When humans evolved into seals

Kurt Vonnegut’s 1985 novel Galápagos is a Darwinian satire on the mess humankind causes for itself as a result of having evolved big brains. Set in the late 20th Century, it charts the breakdown of society and the near extinction of the human species — caused by a cocktail of hedonism, financial crisis and viruses. The twist is that the story is narrated from the vantage point of a million years hence, from which perspective the culture and behaviour of 20th Century humans seems inexplicable. The few surviving humans of the future — a small colony that settled on the Galápagos islands — have evolved a more stable equilibrium with their environment with small brains, minimal language and a simple life in which the only concern is when to dive into the ocean to catch fish.

The novel has a fragmented narrative but is brimming with ideas. Reading it in the wake of the financial crisis of the early 21st Century, it resonates more strongly possibly than it may have at the time of publication. Vonnegut evokes the rapidity with which society can break down when people no longer believe in the value of money: a catastrophe to which we came closer than most of us care to imagine.

The crux of the book is that our brains evolved to such a size that we developed redundant capacity. Somewhere along the way, the consciousness of humans was turned away from the boredom of simply existing and reproducing and towards a variety of lifestyle choices that could make life meaningful:

Human brains back then had become such copious and irresponsible generators of suggestions as to what might be done with life that they made acting for the benefit of future generations seem one of many arbitrary suggestions which might be played by narrow enthusiasts — like poker or polo or the bond market, or the writing of science-fiction novels.

The humans of a million years in the future are descendants of a motley group of mainly women and one man who survive by luck. They escape the mainland before the rest of humankind becomes infected by a virus which terminates further reproduction, and between them they embody some genetic and cultural inheritances that help them to adapt well to the small island of rock where they run aground. Most of the group are from a primitive tribe, the Kankabono, and there’s also a Japanese baby who was born with seal-like fur.

What quickly becomes apparent in this new environment is the uselessness of the sum of knowledge of Western civilisation, which happens to have been captured for them in a computer called Mandarax which accompanies them on their voyage. When human life is stripped of culture, the simplicity of the Kankabono has more to offer than the great achievements of art and science.

Vonnegut does not deny the positive things that have emerged from human endeavour — such as Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. But it’s a running gag in the book that most people were never destined to create something of such sublime significance. The achievements of human culture seem to be outweighed by the inevitability that even the most destructive and outlandish imaginings of the mind would always end up being put into effect:

That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, ‘Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It’s just fun to think about.’

And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it – have slaves fight each other to the death in the Coliseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in industrial quantities, or to blow up whole cities, or so on.

Even the narrator, the soul of a 20th Century American is compromised, having shot an elderly woman in Vietnam out of vengeance when he served there as a soldier. It was an instinctive reaction to seeing his comrades killed by a hand grenade, but one which would be unimaginable to the humans of the future — whose limbs whither away to flippers and who have no need for weapons.

I chanced upon Galápagos while researching my Masters dissertation. It is quoted by the educationist and psychologist Guy Claxton in his book on consciousness, Noises from the Darkroom. Claxton argues that we give too much credit to our sense of the conscious authorship of our lives, and underplay the largely unconscious processes by which our minds work for us:

The problem is that we can pretend to claim conscious credit for our decisions only if we persist in denying the existence, or even the possibility of unconscious influences. Once we see consciousness as an intermittent and unreliable print-out from the invisible biological system that underlies it, we can no longer claim the credit with such confidence.

Vonnegut’s novel delivers a warning about where our reverence for consciousness could lead us. In his depiction of the survival of humankind as being dependent on relinquishing our big brains, he challenges what we most value in Western culture. His imagining of how humankind might evolve is a call on us to learn again how to appreciate the simplicity of just being with our unconscious experience.

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Available from Amazon

See also Things Mean a Lot.

Image courtesy putneymark.

Empty gallery

I’m writing a series of pieces for ArtsProfessional on how arts organisations can focus on delivering their mission. Part 1, on the gap between the organisation’s purpose and its actions, appears today and is reproduced below.

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A theatre won funding to improve its engagement with disadvantaged groups. It approached the challenge as the chance to spread the word about its work. But it discovered that to get the target groups through the doors, the work would need to change. What the theatre was doing from day to day turned out to be irrelevant to a section of the community it was meant to serve. This is an example of the gap that can occur between the way an organisation behaves compared to its avowed mission, one that provides the sense of purpose from a shared understanding among everyone who works in a company.

The mission statement should inform everything people do in their jobs. Often, though, there’s a nagging doubt about whether a company is fulfilling the potential that marks its reason to exist. Arts organisations are particularly vulnerable. Being values-driven, they tend to be more vulnerable to falling short of a high ambition – and they are more likely to resist change. It’s not surprising that the purpose and actions can be misaligned. Things change rapidly; it’s easy to lose one’s bearings.

