Teddy Bear's Picnic

I got talking with Jill last night at the Waffle House in Norwich. She's a fascinating old lady who has been a scientific researcher and College lecturer in her time. Now she's retired and gets involved in things - mental health is a shared interest.

Sunday evenings she usually visits the Waffle House, a long established and rather good place to prepare yourself for the week ahead. We too go there on Sunday's after a visit to the cinema.

Jill usually has a large teddy with her when she goes out for dinner. She lives alone and the teddy is her companion. Last night she was alone. It seems the owner of the place at suggested tactfully that she leave the teddy at home. 'It creates the wrong image' he'd gently told her. Reluctantly she'd complied and now eats alone.

It seems though that I'm the ninth customer to ask her where her teddy bear is. So that's one restaurant owner worrying that it's not giving the right impression and nine customers asking what's happened to the bear. I think they should invite her to bring her bear next time and give her a free meal as well. There's nothing wrong with eccentricity - it should be celebrated, not suppressed.

A happy coincidence - or was it?

We visited HMV yesterday as we'd been given some vouchers and thought we'd check out the sale CDs and DVDs. I secretly hoped to find a copy of 'Of Time and the City', a wonderful film about Liverpool by Terence Davies. When we saw the film at the cinema, I was as moved as my wife was bored. It's really strange how films get to different people in different ways. My search for the DVD was therefore rather covert. I didn't want it discovered until we reached the till.

Alas, no DVD in HMV but guess what? It was broadcast on BBC4 last night and so I was able to record it. I'm not sure by what coincidence I thought about the film in HMV and decided to search for it. I did not then know it was being broadcast later the same day. Is it coincidence or premonition? Who knows . . . 

Is this what reputation is all about?

I met very modest but inspirational entrepreneur Paul Conrathe yesterday. He was one of the UK's leading lawyers representing children with special educational needs and then he opened a school. Now he has a very successful group of schools, one of which I visited as part of a current consultancy project.

When we met he told me how when he decided to open his first school, he bought a really good book. Six years later it's still on the shelf above his desk. He told me how nice it was to finally meet the author; yes that book was one I had written!


It is so easy to underestimate one's own reputation. Here for me then was a real illustration that for many people starting and growing successful enterprises, my books really do make a difference.I like hearing from people I have helped to succeed without even meeting them!


Find out more about Paul's work here.

Spending a penny and finding a conundrum

You walk into the toilets in a posh restaurant and spot a coin on the floor, close to a toilet. Clearly it fell out of someone's trousers when they pulled them down (or up). The floor is dry and there's no one else around to see what you do.

You can choose to pocket the coin or leave it where it is. We all have our price and for me, faced with this conundrum last night thought long and hard before deciding what to do. In fact I decided that for me to pick up a coin in a toilet it had to be either a one or two pound coin. 50p or below and I'd leave it where it was.

It was a one pound coin and right now it is in my pocket.

What's your price? What's a coin got to be worth for you to pick it up and once in your pocket, what would you do with it?

The paradox of amibtion

I was 55 at the weekend and inevitably spent time reflecting on my life thus far.

When I was 30 I'd been selling for five years and had already started to climb the career ladder. I thought I was invincible and for me success was easily measured by where my company Sierra sat in the range. At 33 I got a bright red two litre GLS - I'd reached the top of the company list and changed companies to get more.

The new firm indulged me with an identical GLS and a slightly higher salary. I thought I was worth more and lacked the wisdom to understand why the talent so obvious to me wasn't universally recognised by my bosses.

Now I'm 55, I have gained much of the wisdom I then lacked. I probably also have the commercial skills to command the high salary I then saw as my right. The trouble is, that I'm no longer ambitious in a material way. I'm more interested in the positive impact I can have than the money I can earn.

I suspect the world today remains full of young men with more ambition than ability. It's up to us who have long since grown up to help them reconcile what they can do with what that might give them. Then they might mature faster than we did and actually achieve more!

Past, present, future

I visited the excellent Belsey Bridge Conference Centre today. Brilliant people, wonderful setting and facilities and prices that make it the perfect setting for the social enterprise residentials I'd like to run next year.

However I've always known the place by another name - All Hallows School. It's where my kid sister was sent by from the age of seven for reasons I'd rather not discuss. Actually Boarding School was good for her I think but it meant that she and I never really knew each other (I'm 9yrs older). Sadly we've not met or spoken for around 25yrs.

The school was very St Trinians in architecture and I'm sure in many other ways too. Last time I was there was in October 1980 when in a state of shock, I drove my distraught father there to break the news of our mother's sudden death. All that for me is now ancient history, but the conference centre, despite it's high tech gear, new decor and furniture is still essentially the school I last visited on that emotionally turbulent day.

The school library still contains old school books and one room had a display cabinet of old school trophies and cups. Both caused me to gulp, as did the whole visit. In fact I parked on the verge for ten minutes when the place came into view, to stop my heart racing before turning into the drive.

How amazing that after 30 years, a place can have such an effect on me. I now know I have to run a programme there if only to deal with the strong feelings visiting the place has evoked. I cannot wait 30yrs before I return . . no way

Big Society - Big Opportunity

I've just written the text below for the organiser of an event I'm speaking at in September. He said it 'sounds fabulous' which set me thinking. There's so much bullsh*t and hot air being spouted about Big Society yet so few actually getting off their backsides to be amongst the first to rise to the challenge?
Am I unusual? Surely not:
The words
How to create your own reality behind the rhetoric
Robert Ashton believes that social enterprise is about attitude and action. He says you need attitude to make a difference in a financially sustainable
way. He also believes in action, describing Big Society as 'an open door through which the brave must step to create the world they want to see.'
Right now he's working with three communities seeking to do just that. A village seeking to regenerate their community, creating jobs and improving local services; a community determined to create a new community hospital that can never be taken away and a school not willing to sit back and accept hat the end of BSF means the end of their hopes for a new school in 2012
Robert is also an author, his 12th book, 'How to be a Social Entrepreneur' is published in October and can be pre-ordered at this event.