our whole heads and not just our faces, I've got more hair than he has.

This set me thinking. Why did I beat myself up about my less dense beard when actually I'm better off overall? What other examples are there in life where I and perhaps you, compare just one facet of ourselves that we're sensitive about and ignore the fact that in other respects, we're actually better off?

My conclusion is this: when you start comparing your performance with that of those around you, step back and take a wider view. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that when you stop focusing on detail, you find that you're actually better off than you first thought!

Atlas Shrugged - more than a good read!

I was introduced to 'Atlas Shrugged' by a millionaire who told me it's the only book he ever read twice. I now know why!

The book is a compelling read and the parallels with today's focus on political correctness and positive discrimination tells me that we're in great danger in the UK today of living out the book with all of it's dire consequences. Only yesterday I heard a senior NHS manager apologise for appointing a man rather than a women to an all male Board. 'The man was the best candidate,' she said, 'but if both had been equal, we'd have appointed the woman.'

We also have the National Union of Teachers calling for the nationalisation of Britain's private schools because it's not fair that the kids there stand a better chance.

I lead an anti-stigma project and also provide 'business support' to UK charities seeking to develop social enterprise. I know the paradox of equality, that is: the more you seek to include and be fair, the more you actually highlight the differences and exclude.

Atlas Shrugged ends with the lights going out in New York. Let's not let that happen in London!

There is now a website to explore; take a look! http://www.atlasshrugged.com/

Stuffing Stigma

I led a successful bid for Lottery funds to continue an anti-stigma campaign I launched last year. It's part of the Rethink/Mind/Mental Health Media 'Moving People' project and will I hope form an innovative, Norwich based link in that bigger 3yr campaign.

As is always the case when it's my initiative that has led to something happening, the process of 'letting go' as others become involved is painful. I'm very good at seeing opportunities and grabbing them. I then become very protective and finally, recognise that actually the project has to become what others feel it should become.

The challenge for me always comes at that point when others can clearly see that what is actually needed is a little less extreme and revolutionary than what I've been advocating. (I exaggerate for effect - always - then become entranced by the opportunity to surprise!).

Chatting with the Chairman of our local Mental Health Trust yesterday, over a milky Starbucks coffee, it became very clear that Stuff Stigma now had to become less maverick and more mainstream. The imminent appointment of a Stuff Stigma Project Manager also suggests that soon it will be time for me to slip from 'activist' to 'mentor' role - stepping back and supporting someone else who will be having all the fun of changing public attitudes to mental ill health.

Perhaps it's my age, but I find I'm becoming much more comfortable with the model I've developed. It works like this:

1. See a gap or opportunity
2. Challenge, provoke, irritate and eventually get something happening
3. Involve those who work in the same 'space' as the project I'm incubating
4. Invite those showing an interest to shape the project and align it with their own
5. Step back and then out, to do it all again somewhere else

As far as Stuff Stigma goes, I'm going to be very involved in some of the outward facing elements of the project. Specifically annual conferences, mass participation events and a book I'm writing about prejudice.

The 2008 conference focuses on empathy and how to do it . . . it's on Mowww.stuffstigma.org ay 31st March and you can book your place via www.stuffstigma.org

It's free to attend and will be fun - I promise

See you there!

A chav for two days

One of the benefits of driving a Nissan X Trail is the car you get to borrow when yours is in for a service.

Yesterday I swapped my sleek, sophisticated X Trail for the ultimate chavombile, complete with chucky roof bars, running boards and a back seat, convenient for servicing firm breasted blonde hitchhikers.

It's a motor that had me fighting the urge to blow £10 at Argos on a gold bracelet and chest medallion. It's also a motor that did not meet the approval of the lovely young lady on the security barrier at Norfolk County Council.

She was clearly the kind of person who would normally swoon at the site of a tanned, muscular chap like me arriving in the ultimate fun 4x4, but somehow the charm opportunity passed her by.

'The car park's full,' she said, 'you'll have to go away again.' This was somewhat inconvenient as three people were waiting for me inside the building for some high-powered negotiations. I had to ring them from the roadside and explain that short of parking on a double yellow line on the main road outside, they'd have to re-schedule the meeting and find a venue that allowed visitors to park.

Rather like the car, her willingness to screw up the Council's business by turning away visitors with important meetings, left me speechless.

The three folks I was to meet are now scheduled to come here in a few days time. I'm tempted to give my PA a high-vis jacket and clipboard and have her turn them away at the top of the drive, 'as our car park is full'. That however would be rude and unlike Councils, I don't do rude.