New technology transforms people’s expectations of the relationships they expect to have with companies. The global recession and the new government’s spending cuts are transforming the economic outlook for the arts. As austerity bites, it’s not just public funding but also consumer spending on the arts that will decline. The coalition’s broader policy changes for the arts are, as yet, unclear.

Change is the one given. The underlying purpose may stay the same, but the way to deliver it will always need to evolve. An organisation that fails to keep pace can quickly begin to lose relevance.

You might spot the gap around the artistic purpose: a gallery that measures success in terms of footfall, but whose traffic is consistently to its cafe not the exhibition space; a theatre that exists to promote new voices buts retreats in the face of intimidating protests. This kind of gap drives away audiences. Or the gap may open around a company’s business practices. Arts companies can be far from model employers. People may be expected to work for long hours in poor conditions. Occupants of senior roles might find their initiative stifled. There may be a culture of bullying which goes unchecked. These are behaviours that contradict the championing of creativity and respect for human potential that involvement in the arts might lead you to expect. This kind of gap damages retention and recruitment of talented staff. It leads to ossified processes and reduced ability to generate fresh ideas. Ultimately, the gap between performance and action drives away funding. When arts budgets are under pressure, companies can suffer capricious cuts. But those with clarity of purpose and a good narrative about delivery will better weather the storm.

Board members must understand the company’s role and their own part in holding the organisation to account. Management teams need to grasp how the organisation’s values should be manifested in practice. This begins with honest, reflective scrutiny of the artistic purpose. How well is it delivered? How well does it connect with an audience beyond the organisation? It extends to searching questions about running the company in a way that is congruent with the artistic purpose. How effective is the stewardship of public money? Is the cost of delivering the purpose appropriate? How motivated is the organisation to mobilise other sources of revenue? Managers also need to be clear about broader issues, such as how creativity is valued and fostered throughout the business. How are staff treated? What are the social and environmental responsibilities?

Purpose and action are aligned through an organisational culture that transmits respect for the purpose in everything it does. This is most easily evident in how recruits are inducted. If new recruits learn from their peers what people should do and why, the culture is probably in good shape. Where it’s not, managers must find ways to create new cultural imperatives. At the BBC, when Greg Dyke was in charge, he banned biscuits at meetings. A relatively trivial financial saving, but one with a powerful message: that every employee had a part to play in ensuring that the BBC’s use of licence fee money should be focused on delivering great services to the public.

An organisation that consistently asks how well it serves its purpose develops better clarity of purpose and better alignment of behaviour behind it. This kind of reflexivity creates a self-renewing culture, which promotes effective action and communicates its purpose in what it does. It makes staff more empowered, more motivated and more creative. And these are the conditions which foster experiences which delight audiences.

Image courtesy Mr. T in DC.

All too much?

The charity, Mind, is running a campaign on mental health at work.

It’s offering resources to help employees manage stress at work. Mind emphasises the need to recognise when you are feeling and stress and your ability to take action about it, however small. In most jobs, one has some autonomy to manage things without reference to anyone else; making the most of this gives you some sense of control and helps you to stop feeling the victim of other people’s demands. There’s some good advice on how to do this:

• Develop good relationships with colleagues so that you can build up a network of support.
• Talk to someone you trust, at work or outside, about what upsets you or makes you feel stressed. This is not a sign of weakness, it’s taking responsibility for your wellbeing.
• Treat colleagues with the respect and consideration you want from them.
• Communicate if you need help.
• Be assertive – say no if you can’t take on extra demands.
• Be realistic – you don’t have to be perfect all the time.
• Write a list of what needs to be done; it only takes a few minutes and can help you to prioritise, focus and get things in perspective. It can also feel satisfying to tick items off once they have been done.
• If everything starts to feel overwhelming, take a deep breath. Try and get away from your desk or situation for a few minutes – get a drink or go to the toilet.
• Try and take a walk or get some fresh air during the day – exercise and daylight are beneficial to mental as well as physical health.
• Make sure you drink enough water and that you eat during the day to maintain your energy levels.
• Learn some relaxation techniques.
• Work regular hours and take the breaks and holidays you’re entitled to. If things are getting too much, book a day off or a long weekend.
• Try not to work long hours or take work home with you. This may be all right in the short term, if the work has a specific purpose and is clearly defined – a team effort to complete an urgent project may be very satisfying – however, working longer hours does not generally lead to better results.
• Maintain a healthy work-life balance – nurture your outside relationships, interests, and the abilities your job does not use.

The more impressive aspect of the campaign though is the call on employers to recognise their duty of care to employees with respect to mental health. This is an obligation on all employers, big or small, under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1984. Yet, as Mind says:

“Mental health is still a taboo subject, with employers and employees feeling scared and confused about confronting the issue. As a result, millions of workers are putting on a ‘brave face’, hiding the fact they are experiencing distress. Work-related mental ill health costs the UK economy up to £26 billion every year through lost working days, staff turnover and lower productivity.”

Mind offers resources for employees to help them ensure they’re promoting the wellbeing of staff and it makes clear that it’s in companies own interests to get this right:

“If your work environment and relationships aren’t right you’ll struggle to recruit and retain good staff. Creating the right environment and supportive relationships between staff will prevent your staff from experiencing work-related mental health problems and help your organisation to thrive.
• Make sure that work environments are suitable for the task. Noise, temperature and light levels can all have a big impact on wellbeing. Could space dividers, quiet spaces or music improve your workplace?
• Manage workloads among your staff. Make sure that no one is expected to deliver more than what they are capable of.
• Train managers to identify risks, recognise mental ill health and support their staff.
• For staff working in isolation, ensure there are clear and regular lines of communication.”

It’s a duty of care, but it also makes good business sense.

Image courtesy Bhernandez.

First taste of power

When Barack Obama took office as President of the United States, I was struck by his effort to accommodate rivals within his cabinet. Now we have our own cabinet of rivals governing the United Kingdom and the impact on the tone of our politics has been immediate.

There are warnings in the press that the unlikely pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives will end in tears. All governments end in failure at some point. But for now, we have a more adult-to-adult and consensual political discourse and the signs are that the leaders will try their utmost to make it stick.

Nothing exemplified this better than the ease and humour with which David Cameron brushed aside journalists playing back his previous jibes about his new colleague, Nick Clegg. His answer gave substance to the claim of a new politics:

Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg displayed courage and leadership in reaching out to each other. There was self-interest in it, but also a determination to mediate differences so as to establish a majority that can give stable government.

Clegg laid the foundation for the partnership the day following the election when – finding he held the balance of power – he exercised moral integrity in asserting the right of the Conservatives to have first shout at forming a government. In doing so, he will have affronted many on the left of his own party who see themselves as more natural allies of Labour.

Cameron responded with creativity and lateral thinking when he made his “big, open and comprehensive” offer to the Liberal Democrats to join him in a coalition, identifying areas of common purpose between his party and the Conservatives. He carried his party with him by drawing clear red lines, and not extending too far with his opening position. But he must have known that he would have to compromise much further if he was to close the negotiations successfully.

That he was willing to make these further compromises is testimony to his seriousness as a leader. He was prepared to do what was necessary to secure power, knowing that without it his leadership of his party is nothing.

In this context, Nick Clegg’s flirtation with the Labour Party before completing the pact with the Tories was a necessary part of the dance. Members of the Conservative Party and its supporters in the press expressed outrage at this “betrayal”. But it was noticeable that Cameron and his lead negotiator, William Hague, were forbearing. In my view, this was the manoeuvre in the negotiations which cemented the marriage and the Conservative leadership recognised this.

To carry his party, Nick Clegg needed to gain more from the Conservatives than had been outlined in Cameron’s opening offer and he needed to demonstrate that he’d given the alternative option of a deal with Labour a chance.

To carry his party, David Cameron needed a plausible reason for compromising further than many of his supporters would have liked. The prospect of the Liberal Democrats sustaining Labour in office provided that pretext.

If there were any lingering suspicions that this is a marriage of convenience, the choreography yesterday was intended comprehensively to dispel them. The parties have agreed ways to allow for the differences that they know will surface between them. But they’ll want to avoid this if possible, so there will be more emphasis on leadership by consensus.

And the two leaders implicitly draw upon another aspect in which comparisons with Obama seem relevant: the generational shift which may embed the shift in style. Modern leadership displays a relaxed ease – tolerant and inclusive. Both Cameron and Clegg were keen to show a break with the more sectional politics of the baby boomers. And there was a palpable sense that – of a similar age (and background) – they could do business with each other.

The break with the past was most pressing for Cameron. As a journalist, I attended Conservative Party conferences where the attendees aged in their fifties and sixties would have represented the youngest end of the membership. As Jonathan Freedland observed, the new Prime Minister regarded a partnership with the Liberal Democrats as anything but a necessary evil:

“Since taking over in 2005, the Tory leader has tried to recast his party as one with which liberal Britons could feel comfortable – modern, tolerant, environmentally aware. That has been an uphill struggle, as the failure to ‘seal the deal’ in last week’s election confirms. Yet at a stroke, Cameron has rammed his point home. How, runs the logic, could anyone dispute the liberal credentials of the new prime minister now? “

The management theorists Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that what is value above all else in a leader today is authenticity.  The coalition provides David Cameron a totemic opportunity to substantiate his claim to have changed his party.

But before we become too awed by the touchy-feely cosiness of the new administration, let’s take note of the subtle messages beneath the gentle body language.  Peter Collett decodes it:

“One of the litmus tests of power relations is who laughs at whom. That’s because laughter serves to elevate the status of the person who manages to elicit laughter, while it reduces the status of the person who does the laughing. During the press conference Clegg made a bold attempt to be amusing when he feigned hurt and pretended to be leaving. Cameron responded with a show of embarrassment, but he didn’t laugh. But when Cameron made an amusing remark, Clegg cracked up. On the surface it all looked very jolly, but the underlying purpose of the levity was to sort out their status positions.

The overriding impression that everyone went away with was of two men who are at ease in each other’s company, and who could definitely work together.

But Cameron also managed to stamp his authority throughout the day, reminding Clegg and the rest of us that he’s the man who’s very much in charge.”

It may yet end in tears.  But, in the meantime, we’ll witness an experiment in more honest and grown-up leadership that may have repercussions beyond politics.

This is the second of a pair of blog posts on the leadership lessons of the 2010 General Election.  Part 1: Gordon Brown.

Image courtesy The Prime Minister’s Office.

Gordon Brown at the G8

I hesitate to blog about politics, but am inspired to reflect on a post at the Coaching Commons blog about Gordon Brown’s handling of the post-election situation.

My initial response to the post, written by a US observer, was to notice the folly of making coaching judgments about foreign cultures. The premise of the piece was a misreading of the British constitution, that Brown was clinging to office. As evidence, it offered, without scepticism, opinion drawn from Britain’s famously partisan press. Clinging to office Brown may have been. But he was also prisoner of the vacuum at the heart of power, unable to leave until it was clear a new government could take Labour’s place. As it turned out, the premise was undermined almost as soon as the piece was published, with Brown announcing his intention to resign so as not to stand in the way of any possible deal between his party and the Liberal Democrats.

Nonetheless, there was clearly truth in the reading of Brown as a control freak who undermined his own strengths of resilience and the drive to leave a virtuous legacy. This much was confirmed by Andrew Rawnsley’s book, The End of the Party. The more interesting aspect of the analysis was the focus on Brown as an introvert: more energised by working with small groups of people than large groups, who would tend to exhaust him. The piece highlighted how his failure to work with the grain of this characteristic led to an inability to draw out his strengths.

This rang true for me. I often puzzle at the disparity between the Brown we came to know in office and the earlier rising star that was such a force in bringing Labour in opposition back from the brink of oblivion. As a reporter in Parliament in the 1990s, I observed Brown as a formidable communicator. The benches of the House of Commons, routinely two-thirds empty, would be packed for one of his set-piece speeches. These combined razor-sharp analysis with acerbic wit in their deconstruction of the Conservatives’ reputation for economic competence, after they had presided over the humiliation of sterling on the foreign exchange markets. Here was a man comfortable in his own skin, able to function in front of a crowd but not beholden to it. Required to perform on the national stage, he would rise to the occasion. But he could retire sufficiently to his own space not to be overcome by the energy-draining demands of public service.

The Blair years changed all that. Not simply because they represented the vanquishing of Brown by his mentor. They also established Blair’s extravert style as the zeitgeist. Blair was clearly energised by being with people and and connecting with them at levels far beyond the political discourse. On the death of Princess Diana, Blair was the conduit for a very public mediation of emotion the like of which Britain had not experienced – at least not in my lifetime.

A succession of Conservative leaders could no more grasp this style of leadership than Brown; until David Cameron arrived in similar mould to Blair – informal, open and emotionally literate. By the time Brown reached prime ministerial office, the dye was cast – to the extent that he felt himself forced to ape the style rather than play to his own.

Operating outside his comfort zone would have exacerbated Brown’s worst tendencies to bully and control – the only ways left to influence the situation he was supposed to be leading. It needn’t have been that way if he’d made more effort to lead with authenticity – making more of a virtue of his downbeat, austere style rather than deploying his awkward rictus grin at alarmingly inappropriate moments. This uncollegiate leader needed to be able to rely much more than he did on others, more relaxed in public, to carry his party’s message. It may not have ended differently, but it may have been less painful – for him and for us. As it was, there was a severe disconnection between himself and the British people, and a failure to influence successfully the people around him.

Nonetheless, the downsides of Brown’s leadership can be overstated. The banking crisis may have been partly of his own making, but he showed courage and judgment in his response to it. He led the world in containing the risk – as he had done earlier in prompting western leaders to alleviate third world debt. These areas of high policy allowed his strengths – his intellectual mastery, his powers of rational persuasion – to come to the fore.

Appropriately enough, it was when he was most alone – staring defeat head-on – that he showed consummate political skill and leadership. Reportedly, he had decided as early as Friday, the day after the election, to step aside. He demonstrated astute timing in waiting until Monday to announce this. It was an act which combined both statesmanship and low political cunning. It recognised the likelihood of a coalition of his opponents taking power, but created enough room for the alternative – a Liberal Democrat deal with Labour – to be tested.

Had that alternative succeeded, he would have kept his party in power. The gamble failed. But the eventual, and always more likely, outcome was rendered more legitimate as a result of the best deal Labour could offer having been put on the table and found wanting. Before it reached this point though, Brown’s act had electrified the negotiations between the parties and immediately elicited concessions from the Conservatives which significantly moderated their governing agenda. So Brown left office in the knowledge that he had secured, from a bad hand, what he could view as the most progressive result possible.

It was striking, watching him walk down Downing Street with his family, how he gained a spring in his step as the burdens of office lifted. His face bore a more natural, human smile than we have been used to seeing. The scene was well described by the drama critic, Michael Billington:

“It rounded off the New Labour era with a perfect circularity. Just as Tony Blair on a bright May morning in 1997 had arrived at No 10 to pose with his family, so Brown quit the stage on a chilly May evening in the consoling presence of those closest to him. Of course, there was a touch of political calculation to it. It made for a great image. It was also, I suspect, a reminder to the media, who, in their hounding of Brown over the last two years, have more than justified Blair’s epithet of ‘feral’, that the ex-PM is still a human being.”

The pictures from inside Downing Street in Gordon Brown’s final hour in office tell the same story. He was reconciled to departure and this reserved, introverted Prime Minister was relishing a return to private citizenship.

This is the first of a pair of blog posts on the leadership lessons of the 2010 General Election.  Part 2: David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Image courtesy Downing Street.

It was produced for the Department for Culture and, having the misfortune to be published in the midst of the election campaign, will struggle initially to receive the attention it deserves.

One issue Jonathan highlights is the critical need for the leaders of arts organisations to bone up on technology:

“There is a strong perception among the contributors to this paper that the leadership of local authorities and the boards of governors and trustees do not contain enough people who feel confident debating and taking decisions about digital strategy and policy. Trustees, recruited for their seniority and wisdom, are seen as being less likely to be digital natives.

“Having more people with insight into digital opportunities would reduce the risk of boards rejecting worthwhile projects or failing to encourage management to consider new digital methods. It would also reduce the risk of ill-considered digital strategy being adopted.”

He also urges senior managers to recognise that they need collectively to develop some “herd knowledge” of digital strategy and not just leave it to a designated technology expert on the board.

I was struck by a quote in the report from my old boss, Tony Hall, about the reticence of arts organisations to give away cultural assets on the internet:

“People are over-optimistic about future commercial value and not excited enough about present public value.”

Click the image above to see Jon’s top ten tips. Recommended reading for anyone grappling with digital strategy in the cultural sector.

“We have developed into a society or culture that is afraid of silence. The noise is now so great in many public places, partly because of all the mobile phone conversations conducted in them, that I am surprised people can actually hear the others they are phoning.

“Constant noise appears to be reassuring, or at least to be thought so. That is why music or muzak plays in shops, restaurants and on aeroplanes when they are about to take off or land. But what happens when noise is so loud and ubiquitous that you can no longer hear yourself think?

“Then the thought occurs that the whole point of all this din is to stop people thinking, or confronting themselves. The scary thing about silence is that you are left with yourself; the mirror which might have been conveniently darkened or blurred is now uncomfortably clean and unforgiving.”

He’s writing in response to A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, which I’ve not read. His article resonated with my own increasing appreciation of silence.

Long before iPods, and before them Walkmans, a music soundtrack accompanied my life as much as possible. At some level, it helped my mind switch off and to become more connected with life. But the iPod finally killed this for me.

When I first got an iPod, I uploaded my entire music collection and more or less listened to all of it over several months as I cycled to and from work. I found I didn’t much like most of the collection and still less did I like constant noise in the background. Where before, a soundtrack helped me relax, now it was becoming a source of distraction and stress.

More recently, I’ve noticed that I opt for silence by default. For as many years as I can remember, the start of my day was arranged to the rhythms of the Today programme on the radio. It connected me with the world beyond. My childhood and teenage memories of Today are of civilised, sophisticated and affable presenters whom it was a pleasure to invite to your breakfast table. But through the years that I was working at the BBC, the mix became more toxic.  The political culture seemed to demand a more austere diet of aggressive interrogation of guests. It felt like a civic and professional duty to listen, but no longer one that was wholesome. I was surprised how quickly the habit of listening fell away once I left the corporation. Nowadays, I’ve already checked the headlines on my phone before I even switch on the radio and as often as not I forget to switch it on at all.

Similarly, when driving I surprise myself by driving long distances in silence where before I couldn’t contemplate travelling without a playlist of podcasts or some music to alleviate the boredom. I currently need to drive to Oxford reasonably frequently and look forward to the opportunity to be with my thoughts and to take in the hills of the Chilterns as I speed through.

Silence lets us connect with ourselves in ways which are too infrequent in contemporary life. I notice this with my coaching clients. One of the greatest gifts you can give as a coach requires no particular skill or training; just the discipline to ask a question and then shut up. To experience the time and space to explore one’s thoughts is such a contrast to the demanding busyness of normal everyday life that it’s almost a value in itself. The icing on the cake is that it refreshes the mind, helps us see things in new ways and ultimately fosters a more grounded and measured approach to life.

Image courtesy ell brown.

This week I’ve been refreshing my GTD system: reviewing my horizons of focus, tidying up my project lists, and emptying my collection baskets.

If that doesn’t mean anything to you, perhaps it’s time you were inculcated to the cult of Getting Things Done – a book on how to organise yourself and manage all the stuff in your life with the minimum of stress.

Getting Things Done, by David Allen, must be one of the most blogged about of books so I hesitate to add to the cacophony. But, since I find myself recommending it to clients with increasing frequency, I feel a need to explain its particular appeal to me.

David Allen’s great achievement in my opinion was to notice the kind of things we tend to do all the time, when trying to process and get through the cascade of responsibilities that we all face, and order them into a set of routines which, if adhered to, remove much of the friction around being productive. Instead of prescribing a time management system which tries to slot your work into rigid structures of prioritisation, GTD – as it’s known to its friends – offers a more natural, fluid process of keeping track of your commitments and following your energy in deciding what needs to be done.

It’s difficult to do justice to the elegance of the approach in a single blog post so let me confine myself to some of the elements that I find particularly helpful.

A trusted system for collecting your commitments. Instead of relying on your memory, and writing things down in diverse places, GTD encourages you to have a single system that you can use wherever you are for capturing your thoughts, action points, to-dos and so on. This can be as simple as a notebook or a pile of index cards which you can toss into an in-tray, or it can be more sophisticated like an app on your phone that syncs to the web or your computer. The key is to have always on hand the tools which will enable you to note down something you need to do and get the note to a single, consistent destination. Typically, we carry a lot this stuff around in our heads. But there’s only so much that your mind can hold at any one time and the things we have to do recede from grasp. If you can trust that all the stuff that you accumulate through the course of a day will end up in a place where you can later work out what to do with it, you free your mind from having to remember everything and your ‘psychic RAM’, as Allen describes it, can be put to better use.

Workflow for keeping your inbox clear. Don’t treat your inbox as a to-do list in which things that need your attention accumulate. If you do, you will constantly have to filter through stuff that has been sitting there for some time and new items that need your attention. So your mind will be constantly processing what to do with each item. David Allen offers a process for clearing your inbox methodically. You go through each item and give it your attention only once – deciding whether to delete it, file it or take action. If the item is actionable, your options boil down to three choices: deal with it straight away, if it can be done in two minutes; delegate it; or defer it.

Organise your stuff into projects and next actions. Having processed your inbox, you end up with a pile of stuff that is actionable. You need to turn this from a bunch of stuff that demands your attention in some vague way into defined projects and actions which make it clear what you need to do next. David Allen is refreshingly uncomplicated about this. An action is the next thing you need to do on a task to move it forward and a project is any task that requires more than one action to complete it. The important thing about an action is to write it as an instruction that makes clear what you have to do so that, when it comes to the doing, you don’t have to think about what the task requires of you – e.g. Call the garage to arrange a car service (and for this to be a next action, you’ll need to know the number of the garage, otherwise the next action is: Find the phone number for the garage). Often we fail to make progress with a task because we haven’t recognised that it’s a project and not an action. The solution is to think about the outcome you want to achieve and then work back to what is the very next thing you need to do to move you towards that outcome.

Weekly review. To my mind, this is one of the most valuable aspects of GTD and the one that can feel the hardest to justify in the heat of the moment. This is about making a weekly commitment to yourself to go through your lists of projects and actions so as to review progress and anticipate what needs to be done in the week ahead. This can take a good two hours to do well and there’s a great temptation to skip it. But time spent up front getting on top of your workload and ensuring that you understand what to do is more than repaid in the effectiveness by which you operate subsequently. If you don’t carve out a weekly period to review your commitments, you’ll end up doing this iteratively on the fly anyway.

Mindful approach to doing. David Allen recommends that you organise all your actions into lists for different contexts – phone calls to make, things you have to do on the computer, errands for when you’re out and about, and so on. You then refer to these to work out what you need to do depending on the context in which you find yourself. I have to say that I don’t gain a great deal by filtering my actions by context, perhaps because my contexts are not very varied. I tend to focus much more on what I want to get done today across a variety of contexts. The bigger point though is to be guided by where your energy lies. At some point in the day, you may not feel like doing a lot of thinking work but may be attracted to rattling through a few phone calls. You need to be able to use your system quickly to find the tasks that correspond to what you have the energy, will and resources to accomplish in the moment.

Distilled down, Getting Things Done is about doing in a disciplined way the things you need to do in any event to keep on top of your workload. If you don’t acquire the disciplines, you still end up doing having to go through the same thought processes about how to approach your work but you’ll do this in a piecemeal way that absorbs more of your mental capacity.

The great thing is that it’s not an all-or-nothing edifice that is hard to integrate into your life. You can make a difference to your effectiveness by adopting any one of these practices. As you embed it, it begins to free you up to achieve more; then you can build on this by taking on another aspect of the GTD approach. Ultimately, as you get more competent at dealing with your immediate commitments and responsibilities, you find your mind begins to shift to the bigger, more long-term questions about what you’re doing with your life.

Beware, this thing has existential implications.

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Available from Amazon

Image courtesy koalazymonkey

What's the story?

Are you a coach whose practice draws on a narrative perspective, or explores how clients make and tell themselves stories? If so, can you help with my research project?

I’m doing a Masters dissertation on how an awareness of stories can help clients. I want to talk to coaches who work with a narrative perspective. I’d particularly like to hear from you if your approach resonates at all with what I describe below.

I bring a particular interest to the subject as a coach whose practice draws on an earlier career in journalism. I retain the journalist’s habit of viewing events as stories and instinctively try to tease out the stories represented in coaching conversations. But narrative has a broader relevance to coaching than this.

Stories are how we make sense of the world and together make our social world. With the fading of the grand narratives which traditionally provided meaning and direction for people, individuals are challenged to create their own personal narratives to make sense of their life’s purpose. I’m interested not just in the outcome of story creation, but also the process – since a story is always materially affected by the circumstances of its telling.

My impression is that coaching can help individuals understand the narratives which shape their expectations of themselves. Some people also suggest that coaching can help clients construct narratives which can give them a more positive sense of self and direction. I’m open-minded about this.

In my view, the narrative perspective can foster reflexivity in coaching, providing a language to enable coach and client to see their own conversation as collaborative story-making. This can help clients see beyond the perception of reality as a given, and see themselves much more as the author of their own meaning. I want to test these assumptions in my research project.

I’m also interested in exploring a narrative-based approach as creativity. It can help elicit resourcefulness in a coachee: triggering things like memories, lateral thinking and imagination – insight that may be embodied in an individual but not always readily accessible.

I link this to a view of the mind being developed by neuroscience (and here I’m at the limit of my intellectual competence). This sees the mind as largely unconscious and comprising diverse mental models of the self, which are activated and synthesised in different ways according to different perceived triggers. Narrative inquiry can encourage a client to explore a story from different perspectives. This can mobilise the client’s imagination to bring more of the mind’s stored experiences to bear on the subject at hand than might otherwise be the case, for example helping the client more easily to empathise with a difficult colleague.

I see a further link between narrative and a developmental view of the self as a process of evolving meaning-making. The narrative perspective provides a way to think about how the self is influenced by each experience incrementally. If a story is always unique to the circumstances of its telling, we are also slightly changed every time we tell or hear a story. Even where a story is retold between narrator and listener, it is different the second time since the way both individuals interpret its meaning will be influenced by the first telling and whatever experience has occurred in the interim. So how a story unfolds in a coaching conversation will itself have an impact on how the coachee perceives it. What does this mean for how coaches should work with stories, and how will stories developed between coach and coachee stand up in the coachee’s life beyond the coaching sessions?

I am interested in testing these thoughts-in-development by talking to other coaches who draw on narrative, and exploring how they use it. I’d like to understand: what you consider narrative and story to be; how you apply these concepts in your coaching; what outcomes you think are brought about for your clients by drawing on a narrative perspective; and what are the avenues for further developing your narrative-informed practice.

Initially, I’m looking for a short exploration of your views. The methodology of my research after that will be influenced by the response I get to this request. Most probably, I’d be looking for about 90 minutes of your time for an in-depth interview (either in person or by phone or Skype).

If you’d be interested in finding out more, please get in touch via this contact page or LinkedIn or Twitter.

Image courtesy Julia Manzerova

Are you looking in the right place?

Finding a coach is harder than finding a doctor, lawyer or most other kinds of professional service. Coaching is a fast growing profession, but strangely invisible and not clearly defined to its market. People often reach a coach through word of mouth; but chances are you won’t know many people who have experienced working with a coach. Alternatively, you might pick up a flyer for a coach who works in your neighbourhood; but how do you know if this person is the real deal or a quack?

If you’ve done the work of the part 2 in this series, and spent some time ascertaining your coaching needs, you will be well placed to find a coach with whom you can have a productive relationship. Instead of approaching the market with a broad and open agenda, you will have a reasonably clear idea of what you’re after and this should make your approach to finding a coach more focussed. So the first thing to understand is that you are not simply looking for a good coach. You are looking for a coach who is right for you – someone whose model of coaching is relevant to your needs, someone who inspires your trust and confidence and with whom you can imagine sharing aspects of yourself that would not normally enter other professional relationships.

Where do you find such a person? You need to seek candidates and interview two or three of them before selecting the coach that you will employ.

If you have a very specific need – such as decluttering or weight control – you might find the internet a good place to start. But these are very task-focussed examples which are on the borders of coaching and may well encompass a degree of mentoring or directive advice that coaching wouldn’t normally provide. Web searches are reasonably effective at connecting practitioners and clients for this kind of work.

More typically, coaching is one of the few areas of life in the digital age where a web search is not going to be especially helpful to begin with – although looking closely at coaches’ websites will be a significant part of the finding process later on.

If you work in a company and are considering business coaching, it’s possible that your HR department or senior management may have an arrangement in place to provide coaching. The important consideration in this situation is to keep in control of the selection process and not simply accept the first person who is offered to you. In most corporate situations, good practice is to offer you a choice of coaches and allow you to select the one who seems to offer the best fit for your needs. If this does not happen, you should insist on it: it is not for your boss, HR director nor anyone else to tell you who is the right coach for you.

If you are looking for a coach independently, your best bet is to seek recommendations from people you trust. These may include someone who has had coaching or someone who works as a coach (if you have a friend who coaches, it’s probably best not to choose this person as your coach since the boundaries between your friendship and your coaching relationship could get confused).

If your personal contacts yield no results, your next ports of call are organisations in the coaching field such as professional bodies, training schools and coaching companies. Among the professional bodies, the International Coach Federation and the Association for Coaching operate public directories of coaches which are accessible online. But these are fairly blunt instruments.
Ideally you want to speak to someone to explain what kind coaching experience you seek, so as to filter the recommendations you receive to your needs. Many training schools will be happy to put you in touch with alumni coaches (or even coaches in development who may offer free coaching in order to gain practice) and most coaching companies maintain panels of associate coaches and should be able to put you in touch with a number of people to speak to.

Armed with a few leads, the next step is to check out the websites for the people whose names you’ve obtained or the companies with which they are associated. These tell you an awful lot, and not always in the way their authors intend. You need to interrogate the websites, not passively absorb the information they present. Try to build a picture of the person who is putting him or herself forward as a coach.

In the first instance, look for obvious signs of professional credibility. These include relevant qualifications from reputable training establishments or accreditation by a professional body, membership of professional associations, subscription to a recognised code of ethics (pdf), and a commitment to ongoing development of the coach’s practice.

Next, ask yourself whether the website gives you a reasonable overview of the coach’s approach. What impression do you gain of what it would be like to experience coaching with this person? Some coaches will provide a model to explain what they do. Others, including me, blog about coaching-related subjects to give a more qualitative insight. Sometimes coaches provide resources on their websites which enable you to try out for yourself some of their techniques.

What do you learn about the theories, beliefs and perspectives that the coach brings to the task. How well do they fit or complement your own world view? If they challenge it, is this in a way that might help shift your thinking in a constructive way or is this giving you a warning sign that you could be looking at a dead end?

Step back a bit further and consider to what extent the coach’s website is in the service of your buying decision. Does it make you feel comfortable or uncomfortable? Is it written in language that is meaningful? Or does it bombard you with jargon about the coach’s credentials which make little sense to you? What is your reaction to the colours, design and style of the site? Is information provided freely or is it conditional on you submitting contact details? What do the answers to these questions tell you about the kind of relationship you might establish with this coach?

A note here about price. I know of few coaches that post pricing information on their websites. Here’s why. Most coaches operate in a variety of markets with different levels of price sensitivity. A large corporate client will expect to pay considerably more than an individual who funds the coaching from his or her own pocket. It’s quite hard to address these expectations simultaneously from a single website. But you should expect a clear and accountable answer to your questions about price once you get into a conversation with a coach. Within reason, few would want price to be a barrier to a client benefiting from coaching (indeed many coaches do a certain amount of pro bono work for causes or individuals they want to support).

The implication of this is that, if your search is price-led, you won’t get very far. In the first instance, focus on finding a coach who fits your needs and deal with the question of price later on. By this time, you should have a good idea in your head of the value you would put on coaching and how to tailor your budget accordingly. Fewer sessions with a coach who will challenge you and move you forward are better than more sessions with one whose approach is not right for you.

Your objective in comparing websites is to find a few practising coaches with whom you can have a useful conversation about your needs. An initial conversation on the phone should be enough to tell you whether this person may be a potential coach for you.  If the signs are not encouraging, don’t be embarrassed to ask for recommendations for someone who might be a better fit.  If the signs are encouraging, you will want to meet the person for a reasonably lengthy conversation to enable both of you to explore the kind of working relationship you might establish together.

In both your initial phone call, and your subsequent meeting if you proceed to that, you’ll want to have in mind the same kind of considerations that apply to scanning coaches’ websites.  Aim to meet two or three people and think about whether the impressions you formed from looking at their sites and talking to them on the phone are borne out. Each meeting will give you a real insight into what coaching with that particular person would be like. And being able to compare your experiences of two or three different coaches will give you valuable data about which approach might best suit you at this particular time.

You need to be clear what you can expect from such an encounter and what you might want to get out of it. That is the subject of the next post in this series.